Case studies
John’s story
It all started in 1987 on my 16th birthday.
I was at school and some year 11 students knew it was my birthday. During lunch they took me and one other girl whose birthday it also was to a place called “The Caves”. It was a hideout we had on the school grounds where students would smoke during recess.
I remember being past a packed bong and lighter and was told to block the small hole, suck on the bong and light it.
The next thing I know I’m sitting in class with the teacher telling me and the other girl who was stoned with me that if it ever happens again their would be trouble.
It did happen again but I had discovered eye drops hid the red eyes so I could hide the fact I’m stoned, hence not getting in trouble.
My friends and I always knew someone who had cannabis so we would smoke cannabis before school, at lunch time and after school.
I felt invincible, nothing could hurt me no matter how much cannabis I smoked.
Then we all left school and as always some people go there own ways, get jobs or move away.
I stayed in the local area continuing to smoke cannabis. I had a good job, fast car and lots of different woman in my life and for a 17 year old I was king of the kids, all while I’m smoking more and more cannabis.
Over the next 18 years until I was 34 things didn’t change much. Good Jobs would last a few years and then my attitude would destroy things. My pay would last from week to week because all the money left over after bills would be spent on cannabis for the week. Good woman were still coming and going from my life, they would get sick of the cannabis use and leave me or I would sleep with someone else because I didn’t care who I hurt and still thought I was invincible.
Then one day I was scoring some cannabis at my usual place and I got a headache that was so bad a friend had to pick me up and drive me to hospital. The headache was just that, a headache and nothing bad had happened to me. I say to myself “thank god, I think I just had a wake up call”.
I stopped smoking cannabis from that day on. I didn’t even think about it!!
Three years went by and life was good, I had a good job, lots of money, regular holidays, nice home and a hot girl friend (with $15,000 worth of new boobs).
Then one late Saturday afternoon my girlfriend said to me “I have some cannabis here if you feel like some”. She was never a cannabis smoker so I thought this is odd. Anyway I think it has been a very long time so why not, but in the back of my mind I remember the years of smoking cannabis and how my life sucked because of it.
I chopped the cannabis up all while I was thinking one or two won’t hurt me, I can control it because I’ve been off it for so long. We smoked the cannabis together and we were so stoned, it was great. I was living alone so I got stoned the next day and the next day without anyone knowing. When my girlfriend was in Sydney I would stop for a few days so she didn’t find out.
We broke up 4 months later but remained friends. My cannabis use continued getting worse and worse every week, I had no money, no life and very few friends but I was stoned 20 hours a day.
Then in December 2009 my ex girlfriend was in Sydney giving me my Christmas presents. She had brought 6 ecstasy pills with her. We had stopped taking ecstasy pills 3 years earlier because “theirs no such thing as good pills anymore”.
I procrastinated for 1.5 hours as to wether to take one. I wasn’t “in the mood” but I still took one. Why I did, I really don’t know!!
One hour later my head starts to hurt. Two hours later I’m in hospital after suffering a heart attach. The doctors blame 20 years of cannabis use and the ecstasy that was in my system.
I am now 39 years old, I look 30 years old on the outside but inside me things are not good and cannabis use is to blame for most of it.
I thought I was invincible, nothing could hurt me no matter how much cannabis I smoked.
How wrong I was!!
The thing I notice and miss the most from my life is my short term memory. Long term memory is just ok, but short term memory is shocking and cannabis use is to blame.
Getting off and staying off cannabis isn’t easy but a good life is far more important than getting stoned 20 hours a day.
I really hope my story about cannabis use inspires you to get off it, stay off it or never touch it. I have wasted allot of my life because of cannabis.
This is a true story!!
John, 39 years old.
