A Trip Down Pot Lane

I’ve always wondered about my fascination with marijuana. I never experimented in high school—both my parents taught at my school, so that was out of the question. In fact, I led a rather sheltered existence until college. And like people that go a little crazy in college, when I went, I went big.

My first time smoking weed was with my freshman year dorm-mate, “Greg.” “Greg” was from a town about an hour away and had led as sheltered an upbringing as my own. He’d bought a bag of weed from a cousin of his, and wanted to get high. However, like me, he’d never rolled a blunt/joint before, and didn’t know how to proceed. So we figured we’d both give it a shot (this was in the days before YouTube.com) and between his efforts and mine, we’d get high somehow. We managed to roll two of the sloppiest joints I’ve ever seen but the mission was ultimately accomplished.

I wasn’t sure what “high” felt like at first, but it didn’t take long to get the point. On a normal day, my mind is all over the place. Random thoughts (usually of a smartass nature) fire constantly and the periphery is filled with ideas and concepts for my writing. But that night in the dorm room, I felt myself completely focused for the first time in my life. My mind was absolutely and totally focused on….nothing at all. Had you been able to insert a microphone into my head that night, you’d have heard the sound of wind whistling across the deserted open plains, with the occasional cricket sounding off for good measure. And I loved it. I loved the quiet inside my head, and how little I really gave a shit at that moment.

And now, all these years later, it’s still the same. Every time I pack a bowl I still feel the same giddy feeling of Here it comes! as the flame approaches the green. As the bowl warms, and the green chars, then burns, then starts to create smoke, I pull at the pipe like a starved babe at the teat. As that funky smoke fills my lungs (smelling vaguely like a cross between socks and pine straw) I know I’m almost there. I’m only seconds away from feeling like my brain is trying to sneak out of the back of my head.

Okay, show of hands: who already figured out I was stoned as I wrote this?