[ScroLL-X]

Long post ahead.

I'd like to reiterate that telling the folks on GC about your innermost problems takes balls, especially when some know you in real life.

Well, where do I start? Primetime, your original post reminded me of my own story. Looking back on my life I don't know where my mental nightmares began. I've always considered myself extremely intelligent. In elementary school school I was part of every special program for gifted students and I was really popular at the same time. Life was easy. I didn't feel out of place, the thought of mental problems didn't even register in my ignorant fifth grade mind.

Middle school... I don't really know what to make of it. I felt socially behind my peers at times. It was at this time I had a string of three girlfriends during the summer, but I couldn't connect with them and we broke up in a few days to a week each time. I felt very weird whenever the relationship changed over from friends to a couple. Like there was something I was supposed to be doing but I just couldn't figure it out. The group I hung out with in school, my lunch friends, didn't seem to be having problems with girls. They started doing drugs and drinking too, but I guess the DARE program scared me into thinking drugs were evil and bad for you instead of educating me on them. So at this point I started to stray from my lunch friends. This is one of the things that angers me the most. I do not think I can ever forgive DARE that organization of propaganda and misinformation.

After middle school ended but before high school began my parents surprised my sister and I by moving us from California to New Jersey. I didn't care much since I only had one CLOSE friend left in California. The other two had moved away when I was in elementary school and middle school. High school was probably the worst time for me. My recollection of the past isn't very good, but I believe it was sometime around the beginning of high school where I began to see some ugly realizations. I was far behind my peers in social interaction. I could make them laugh granted, but I couldn't hook up with a girl if my life depended on it. I had some peers I guess I would call friends, but I never really connected with them. I would spend all day after school playing video games until I went to bed late in the AM. I got almost no sleep during high school. I had serious depression at the time, but I didn't recognize it. When I would try to go to bed I would lay there for hours without sleep. I would dig my knuckles into my temple while I lay there and wish my knuckles were a gun so I could kill myself. If I had access to a gun at that point I wouldn't be writing these words now. I would also start to get pangs of mental chaos, anger, and pain whenever I remembered doing something in my past that I wished I could change. It would be a very intense feeling that I had to kill myself immediately because I had messed up and there was nothing I could do to fix it. I still get these pangs every day. They make me want to tear my hair out and punch myself in the face. Girls would ask me out from time to time. Hot girls too, but I always shied away and went back to my isolation. So even though I had fooled around with girls I was still a virgin because of my own isolation. In high school I also officially notified my parents that I didn't believe in their religion, which still to this day they do not take well at all. The relationship with my parents has always been a love/hate one. They provide me with everything and I am grateful but at the same time they can be my worst enemies. I think my parents are truly insane sometimes which caused me to suffer. But then again it is hard to have a great mind without knowledge of suffering. I won't go on a buddhist tangent don't worry...

College rolls around and I'm lucky enough to get into the only school I bother applying for. I'm socially awkward and I don't feel that I fit in still. It's the same bullshit. I can make people laugh, girls give me that signal, but I just ignore it and go back to my own shit. My roommate is a big stoner and eventually I start smoking with him. I'd never really touched drugs or alcohol (because of DARE) so the altered state of consciousness is mind blowing to me. I've dropped acid and ate shrooms but nothing compares to when I first started smoking weed. It was beyond tripping. I would smoke and I would just collapse on the floor unable to move or do anything just laughing my face off. I would get OPEN EYED visuals, and I would truly be ONE with the MUSIC. It was at this point I started drinking and partying every night but of course I was still too weird with the chicks. Or at least I felt weird around them since they didn't have a problem with me. So I'm having a blast but things take a turn for the worse. I start making ugly realizations again thinking I will never get with a girl, etc. I start freaking out and can't sleep any more sometimes going days without sleep. I start thinking about killing myself every day again. There's a look of sadness, emptiness in my eyes and everyone can see it. I end up FREAKING OUT one night and calling my parents and telling them I'm fucked in the head. We began talking and my mom is crying etc. I find out that one of our family friends just killed himself and that my dad has always had some mental problems, mainly minor depression. They also tell me he has leukaemia at this point and I don't know whether he's going to live or die. My parents convice me to start seeing a counsellor at college. She's somewhat intelligent which is hard to find in people I feel. But she just asks questions about how I feel. I'm already really deep in my own head with introspections and the like which is probably why I tend to make ugly realizations. So asking questions and figuring them out is something I'm already doing on my own. She suggests possibly taking anti-depressants which I am strongly against since I know that true mental health doesn't come in the form of a pill. I continue seeing her until the end of the year even though I don't feel it's helping.

I end up staying in town for the summer and nobody is really around except for two of my friends who also decide to stay. It's the summer and everything should be chill but things turn from bad to worse. I'm basically spending everyday baked out of my mind and I start to get really bad highs. Super paranoid highs where I can't even talk because I'm afraid of opening my mouth. I can't function around other people when I'm high because my mind is racing with thoughts, thinking out every consequence of every action. I can't even walk home high without needing to repeat mantras or meditate in my head because I will freak out. It feels like everyone is watching me and I can't handle it. My love of weed is changing from my passion to my poison. Smoking weed kept me happy but now it's worse than being sober. I spent a lot of time being high so it made my interaction with the ladies even worse in this sad state. If I was sober I wasn't happy and if I was high I wasn't happy.

The second year of college comes around after the summer and my friends who are my new roommates don't smoke so I cut down on it and my mental state seems to be getting better. I lessen my dependency on weed, socially I am very good and everyone likes me, I also get a little better with the ladies. Although it sucks because any girl that I would want anything to do with I still fail around. The head of the new dorm where I'm living at is a total nazi and gets me kicked out of the building after a few months when he smells weed. So I end up in a different dorm where basically every kid is a straight edge, loser, that doesn't leave except to go to class. So now I'm surrounded by kids I don't like that much and a new head of the dorm who's always trying to catch me doing shit because he got the word from the old head. I still can't shake my paranoia when I smoke unless I have some beer on hand which isn't as often as I'd like. I can do mental exercises until my head explodes to try and shake the paranoia but most often this just reminds me of how paranoid I am. Kind of like telling a man about to jump off a bridge not to do it, but really you just keep reminding him that he wants to jump. You have to take his mind off it either way. I am very prone to boredom and I feel like I can't have fun unless I'm fucked up or there's a chance I'm going to get head/laid. So I feel like I don't even want to function unless I can figure out a way to get that old spark back in smoking. I believe that I have bad highs because I need to get the shit straight in my life with the ladies, so when I smoke I relax instead of trying to constantly figure out if what I'm doing and saying is going to get me on better terms with the lady friends.

Now if I recall correctly up until this present day where I'm a sophomore in college, I have never asked anyone out. The girls have always asked me out. It's probably a fear of failure since being intelligent, almost anything that follows defined rules I can do perfectly the first time. As I'm sure most of you know, relationships, people, and especially girls do not follow neat little rules. Anything abstract such as people and relationships are unpredictable and no amount of precalculations or philosophizing will make you a good lover. Perhaps I just need to stop running from my problem and just take the plunge. I will have to accept failure as an option. I may not be able to be that perfect guy but it can only get better with practice. I also have the problem of not being able to connect to almost anyone at a real level because of their lack of intelligence. I very rarely feel as if someone is my true peer. I don't think I could care less about who is competing on American Idol. It's a tragedy that most people I talk to everyday haven't ever contemplated, meditated, or had a meaningful philosophic thought in their head. Perhaps I judge too harshly though...

My dad is now recovering from leukaemia, but he has to stay on the meds which also have a side effect of making him weak. I am still a little depressed, but nowhere near as suicidal as I used to be. If you guys have any tips for dealing with anxiety/depression while on weed I would greatly appreciate it. I no doubt have left some stuff out since I have a terrible recollection of the past. Getting this off my chest and reading your posts makes me feel better though and I hope my story helps someone else too.