Smoke Stuff

I got this way without drugs.

I don't have the handy excuse that smoking six tons of weed would give me. I was always a lightweight when it came to smoking pot. Two hits was plenty for me. When I was in my early 20's I smoked pot regularly for a couple years. Averaging two hits once a week over the course of two years. Never had the money or the desire to indulge in more than that.

I remember the last time I smoked dope. It was at a keg party that was being given for my daughter's high school graduation. I hadn't had any alcohol for 7 years and my daughter was very shocked to see me take a hit on the pipe being passed around. Two hits...same old lightweight.

She came over to me with her eyes as big as saucers, absolutely amazed. " Mom? " she queried. Guess she wasn't sure if an alien impostor would answer her. I looked up at her and said "What? Did you think I didn't know how?"

"But you don't drink." I replied "No, but I used to. And I only smoke dope every seven years."
Teenagers can be so gullible.

I told this story at an AA meeting and someone said to me "Sounds like a 'slip'; you should get a white chip." I didn't think it was a slip and I didn't take a white chip over it. I didn't smoke the dope for the same reasons that I drank. Two hits of weed weren't going to turn me into a dope fiend or lead me to drink again. I drank cuz I was utterly miserable emotionally.

I just felt happy and comfortable...that was before I had the smoke. At my parents' rural home, my daughter graduating high school, all of my five siblings adults; just a kind of peaceful interlude. It's very difficult to get six siblings together when they're in their 20's and 30's. Like a lunar eclipse, it wouldn't happen again soon. Two of my siblings drank beer only, one of them drank beer and smoked weed, three of us smoked weed only.

That was that. I haven't smoked pot since then; I haven't needed to forsake years of abstinence from alcohol. It didn't change my life. It didn't get me a walk-on part in "Reefer Madness". And my daughter doesn't remember the occasion cuz she got soused on keg beer.