Mary

My return to Apple Valley marked a return to repressed memories and forgotten habits. As of late, I've been asked a lot "why don't you smoke anymore," and the answer is something that isn't easily described through impromptu conversation. Even a thoroughly-outlines, pinnately-detailed manuscript couldn't really hint at my answer to that question. One thing you need to know, though, is that I have an addictive personality---it's the same reason that I lost my whole college fund to the casino last summer, and it's the same reason that I have found baffling attraction towards women I haven't even dated. That addictive personality makes even a (supposedly) nonaddictive drug very seductive to a kid of my genetic-makeup. Weed wasn't too much of a gateway drug for me, I experimented with the casual adderall and pain-killers, but never anything too terrible.  

Mary and I had an interesting relationship... the first time I smoked coincided with the first time I showed anybody my raps. It was the summer after sophomore year, and my parents were out of town. Two of my friends made a water bottle bong and we blew the smoke out of my bedroom window. I didn't get high. The first time I did get high was about three months later, with the same two kids. We were driving to a Halloween Party when it first hit me, and it was a sensation that I don't think anybody could accurately describe. I said my most famous line ever, which has made me the butt of numerous jokes over the years; "Guys... I can't function." 

I started smoking more and more as the months rolled by, and gradually my tolerance for weed built as my funds for weed diminished. The summer after senior year was the climax of my time smoking; our camping trip marked the climax of that climax. I was perpetually high for about 72 hours; shit was weird. Driving home from that trip is when I realized that the relationship between Mary and I was becoming strained.

As I got to college, about three weeks after the camping trip, the smoking shit really died down for me. I didn't think about it, because I wasn't surrounded by it. I smoked here and there (maybe once a week) over First Semester. When winter break came by, that's when things got really weird. Keep in mind, I was going through a rough patch emotionally which probably helped parent the weirdness brought about by the drug too. Through about a three week stretch in mid December to early January, I was introduced to this faux world created by weed.

I know it sounds crazy to you guys, especially the true potheads that are basically unfazed and immune to effects of weed. The best way to describe what I went through was like Inception; there were two worlds: one was the high world, one was the sober world. When i got high, I stopped caring about what happened in what i believed to be the separate universe. I acted weird towards my family, distanced myself from friends, changed a lot. I became super introverted. The raps that I wrote were some of my best stuff; I wrote "Social Network" while exasperatingly high. But, everything was slow. Time stopped existing, motivation stopped breeding, and my concerns in life stopped seeming concerning. I was a different person; a person that I don't want to revisit, and a person that I'm glad I left in the past.

So, that's why I don't smoke anymore. It's not because I think I'm better than that, its not because I don't have enough money to afford it, and it's definitely not for music reasons. I'm just not that person

-Jack