My epiphany on smoking and life in general.. long read

Hey all. Sitting here with my buds on the 4th of july and just had an epiphany that i didn't feel that they would even want to listen to/want to hear, so i thought i'd share it with GC to get their feelings and opinions, im very confused, you'll understand in a minute if you read. This should probably be in the philosophy section but i wanted to get an opinion from the more "common" GC member rather than a more philosophical mind set one (So admins if you could do me a solid and leave it here, its important to me, i would be very much appreciative). So i'm going to start it here anyway, move if necessary, and if you've read this far, please read on.

If your looking to just hear less about the background story and what have you, go to the first *
If your looking to hear basically just the epiphany (i love using the word for some reason) go to the second **'s....

This little part will sort of sum up how i was brought into smoking and a little history i feel necessary to share.

I started smoking about four years ago when i was 14, without the knowledge of my parents obviously. i live in a semi-rich area that can get very good weed very easily, along with lots of house/parents that allow smoking/drinking, so it was always easy to do and easy to get. It first started when i was offered a bowl out at my friends house by one of my friends older brother's friends. At first i was skeptical, but i gave in as it was passed around. I didn't get high until probably another two or so times smoking when i was with my cousin down the shore, who was a couple years older then me.

Our family shares a vacation house every summer so when we all went down for the summer he asks me if i drink/smoke and i said yeah as i had just started but never gotten high before and wanted to see what it was like. He brought down two dubs of some mids so he was happy that he wouldn't have to smoke alone and that he would be showing a "noob". Now that we had exchanged that bit of awkward knowledge about if i drink or whatever, because i was bit young, we began to just head down to the beach with a backpack and blaze right on the beach at night time or under houses along the beach during the day. One night i finally got high and i was amazed at how great it was. Almost too amazed, (as i'm thinking now) and began to ask him if we could go blaze it up at various times during the day, and we did, and i found myself in love.

Now because i was a youngster my parents used to send me up to my grandma's house to help her with things, to keep me off the streets, if ya catch me, and they'd pay me for whatever work i did. My grandma just as a side note is very obvlivious and i was able to say i was going for a walk and just walk outside, blaze, and come back 10-15 min's later stoned as shit and just go on with buisness. One thing to note about my grandma's house is that it's in the town that the same cousin who first got me lifted grew up in/lived around, so i could call him up and he would bring down q's for me for only a bill.

That's how i really got into blazing. Another thing to note is that my friends who i first started blazing with would toss me bills, along with my own cash, to get these q's and we would just share it as a whole and burn it down within 3 days normally.

Soon after, one of my friends older brother's friends (as i was talking about before) took a bit of a liking to me that i was chill etc and i knew he delt, so i asked to get buds off him rather than my cuz just for various reasons.

So now i began getting halfs and z's (keep in mind even at that age i had alot of dough just due to my nature of saving money) and was now getting even better (and more) buds. However, before i began buying, i realized that us all tossing in for one amount was working unequally, so i began to just buy it and then "share" to my pals whatever scratch they could come up with.

This continued throughout my 8th grade into freshmen summer and by the time freshmen year came around i was sharing even more, and outside my little circle of stoner friends. This kind of situation continued throughout my entire highschool "career" and basically just became my life in the sense of hobbies, idealologies in general, and just the way i looked at things.

I was under the impression that smoking all the time, being high, sharing weed etc was perfectly fine and i felt no guilt about doing any of it (not that you should feel alot or any or whatever.)
*
(im getting lazy with the indents....)
However, getting to the main point, my parents knew i was smoking but couldn't really do anything about it, or they just didn't, im not sure. But recently, as of about 7 months ago they started bringing me to a private place to drug test me, which i was not happy about. At first i was pissed and wanted to keep smoking so i used a sober sally p) friend's piss and just fooled them pretty easily and kept smoking. That was until about a month ago when i didn't get my friend's piss warm enough, the people (scientists?) knew it, and my whole cover of being sober was basically blown, and with it my parents trust.

After that, i continued to smoke until my parents put me on lockdown for the summer saying i wasn't allowed to go out at all blah blah blah and that they would continue to test me, and if i didn't pass they would sort of excommunicate me or whatever you want to call, and i'm definitely a family type of guy, so this wasn't happy news to me.

Now the real portion of this story happened about two hours ago when my buds were all sitting around blazing, and one of them asked, why don't i just get a detox thing that he had heard about that will make you clear in about 5 days or something like that. At the time i hadn't really thought about those or if they really worked or anything, and didn't want to risk my parents love/trust/my own ass basically over getting high for a few hours. (At this time i didn't have a car either because of my rents, and i know, im 18, i legally, and morally can do what i want i.e. just take my car, but i don't feel like dealing with more dissapointment from the rents, you know?) So i said hey yeah thats a great idea, tossed him 15 bucks to go grab them for me (which should be soon since he just left, reading through this after i wrote it, he didn't or hasn't come through yet and is being a doucher taking my 15 bucks! take in mind he's not one of my normal hang out friends, but whatever) and hit our mushroom bong, that i had so nicely packed, even though i didn't plan on smoking any.
**
However after hitting the bong i felt a strong sense of guilt that made me feel i didn't even really want pot, and sort of led me into this epiphany.

Now hear me out, because it may sound kinda DARE-esque (i think thats the word), but now that i'm not smoking, i feel sort of that now things can matter more to my life, i could actually try and get A's and not worry about the amount of work, and that basically, i didn't need weed to enjoy my life as i should. I also felt that while i was blazing all the time i was in this sort of trap or bubble where guilt and worry (to certain extents) didn't really effect me. For example, just skipping an assignment because i know that even though i got a 0 i could still pull b's or something along those lines, just lack of going for self "perfection" (which my friend pointed out to me, is just an illusion created by the mind, this being the perfection thing)or the best i could do, if you understand what im saying.

This sort of made me look at smoking in another way and now if i continue to smoke, maybe daily, maybe not, it won't be in the same mindset that i was in when i was high all the time.

THOUGHTS WHILE WRITING THIS AND SOME REALIZATIONS....

-i can continue to smoke (as much as i feel like, i guess) and still go for my greatest possible achievements and whatever, its more my choice and doings then just the weed

-Unless my parents get off my back and i can stop feeling guilty, i'm no longer going to be high all the time. If i do smoke, it will just be whenever, i don't HAVE to be high or i'll be bored, it will just be when i feel like getting high (which may end up being back to all the time, who knows)

-Regardless to the fact that weed is not addictive, it is habit forming i suppose you could say in the sense that when your not high your thinking about being high and how much better whatever it is you were doing would be if you were high, and atleast for me, back in my day of lots of smoking, general life without weed was boring or lacking.

-i will consider things i do in life more important than i have in the past and definitely not let weed and MYSELF hold me back from doing better, being better, whatever.

I've had quite a few realizations within the past few hours, and if you read all of it, i truly thank you, as i am in certain need of venting and opinions.

Even if you just read the "end", thanks for taking a look too.

And most importantly, sorry for the very very long read, my head was in jumbles and i just needed a way to sort it out (which i just realized, writing things down, say in story form, helps me organize thoughts and ideas, never thought about that)

If your interested, (which your not ) i'm going to go through with a plan to smoke just once in a while until july 17th, which should give me two weeks to detox using water and cranberry juice etc, pass the test, repeat, and then try and talk to my parents about this whole thing and maybe work out a deal with them, ya know?

Take it easy, leave comments, leave whatever you want, again THANKS

 

thanks both of you for the positive comments, and i agree with both. However it's not as though i went from getting A's being sober to ABC's as a pothead, i always had A's and B's and the occassional but not pleasant C, it's just being sober for a while made me realize that i could have turned them into all A's, you know what i mean. There's more to be done, but weed kinda helps me look away from those things, and just enjoy life the way it is and whatever else. I'm ranting again, sorry.

Thanks =)