My first time

The first time I ever got stoned it all began with my mother. Mom was a tall blond woman still pretty in her thirties. She was ill most of her life and always had some medicine or other she was taking. During the time I was entering high school, her physician had prescribed her some pretty strong barbiturates. Occasionally when she would take them, she would act like she was drunk. She would have slurred speech, a staggering walk, and crazy eyes! One evening when she was whacked out by her medicine she and I attended a parent teachers meeting at my school. As we were walking home after the meeting, about a block away from the school was a young man. He was about my age and was just standing there on the street corner. Even though he was a kid like me, his arms were covered in tattoos; he had long straight blond hair past his shoulders and was smoking a cigarette. He was dressed in jeans, a white t-shirt and combat boots, his entire upper body was muscular and defined. He looked like a thug. As we approached the corner, he walked right up to my mother and asked her for a dollar. Taken aback by this young man, she asked him what he was going to do with the dollar. He replied that he was going to buy a joint. I knew that I had seen this young man in my neighborhood before and I had decided not to approach him because he looked like trouble. I was so shocked to hear my mother ask, “What is a joint?” I stood there forced to listen to his explanation about pot and getting high. Next thing I know she invites him over to our house to discuss his drug use at such a young age. I was angry when she invited him over; I remember feeling like my mother was making a mistake, inviting this criminal into our home. He said he would visit, so she gave him our address and asked him to come the next day after school. That is how Mark was forced into my life, pushed into it by my mother. The next day he did show up, and when I came home from school, he was sitting at my kitchen table with my mom. Smoking her cigarettes, telling her all about his pot smoking and LSD use. I wanted nothing to do with him and left the house as soon as I changed into my play clothes. To my frustration, Mark began to show up every day and so every day I scooted out the door. One day though, as I got home from school, Mark was not at the kitchen table with my mom. She was on the phone and he was in the parlor, listening to Alice Cooper. Feeling curious and out of my love for Alice Cooper, I went into the parlor to check out what he was listening to. I was surprised to see he had brought over some albums and was listening to them on my moms’ stereo. Well this was the first time I had spoken to Mark, besides just the polite hellos and goodbyes I offered in my mad dashes to avoid him. I asked him why he was listening to Alice Cooper, and he happily replied “I love Alice Cooper; I have all of his albums.” That was all it took to begin our first conversation. As I started to talk to him, I found out in a few minutes that his really brash appearance was just the outside of a gentle and caring person! To this day I remember how ridiculous I felt as he spoke and I learned he was the son of our local minister. He had two brothers, an attractive sister and lived a mostly normal life for a person of his age. He liked to draw, he had done his tattoos himself; they were an expression of art. The muscles were from his love of Bruce Lee and his desire to emulate him. Mark had worked out every day to define his body like Bruce Lees’ and he had practiced martial arts to be a good fighter like Bruce. Still there was the juxtaposition; he was a gentle soul, much more interested in smoking pot and listening to music than having a brawl. In fact in all the time I knew him, he never fought anyone. In this one conversation I befriended Mark but I still was not smoking pot. Mark stopped coming to my house to visit mom and we were now hanging out together. While we hung out I had seen him smoking Marijuana several times. After a while my mom came to me and asked if I was smoking. I was not, but I was surprised at her asking. So I decided to try it, you know, because she asked. I went to Mark and asked him to get some pot for me. He was not surprised and said he knew I would ask one day. Therefore he had felt no need to prompt me before that. He was able to get some pot right away and we went to a place he knew was safe to smoke, near to a small brook about three blocks from my house. He had gotten the pot from a local dealer and brought one joint. We sat near to the brook, on a large, rectangular stone. We smoked the whole joint together and I felt nothing, not a thing at all. At that time most of the pot available was schwag pot of poor quality, you needed several joints to get high from it. I did not try again for several days. Then one day I ran into Marks sister and the local dealer. Mark had introduced me to them during our time spent together. They recognized me and invited me to come join them for a smoke. We all went to the same smoking spot by the brook and sat on the stone. Since we were with the dealer, we smoked three joints together. I remember as we climbed up the hill from the brook, I was fooling around with Marks pretty sister and I had said something which made her chase me. As I stopped running the effects of the pot hit me and I remember a warm glowing feeling came over my body making me feel comfortable and more relaxed than I had felt since I could remember. Even though I was young, at that time in my life I was suffering from a lot of anxiety, anyone who knew me could see it. I hated it; I was sometimes out of control and acted really poorly. But this feeling from the pot was one of being in control, no anxiety at all, I was able to think clearly and really able to focus, whatever this pot stuff was, it was for me!

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