I met my husband in Berkeley in the early 2000s. I was a quasi-hippy with long blonde hair, and he was a stoner with thick black curls and glasses. I was earnest and idealistic; he was smart and funny and sometimes fantastically dark. We had many differences that made for interesting conversations and great sex.
Soon, I realized that weed occupied more space in his life than an occasional indulgence. No time or activity was off-limits; not mornings, or work time, or therapy, or hours spent working on his grad school essays. It was a passion, a way of life. And a crutch.
I liked weed also, but in those days alcohol’s familiarity appealed more than the unpredictable experiences that resulted from whatever stuff he bought on the street. No one I knew was talking about strain names, or THC to CBD ratios, or even the now-outdated sativa/indica differences. Lab testing was unheard of for the recreational user and the growing conditions behind the weed you could get your hands on was anybody’s guess.
His weed thing aside, he was a good guy. We got married, moved around a few times, went to grad school, landed adult jobs, had kids. Life went on. One day he told me that he wished he had never started smoking weed, that he blamed the habit for his career dissatisfaction, and for his enormous self-doubt. Bouts of debilitating paranoia and anxiety plagued him. He sometimes even hallucinated while high. I also suspected that weed played a role in his mood swings that sometimes took him from tense and high-strung, like a tiger pacing in a cage, to really, really dark.
If weed was more harm than help, why, I wondered, didn’t he just quit? I became judgy about his pot …
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Author: Danielle Simone Brand / High Times
