Pot can really f*ck up your life if you smoke it so often and in such large quantities that you are not strengthening, but weakening your connection with the outside world.

Yes, I am high as I am writing this.

This loss of connection is quite possibly the most universal sign a pothead can look for in order to save him or herself from inadvertently becoming numb to the very gift that makes weed so incredibly magical and ultimately necessary in the first place.

Losing your connection with the outside world means not caring about what you see and what happens to you. It is a mental and physical numbness that triggers a loss of regard for the people, responsibilities and potential for growth within your immediate and ever-evolving life.

This experience signifies not only that you are smoking too much weed, but that you are also subconsciously letting it diminish your opportunities to make the most out of life. Weed will do this to you if you smoke it so much that you basically oversaturate your mental and physical capacity for its contents.

Tumblr

One of the many beauties of marijuana is that everyone reacts differently to it. This is why everyone reaches this stage of oversaturation at different points and through different methods. You could hypothetically refer to this experience as overdosing, keeping in mind that this label mirrors only one half of the word’s traditional, yet ambiguous definition. While what I am referring to as oversaturation does imply that the given substance is taken in excess, it does not also include a specific, biological malfunction that can only be neutralized by unnatural medicine.

It’s perfectly all right to smoke weed to escape the stress-filled mental state, but this escape is not meant to cripple your goals or social life.

When you’re too high to maintain your core values and contribute to your own personal evolution, you have smoked too much weed. Weed is supposed to make you embrace life, not get through it as fast and painlessly as possible.

When you have attained oversaturation, you aren’t just escaping the stress that comes with life, but attempting to escape the entirety of life in itself.

You have smoked too much weed when you constantly find yourself in a cloudy trance that veils you from the desire to actively engage in your own personal development and cultivation. This dazed, almost hypnotic trance is a sensation-less sensation, a state of numbness and unresponsiveness that makes the participation and enthusiasm required for self-cultivation and celebrating its wonders seem like feats of unnecessary and unattainable effort.

You don’t want to try, you don’t want to care; you’d just rather sit there and wait for things to fall into place.

Pineapple Express

And the scariest part is: it feels good. It feels good because you’re so numb it’s as if nothing is affecting you, when it’s really having such a heavy effect on you that you grow more and more oblivious to what’s actually happening. The outside world becomes immaterial and meaningless, thus provoking you not to care about your role in it. This neglect of well-being and control is what the oversaturated pothead tends to mistake for freedom.

I don’t think I have to list all of the physical side-effects but the most common include lethargy, lots and lots of staring at a television, decreased responses to texts, much more painful work days, and the dwindling of social relationships, personal hygiene and whatever love life there once was.

As a result of this transformation, sh*t just doesn’t go your way anymore.

There are many ways to achieve a state of this nature but sadly, one of the easiest yet least documented in legitimacy is unquestionably an overabundance of excessive pot use.

Let it be known that “overabundance” was added simply because the utter euphoria, let alone the idea of what is universally known as excessive pot use is something no pothead can ever denounce entirely. It’s clearly okay to smoke a ton of weed at certain points of life because history has shown us that if taken full advantage of at exactly the right time, excessive usage can in fact result in immense success of all kinds.

But most would agree that the universe just doesn’t offer us enough of these opportunities to indulge in this manner, therefore an overabundance of excessive pot use is unnecessary and in turn, rather harmful.

To precisely define a specific pot-induced feeling is obviously pretty difficult, but the comparison that seems to best get the point across involves being so ridiculously wrecked that you feel like you’re on something far stronger than ol’ faithful.

If you’ve ever taken a strong painkiller that makes you space out to the point where the world around you feels like a movie unfolding before your eyes, you’re familiar with the feeling.

Only this time, it doesn’t just last for a few hours. You’ve managed to smoke so much and so often that your version of “sober” has become a non-smoker’s idea of what they feel like when they wake up in the middle of the night on ambient.

I hope you’re not crying if you fit the aforementioned descriptions because there truly is a light the end of this dark tunnel of an SSA (Stoner Service Announcement).

There is good news and great news. The good news is that you don’t have to stop smoking pot upon oversaturation; you just have to smoke it significantly less.

While this will most definitely be a tough regimen to get used to, I guarantee it’s worth every anxious moment of it as it won’t be long before you’ll have re-created the indescribable awe that engulfed your senses when you first started smoking pot. Well, maybe it won’t be just like the very first time, but it should at least make you understand what a healthy high should feel like and most importantly, make you aware of the shockingly uncomplicated changes you need to make to get your life back in order.

Whether you’ve never experienced oversaturation before or are well within its grasp, please let it be known that weed can really, really f*ck up your life if you abuse it like so. Pot may be the closest thing to divinity many of us have ever experienced. This, however, does not mean it is not subjected to the darkness within human nature. It needs to be used wisely and treated with respect. Don’t fool around with pot like a two dollar hooker. Take only what is right for the situation and make sure it always maintains its taste.

Top photo courtesy Tumblr