> First of all, I used to be a regular poster here a few years ago, but
> sort of drifted away. I wasn't toking anymore, so I just sort of felt
> like I was the old lady hanging around a nursing home.
>
> But now, I'm so glad to be writing this high as a kite. But a little
> background on why I stopped smoking and why I restarted...
>
> I first started toking in December of 1996. I was 26 years old at the
> time. Some guy from work, who happened to be a 17-year-old, by the
> way, after two months of asking, finally got me to try some. I never
> thought I'd see the day that a Mr. Goodie Two-Shoes like me would ever
> try "taking drugs." But I did. And I was disappointed...disappointed
> in myself for believing all the crap I was told about marijuana, and
> how it would make the world look like a mosaic of construction paper
> and jellybeans.
>
> I enjoyed just being high for a while, and noticed that I seemed to be
> able to think more clearly than usual. I thought that might be
> useful, so in March of 1997, I decided to start getting high, then
> trying to find answers to the big questions in life. Things like: Who
> am I? Why am I here? Why are any of us here? Who is God? Is the
> universe infinite? Is there a Hell?
>
> I used the internet, the Bible and apocryphal texts, and scriptures of
> other religions, along with various new age books, trying to find
> answers. Some things started making sense. Some things about my
> life, the questions I was asking, the things I was experiencing, were
> all starting to add up to something, but I wasn't sure exactly what.
> Well, by August of 1997, I was having some wild experiences, basically
> flipping out. Some idea popped into my mind -- some powerful message
> from beyond that said, "You're God!" Well, I immediately shrieked in
> horror, "Noooo!!!" I didn't want to be God! At that moment in time,
> my own logic would not allow me to deny myself the experience of being
> God. I was committing the biggest blasphemy of all, and even after
> projecting through the cosmos a vision of heaven so full of lust and
> sin that everyone in heaven would have to be a cheap slut to even cope
> with the environment.
>
> Then I got even more powerful messages from beyond saying,
> "THAT'S NOT WHAT HEAVEN'S LIKE!"
> I insisted in my telepathic communications back to it, that, "Yes
> IT IS!!"
> I got back, "YOU ARE GOING TO H E L L ! ! ! !" And at that
> instant, my body was racked with something that wasn't pain, but it
> made me arch my back and sort of force air into my lungs while trying
> to hold my breath. Instant horror.
> Later, I got high again and this time I was reading internet
> messages and somehow my mind interconnected with what I was reading
> and I got the idea that Jesus was back to rapture the world any
> second, and I remember being so damned happy. But then my joy turned
> to horror when I discovered that indeed it was time for the rapture,
> but I failed and was going to Hell. Now. No discussion. Time has
> expired for forgiveness. You're going to Hell, and I don't have to
> tell you why. It was a horrible feeling. I felt my skin burning as
> the torment of my soul commenced, and I was assured that the pain
> would be quickly rising exponentially, and would last forever more.
> In my horror, something got me to call my mother, but the number
> I dialed was to my roommate's mother. And I got into a bunch of
> questions with her, obviously scaring her to death. But that was the
> end of that panic attack. But it put me over the edge into full-blown
> psychosis. I ended up spending three weeks in a mental hospital,
> diagnosed with psychosis, schizophrenia, narcissism, and emotional
> displacement...oh, and a touch of autism, he said.
> My parents took me home to stay with them for a couple of months.
> They told me that the psychiatrist had said that smoking pot had
> caused my psychosis. He said that some people can handle pot, and
> some can't. The ones who can get along normally, and the ones who
> can't (like me) go berserk. My parents told me that each time I smoke
> pot, it will get worse and worse. I never heard the doctor say this
> himself, mind you. I just heard this first from my parents, who are
> verily, verily, I say unto thee, against the use of marijuana.
> My friend and lifelong intermittent roommate came to rescue me
> from that situation in December 1997. I stayed with him and got a
> hold of some more pot. I smoked again and on that first time, I came
> back inside with a nice high going. I put a piece of apple pie in the
> microwave for two minutes and thought, "Hmmm... A two-minute warning."
> I stared, mystified at the slice of apple pie turning lazily in
> the microwave. I stood up and looked around and was feeling very
> weird. My roommate looked at me and asked if I was okay. I didn't
> know. Suddenly it hit me. I'd smoked pot again, so I was going to
> Hell. Here we go again! Another trip to Hell! But this time I had
> more sense about me and told my roommate to talk to me, and to keep
> going back over the same topics so I can keep a grasp on reality. He
> helped me out with that. I came out of that panic attack fine.
> After four years of dealing with these mental symptoms, I was
> able to work again after all my delusions failed to come true. I got
> a job, then a car, then a different job, and then moved back closer to
> home where I'm at today.
> So a couple of weeks ago I decided to try smoking some pot again.
> But expecting another panic attack, I was very careful not to smoke
> too much too soon. I smoked just a tiny little bit the first time
> through a water bong I'd made out of a water bottle. Not even enough
> to feel a buzz. But no signs of a panic attack after five minutes.
> I tried a little more, more than the first time. After a few
> minutes I did start to feel a buzz coming on. I started having some
> connective, synchronistic experiences with the text I was reading on
> my computer screen. It was the kingdom of God, which I guess can be
> reached without pot, but how everything interconnected with my
> thoughts on that first high was astonishing. But soon, I started to
> come down from that, and started having darker thoughts, and sure
> enough I felt a panic attack coming, but more slowly than before.
> I walked to the bed, trembling, lying down and expecting the
> worst. But it was milder than I thought. I went through it on my own
> without making a sound, though it was scary.
> I got high again the next night and had an even milder attack,
> and you wouldn't even call it a panic attack. You'd just say I scared
> myself half to death with my overactive imagination.
> Well, it turns out, after looking back at everything, that just
> as I had suspected during my hiatus from smoking pot, that it wasn't
> the marijuana that caused the problem. It was the ideas I took on as
> fact during my formative years. One of my "fondest" memories is a
> scene taking place in a fundamentalist Pentecostal Christian church. I
> mean the hard-core no TV-watching, no makeup on the women, no long
> hair on the men variety of pentecostal believers. The preacher was up
> on the pulpit screaming with rage that we all deserve nothing but
> Hell, and that we all deserve to go there and burn in an everlasting
> fire seven times hotter than any fire on Earth...unless we accept
> Jesus and his crucifixion on the cross as payment for our commission
> of sins.
> During my life, I'd come to adopt my own beliefs about God. I
> wasn't willing to accept what preachers were telling me about God. I
> thought that if we were created in God's image, then we must also
> desire the same things that God desires. Safety, comfort, and lots of
> pleasure and bliss. Why would God create life to experience an
> eternal struggle to reach an impossible goal? No, I believed it had
> to be simpler--that God created life to move quickly from birth to
> godhood. I have never believed in reincarnation. I think we are
> created as souls, have a temporary existence in a reality-space held
> together by God and kept from complete destruction, and as our own
> soul learns about reality and how to manipulate the way we perceive
> reality, works to pull you away from the collective and create a new
> universe for you to exist in forever -- eternal life, all there for
> your entertainment and pleasure, in whatever form that takes for
> you--and anything you can imagine is possible.
> Naturally, I then had in my mind during the first panic attack,
> two completely opposite styles of gods. One was a dickhead asshole
> totalitarian dictator motherfucker, and the other was an
> all-permissive God whose motto is, "If you can imagine it, it's not a
> sin." The war was on in my mind to see who was going to be the
> victor. This went on for some time from 1997 to 2001 and finally I
> stopped thinking about it much until March 6, 2008. Then that's when
> I started smoking again was about five weeks after that.
> So what I'm actually saying, after all that extra wordage, is
> that marijuana has actually FIXED my "mental problem." It exposed
> that deep-rooted wrapping of fear around my soul -- fear of
> everything...fear that everything I was doing was ensuring my eternal
> damnation. While that used to be a real terror in my highs, now I
> think of going to Hell and I just laugh about it. The prescription
> pharmaceuticals those doctors tried to make me take certainly wasn't
> doing what pot did. Those pills like risperdol and chlorpromazine
> shut the mind down where it can't work all that crap out like it's
> designed to do -- weeding out the crap from the mushrooms, so to
> speak. Once you weed out the crap, and all you have left is
> mushrooms, you're on a natural, controlled shroom trip without the
> shrooms, and the things you learn, you retain because you've built the
> knowledge and understanding on a foundation, and not jumped over the
> foundation to get to the mentally pleasurable stuff, which disappears
> after the shrooms wear off.
> Now when I get high, I can literally let my whole mind relax and
> completely empty itself to where I'm not really even aware that I have
> a body, but I'm still aware. I could never do that before. My
> thoughts would wander randomly, this way and that. Just a big jumble.
> Now I don't think about anything unless I want to, and so when I do
> think about something, I can think more clearly about it since my head
> is less of a mess.
> So there it is. I guess that's probably true of many of you out
> there... maybe you weren't subjected to the fire and brimstone version
> of Hell like I was, so you have been able to enjoy pot without going
> through any life-changing problems. Or maybe you've been exposed to
> it, but perhaps haven't explored that part of your mind yet?
> So I now wonder if I've been fucked up my whole life up until
> this point, and now I can finally see the world the way everyone else
> sees it. Or I don't know.... The world seems a lot different after
> clearing out all those old fears of Hell.