When I first started smoking weed I was in college. Cliche, I know. Except most Americans start at the tender age of 12. In my mind, I know that the universe knows what it does because if I started at that age, lets just say I wouldn’t be able to type these words right now (because I would illiterate).
No Big Deal….At First
Anyway, my friends were doing it and I did it. No big deal at the time since my thing back then was alcohol. I used to love getting blacked out drunk, the security that brought me, the confidence it gave me, so when I smoked then, it was rare and never thought much of it.
Then, I had my second abortion… At the tender age of 20… (My first one was also at 20) and I remember I smoked with my “boyfirend” for the first one so I did it on the second one. After that time, I was so emotionally unavailable, I really did not want to deal with the intense and horrible thought that come with killing a life inside of you. That is when I graduated from college. I was 21. An adult. In the eyes of society.
I started working at a night club and met Javier. A 37 year old bouncer who’s life revolve on getting drunk and high everyday. He made seem like it was what adults did. No parents. No family. This is what the real world was. He made it seem like it was the natural evolution of things. You are a grown up so you do whatever the fuck you want. So I started smoking every day. Not thinking anything wrong about it. The problem was I was 21, I was supposed to be building the foundation of my life, he aparentely alrleady did that.
Smoking Every Day and Living High
By the time I was 22, I was using cocaine and pills to support my high, but I remember nothing, NOTHING made me feel as good as my good old friend MARIHUANA. everything else I did was to enhance my marihuana high. I stop seeing Javier but my habit stayed with me. And I always seem to meet people who smoked and get romantically involved with such.
By the time I was 24, I was practicing yoga everyday which also enhanced my marihuana high, and then had my third abortion. This one was a rough one because I was engaged to the love of my life at the time and we wanted to have it but understood due to our monetary and mental situation we could not. I never stop smoking through it all. Always wanted to though.
You have to Stop Smoking So Much Weed
I am a Stand Up comedian. And I have at least 24 notebooks filled with jokes and adventures but in each notebook I always wrote “You have to stop smoking so much weed. This is why you haven’t made it. You need to focus. Please” in each and every one of them. Its funny, I have been looking through those notebooks lately and on the first page they all have some sort of marihuana residue showing I rolled a joint in every one of them.
At 25 years old, I was broken up with by the love of my life, our marihuana use was not enough to keep us together. So there I was, alone, and with all the weed in the world to smoke. That is when I developed my guiltiest pleasure, to get high, by myself. I really enjoyed it. To this day, if I smoke, that is the way I prefer to do it. I threw myseld into my yoga practice and I got very deep in it but the marihuana was still there reminding me, the old me was still with me.
At 26 years old I had my fourth abortion… Hopefully the last one. This one I knew happened solely because of my marihuana use. I was so careless and high when it happened because I had sex with my boyfriend while ovulating but I was so down from smoking so much I didnt care. I wanted some sort of change in my life. And up until then, things were so good, I thought nothing bad would happen to me ever again. I was wrong.
After that one, my whole life crumbled. I lost my beautiful lower east side apartment. The few friends I had (which is probably for the best because they were all potheads) my sweet boyfriend (who I never really liked, I was just happy to have someone so cute around while I was high. My sense of happiness. My yoga practice. My clean diet. Everything I lost…
Taking My Life Back from Marijuana
Today, February 1st, it has been 13 days since I smoked any Marihuana. And the last day I smoked I bought a bag of it, smoked a joint and threw away the rest. And I never EVER throw away weed. That is when I knew, after seven years of constant daily use (the longest I went without it was 35 days in 2013) I was ready to say goodbye to my old habit. The one thing that made me feel like I was fine alone.
That my eating disorder was just a side effect of the munchies. That friends were lame and I was the best of them all. That was the day on the new moon of 2015, I was finally honest with myself and understood that some thing can not really make you feel good. A substance should not have that much control over your existence. That was the day I quit weed and hired myself.
I think about doing it every day and I know it wont feel good but I still would love to do it, on my own, to write, to feel peace from my thoughts, from my pain, from my narrowed existence which resulted from all the years I spent in my room getting high by myself. I am completely alone now. Aside from the audiences I perform for at night and the kids I teach during the day. My phone never rings. I broke up with the world because I need time for myself. The problem is I am weak and dont know how to do anything without weed. I would like these 13 days to become thousands. I hope you know that Marihuana has completely taken over my life and I am ready to get my life back.