Mistaken Identity

"They say every alcoholic remembers their first drink, and of course it’s just as true, perhaps more so, that everybody who ever fell in love with smoking dope will also have a vivid memory of their first joint and discovering for themselves what getting high was all about.

Most people’s teenage experiences with illicit cannabis smoking will be linked with excitement, adventure and friendship. Maybe clubbing together once a week with your mates to score an eighth for the weekend; perhaps it was a shared joint with your best friend after school; or possibly a fragment or two stolen from your big brother’s stash box to take to a party on a Saturday night.

How can you describe what it feels like to get high, really high, to someone who has never experienced it? I’m not sure that I can. A release of pressure, an increased sensitivity, a freeing of the imagination, an almost imperceptible bending of consciousness, a near dreamlike state, a physical feeling of warmth like being wrapped up in a blanket. Perhaps some of these things, possibly none. Everybody will have their own personal experience.

Some of us, however, may have been driven by a darker need, perhaps at a painfully young age, to seek out what we instinctively knew would offer us relief from feelings and inadequacies that couldn’t be understood, let alone articulated, at the time."