Protracted Adolescence

"There is one very important aspect of early cannabis use that doesn’t get much discussion – it can stunt emotional growth. One of the things all dope smokers love about their drug is that it seems to turn up the volume knob that controls sensory perception. When stoned, we become acutely aware of our environment – how it looks, sounds, smells, or just how it feels. Often when entering a place or meeting someone for the first time when we are high, a sort of sixth sense seems to kick in, and we either feel comfortable or uncomfortable, picking up the ‘vibrations’ around us.

But like so much in life, what we gain with one hand we lose with the other. First of all, if you’re stoned most of the time (and remember, once dope is in your system it stays there for weeks on end) then you no longer really notice your heightened senses. Everything pretty well feels much the same; and that’s a clue. As your senses are heightened, so your feelings are blunted. Your feelings are another word for your emotions; and for me, it wasn’t until I stopped smoking that I realized to what extent I had been numbing my authentic emotional reality.

As teenagers we become used to the extreme instant gratification we get from weed, which means many of us can run in to problems if we try and quit when we get older. We have to re-learn all of our ideas of reality and normality; we have to discover other ways of managing our feelings and our moods. This change requires discipline and a different sort of personal perspective, to allow us to finally reach the end of a protracted adolescence that for the long-term dope smoker can last all the way through to middle-age and beyond."