The Green Entry in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

Okay, let’s talk about drugs. I feel like I was the only one who paid attention to all those little lectures they gave us in school. I’m not going to lie and say I have never done any because I have… four of them which is not a lot, but it was plenty for me. Plus, I didn’t do them blindly. For instance, I knew when I tried cocaine that it was probably very bad for me. I knew when I did MDMA that it was destroying brain cells, which is why I didn’t run out and do it again the next day or week or even year. Yes, I know there are legal drugs out there, caffeine, tobacco and alcohol… and I abuse all of them. But I don’t drink booze or coffee or smoke cigarettes every day (although it might seem like that because of my Facebook pictures and typically I’m doing all three at once). I think the biggest problem is that people don’t believe that any of these things are harmful. Cocaine is harmful. Tobacco is harmful. Marijuana is harmful. I’m always very amused when someone says “weed is not addicting.” Oh really? It’s great that you think so but many, many scientists disagree!

I’m sorry, I usually don’t go off on rants like this but I just don’t understand people. I’m not advocating not doing drugs, necessarily; I’m just saying that you shouldn’t be surprised when negative consequences happen due to the drug use.

I used to drink and smoke cigarettes far too much. I see the same behavior in my friends who get stoned day after day. It drives me nuts because there is this whole belief that weed isn’t harmful or that it’s not addictive or blah blah blah. I think the reason I feel this way is because when I was learning all these facts about drugs in school, I never really had been exposed to any of them… with the exception of alcohol. I became so overwrought that I went home and told her she was going to Hell because she was consuming a drug every time she had a margarita. I was in second grade.

When I was younger I was far more inflexible than I am now, but that also meant that I had a lot less confusion about what I was doing. There was right and there was wrong. Drugs: bad. Jesus: good.

When I got older and dropped acid or smoke a joint, I had the voice of my second-grade self ringing in my ears… the truth is, that voice was right. Acid is not fun. Cocaine destroyed the taste in my mouth for the whole night. MDMA was probably the most I enjoyed a drug but I knew it was fucking up my brain, so I wasn’t exactly gagging for more. But marijuana was the worst. And I think it is the worst.

My experience with marijuana was unique, probably because of my body chemistry, and people disbelieve that I have a bad reaction to it because they think it’s so peachy-keen it could never harm anyone. I have had many friends who smoked and it just made them so idiotic. I get that it’s effects are not as harmful as other drugs but in their deformed brains this means that it’s completely free of harm and that’s why it’s more dangerous.

Now we all have our thing that is our self-medication. Marijuana is the thing that’s en vogue in America for now. That’s fine. But I don’t want to date someone that does it every day… occasionally is fine. I wouldn’t want to date someone who gets drunk every day, either. Edgar was one of those people who had to smoke a bowl as soon as he woke up, and I tried to accept that, but it drove me crazy. Thinking back, it makes me wonder if I ever got to know the real Edgar because he was always on some kind of trip. I could never do that again, it was disgusting.

That’s another reason I want to get out of America. Weed doesn’t really exist in France. They have hash but it’s not as ubiquitous as marijuana is in the US. Besides, there are no illusions that the drugs that you do (I’ve only done MDMA in France) are bad for you which is why there’s a little bit more moderation there. At least in the circles I traveled in, and I traveled in the French version of the circles in which I travel here. The main difference was the drug use… they were still the uncouth straight men who drank too much, covered in tattoos, working labor jobs… but they were never stoned.

My French friend gave the greatest reaction when he saw Edgar stoned, “Why is he acting like that? He’s always been kind of stupid but now he’s acting like some Italian asshole.”