PART 1
The Romance begins.
So when I met a lovely girl in the south of France with a joint in her hand I was fatalistically drawn to her.
My romance was almost like a storybook beginning when I met her on the beach through a mutual acquaintance.
Like all drug related encounters this romance started with an amusing ‘lost in translation’ beginning. There I was with my 20 euros asking a friend to acquire a little green bag and instead of her taking the money she requested that I meet a mystery supplier in person.
This got my alarms bells ringing and while she was innocently was trying to arrange a date, I had the distinct feeling that I was being set up to meet a cop and get busted.
That evening the young lady was arranging a relaxed smoke on the beach with me while I was acquiring some pot for a friend from London.
I was reluctantly waiting on the beach for a car to pull up and felt I could potentially be bundled into a van and interrogated for trying to purchase a nominal amount of contraband.
One can easily understand how prohibition throws normally law-abiding citizens into situations and circumstances, which raise their fear and paranoia.
Much to my relief a girl in pretty pink jeans turned up and the three of us proceeded to find some isolated pebbles to admire the view, listen to the ocean lapping on the rocks and enjoy a casual flirty smoke under the stars.
I eagerly admired the new brunette called CC who very quickly caught my attention.
Captivated by this young lady I felt a strong sense of abandonment so threw myself into getting to know her as well as possible. She mentioned that she had planned to relocate to Madrid so I threw caution to the wind and invited her to the beach the next day.
So like all self respecting Brits the next day I woke up early put on my board shorts to go to a near by beach and meet my friends from London. The day unfolded perfectly with us ending up in a memorable passionate embrace in the pool.
The combination of a beautiful setting, pot, friends, sunset and everything else was really the start of a great romance both with CC and pot. It is genuinely hard to describe the great feeling of having exactly arrived in a place where I wanted to be.
The stage was set for my love affair with marijuana to commence and like all things prohibited the ‘forbidden fruit’ aspect of it only made my late introduction even sweeter.
Food tasted better, sex was the best and I felt like I'd found the counterculture revolution of our time, which was legitimately going to make the world a better place along with a beautiful ally.
The U.K.- French alliance was strong and the intent was very cordial.
The next few weeks were spent primarily in bed in a haze of pot smoke and apart from tending to survival needs of food and water we spent hours in my apartment growing very close and embracing our newfound mutual affection. The combination of love and sexual desire along with a mutual enjoyment for pot was a magical formula for connecting and essentially finding a perfect partner.
CC had to travel for work that only made our mutual affection grow as absence made the heart grow fonder so on her relocation to Madrid the stage was set for our next adventure.
The early stage of our romance was based purely on lust, a genuine excitement to get to know each other with the pleasure of shared experiences while seeing life in a new perspective.
The romance that ensued was deep and complex and we got on well with the backdrop of discovering new city, attempting to see the tourist sites and avoid the winter weather.
The marijuana aspect of our relationship was interesting as being bonded by the mutual enjoyment of getting high and laughing together was undeniably endless fun.
During the time I spent with CC I felt an incredible sense of appreciation. I knew this was a rare and privileged opportunity to have a beautiful girl who enjoyed and shared my passions for architecture and culture so we got to explore the city and walk the streets in beautiful and romantic settings.
We did well to mitigate any arguments or conflicts as we spent many hours just laughing and joking despite being slightly pressured by spending so much time together.
Most mornings I would leave CC to sleep whilst I snuck out of the bedroom to have a quick coffee and morning smoke on the balcony.
I’d know she was up when the radio started playing and I’d flick on the toast so she would have something better to smell other than the smoke.
We’d play the same upbeat music most morning that allowed us to exchange smiles, go about our morning routine but not feel too claustrophobic together.
Smiles, kiss’s and touch, rather than words, got us ready for the day ahead.
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There is a very fine line between luxury and decadence; the balance of enjoyment and overindulgence is a constant battle.
The human experience seeks daily rewards and chasing comfort and dopamine is the constant challenge that we all face.
Modern life throws a huge amount of temptations at us on an hourly basis and once something is added to our list of enjoyments its then difficult to live without.
Our primary temptation is food and we are all guilty of overindulging in an ice-cream binge.
The issue of marijuana is that it’s on the cookie list, whilst classified at a medicine for some, I know that my initial use was recreational and primarily a method of searching for more pleasure and a means to fully enjoy my life.
What is difficult to understand is cookies make you fat slowly and marijuana was having a subtle and adverse effect of my personality and was ruining my life.
Regardless of the pleasure I derived from its use the reality was a high price to pay but it was subtle and difficult to detect.
The primary difficulty about having a drug problem is that it becomes a problem apparent to other people before it is a problem to you.
I, like many others, could not see objectively that any of my issues were drug related or therefore made worse with my drug use.
It’s easy to see ‘life’ as problematic and I never assumed that pot was making it worse for me.
There I was sitting with a joint in my hand fantasizing about changing the world, joining the softest revolution of our time.
Like many others I fell in love with the concept of advocating the issue and I had found a cause and purpose that matched my aspirations.
The end of unneeded incarceration, great potential medicinal benefits and peace on earth.
Every young man feels the pressure of trying to amount to something, make a stand, attempt to make a positive change on the planet and with the magic of the internet all one can share the great work that has been already been done.
In 2014 Uruguay was the first country to legalize marijuana and Washington and Colorado have also legalized it on a federal level for recreational use.
This made me feel that I could embrace and test the legality myself.
The hard truth for me is that I made the classic mistake of wearing it on my sleeve for all to see, as it seemed to fill a void. It filled a cause and persona that I had been longing for.
This is where the problem started.
I was seduced hook line and sinker and off I trotted flagrantly throwing caution to the wind and essentially throwing myself under the bus.
A hard reality, that I learnt slowly, was the prohibition is also applied financially and getting high will do very little to help.
The politics of marijuana are closely associated with rebellious youthful causes of the next generation who take a moral standpoint against the powers that be.
The Internet has exploded with expose documentaries about the financial system, food industry, monetary system and the global advocacy of marijuana is quickly following.
My constant dichotomy was that I agreed totally with the change in legislation but also felt it was worth highlighting the potential potholes associated with being a drug user.
‘Freedom’ is the ability to appreciate but not fall into dependence or abuse a substance.
I'd liken it to falling in love with a stripper; you know its a bad idea from the beginning but its attractive and feels like a challenge worth undertaking; you can continue to bullshit yourself that you've got it all under control, but it was one way from the beginning.
Once you've committed to this path the inevitable rock bottom heartbreak is inevitable.
It is almost the right of passage for modern man to avoid the hazards of drink, drugs, debt, obesity, venereal disease, unwanted pregnancies & cancer with the reward being his inevitable death!
At the ripe age of 35 I had managed to dodge most of these bullets, with an exception to drugs. I then spent the last two years in a ‘cloud of stoner logic’ trying to battle my personal prohibition with my new love for marijuana.