No Weed for Me

I smoked weed once and I admit I won't do it again. And I will explain why...

I was a freshman in high school and I decided to hang out with my senior friend, Wesley, in my neighborhood with his friends. We walked around the block for a little bit, just talking and laughing. We walked to Wesley's house and went to the back where this garage was. I sat down on end of a couch that was falling apart in there. Joy, an asian chick, and Jared sat next to me. Wesley said it was 'mary jane time'. At first, I had shrugged my shoulders and I didn't want to take any part in that. But they changed my mind to give it a try because Wesley knew how to twerk with my curiosity.

Everybody, including myself, formed a circle around this table in front of the couch to each take a hit off the blunt Wesley made. When I took my first hit, they all clapped and applauded for me for it being my first time I would get high. I didn't want to take any more hits after that but you know, Wesley got me to. I stopped after the third or fourth hit. I told them 'no more for me' with a firm voice as I sat down to recline against the couch.

The first thing I noticed was I starting to feel calm. But it didn't last because then something inside me suddenly felt like I was going to sweat to death as if I were panic mode or something. My body began to feel tingly all over. My vision changed to where I thought I seeing everything through a transparent black-and-white checkboard. I looked around me with a startled, confused facial expression. Wesley called my name and I turned to look in his general direction. "Oh dude, you're tripping!" I heard him say and he laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.

Things started getting even more funkier. Every sound I heard, I magically could see its soundwaves that it produced and I could also the echos from it. I tried to focus on all these new things that I had never seen before but then, my vision began to zoom in and out on me. With the zooming effect, I thought the garage was alive and breathing - that everytime it inhaled, the walls closed in on me. This was really starting to freak me out and no horror movie could ever frighten me like that.

I scooted towards the center of the couch, not knowing the Jared was sitting there. I bumped into his shoulder and I saw the hoodie he was wearing. I was scared out of my mind and needed some comforting so I decided to nuzzle into his arm. He questioned if I was alright and I didn't answer him. Jared sat me up, got off the couch and Joy took his seat. I stared and concentrated on the table in front of me. My hands were folded together in between my knees.

Joy placed her hand on my back and caused me to jump to see who it was. She studied me and rubbed my back. I don't know what the guys were talking about at the time but something about 'killing a bunny' was mentioned. I heard that and my eyes teared up. Bunny to me was a nickname for a girl that just recently dumped me at that time. Joy awwed me at my crying. A tall African American guy stood over me and wanted to know what was the matter. His voice seemed booming to me, it shook me up a little and for reason I thought he was an elf of Santa Claus. All I could do was stare at him, give him a shrug of my shoulders and shake my head. I leaned into Joy since she wrapped her arm around me. At this point, my vision faded away and I don't know what happened next.

The next thing I remember after that was either I woke up or my vision came back. Wesley came up to me and informed me that I wouldn't be smoking weed with him ever again because he believed I got too dangerously high.

I should've said no. I should've said no when seasoned potheads were telling me about how even they got fucked up. I should've said no when I was told my mom would be off work in 10 minutes. But I didn't, it was only once or twice a month I got the opportunity, so I threw caution to the wind.

As soon as I got my breath back from the bong hit (it always closes up my airways for a few seconds) I went back inside to do a few chores. My attention span shortened to about a couple of seconds; it made even the simplest task nearly impossible to keep track of.

I still got it done. But my mouth was dry and I couldn't figure out how to fix it. Everything was so distracting, the television, the tunnel vision, the spider webs of color that threatened to snuff out any blank spaces and the loud, pulsing ticking coming from the other room. I vaguely knew there wasn't a clock out there, but I wasn't about to look stupid by asking about a sound that possibly wasn't there. And to top it all off, my mouth was dry!

Instead of getting a drink I watched TV, because that is what made the most sense at the time. I imagined the rectangle of the TV as an oversized head of some sort of animal, an animal that was purple. There wasn't much difference between what I was imagining and what I was looking at, they almost became one and the same, it seemed my mind was stuck in whatever happened a few seconds ago and the memory got horribly distorted by the time it got to me.

I saw the solution to my cottonmouth when someone got up to get a drink of water. I did the same, then went up to my room.

Alone in my room I thought about my mom coming home, finding out I was high. This scared me; I decided to clean my room so maybe I wouldn't get in trouble. It took me 10 minutes and all I did was throw the stuffed animals in the closet. Except for the frog. Where did the frog come from? I didn't remember ever seeing it before and questioned if it were real. It stared at me with its yellow eyes, looking into my soul with malice. The frog was most likely alive, and wanted to kill me. I knew it, I didn't question if it made sense and seemed to forget I was stoned.

I punched, smothered and beat the stuffed animal as much as I could. It just stayed the same, staring at me with yellow eyes. I put it face down on my lap and imagined/felt (there was very little, if any difference between the two) it biting my legs. I could feel hot blood running down my lap. I looked and it wasn't there, it wasn't red. Ok, that wasn't real, but it still scared me and I couldn't bear to look into the frog's eyes again. It really started to go downhill from there.

Every fairly long amount of time I thought my mom was home (about a minute) I would check to see if the car was on the driveway. I decided I would pretend to be asleep when she was home, but it still made me more and more scared as more time passed since she got off work. When I was near panic I tried to save the trip by finding something funny on the internet. I did, and laughed.

I laughed too hard. Literally. I felt a sharp pain where I believed my heart to be. My heart was pounding too hard, too fast. One of the arteries right next to my heart had exploded! I grabbed where my heart should've been, could feel it pounding, pulsing. Panic fueled the imagined injury, and the pain got worse. My heart kept beating faster, I wished I could've counted my pulse but there was no way I could've counted. The phantom pain radiated to my left lung. It was filling up with blood! Vivid images of crimson waterfalls filling my lung scared me further and fueled more hallucinations. I could feel the blood running down on top of my skin, somehow I was bleeding. I checked repeatedly, but was always surprised to see no blood.

The worst part was when my mom pulled up on the driveway (for real). I hid under my blanket on my bed, shivering and waiting to die. I was so cold, and my heart hurt so much. I told myself it all wasn't real, that I would come down and be all better in the morning. I didn't believe myself, I still felt scared. The pain was real. Sometimes I sensed my mom right behind me, and I thought that was real as well.

Eventually I came to my senses and realised I would've been dead if there was anything wrong with my heart. I crawled out of hiding and listened to some Beatles music. That calmed me down further and I realised I was relatively quite sober. My attention span had lengthened, I could form an idea of the big picture and the rainbow spider webs weren't nearly as prominent.

That was one of the worst days of my life. I had underestimated how real the hallucinations can be; how dark and scary they could turn. Marijuana didn't turn out to be all rainbows and giggles; when powerful enough I could loose control just like any other drug. Setting is important, even with "mild" drugs like weed. When you loose your mind you want it to be in a safe place. Maybe in the future I'll try it again, but until I can spend several hours in a safe place: No weed for me.