[shanlstrick]

Hi all,
I had refrained from speaking about weed or other drugs in this forum because I was not sure how it would be received. But since the thread is started…

I am 43 years old right now and up till a few weeks ago I smoked daily. To go back a couple of decades - I was dead against all drugs when I was 17 years old. I joined the Army, went to Germany and got a “Dear John” letter from my supposed fiancée back in the states.

One evening I was at the local bar when a friend of mine asked me if I would like to go the castle (a little place in Budingen) and smoke some hash (that’s the variety you get over there). I was a bit depressed and had a couple of German beers in me, so I said what the hell.

That night I smoked many bowls of hash and dropped a hit of acid (LSD). I had never done drugs in my life before that. You have to understand; I did not care about anything that night. To make a long story short, it became the usual weekend routine while I was there (the LSD part was not so frequent as the hash).

When I got back to the states, I bought my first sack of smoke from my sister and for the most part I have been smoking daily ever since. There were occasional dry periods (random drug tests for employers, etc.). I actually got a raise one time for coming up positive, the boss said “If I give you a dollar more on the hour – will you come up clean on the next test?” – I remember leaving his office shaking my head in disbelief – I did pass the next one.

Anyway pot was all I was doing for the most part until about 1988 when a friend of mine obtained an entire sheet of LSD. But instead of partying with it – we did our own form of research at a lake, we were exploring reality, and listening to a lot of Blue Oyster Cult (I was not aware of Enigma then - that would have been great). After that sheet was gone, we stopped (that lasted several months). I have not touched LSD since 1994. I credit it with waking me up to possibilities, that’s when I first got interested in quantum physics and the nature of reality. I was also suffering from a complete lack of faith in religion and the meaning of life prior to that time.

Now I am not religious at all, but I am spiritual, I just don’t get into the current dogmas of organized religion. Sorry for the label – I think they all have their benefits (community, fellowship – very positive things), I just seek my own path.

In the last few years I have been doing personal research into brainwave entrainment (using binaural beats to cause your brain to go into certain states of awareness; delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma, etc). I even built a cranial electro-stimulator (that was not so good). Anyway, for me smoking weed seems to always be a detriment to this kind of work. For instance, when I initially smoke after a long period of not smoking, I have very vivid dreams. But soon they disappear all together and I never recall them any more. Conversely, when I stop, the same thing happens, vivid dreams that eventually diminish. But I find that for brainwave training or biofeedback training, being clean has always been the best for me. And now that I have been clean for a few weeks again – I am much more alert.

I have also acquired an amount of a substance that is NOT illegal called Salvia Divinorum (aka Diviners Sage), that stuff scares me to death. I have had about an ounce of it for 3 years, tried it 3 times, I always end up not remembering anything about my experience at all – total amnesia. I have been told that I was over doing it. 4 puffs are too much at one sitting. I may have a go at it again, but every time I go to get it, I stop and put it back in the closet. Plus the stuff tastes like total crap.

For me, I plan to be clean for a while. I want to get back to proper dreaming and exploring brainwave entrainment, I feel smoking inhibits these activities. I want to expand my possibilities, and create more success in my everyday life. I am tired of being an electronics engineer at the mercy of a big corporation. It’s time to live life on my own terms. Thanks for letting me rant.