4/20 – 1999
On 4/20 1999 sophomore year of high school I was caught at school with cannabis and was suspended with two friends, I’ve written a blog post on this experience, find it here.
As a result of this experience my parents, who both smoked themselves into heart attacks and emphysema from cigarettes, not to mention hot boxed myself and siblings with their second hand cigarette smoke for over 18 years; decided to put me on drug test to save me.
In 5k years of recorded use and 0 deaths attributed to cannabis it is still a schedule one drug according to the DEA, I can only attribute this classification to willful ignorance in conjunction with Big Pharma and The Industrial Prison Complex. It’s worth mentioning at this juncture that the US government has a patent on cannabis as medicine (Patent No. 6,630,507), the absolute height of hypocrisy.
Cannabis = Community
Cannabis helps to build communities, and smoking socially is as good as it gets. There are no fights that break out among pot heads, just a bunch of people that are laid back and friendly (Kid Cannabis reference). The reason I bring this up is because my friends and I used cannabis as that social lubricant that helped us to become very close. I can think of nothing better than the times we spent stoned and laughing our asses off at whatever teenage hijinks we were getting into at the time.
Once I was put on drug test, I pretty much lost contact with my closest stoner friends, because it was not fun being around a bunch of people that were taking part in something I really enjoyed but was unable to participate in.
Illegal Medicine, Legal Poison
As a result of quitting cannabis I found new friends, these new friends drank all the time and long story short over the course of junior year of high school I became an alcoholic. It was fun at times, but mainly I was putting myself in a great deal of danger. Not only from alcohol poisoning, but from driving not only drunk, but completely blacked out. There were multiple times that I do not remember driving home at all or where I even parked.
Fast forward to senior year when I turned 18 and I basically told my parents to take their drug test and to respectfully shove them up their fucking asses. I went back to consuming cannabis and never looked back. I went back to hanging out with my stoner friends and I’m happy to say that I’m still great friends with most of them until this very day. Stoner relationships are strong.
Cannabis is life
Cannabis is medicine, not only physically, but mentally and socially. I might sound like a real pot head when I say this, but there have been times when I’ve felt like cannabis is my best friend. It never betrayed me, never turned its back on me and was always there when I was going through a great or tough time. It helps me to reflect and have introspection. In this way cannabis is a great problem solver for me. It helps me to find inner peace and tranquility, something we are all searching for. Perhaps most importantly it helps me to become more human.
