Info about Addiction
Thoughts on Weed Addiction
I grew up watching my Dad deal with a weed addiction. Well, to be more exact, I would
secretly watch him and his friends get high. It's almost ridiculous in retrospect to think he thought I wouldn't know. As a kid your number one goal at night is to A) stay up later than you're supposed to and B) spy on your parents lives, out of some combination of boredom and curiosity.
I found his glass art pieces when I was like 11 or 12. Brilliantly, there were in him and my Mom's bedroom, sitting there behind a chair. What a hiding spot! I didn't say anything at first, and then later I asked my Mom what they were for. I don't remember what she said, and at the time I had only this vague notion they were there for smoking. Honestly, they looked liked some funky toy set, I didn't understand this connection to how you could use them to smoke, as they sure didn't look anything like a cigarette!
But then I saw him using one of those same pipes on the back porch. I could see from my window when I was supposed to be asleep. One thing led to another, and I started making a game out of this: nearly every night my Dad went out to the back porch and smoked from these pipes.
I suppose I'm making him out to sound like a crack head. No, he's not a crack head. He holds down a nice middle class job and works his butt off to provide for the family. I know there's a term for alcoholics who are able to do this - they call them functional alcoholics, and it's basically the same with my Dad and his marijuana addiction. He's what you'd call many smoker; functional marijuana addicts. He's able to live like an adult and a family man, but at the same time, he pretty much, I think at least, has to feed his marijuana addiction, or else he'd start freaking out.
I'm the same age now that he was when I first saw him smoking marijuana on our back porch. I should be one of those people who went into their parents footsteps, but I actually tried smoking weed once and then that was it. It was just too weird, having this mental connection in my brain to this drug and then knowing my Dad was addicted to it. I didn't want that to be me.