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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
well i think skydiving is stupid, but yeah, everyone has their choices. if people want to self-castrate for a life of marijuana smoke, yeah, it's their choice. i won't deny them. but i'll have my opinions-- like i have one about skydiving.
my experience with weed has been like this, and i think it's very similar to what other have experienced.
first time: "i feel nothing" followed by utter disorientation & paranoia
second time, and various times afterward: like looking at the world for the first time, luminous, rich with detail, the opening of the mind's eye, a river of creativity, but without focus-- great inspiration, but difficulty executing
afterwards: habituation, dulling of the luminous experience, psychological dependence, slowing of the mind, diminishment in personal grooming, and INABILITY TO COPE WITH STRESS.
life can be stressful, but the pothead prefers to sit in a cozy spot rather than face the music.
at this point you either wake up & realize you can't continue the habit, or you rationalize your habit with shit like "oh, i didn't REALLY want to do great things after all", & continue living a medicated life.
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...my experience fits more with this than what rob's talking about...
and yes, i've continued to smoke after realizing that, yes it has affected my productivity, and yes i sometimes get irritable when i don't smoke for a while. this is true for
both tobacco and weed. i used to get slammed sometimes when i first worked at offices for spending 10-15 minutes of every hour standing outside smoking cigs. that's fully 20-25% of my productivity down the drain right there. but i was far from the only one, and when you throw in making coffee and drinking it while standing outside chain smoking, there were people there who spent closer to 30-35% of
every work day on the entirely unproductive task of feeding their dependencies.
as far as medicated life goes... i've also spent a couple of years walking around like a zombie on meds my psychaitrist was feeding me and my ex-wife was telling me made me more "mentally stable." i was entirely weed and alcohol free for around 3 years. i was taking fairly high doses of risperdal, seroquel and other atypical anti-psychotics that my doctor was telling me could help bi-polar disorder, which is what they said was causing my periodic problems with depression and that i just didn't recognize the periods of intense productivity and creativity coupled with often serious sleep-deprivation (so called hypomania) as problematic.
within the first 3 months of taking these medications, i had gained nearly 30 pounds. i began sleeping upwards of 12 hours a day, yet i was still falling asleep at my desk at work. on more than one occasion i had serious problems judging distances while trying to park my car, and not even parallel parking. for a short period i lost the ability to establish a mental image of the space around me. for example while driving on the highway i would glance in the rearview mirror and see a car in the next lane over a little ways behind me. when i looked back at the road in front of me, i could no longer see in my mind's eye how far behind me the other car was. i'd find myself checking my mirrors almost constantly and still only narrowly avoided a couple of accidents. i had trouble picking up an object from the desk in front of me with my eyes closed, even if i had just been looking at it. as an aspiring architect this was truly frightening.
even after finding a combination of meds that didn't have me falling asleep at my desk and stumbling on the stairs, i eventually gained around 40 pounds and my risk for diabetes had gone up fourfold. i was still sleeping 10 hours a night to feel as rested as i used to feel after 7 or 8. and i found that if i didn't take my medication, i would be literally unable to fall asleep for hours, doze off for an hour and half, then wake up and stare at the ceiling until the sun came up. i gradually stopped hanging out with my friends, lost all interest in my career, and slowly began hating myself.
since then, i've gotten divorced, quit the meds, gone back to grad school, lost nearly all the weight (i'm down to 135 from 165), become a far more sociable person and eventually resumed smoking weed on a fairly regular basis. if that's not a good thing, i don't know what is.