A LOVE affair between a computer scientist and marijuana to enhance his performance as a male escort has ended in heartbreak and a six-year prison term for drug offences.

Paul Chalmers's ''romance'' with marijuana worsened in 2000 when he swapped a high-paid IT role for registered work in Melbourne's sex industry.

Chalmers, 45, found cooking with grass an effective and controllable way to relax - and ''I could have a biscuit at the right time without my [female] client even knowing''.

In 2005 he grew his first plant as a safer and easier method of personal supply, then the biscuits got stronger, he ate more and ''I had become so in love with cannabis that I did not see any bad in it''.

As he told Judge Frank Shelton - who yesterday jailed him for a minimum of four years - in a letter for his appearance last week: ''I was naive to think this, as it was now consuming me rather then me consuming it.'' The court was told his arrest in October 2009 ended a four-month police operation that revealed Chalmers had co-ordinated the cultivation, delivery and money of a group of co-accused hydroponic marijuana growers and distributors in the Dandenong Ranges area.