That drug, for many people, is marijuana. It’s widely available, incredibly safe, affordable; it offers few side-effects, is rarely addictive, and for most users, produces a chill, easy high you can wake up from effortlessly the next morning.
What’s not to love? Well, in a cruel twist, it gives some people terrible anxiety and panic attacks also known as “the weed demons” not to mention a crushing paranoia that defeats the entire purpose of getting high in the first place.
One hit and I became violently ill. Mix it with booze, and I was committed to a night of puking until I passed out. I was the only person I knew like this, and it was a real drag in a town where there’s little else to do. I used to be an indoor kid, this was my peer group’s version of team sports, and being able to hold your own that is, do even a reasonable amount of drugs on a Saturday night and remain standing was a prerequisite. I would recently learn this reaction to weed going pale and unsteady, then passing out was called “pulling a whitey.
Then weed turned on me again. And to this day, so much as one hit creates an unbearable weirdness in me. The second it hits my lungs, my brain turns into a flipbook of anxiety, and suddenly every decision I’ve ever made flashes rapidly before my eyes like a carousel of bad choices, even the indisputably good ones.
