The first time I smoked weed

I grew up in a conservative Christian family. Drugs are bad, no sex before marriage, church on Sundays and Wednesday nights, no cursing, respect your elders. I was always the "good kid" mostly because I was too scared to step out of line. I was gullible and naive, a straight A student who spent most of his free time reading or playing video games. I moved around so often, that I was always making new friends, mostly because of the novelty of being the new kid in school. I rarely spent much time with them outside of school. I spent the Summers at my dad's with my two oldest brothers, Mike and Jesse, until they got old enough to not have to visit him any more, around the time I turned 11 or 12. After that, my Summers were mostly spent alone.

I was always adamantly against drug use. Especially since I heard so many stories about my brother Jesse getting into trouble over drugs, and going in and out of prison. Describing him like that makes him sound like a bad guy, but truthfully he was one of the most loveable and amicable people I've ever known. He was the kind of guy who could become friends with anybody, and whose troubles you could overlook in favor of wanting to help him instead of shun him. And we tried, unfortunately he succumbed to his drug abuse and died in 2013 at the age of 27.

Ten years before he died, I was 13 staying with my dad in Manchester, TN for the Summer. It just so happened that Jesse was living not far away with his friend and roommate, Chris, a man I now consider my brother. He invited me to come stay for the weekend, and I eagerly accepted. Not only was it a chance to be free of my dad's authoritarian control, but I looked up to Jesse. I loved him very much and missed our time together. After we got to his apartment, he introduced me to Chris and showed me around. If you've ever seen Requiem for a Dream or the music video for Metallica's song Hero of the Day, you'll have a good image of what their apartment looked like. They drew on the walls in permanent marker, the sink in the bathroom was clogged, and nothing really "felt" clean. It was perfect.

After introducing me to Chris, Jesse pulled out the first gravity bong I've ever seen, made from a two liter and a bucket, with an aluminum foil bowl. He offered me some, and I politely declined. He and Chris got out their guitars and at my request played I'll Be by Ewan McGregor. I love that song, and Jesse had a grungy bluesy kind of singing voice. He was by far the most talented musician of all of us siblings. He had a soulful touch that really brought life into the songs he would sing. I had brought along my Xbox, but we never got around to playing anything on it. Instead, he introduced me to Howie Day, since I had become interested in learning to play the guitar. And he showed me the song Dead Girl by Acid Bath. I was hooked on both bands, and copied their CD's to my Xbox. I still love listening to those albums, and surprise myself every time with how many of the songs I still know by heart.

That night, they had a couple girls over. I was growing tired, but didn't want to go to sleep yet. I wanted to hang with my bro. They all decided to go to a friend's house to party. Of course, I was down with that. It sounded like fun, and the excitement of it kept me awake. When we arrived, there were about seven of us total, and they were passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Now, as much as I was against the use of drugs, this wasn't my first time drinking. I didn't have a lot of supervision growing up, and truthfully, the first time I had ever gotten drunk, I was in third grade, about 8 years old, drinking vodka and orange juice at my house, in a party we threw for the kids around the neighborhood. It never became a habit, but every now and then I'd get my hands on some Mad Dog 20/20 or a bottle of wine. So, when they passed me the bottle of Jack, I took a long swig without grimacing or gagging. To this day, I don't know how I managed that, because whiskey is nasty. I just remember Jesse looking impressed and saying, "Hell yeah, you can hang!" I asked what he meant and he explained it meant I could hold my own with them.

Shortly after that, they got invited to a bigger party at his weed man's house. Probably about a dozen people there, making a huge circle around the living room. They lit up three joints and started passing them around the circle. The guy next to me offered when it came to me, and I politely declined. Of course, in classic stoner fashion, he offered every time a joint came around, and by the third one, I was curious to try, so I took a hit. After that, I was in. Jesse gave me a shotgun, and I did my best to look high. It's not uncommon for a first timer to not feel anything, he explained to me, but I assured him that I did, which was a lie.

We left and went back to his place to crash for the night. I don't remember much about the next day except waking and baking with Jesse on the gravity bong. That time I did feel it, which is the main reason I don't remember much after that. It felt so good. It felt like the first time I had been able to relax in my entire life.

Later that afternoon, he took me back to my dad's. My dad didn't like me being gone for too long, especially with a bad influence like Jesse. But, the damage was done. The good times were had, and it was probably the only days that Summer that were any fun at all. It was certainly the only days of that Summer that I remember. I likely spent the rest of my Summer locked in my room, memorizing those albums, and trying to learn something on the guitar.

After going back to mom's for the school year, somehow or another, I confided in my brother Jared about smoking weed for the first time. This was news that he was happy to hear, he finally had someone to smoke with. He taught me how to make a pipe from a can.

In the following years, I ended up making friends in school who could get weed. I remember living with my uncle for a time, smoking a dime a week, rolling tiny joints and making them last, or learning to make bubblers from Gatorade bottles. We'd smoke behind the gym at school. We had a block system, so it was four classes a day, and gym was second block. And in classic gym fashion, the teacher just let us do whatever the whole time. Every now and then, we'd have a "class" explaining the rules to various sports, just so he could give us a test to have something to grade us on. These were the days where I could still get so stoned I'd forget what I was saying mid sentence, classic T.V. stoner style.

The years afterwards are kind of a blur. Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005. I moved in with dad later that year. Not because of the damage, but because Jared has a lot of mental problems that were never properly addressed by my conservative Christian family who believe prayer was the answer and all he really needed was Jesus to set him straight. He was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He throws fits of rage, screaming, breaking things. He put a gun in my mom's face once. He says the nastiest things to everybody. And anything can set him off, you never know what will upset him. You know the old wisdom of "don't give a kid what he wants when he throws a fit or you'll spoil him?" Well, Jared only ever got what he wanted by throwing fits, for his whole childhood and now even into his late thirties. I was made to apologize so many times for upsetting him. Somehow I was made to be in the wrong and he would get what he wanted.

It was preferable to live under my dad's thumb, because I was old enough that he didn't spank me any more. He'd just yell and insult me instead, which I could tolerate. He wasn't as bad a Jared. Talk back to dad, you get yelled at and your video games confiscated. Talk back to Jared, you get pushed to the ground and strangled.

What little weed I managed to bring with me, I made last for a month, and then I was dry again. Shortly before school had begun, I was riding my dad's four wheeler around the streets, and met a kid my age at the other end of my street. His name was Chris (there are a lot of Chris's in this story) and he lived in two single wide trailers that had been pushed together with a wall removed on each to create a double wide. He smoked weed, and could get us some. The very first day I was over was the same day his parents had found out his 13 year old sister was pregnant with a 22 year old man's baby. He was a family friend and no charges were ever pressed. I was 15 and just waiting for the weed to arrive, looking at Chris's iguana in the living room and smoking cigarettes because they still gave me a buzz.

These were the days of being able to find weed just often enough that the days in-between were spent really wanting to get some weed. The lyric in the song Bottles and Cans by Rehab that says "caught between tomorrow and yesterday" is really on point with how that felt. I fully considered myself a stoner. I read blogs about weed, and wrote poems about weed.

"...All the smoke from my chimney ain't from a fire

Every time you see a cloud, I'm just getting higher

Open up my door, it's like when a blind man sees

But it takes a couple minutes for the cloud to leave

And I can't stand the taste of fresh air in my lungs

Got a joint in my mouth while I'm rolling a blunt..."

That's a little bit from the first rap song I ever wrote. I still remember most of it. I used to listen to a lot of music about weed. Blueberry Yum Yum by Ludacris comes to mind. I memorized all the lyrics to Because I Got High. Mostly rap music, really.

I got a girlfriend, but she didn't like me smoking weed, so I promised to quit. Which I did for a while, but always eventually gave in to the temptation. She got tired of me lying about it and eventually dumped me. I always used to say the worst part of smoking weed was never my reaction to the weed, but everyone else's reaction when they found out I smoked weed. Whether it was my mom freaking out, my grandparents kicking me out of their home, or my girlfriend dumping me. At least the weed made me feel better for a while.

After graduating high school, I decided to stay sober for college, and take it seriously. Which I did for a while, but my depression came in full force during those years and I ended up having to drop out. Shortly after that, my second real girlfriend dumped me and my car broke down, and I had to move back to Louisiana with my grandma (not the one who kicked me out for smoking weed). I got jobs working at restaurants because there is literally always a bunch of stoners working in kitchens. Name a restaurant, any restaurant, stoners cooked your food. It's almost a guarantee.

My life was pretty transient, moving from one person's home to another. Then one day, I decided I was finished living in other people's homes. I wanted to see what I could accomplish on my own. So, I bought a tent, and lived in the woods for two years, behind a Wal Mart, walking distance to my job. I had a motorcycle at the time, a Honda Rebel 250, that I parked in the Wal Mart parking lot. Some of the employees thought I worked there.

Then, there was some management changes at my job, and the manager I least liked became the general manager. I quit that day. I got another job at a car wash, but that job sucked, so I said, "You know what? I'm going to California." I just wanted something totally different than Louisiana. I was about to turn 27, the same age as Jesse when he died, and I felt like my life wasn't really going anywhere. I needed to change something drastically.

On my tiny bike with my limited funds, I didn't make it that far west, and ended up settling in Denver for a year. I tried one shelter for a while, but didn't like it, then decided to sleep at various construction sites instead. I had to wake up early anyway to get to the temp agency and get a job for the day. I worked just enough to eat and buy weed. It was so much cheaper in Denver than it had been in Louisiana.

After a year up there, my brother, Chris, was getting married, so I had a choice between getting a two way ticket there and back for the wedding or going back with a bunch of weed. I live in Louisiana now. Chris helped me get a job at a machine shop that I kept for four years. I moved in with my current roommate shortly after getting the job. I eventually met my buddy Chris Alonzo, who I affectionately called Mexichris to avoid confusion with the other three Chris's that worked there. And he ended up becoming the most reliable weed man I've ever had. I'd give him money one day, and get my weed the next. He never took any off the top, and he only asked for the amount of money it would cost him. He was a really good friend of mine as well.

We spent a lot of time together in the short amount of time that I knew him. He died four months ago at the age of 24. He and his mom had gone to a concert the night before mother's day to celebrate. He got drunk and died only a few miles from her house in a single person car wreck, driving off the road.

I haven't smoked weed since then. Finding a reliable connection is nearly impossible and I don't want to go back to the days of "I'll be there in an hour," and after three hours "Oh, I'm just leaving now."

Looking back at my life through the lens of weed makes it clear how much it really affected my choices and relationships. I imagine things would have been a lot worse without it, because I probably would have just been drinking instead. I would have certainly been addicted to something. For Jesse it was anything and everything. He liked to do as many drugs as he could. For Mike it was heroine. For Jared, it was mostly cough syrup and alcohol. For my mom it was pain killers. At least for me it was just weed.

That first night with Jesse changed the course of everything for me. The way I tell this story, it makes my life seem pathetic, but really it's more like an adventure. I've been places and seen things and had experiences that made me stronger and able to overcome obstacles that people are paralyzed with fear, just thinking about. I know people who are afraid to quit the job they hate because they "don't know" what they would do. They're afraid of becoming homeless. And I'm just like, "being homeless is way better than being miserable at work 40 hours a week, and then going home to fighting." I'd rather live in a tent than with people who bring stress and anxiety. I'd rather find odd jobs than work under a boss who I don't respect and who doesn't respect me. I'd rather feel like I have some freedom over my life than live with the "comfort" of having a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly pay check.

Weed helped me develop the free spirit that I have. It helped me open my eyes to the lies I was living about things that are "wrong." I've known too many good people who like to smoke weed, have good conversations, and make art and music. The most obnoxious people I've ever known "never touch the stuff."

Weed changed my life. It gave me some reprieve from my anxiety and anger which were the roots of my depression, and gave me moments of intense focus where I developed my poetry and music. It gave me something to look forward to in the hardest times of my life. I may not be the best example of a "successful" stoner, but the stories of me moving around and living in a tent are more related to the severe depression I suffered than to the weed I smoked. They're stories of the results of my attempts at self-destruction. Weed was a release from those feelings. The times I felt the most depressed and sank into my dark thoughts were those times when I wasn't smoking, and often I was drinking instead.

That first night with Jesse and that first joint are fond memories for me. After that, I found it easier to make friends. It was like being a kid again. "Hey do you wanna play?" "Yes." Boom! Friends. Except it was "Hey do you smoke weed?" "Yeah." "I've got some." Boom! Friends. Smoke a joint, get to know each other. Suddenly you have someone to hang with and talk to and help you find more weed, and in that way you meet even more people who have at least one thing in common with you. It's like having a hobby that requires other people to participate. It's led me on some rather exciting adventures, and I'm sure there are more to come.