Life with Hope by Marijuana Anonymous

Author:Marijuana Anonymous
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hazelden Publishing
Published: 2020-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

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26 A Slave to Marijuana

I WAS THE LAST PERSON in my circle of friends to smoke dope. I was afraid it would lead to other drugs, so I stayed away from it until I was fifteen. I loved the way I felt when I finally tried it, and smoked it whenever anyone had it. After moving out on my own, I started buying it, and before long I was smoking 24/7. Everyone in my life smoked dope. I felt everyone in the world SHOULD smoke dope. Everything I did, I did stoned.

After three years of daily smoking, I was able to acknowledge that I was an addict. All my friends smoked like me. Then I met someone who wasn’t an addict, and we started a relationship. When that relationship ended, I was off and running—smoking all day, every day. I thought true decadence was lighting up before I’d even gotten out of bed in the morning. After five years of that, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. Every morning I woke up feeling tired and groggy. During the previous fifteen years I did plenty of drinking and other drugs. I hated the way alcohol made me feel, with throwing up and blackouts and hangovers the next day. Until I got clean, it wasn’t obvious to me that pot gave me hangovers too.

Pot has seriously affected my memory. It’s not easy for me to remember how it was when I was stoned all day, every day. I knew that I couldn’t function without pot. Though I’d quit drinking and driving long ago, I couldn’t drive without pot. I’d get out of my car and think no one could smell the pot. I was also in big denial about pot being illegal. I don’t remember ever really being scared about getting thrown in jail, which was in reality always a possibility. Another denial was the health consequences. I was a “health nut” who ate vegetarian and exercised regularly. My mother once confronted me, asking how I could smoke dope when I wanted to be healthy. My addiction couldn’t let in the truth that dope was worse for my lungs than tobacco would be if I smoked cigarettes.

In my job as a legal secretary, I just happened to work in a building where my boss and the two lawyers upstairs all smoked dope in their offices! It was heaven. If a client was going to come in, we’d smoke on the roof of the building. Luckily, my boss quit before I did, or else I’m not sure I could have stayed in that job after I quit smoking.

As I was approaching my thirty-second birthday, I realized I’d been smoking dope half my life. I knew I didn’t want the next sixteen years to be the same. That was the beginning of being willing to change. It was a definite miracle where grace happened.

When I tried to quit, it was really hard. I tried for a number of years and I couldn’t.

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