Seeing Through Smoke - The Life of A Marijuana Addict

The smoke sifts like a snake –
Bending in a wind that cannot be felt.
Dancing to a song that cannot be heard.
Shivering through a spiral that cannot be seen.

There is no such thing as the line. It cannot be crossed; it does not exist. It is a spiral – one you slide down the first time you question a personal moral choice. I ride that spiral…

It has no definite beginning, middle, or end. I say this as someone who managed to slip off only to be snatched once more.

That’s what it does. It encases you. A key dangles from your finger but its jingle is all you hear. A saviour is in arm’s reach but all you see are shades.

Like a cocoon it transforms you, day-by-day, night-by-night, bit-by-bit. A mirror never finds you, as long as your knuckles are covered in blood and broken glass. But the voices – they never leave. They can’t ever leave, so long as you remain.

How they pretend to be your friend, whispering coaxes no friend would ever suggest. They offer you a piece of cake for a stomach ache and then tell you eating more will make you feel better. And this cake never ends. You never eat enough to please the voices. More slices continue to appear; the cake gets bigger, thicker, richer. Until all you see is cake. Everywhere: cake, cake, cake. It is no longer pink, pretty, fluffy. It is green, rotten, diseased. And it surrounds you. Shoves itself down your throat. Chokes you. Devours you.

* * *

My spiral started when I was seventeen, although back then it looked more like a carousel – bright lights and happy faces. No one had sad eyes, cracked lips, broken dreams. Smiles never stopped; boredom was our friend. The world was our buffet and our stomachs could never be filled. Jobs were for those that had buried fun: education for those that couldn’t think for themselves.

Our brains were stuck in high school, because for us it had never really started nor had it ended. Real life was a dream we talked about like a movie – we were going to watch it eventually but just hadn’t gotten round to it.

The first time I tried weed was in a friend’s caravan, camped outside the front of a house. He knew the owner and had an arrangement. This was his home: a crumbled bed, television set straight out of hard rubbish, and an abundance of dope.

I had known this friend – let’s call him Lockie – for most my life. Our parents met attending a gathering for divorced ex-wives, and whilst in the children’s area – both of us around six at the time – we sparked a friendship and continue it to this day. Unfortunately, due to circumstances at home, at the age of sixteen he was forced to leave his nest and find a place in the real world. Along the road he met a collection of characters – a lot of them users of weed. And just like a garden of thorns, when surrounded by them long enough you are bound to prick yourself eventually.

He fell off the radar for months at a time, generally having no phones where he stayed (or any other means of communication). The few times we caught up he would tell me stories of the road – the people he had met, the places he had stayed, the things he had seen. After awhile though, something seemed different about him.
His eyes seemed hollow; his voice – muffled in an apathetic coating. The words he spoke seemed lazy, as if they had barely slipped out his mouth. Eventually his stories became tangled, barely coherent. He would laugh at pauses or jokes that only he had heard. Lockie had always been a strange boy, but I had never seen him like this. It should have scared me. It should have been a warning as red as his bloodshot eyes.

But I took the bong in Lockie’s outstretched hand, brought the lighter to the cone-piece, and sucked down a cloud of smoke to erase everything I had just thought about.
This was it… the feeling I was after… I was completely… numb… My head was so light yet felt like a stone, bobbing from side to side. My entire body breathed relaxation. My arms, fingers, legs, toes, tingled like happy fireworks. Everything was beautiful… Nothing mattered… No one mattered… My soul had been unchained, and all it wanted to do was dance in silence. How it felt… I will never forget that first feeling… that first rush… that first moral choice… faded…

* * *

What brought me to do such a thing, you might ask? I could give you a few of the easy, boring answers: boredom, depression, curiosity, acceptance – but the real reason was rebellion (at least at first). My father hated a lot of things: weed and homosexuals among them. And seeing as I had no interest in the same sex, the option of smoking weed seemed passable.

My father had never been what you’d call a dad to me – even though I was forced to call him so. By the time he met my mother he was an ex-Vietnam veteran and had two other wives he’d seen to the courthouse – both having left him because of his physical violence. Whatever Mum saw in him, she did. But just like the others she eventually saw his bad side. Yet, she stayed. And then I came into the picture.

All the shouting, yelling, screaming, kicking, punching, smashing, banging, crashing, slamming didn’t stop when I was born. It only worsened. Up until seven years old it was all I heard at night – causing me to develop a nasty habit of sleeping with the bed sheets pulled over my head (to block out the noise – and in my childish rationalisation: protect me).

That was the portrait of my father.

Growing up he offered lessons such as: say “no” to drugs, never ever turn gay, money is life’s most important virtue, and always obey the law. That is why I ventured into the home of Mary Jane, did not care for authority, and never much regarded money.

If you hadn’t already gathered, my father was an intimidating man. I could not simply stand up to him. So this was my way of expressing myself; of venting every bad feeling I brewed inside. This was my way of saying: “hey, Dad… FUCK YOU!”

* * *

I visited Lockie at least once every week for the time he stayed in that caravan. Sometimes I would bring a friend, mostly I came alone. Lockie never minded either way. He was generous like that. Just happy for some company to drag him out of his thoughts, as long as we didn’t pinch too much of his smoke.

Eventually, the wind swept him away once more, and I was left not-high and dry. The days toyed with my mind. Every time I would see someone smoke weed on TV or hear about it in a song I would think back to my time spent in Lockie’s caravan; long for it.

* * *

There is something stoners recognise in each other – a sixth sense they possess that notices the behaviour of a fellow smoker. Before I was smoking heavily, the school-smokers already had me on their radar. They saw my slumped shoulders, tired eyes, uncaring attitude, and chilled demeanour – and thought, bingo!

It wasn’t long before they befriended me, offering me bags of dope in their handshakes – at a price of course. At first I was hesitant. There was a big difference (in my mind) from taking drugs to actually purchasing them. But I longed for that lost feeling, that feeling I thought I’d never get again until I saw an old, dear friend.

I agreed to meet Joe – the head of the school stoner pack – at his house after school. “Everyone who smokes comes round,” he said. “Mum doesn’t mind…” No, she certainly didn’t. I didn’t know what to think when I arrived to see Marie – Joe’s mum – sitting on the couch with a bong pressed against her lips, surrounded by my fellow students. I had entered a brand new world: one that redefined morals, beliefs, and perspective. One that redefined… me…

* * *

I spent every Friday after school at Joe’s house. Soon that turned into three times a week, to every second day, until I was skipping school all the time to visit Joe’s array of endless smiles. It was all I could think about. And it buried every problem: trouble at school, fights at home, self-esteem, girl problems, depression. As long as I was around those guys with a bong in my hand, I was content.

Eventually high school ended, but nothing seemed to change. I was the only one that had gotten into uni – but it was a course that didn’t require an ENTER, and I dropped out after a year. No one really went anywhere. They just floated around. And I liked that. It gave me security knowing none of these people would disappear into the lights of Hollywood or wear a suit into Wall Street.

It was ambition Limbo. No one ever spoke about the future, only the night ahead. Jobs bought dope and booze – they weren’t much good for anything else. People in the circle rotated so only two to three of us would actually work at a time. The rest would just leech until one of us got fired, then the rotation would switch, repeat.
This was how we lived in the world with minimal interaction. Reality was not something we liked to face often. Why do you think we were smoking in the first place? Even going to parties made us feel out of sync. Everyone would be drinking, laughing, talking about their courses and plans for the future. We couldn’t relate on any scale, until the topic of weed came up of course. That was the difference between a casual smoker and us. They could join in the festivities and then go about their lives. For us it was just about time. Something we had been waiting a few minutes – or hours – too long for. The only reason we even shared was to appear normal – another lie to the world: “we’re not addicted. Look, we pass it around!”
That’s the worst thing about weed. How normal you can seem. How you can carry on with this addiction gnawing at your back and not even a single soul notices. They just assume you’re tired (I’ve used this excuse many times when stoned – especially to my father). Unlike heroin, where your struggle is impossible to be ignored, weed is a light drug that isn’t considered serious. In fact, when I came out of a weeklong stay at a halfway house – my first attempt to quit, all of my friends laughed at me when they heard where I had been. “You went into rehab for weed? Is that even possible? That’s like going to rehab for cigarettes! How weak are you?” Needless to say I moved on from these friends and began my journey to get clean. With the help of a drug counsellor I lasted six months, which at the time was very impressive to me.

* * *

My old friends kept calling, asking where I’d been and why I hadn’t been round. They all said they missed me, but I didn’t see what was to miss – by the end of my stay with them I barely spoke, and the few words that did come out were always related to smoking.

But it wasn’t just the old crew that called. The voices also came creeping back, crawling on their bellies, hissing insecurities: “It’s been six months, your life has barely changed. Is this really worth it? Come back to us, Paul. You need to!”

I gave in, unable to take their nagging any longer. I told myself it was a reward for being good and that it’d be a once off. That was the first brick of a barely built wall coming down.

Joints at parties became okay – it was just a social smoke. Smoking at friends was fine – I hadn’t paid for it. Smoking alone wasn’t a problem – it was just on weekends…

After all – I had been to rehab: I was cured…

* * *

Again I was in a haze of smoke, surrounded by my fellow stoners, not quite sure what had happened. It felt like I had sleepwalked back into a nightmare. The thought of rehab became a distant dream; I lost all contact with my counsellor – ashamed to face her; and fell right back into my escapist wonderland.

No one treated me like an addict, because I wasn’t in their eyes. None of us were. We were just a group of psychedelic explorers who didn’t need or care for the world: we just needed each other and a few hits of the bong to keep us happy – and by happy I mean disillusioned.

About this time I noticed a change within myself: despair was rising. Because I had quit – and failed – the possibility of escaping this mess fell into a razor-wire tunnel. I would never make it through without a pair of fucking big wire cutters, and I could spot none in sight.

So I accepted my fate and continued to waste my brain cells day-after-day, night-after night, bit-by-bit.

* * *

My mum was sick of me by now. Sick of my self-destruction, my apathy, and my “wasted creativity”. She said if I didn’t do something with my life I would be kicked out. She refused to watch me slowly kill myself in front of her, as she put it. Well, being homeless wasn’t an option for me. I could barely scrape enough bucks together to feed my addiction, yet alone worry about feeding myself. So I reluctantly followed her wishes.

Having destroyed my Year 12 results to a lack of care left me with few choices. I tried enrolling as a late-age uni student, but was rejected, so turned my sights to a Tafe education.

One of the few things I did enjoy in school had been writing. In my old rock band I was the lyricist, and during my free time wrote short stories – some even placing in a few competitions.

I found a home in Holmesglen, deciding to undertake a course in creative writing. The distraction of work seemed to be effective for a time until I bumped into an old friend I had shared a circle with once before.

Of course the topic of weed came up, but not my recovery. We spoke about the good times, the joy of smoking, and our current habits. I don’t know why I wasn’t stronger. It was like someone spoke for me.
“Yeah, I’m still smoking,” I said.
“Awesome,” my friend replied. “Feel like catching up and having a sesh’ sometime?”
“Sure.” Wait… what? “I’m free Thursday night?” Why am I saying this?
“Ace. I’ll catch you then.”
And that was that. Back on the bandwagon I hopped, ordering the horses to be whipped at full speed.

* * *

A counsellor at rehab once said to me, “When someone wants to quit… they will…” But that never seemed to relate to me. It seemed to contradict my definition of addiction.

People don’t become addicted to things they hate; it’s the things they adore that hook them. And why would you want to quit something you adore? Sure, the cons might start to outweigh the pros, but it’s not that simple. Addicts don’t share the same mind-frame as most. Logic is twisted. An addict can trek halfway across the city to score drugs but can barely be assed slumping off the couch to grab the TV remote.

I know all the dangers of smoking weed: I’m living/breathing some of them. I know the stupidity that goes into willingly killing brain cells. And yet I do it every day.

A part of me hopes by putting my blood on paper that I will no longer feel apathetic about shedding it. But I am long since past trying to predict my strength and resolve. I am now mentally and physically addicted to this toxic plant, it’s thorns deep under my skin.

I do not cry pity. I do not seek attention. I just crave for a glimmer of hope. To see an end to this gun-heavy battle. Because the smoke pouring out of every weapon… is the only thing I see…