Marijuana Addiction & Recovery Support Group

I must admit that I'm a little nervous to be here. I never thought I'd join a group like this because I feel that marijuana does have a lot of benefits and even think that it would be acceptable (or better than the way things are now) if the drug were legal but regulated like alcohol is. I'm sure many people here would disagree with those sentiments, so I'm just worried that I'll start an argument I'm not really prepared to deal with right now. I guess I'll tell a bit of my story and see what you guys think.

My parents are relatively liberal, but were very firm while I was growing up that drugs are unacceptable and dangerous and to be wary of alcohol. My dad used to (half) joke around, saying that the only house rules were "No guns, no drugs, no babies." I was solid in my conviction that drugs, including weed, were bad and dangerous, and that alcohol must be used with caution, until the end of high school. I had started the first very serious relationship of my life, and this young man I loved confessed after a few months that he used to smoke weed often, and that he still does sometimes but not often at all.

I was furious and sick with worry for him. He admitted that his dad sold weed when he was young to help pay the bills, and he associates the smell with a happy time in his childhood... a time before his father's alcoholism became verbally abusive towards him. By the time I graduated a year later, however, I my anger had changed to cautious curiosity, and I ended up smoking (and getting drunk for that matter) for the first time the summer before I left for college.

Since that time (about 5 years ago), I have smoked with various degrees of frequency, and even lived with a friend who dealt for a few months one summer. I eventually realized that it was important for me to smoke infrequently, because frequent use contributed to my depression. My friends understood and didn't pressure me to smoke more than I could handle. Then, one year ago, I started my second serious relationship, with a man I've been in love with since mid-high school, a man who promised me forever and loved me as much as I loved him.

He was a year younger than me, and despite the early start most of our mutual friends got with alcohol and weed, he waited until soon before his 21st birthday to try alcohol for the first time, and had never tried weed when we started dating. The reason for this is that his parents had been serious addicts for many years, to the point that his grandparents ended up raising him for his own safety starting at age 7. His grandmother was open with him about the reason his parents seemed to disappear randomly from his life because she wanted to be able to warn him about drugs and alcohol so he wouldn't make the same mistakes. This caution resonated with him, and he waited until he was sure he was ready to try alcohol for the first time, just a few months before he and I started to date.

In those months, however, he quickly dove into regular binge drinking that all of our friends remember as extreme, and often as very unpleasant experiences for the people who ended up taking care of him, though he will never really know just how unpleasant because he blacked out every time, and has never had to repeatedly deal with taking care of someone else like that the way he forced his friends to do.

Because I was living far away at the time, I only heard about these stories from him over the phone, and since there were always parts of the nights he didn't remember, I didn't hear the whole story until much later. After we started dating, there was only one incident of binge drinking, the night of his 21st birthday, and we had a very serious talk about how I needed him to stop doing that in order to continue with the relationship. He did stop, and I interpreted this as a sign of maturity, a sign that he had gotten past the phase of being a young and invincible party animal. Little did I know that his introduction to weed would cause even more problems.

Now, a year later, the relationship is over, and boy did it go out in flames. The single biggest reason, I believe, would be drugs. I knew that marijuana could act like a gateway drug for some people, but I had never seen it happen despite the many, many stoners I'm friends with, until after I introduced my boyfriend to weed. Yes, I introduced him to weed. Like I already mentioned, I thought he was past the party hardy stage of his life, and enjoying smoking as much as I did, I wanted to be able to share the experience with him. At first, it was great. He was nervous about his job, and therefor only wanted to smoke very occasionally, which was perfect because that's how often I did. Then, he started smoking a bit more often. Then, though I didn't find out until a few months after it started, he started smoking every day. Then, he started being interested maybe trying other drugs.

It took a while, but the weekend before the relationship ended, he tried ecstasy for the first time, and was very upset that *I* was upset about the fact that he didn't talk to me beforehand or even tell me the truth until days later, upset that he had taken it at all despite the dangers, and upset that he insisted that he wanted to take it again, and wanted me to take it, and still wanted me to go to Burning Man with him where, yes, he still wanted to take whatever drug anyone handed him no matter who they were or what it was.

Now here I am, two and a half weeks later, writing this post. It was a long one, and I really appreciate anyone who made it all the way through. The reason I'm here, ultimately, is that I've decided to stop smoking weed, permanently. I refuse to smoke a substance that not only contributed to the loss of the one person I loved most in the world, who had promised me forever and even meant it before drugs came along, but also serves to support drug cartels, gangs, and all sorts of violent and deadly crime. I still think that marijuana should be legal, because then the money could be taken out of the hands of the cartels and the gangs, but as it is now, that's where the money goes. Also, if marijuana were legal while other drugs remained illegal, I think it would be much harder for people to make the jump from weed to other drugs, much like many people never make the jump from alcohol to weed.
Posted on 10/23/09, 04:10 pm