The Story of How Marijuana Saved My Life WSJ Team

As I sit here with a little less than a day’s worth of some dank Strawberry Cough, I think back to how it all began.

Well not exactly.

It actually began in high school on the ski team when I begged a fellow teammate to smoke me down so I could share the “experience of marijuana”. This story isn’t about that. This story doesn’t even start with me getting kicked out of the dorms my freshman year for smoking marijuana. Instead, this story starts the year after, in 2004. More specifically, after my first sexual partner decided to get an abortion with no discussion or even notifying me first.

This was the tipping point for the rest of my life. It lead to my eventual happiness through marijuana. Now, please don’t get any misconceptions. I harbor no resentment towards this woman. At the time I was still Catholic and thought of myself as pro-life. It hurt me very much when I found out. I can’t say she made things any easier when she said, “The blood of an unborn child is on your hands”.

I slowly slipped into a major depression. I went to the school counselor and psychiatrist to see if I could get some help. I was put on Prozac and told to see the counselor weekly. I did but had trouble staying awake during my classes, often missing them.

I was then put on Provigil, which for those of you that don’t know, it is different chemically but equivalent to amphetamines. By this point my sleeping pattern had gone crazy. I was up all night and sleeping all during the day, although it shifted. It was as if I no longer on a 24-hour cycle.

By this point, I couldn’t take my depression anymore. I told a friend from high school that I was gonna kill myself. She begged me not too and we negotiated that I would at least call a help line. So I climbed to the top of a parking garage and called the help line.

At this point, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to die or if I just wanted the pain to end. Either way, I was found by the police and pulled from the building. If you tell someone you’re on the top of a parking garage and there are only two such structures within an hour radius, apparently it’s pretty easy to track you down.

I was put into my first mental ward. I was eventually released to go home with my family for Thanksgiving. Little did I realize then, that this would be the first attempt in a total of 15 to 20 and the first of 13 stays I’d make in a mental ward.

I was barely able to graduate college in July of 2007 with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. The attempts didn’t continue till after college. At this point I was hopeless and thought of death and dying every day. Often, the only thing keeping me from trying was the knowledge that I had failed before and would likely fail again and would most likely end up in a mental hospital.

I hate mental hospitals. I hate being locked up with no release date except the vague- “when you’re healthy enough”. During this time, from June to November of 2007, I tried to kill myself 7 times. Finally, in January of 2008 I was admitted to the mental ward again for a month to receive 12 Electro-Convulsive Therapy (ECT) treatments.

I don’t remember anything from this time. This is apparently a common side effect of the treatments. I was told that I tried to kill myself 4 times and gave an orderly a broken nose. I really wish I could apologize to this person but I have absolutely no memory of it happening.

…

At this point, I’m going to take a break.

Writing this brings up a lot of bad memories. You’re probably thinking that you’re sad for me or that I want you to be sad for me. I don’t. Please don’t be. It all gets much better. Just wade through this time of my life with me. Trust me. I spent 5 years waiting for it to end.

So lets spark up a bowl together and sit here and think about our lives and what they mean to us. Mine means so much more now that I’ve been through all this.

Welcome back…

After the ECT treatments, I was considered homeless. My parents didn’t want me back and I couldn’t support myself. I’d had a few jobs during this time but they only lasted for 6 months or so before I’d usually quit. Then try to kill myself, end up in the hospital, and then come out with no job again.

I was released to the state to be cared for by the free mental health clinic. They set me up with a hotel room for a couple months, and then moved me into a halfway home. For the first few months I was alone but soon someone else came to live with me.

I feel that I owe this roommate my life. He introduced me to weed. Well, I guess I should say he re-introduced me to weed. Before this time, I was always afraid of getting busted with marijuana again. So I would find other ways to get high. Alcohol and cough syrup were among my favorites at the time. But at this point in my life, I could care less about being put in jail. I just couldn’t imagine it getting any worse.

Every night we would always go get a dime bag and that was always enough for a blunt. After a week or so, things turned around, I didn’t want to kill myself anymore. It was this miracle I had always been praying for, even though I had turned atheist long before. Sadly, it was a miracle that nearly everyone else hated; the doctors, parents, girlfriend.

I was sad to learn that my roommate had died of a heroin overdose the day after I left the halfway house. He had never done hard drugs with me. When I had moved out, someone else moved in. The new roommate re-introduced him to the hard stuff.

I had moved out to an apartment. At this point, I was on Social Security disability so I didn’t have to worry about working and I was starting to feel better. I met a downstairs neighbor who smoked. We would smoke everyday after he got home from work.

Soon, I got a job doing data entry. It wasn’t much of a job. But it was a job that was close to my field and all I could get because of my spotty resume. Eventually though I was moved up into IT and software development. I’m still business partners with my boss from that company.

At this point, things are going well. I’m still on social security disability but I need that extra coverage because I wasn’t getting paid nearly enough to live on, I was still getting a data entry salary. Also it helped to have a security net in case I couldn’t smoke anymore for some reason. I still lived in a state that had very strict laws against marijuana. I had made several attempts to quit marijuana but it turned me right back to where I was before. No combination of medicines had ever made me feel so happy and not depressed. I felt as if things were good with the world, for the first time in several years.

By this point, my girlfriend became my fiancée. She was also very supportive of the marijuana by this point as she had seen the wondrous change I’d gone through. My parents became more supportive, but still worried about me getting arrested and in trouble with the law. I already had one marijuana charge on my record and they didn’t want me to go through that again. My doctors would have nothing of it. They insisted that it was terrible for me and that their methods would work, eventually, someday, “Yea right.”

As soon as my fiancée finished college, we decided on a career move. Sadly, we moved to Nebraska, the first place where she could get a job. Not even Omaha. Rather, Scottsbluff, in the middle of nowhere. I’m sure some people somewhere like this but I certainly didn’t. There was nothing to do and although you could get weed, it was dirt brick. The weed seemed as if someone had stuck it in a compactor, which was probably the case.

After about a year of living in Scottsbluff, with both of us being from the Detroit suburbs we decided we needed a town with more life. So we packed up and moved to Denver, where we now live. I was so excited. I got my apartment lease signed, a new driver’s license and my medical marijuana recommendation all in the same day.

I had smoked Kind back in Michigan but I was amazed to find I could actually go into a store and pick out what I wanted. It was the most amazing day of my life. I learned what Sativa and Indica were and about all the different cannabinoids and how they help you.

I’ve lived in Denver for two years and have never been happier. I smoke some amazing chronic and hash every day. I have a wife and a puppy named Kush. I work for a supplier of point-of-sale systems to the medical marijuana industry in Colorado. I get to travel to different dispensaries and sometimes sample their wares. It’s awesome to get to see all the different products. I’ve seen cross joints, 1/4oz joints, all types of hash, not to mention the weed and edibles.

Here’s a toke to you for sticking through to the happy ending.

Thank you for letting me share my story with you.

Happy toking,

By Joe

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