Marijuana Rehabilitation

From Channel 4.com:

Geoff, a 20-year-old undergraduate, talks about drugs, his addiction to cannabis and his frustration with the law.’I smoke about 20 cigarettes per day, smoke marijuana on a daily basis and drink very little alcohol. I take cocaine very infrequently and smoke crack very occasionally – perhaps once a year. I took ecstasy on a regular basis for about six months about a year and a half ago. I have also taken other random drugs on a couple of occasions over the past five years, including speed, ketamine, acid, opium and ‘yaba’ [methamphetamine].

‘I’ve been a heavy marijuana smoker since the age of 14, and this has always been my drug of preference, way above alcohol, given its ability to make you relax and the smaller impact it has the following day! I smoke it at home by myself and with friends and at friends’ houses.

‘I’m addicted to nicotine and I’d say that I’m psychologically addicted to cannabis. I have gone through periods of high use of more addictive substances, such as cocaine, but, thankfully not over a long enough period to result in a proper addiction. Aside from marijuana, drugs have generally been a weekend indulgence for me.

‘I take drugs as a relief from reality and boredom, in a nutshell. It seems to me they allow you to be less introspective in many ways. I personally find it quite difficult to really relax, which to be honest I find disturbing in itself. Drugs allow you to forget about any current problems that you may have. That’s not to say I’ve had dreadful events in my life which I need to ‘hide’ from, but everyone has issues.

‘I think drugs have a lot of negative side-effects, but what doesn’t? The financial one is obvious, and this can become even more serious if one gets involved with seriously addictive drugs. Come-downs are another, but a lot of this is the result of drugs being illegal – so many of them are cut. The two drugs that I would say have the worst side-effects (and which I personally believe to be the most dangerous drugs) are acid and ecstasy. One of the most appropriate statements that I have ever heard about acid (which I think also relates to ecstasy to a lesser extent) is by Robert Pirsig in his cult book Lila, where he says that acid allows you to walk through the door to an alternate reality, but most people have no idea how to walk back through.

‘Perhaps the biggest drug-related problem for me, or rather for those around me, involved being expelled from school for smoking weed. This had a very bad impact on my family. I’m not excusing my actions, but I do feel that most of the problems that occurred were caused by people’s naive views about cannabis.

‘Though I feel bad about the problems this incident caused my family, I don’t feel that I have ever directly hurt anyone as a result of my drug-taking and do not see it as something to feel guilty about.

‘I have severe problems with the drug laws. I think, without a doubt, marijuana should be legalised immediately and the government should stop wasting so much time and money on prosecuting people who have been involved with it.’

Jamie’s story

‘I started smoking resin when I was fifteen and almost immediately I became paranoid. Over the next few years, as the amount and quality of what I smoked increased so did the intensity of my symptoms. I became completely delusional, building elaborate ideas for what was happening in the world around me and began having frightening hallucinations.My schooling suffered and while I passed my GCSE’s I made numerous unsuccessful and very bizarre attempts to complete college courses. I lost all my friends due to paranoia. My relationship with my family was destroyed and I was kicked out of home. I pretty much lost everything there is to lose apart from my life and I was very close to losing that due to extraordinary stunts in cars and my habit of not eating anything.

‘Cannabis is very addictive and those that say it’s not physically addictive are totally misguided. Resin often has crap added to make you dependant. I spent many night sweating and shaking without a joint. Throwing up nothing into the toilet as I needed whatever was in the rubbish I smoked. Grass was even worse though. Upon quitting resin, I smoked only grass and when I had none it was hell. My mind would race and my heart would pound, I couldn’t concentrate on anything, the slightest sound would startle me and the dimmest light would dazzle my eyes. Needless to say, I smoked a lot to combat this.

‘The drug was the cause of my illness. Many dispute that but the chemistry is all there for the reading. The first thing I did after being diagnosed as psychotic was get on the internet and find out exactly how cannabis affects the brain. The information was there albeit filed away on obscure scientific websites. I was so angry that it was not in the public domain but at least I knew the cause and I knew I could recover.

‘If I had been aware of the dangers then I would not have smoked like I did. Cannabis had no danger in my mind, not even a hint of anything sinister. After numerous arrests due to cannabis I eventually got referred to a drug counsellor whose only qualm was that I was spending a lot of money on it! I even saw doctors during my illness that said not to worry about the cannabis and misdiagnosed me with depression. There was no knowledge out there about the risks but over the last few years the issue has become topical.

‘The government’s decision to re-grade cannabis to Class C was probably wise. A lot of time and public money was wasted on police officers having to write up kids for carrying a tenth of resin, no doubt there are more serious crimes. The problem was the way the media handled the issue. Cannabis was on the front page of every paper, all over the TV, the message being sent out was that cannabis was harmless. Now there are talks of reclassification, while this may counter act some of the positive publicity it once more places a strain on the police. I believe the only way forward is a widespread well-funded public information campaign. If kids are getting taught the risks then at least they have the chance to make the stupid choice!

‘Quitting the grass was not hard for me, I had clear evidence that it was having a profoundly bad effect and I had mind and body numbing medication to cover any withdrawal symptoms. Without either it probably would have been impossible. It’s a tricky one to quit as the desire to stop is counteracted by the belief that it is supposedly harmless but please believe me, you may never become psychotic through cannabis but you will definitely be negatively affected – use Google to search for the words cannabis and dopamine together and have a read.

‘Three years after quitting cannabis and a year and a half after coming off medication, I now live with my girlfriend in our own place. I still carry a few remnants of the illness and find some situations very difficult but I have my life and my sanity back. The world can be pretty tough and every time something goes wrong I want to roll a joint and forget about my problems but I know things could be a lot worse then they are and would be a lot worse if I smoked cannabis.

From Drugstory.org:

Lauren  started experimenting with marijuana when she was 13 but didn’t become a regular user until the following year when she switched schools and fell into an older, drug-using crowd. Lauren’s older brother also began abusing drugs, which encouraged Lauren’s drug use. She says, “We would sell drugs to each other or buy drugs with both of our money combined and sell it to people.” She goes on to say, “Everything he explained to me about drugs made me love and need (them) more.”

In addition to her regular alcohol and marijuana use, Lauren started abusing other substances as well. She explains, “Because we were drinking and smoking pot every single day, it didn’t become enough. We needed something more exciting for weekends or special occasions. I used mushrooms, Ecstasy, cocaine, nitrous (oxide), acid and prescription pills.” However, Lauren remained faithful to alcohol and marijuana as her drugs of choice.

Despite Lauren’s habit, she never had problems securing drugs. “My brother and I found a dealer through school and seniors who had graduated were selling drugs, so there was always someone we could call to hook up any drugs that we needed.” Alcohol wasn’t as easily accessible at school, but Lauren was able to steal liquor from stores. She says, “I actually began stealing alcohol from supermarkets and people’s parents. I … eventually started selling it to people so I would make money.”

Lauren also supported her drug use through a generous allowance from her parents. “My parents would give me $20 a day for school lunch and after school. On weekends, I would tell them I was going to a movie or “Golf and Stuff” or bowling and they would give me $20 or $30, but I would save that money to buy drugs.”

Lauren’s mental state eventually suffered as a result of her drug dependency. She says, “When I was smoking pot and drinking (heavily), I noticed that when I was sober, I was a lot more depressed. Marijuana also made me extremely unmotivated.” Consequently, Lauren often ditched school, or arrived late to class and slept through it. Rarely did she come sober. She recalls, “I would smoke every morning before school and by lunchtime, I would either drink from my water bottle filled with vodka or I’d find someone at school who could sell me Vicodin, OxyContin or Ritalin just to get through the day before I went home to smoke again.” Yet despite her lackluster attendance and attitude, Lauren said her teachers hardly noticed anything wrong with her behavior because she continued to earn good grades. “I basically maintained Bs and As by always copying my homework 5 minutes before class and cheating on tests or getting answers online – stuff like that.”

At home, Lauren’s substance abuse escaped detection. She cleverly hid everything. “I would keep things in my purse or pockets or places where I didn’t expect my parents to inspect. I hid most of my drugs or paraphernalia inside part of the wall where the bathtub was mounted. My nightstand served as an alcohol cabinet. I just placed things in front of it so that when you opened it, you couldn’t really tell there were about 20 different types of alcohol (in it).” She goes on to say, “My parents wanted to give us the benefit of the doubt. Either way, they didn’t have any evidence to get us in trouble.”

For more of Lauren’s Interview…

From Drugstory.org:

How he was introduced to drugs…

I first used nicotine when I was 11 or 12 and then marijuana, and that was a month before my 13th birthday. I got into alcohol later on that same year. I was actually in a locker room after gym class at school in 7th grade and somebody was offering to sell a joint for three dollars. I had never tried it but I kept hearing about [it], and I was just really curious so I just wanted to do it. So I asked a good friend of mine if he wanted to try it out with me.

When I first started using it was really sporadic. My grandfather’s death later that same year when I was 13 kind of triggered up more emotions that I kind of wanted to run from. I tried to use on a regular basis as much as possible. If I had to steal alcohol from my parents I would do that. I would try to cop as much marijuana as I could from friends. It was just more difficult in middle school than it was in high school to get drugs, but I mean it was on a regular basis, as much as possible.

I moved from different people to different people. I was kind of a social chameleon trying to please everybody and make sure I was cool to everybody, every group, so sometimes I’d be with the more stereotypical [kids], like prep kids, but they were using too or sometimes I would be with the more kids that were called freaks and they’d be using different kinds of drugs. But I never purposely gave up a group of friends because of what they were doing or what they weren’t doing.

Those who I did move away from the most would be my clean friends, the kids that weren’t using because they didn’t have the same interest obviously as I did, so I would move away from my clean friends in order to have more time to get high because when I did hang out with my clean friends, I found that I was bored because I didn’t have what I wanted and I still had to deal with emotions and my problems.
My drug use really did progress rapidly. I started out with more marijuana and alcohol in middle school but when I got to high school I was introduced to a world of all kinds of different drugs, and the progression of it was just that anytime I saw something new at a party or that somebody had, I would say, “Well I want to try that out,” and I’d buy it or I’d use it with somebody else who was using it, and it was basically just whatever I could get my hands on – anything that took me away from reality. It was like searching for some kind of magic combination that would be the ultimate solution to my ultimate problem, which at that point was myself. I didn’t have the proper coping skills, so my best friend was my addiction.

I think automatically it starts out as an experiment thing but for some of us it makes more sense to keep doing it than it does for others and those of us who become addicted or are already are addicts, we find that it is so powerful – why would we want to quit? The big part of addiction is denial and, I mean, I remember myself thinking, “Well I have so many problems” and feeling really hopeless, but I figured it couldn’t be the drugs – they don’t have anything to do with this.
When I got to my last six months or so, maybe six or nine months of using, I would get high and I would still feel the effects of the high except that the feelings beneath it, all the anger and sadness and hopelessness and all that stuff wouldn’t disappear anymore. It would still be there while I was high so then I would be, you know, messed up, you know, high, stoned – except I still would be feeling sad about something, anger and it would only enhance that emotion rather than take it away.

Read the rest of Brad’s Story…