[John Stegin]

I am 21 years of age, and for the past 5 years I have been a regular marijuana user. I would smoke on average one joint a day.

Initially when I began to use the drug my mental state began to degrade emotionally, socially, and most certainly intellectually. In my opinion this was certainly brought on by marijuana.
It was a catch 22, I was becoming socially inept due to using the substance, which encouraged me to use it more to detach from "reality".

These days though the substance has a radically different effect on me. I honestly think the substance brought to surface problems I had deeply buried and had honest fear of confronting, and in a lot of other respects make me realize strengths in my personality which I had somehow overlooked. I can not even come close to articulating how this happened, thus I will stay away from doing so so as not to unintentionally misrepresent it.

Friends have brought to my attention I smoke a little too much, but I do understand their concern. I am not living under some naive delusion that this will not have any long term effects on the state of my mind, I do acknowledge and discuss their concerns openly. Though, I do point out to them when it begins to control me I can stop. Having had serious arguments with some of my close friends over this I stopped for 3 months as a demonstration. I did not need any crutch (such as alcohol or smoking), I could 'survive' fine.

So why am I still smoking it?
As somebody pointed out in an earlier post you feel like you are having the most profound thoughts, but when you look back later they seem silly. The thing is a lot of my ideas don't seem so silly afterwards.
I get high and I code, I am a computer programmer by trade. I have a shelf of scrapbooks that I use and have used to document and outline ideas I have or have had while high. Looking at these in a 'sober' state of mind I will admit a large proportion of the ideas are generally useless to me and often not all that feasible, but a certain percentage can have and have shown to have potential.

Somebody made this very point earlier; you get to look at the problem from two different aspects, and having these two aspects allow you to understand it better.



Now after saying all that, I do not agree marijuana use is for everybody. It certainly had a negative effect on me, which out of some 'luck' took an upside. And being honest, I think I am just one of the lucky few.
Out of the group I began smoking with, some have found themselves in prison having moved onto 'harder' drugs, some remained stable, and some just became lazy stoners.


After saying all that, marijuana has most certainly negatively affected some of my mental facilities. I find it quite difficult to articulate concepts like I once could, sometimes to sustain any command over the English language, and other things like that.

One last thing to finish up,
Would I not be able to think better without the marijuana?
I am unsure. When I did give up for 3 months I found my concentration was affected by my lack of enthusiasm in what I was doing. I did notice some improvements, I became less impulsive and a little better mentally balanced.
However, certain simple tasks which I completed daily became difficult, like being able to "spot" the next key step in a sudoku puzzle, being able to program without having to stop to think(fluency), being able to pick up a guitar and play effortlessly and that sudden spark of insight to problems disappeared.

For the moment I feel this drug benefits me, but I hope I know when to get out before I become too 'cocky'. Otherwise in reality, I will have not gained anything but merely wasted my life.