• Now I haven't had a joint for 10 days, but it's much too early to talk about my former addiction.  Except for a few short holidays abroad I have smoked hash every day for the past eighteen years - following 20 years or so when my use was less regular.


So, what's so terrible about that? - some of the more laid back of you may ask (you may smoke a joint occasionally yourself, or be fixated as I am)  After all, it's not crack, it's not smack.  It's not opium.

True.  I was appalled when, during my time with Vanessa, a hypnotist said he could nothing for me unless I enrolled on a six week, $70,000 course in the Nevada with a bunch of coke and smack heads.  Alcohol and tobacco cause far more problems, blah and blah.  And the odd evening of spliff sharing with friends is about as friendly, harmless activity as you can have. 

But my smoking wasn't the odd evening, and I did it less and less in company.  I have never smoked a straight cigarette in my life, so part of the buzz probably came from nicotene.  Also, I started smoking on a daily basis at about the time I was advised and then discovered for myself that my health and digestive system suffered when I drank alcohol. I've never been particulary fond of booze and hate feeling drunk, so avoiding it has been easy.  On the other hand, I'm no puritan.  Reality on its own often felt dull.  Why not smoke my way to the land of fantasy?


The other motive was to help my writing.  Perhaps it does help.  Just now, pausing as always at the startof this post to come up with a pithy title, I thought "I'll roll up and get inspiration".  It would have been so easy.  Now, I'm not entirely sure that I ever got writing inspiration this way, but I thought I did.  I thought it summoned up my muses; certainly it often relaxed me more (though, like booze, it's no help in a depression).  The problem is though, that it also, as the day wore on, made me incapable of writing.

I rationalised it thus: all my life I had thought too much.  I had been to practical, so self critical, so - and regular readers will know I am tediously often writing about this - so aware of my Mother.  Smoking would obliterate my Mother.  But, of course it didn't.  In fact long term dope smoking (even at the relatively low levels I maintained - five to ten joints a day) makes you paranoid.


So I probably destroyed a few million brain cells but also, in a sense, moved away from being true to my inspiration.  Dope doesn't only get you out of head, but also out your body -  only occasionally in a nice way.  More and more I have felt hazy, disconnnected, ungrounded. 

I longed ot exile myself in my dreams - but, actually it was if I was exiled within them.  Puff, puff, in a cloud of rather sad possibility, when I could have been out and about.

For this is the most debilitating thing that happened to me - I became demotivated.  Dope is a very good inventor of excuses not to do something , particularly on the evening - not to go and see a movie, not to phone a friend, not to throw a party.  No wonder I didn't have a proper girlfriend - where would I have met her?

Of course....

No, I'll stop here for now.

time to quit weed