I was an everyday pot smoker from about the age of 16 to the age of 29 or 30. Everyone I knew was too, including my dad. I smoked a lot with him, we'd get high and listen to Zappa. When I started in the late 80's in the UK it was all hashish. Weed was rare. We used to do "hot knives" - you'd heat a couple of knives on the stove, put a "blim" (probably a Geordie term) of hash between them and press hard. Massive stream of pot smoke immediately, which you'd suck up through a plastic bottle with the bottom cut off. Boy that was a strong hit.
"Skunk" weed became commonplace in the early 90's and my consumption kind of took off from there. It came to a head sometime in my late 20's when I'd managed to find a plentiful supply of strong, cheap weed and took to selling it to people in my social circle. For a year or so, that was my job. I'd cycle all over the city with my fragrant backpack, spreading sweetness and light to anyone who could pony up the cash. I kept proper accounts, gave credit (or "chucky" as we called it) and actually made enough out of it to stop working - at that point I had been making a living as a double glazing salesman, a job which made me feel like a total scumbag (I worked with some pretty dicey people, most of them ex-cons). So the pot dealing actually seemed like a step up the ladder, believe it or not
That's when I realized I was smoking 10 - 15 joints a day and it was time to cut back. I was virtually never not stoned. Wake and bake. It actually gets kind of depressing, and seriously affects your sex life! So I made a vow never to smoke before 6pm. I'd get up early, be productive, go work out, go for a swim, come home, eat lots of healthy food and then by the time it came to roll my first phatty, I'd
really appreciate it. I learned a very important lesson, that to enjoy anything in life, you need the contrast between work and play.
I guess it stopped when I moved to NYC. I lived in Nantucket for a year before then, and that was one long party let me tell you. But I really didn't smoke much. The novelty and fun of living in a new country was plenty enough stimulation for me. When eventually I got bored of Nantucket I literally threw some stuff and hopped on a bus to NYC, and I've been here ever since. I did try getting back into regular smoking sometime around 2007, but found scoring weed in New York to be somewhat of a scarier experience. I would call a big Jamaican guy called Kev, and you'd have to get into his car and drive around with him a while because he was paranoid. Really nice guy, and otherwise a respectable family man, but I was always aware that he had a gun in the glove box, and that was a far cry from back home when all my contacts had been bleary eyed hippies who lived in a world of rainbows and unicorns. What eventually freaked me out to the point of stopping for good was when I got in the car with Kev in a very stoned and paranoid state, and he pulled up to a venue around the corner from me which holds freestyle rap nights. The line outside was full of scantily clad girls and their gangster boyfriends. Kev pulled up to the curb, leaned over me, wound down my window and yelled "Hey LADIIEEEEEZ! You wanna come and party with a Jamaican guy? Come on girls don't be shy, you don't wanna be wit' those guys, come play wit' Kev!" And I sat there looking straight ahead, sick with fear, thinking "Oh god, THIS is how it starts. This is how the shootings begin, someone's gonna fire at this car at any minute."
They didn't, but my whole buzz was shot after that. I never called Kev again. These days I only ever smoke on special occasions, I have a friend in Jersey who gets the good stuff. But it's so strong that two or three times a year is enough for me.