Cannabis through the Years by KNL

KNL is 47 years old who first used cannabis at age 14.

Thank you for your website. I’ve been looking for a place to connect with other marijuana users, and your site is a good start.

I first smoked marijuana at fourteen, and I always preferred it to alcohol at parties. During my late teens, I moved to a very rural area because of a relationship. There everybody smoked and I began to smoke daily. I probably smoked too much, and I didn’t have much initiative to move my life along.

When the relationship failed and I returned to “civilization” at the age of nineteen, I went back to school and work. I didn’t have any problem returning to a more goal-oriented lifestyle, but I still smoked frequently, to wind down after work, or focus on homework.

I started seeing the man who became my husband when I was 22. Marijuana was an integral part of our time together. We married, and I had our first child a year later. Our second followed three years later.

During the next 20 years, I smoked very little. I was intent on being a good mom, and I found being stoned incompatible with parenthood. For instance, if a friend took the kids swimming, giving my husband and me the rare opportunity to get high, I found the experience marred by paranoia about the kids. I smoked rarely when they were young, though my husband smoked intermittently throughout those years. As they grew old enough to understand, we did share our feelings about marijuana with the children, but they never saw us use it.

As my younger child prepared to leave for college, I began smoking again. It has enhanced my life in many ways. Since I work full-time, I have a lot of housework to do on weekends. Marijuana has helped me enjoy putting my house in order. My husband and I are again enjoying it together, and it has enhanced our appreciation of each other, the life we’ve built, and our cozy home. It has also enhanced our sexual relationship, not as an aphrodisiac so much as an enhancer of openness and relaxation. Life is good.

Both of our kids (now 23 and 20) have tried marijuana. My daughter smokes it regularly, my son, rarely. Both understand and accept our use of marijuana, and both are intelligent, educated young people whose lives have not been adversely affected in any way by our family’s (age-appropriate) openness.

My 71 year-old mother recently had an extremely painful bout of sciatica that sent her home from the hospital on a myriad of pain pills. The meds did not keep her pain-free, and they prevented her from getting a good night’s sleep. I suggested medical marijuana, and brought her some. Not only did it help her sleep, it helped the pain better than the heavy-duty pharmaceuticals she’d been taking. I was delighted to be able to help.

A good friend is a medical marijuana supplier, so he supplies my mom and my husband, who has found marijuana very helpful in reducing the pain and sound distortion loud noises cause him as a result of Meniere’s Disease. My husband has gone to the trouble of getting a doctor’s prescription, so he, at least, is quasi-legal here in California.

When I “come out” to long term friends about my marijuana use, it turns out that many of them use it, too. And yet, in my community use is not open. There must be millions of responsible, hard-working, middle class, middle aged people who smoke. In spite of this, in our culture, the official word is that its awful stuff. I miss the community of marijuana users I had in the seventies. I’d also like reassurance that my level of use (2-3 hits four or five times a week) is not excessive. Where can I find an appropriate discussion group on the internet?

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