I was fourteen when I first found cannabis. And High Times. The two didn’t just make me feel better—they saved me. Back then, I didn’t have words for what I was feeling: a restless, chaotic mind, a chest tight with panic I couldn’t name. Cannabis slowed everything down just enough for me to breathe, to feel, to survive.
Not long after that, an adult handed me meth. That was the beginning of a 26-year descent into addiction, chaos, and legal trouble. Ironically, my first felony was for Marinol—a synthetic version of the very plant that had quietly held me together as a teen. The system made no sense: rules designed to protect people instead punished curiosity, survival, and the search for calm.
Cannabis didn’t cure me. It wasn’t a miracle. But it kept me alive long enough to get sober and start piecing my life back together.
The Long Road Through Darkness
Addiction teaches you a strange kind of patience, the kind that feels like hell until you’re on the other side. It teaches you persistence when every part of you wants to quit. For me, it meant surviving years of meth, pills, and chaos—sometimes day by day, sometimes hour by hour.
Even when I was at my worst, cannabis offered a tether. A single hit could slow the mental screaming enough to focus on something else—writing a sentence, taking a photograph, noticing my child’s smile. It didn’t fix me, but it allowed me to stay present long enough to rebuild, long enough to make choices that didn’t kill me.
I got sober on January 20, 2020. Since then, I haven’t touched meth or pills. I’ve relied on natural cannabis—not as an escape, but as a …
Read More
Author: Aaron Bradley Cooper / High Times
