My experience with weed pt.2

I talked about this in an older blog post. But I just like reminiscing still. There was a point in my life, during all of 2022, where I look back at how I must of looked in third person, and the life I had, and the scenes of my life, and it fills me with bliss, peace, and a little contempt.

I worked as a cashier for all of 2022. My weeks consisted of 2 – 5 shifts a week. Each shift was about four hours, maybe five. I was living paycheck to paycheck. I remember I had virtually no savings and no discipline to save.

My money went towards new nicotine vapes, new nicotine e-juice, rolling papers, blunt wraps, marijuana flower, marijuana cartridges, marijuana disposables, grinders, pipes, bongs, lighters, marijuana dry herb vaporizers and fast food.

I remember I distinctly would go to the gym, go way too hard for 45 minutes, leave the gym, vape, and then get a milkshake and erase all the exercise I just did. Funny though, I had went to the psych ward before this at the end of 2021 and came home and had gained 30 pounds. I also came home from the psych ward and I remember coming home to a cleaned, fresh room and my nicotine vape was on my desk where I left it. I hit it, got a massive buzz, and I was back, I thought. I played Doom Eternal and my life resumed.

Anyways, back to 2022. Also though, I shit you not, I have not been able to go back to the weight I was before the 2021 psych ward. I don’t like making excuses, but the meds I was put on since then, combined with a worse depression, etc, have made it hard to lose weight. I am trying to get ozempic.

I also went to the psych ward at the end of 2023 and gained 20 pounds there too, but have since been able to lose it. It’s complicated but at the psych ward, there’s very little to do, very little pleasure besides from food. They barely let you go outside, etc.

Anyways, in 2022 I was a cashier for 10 months. It was a cozy life, although during it, I believe I tried everything in my power to not address the fact that I had no plan or progress or guarantee that I could move out eventually. I was 21. I am 25 now. My days consisted of:

1. Wake up, vape nicotine and weed
2. Put on the same pair of jeans and the same shirt from the day before
3. Shower maybe 1 – 2 times a week, constantly smell like body order and shit, like literally – shit.
4. Vape on the way to work
5. Vape in the parking lot as much as I could before having to go in
6. Boss arrives lets me in
7. I buy a snack and drink
8. I take a basket and pretend i’m putting items back but i’m really just sneaking around the store and vaping
9. Shift starts, store opens, I start ringing up customers and bagging their items for them
10. My boss will occasionally come over telling me i’m going too slow
11. When there’s no customers, I pretend to be putting items back, but i’m hiding out of view from everyone and vaping. I could be doing this in the bathroom, behind the water fountain, etc
12. Boss sometimes tells me to do side-tasks, like blow up 50 – 100 balloons for a customer
13. Dread my existence whenever a new customer comes to my line
14. Shift ends, vape break, feel some optimism

Come home, usually it’s just me and my grandma. After having worked a shift, I feel like a useful member of society, and feel it’s okay to veg out the rest of the day:

1. Dad comes home
2. I walk the dogs with him
3. He makes me dinner
4. At 7pm, like every day, I white-lie to my Dad saying i’m going to bed, and over time after many times of him saying that it’s too early to go to bed, he just stops questioning it.
5. I go to my dark room, light a candle, position my laptop on my nighstand facing me as I lay sideways on my bed, facing the laptop.
6. I watch one of the many shows/ gaming streams that i’ve watched a million times: Entourage, Workaholics, League of Legends, Impractical Jokers, Blue Mountain State
7. During watching this, vape weed/nicotine every 5 – 10 minutes.
8. On a lot of these days, my Dad and Step-mom are still upstairs, eating or watching TV. Many of these times, i’ll hear them supposedly talking about me. Stuff like that i’m a loser, that I ruined my life, that i’m a weirdo, etc. Not 100% sure though, could of been hearing things.
9. Friends on Discord spam call me everynight over and over. I finally join the call, say hello, then go silent. On other nights, I just watch shows or league of legends and vape till I fall asleep.
10. On nights talking on Discord, i’ll barely say anything, and just fall asleep in the call. Then the next day starts, and I will usually have to work, and these list starts from the top again.

I actually would have some days where i’d legit wake up at 4am for some reason, grab my nicotine vape, and just gaze out the window chain vaping. There’d also be nights where i’d wake up every two hours to vape.

I actually remember getting into vaping again, in 2021 or so, and I got back into it after a long break. And it started off so great. I remember I vaped all night and it kept me ‘wired’. I used the energy to write like 30 pages of a fiction novel I wrote. Then over time, my life just turned normal, no extra productivity or anything, except now i’m a nicotine addict.

I remember I thought it was amazing at first, and didn’t care about being addicted, cause most of my family did it. I actually read a reddit post of some person who was ecstatic about it. They talked about in their post that they used vaping nicotine as a lifestyle to get shit done. They said they had a routine of it everyday, like: wake up, vape, brush teeth, vape, shower, vape, work, vape, etc. And it got so many upvotes and people agreeing with the lifestyle.

Anyways, I keep looking back at the cozy scene back then. Me in a dark room in front of the light from my laptop, laying sideways, chain vaping, chill as hell. That’s what it’d look like on the outside. But again: I was still very mentally ill. Constant anxiety, sadness, depression, guilt, regret, hopelessness.

Like I said, I just had no discipline. Like with my weed addiction. I didn’t say this, but for some reason, 95% of the time, the weed didn’t get me high. This was with real carts, delta 8, etc. It just would rarely ever work. So I instead just got addicted to the placebo, the taste, etc. By placebo I mean, if I wanted to get ‘conked out’ and have a ‘real wholesome special experience’, i’d hit the weed. If I just wanted something ‘okay’. I’d just vape the nicotine. The weed was basically my special lifeforce. I remember trying to quit, going four hours, losing my mind from the emptiness without it, and calling my d*ealer and going back.

Anyways, so as i’ve been explaining, its nuanced. I look at how chill some of the moments were. But now i’m three years sober from all of it, and while a lot of my moments are hard with no escape, i’m pretty sure this will pay off mega long term.