Ellery
Member
I'll share some of my personal experiences with Weed. In my youth(20s) i tried a few times and honestly didn't truly understand or enjoy the weird feeling of "loosing control" in a sense of how your body reacts to stimuli. I never did it by myself or in an environment of complete and total trust.. Which I believe was my problem..
Fast forward 20 or so years and it has been a completely different experience. At first the highs were just about raw emotions and absolutely great sex. However while those things are still attainable if I want to, that is no longer the primary effects I seek from consumption. During the first year of the pandemic I was dealing with a lot of personal introspection and analysis given the issues I have had in my marriage of 15 years. For about 6 months I would spend countless hours at night to better understand myself and my behavior/actions. Weed has a very unique effect on me, in that it allowed me to unlock parts of my mind, that were either laying dormant or simply I had suppressed due to trauma. However over that 6 month period I continued to hit a "wall" of sorts in how I analyzed/aggregated my thoughts. Its hard to explain I guess, but the best phrase I have found is "I would get right up to the curtain but would never be able to peak behind it".
That changed last year in march when I over did a couple of hits from a specific strain "ATF- Alaska Thunder Fuck". I say I over did, because I usually limit my consumption to either bowls, joints, cartriges or edibles. When i did this, I used my big glass bong with ice catchers and took 4 HUGE hits. Long story short, when that happened I was able to "look behind the curtain" and since then I have been able to achieve that even without weed. It gave me a better understanding of everything? It unlocked a sort of new analytical aspect of my brain that I can now use on a daily basis. Ever since then, I feel I can analyze and problem solve a lot quicker. As an Engineer it has made my job 10x easier, and I am not kidding about that. I can analyze and solve problems at work so much quicker and that applies to pretty much every other facet of my life.
Obviously not everyone's bodies are wired the same, so my experience might not be comparable to others.
More importantly than anything else, it helped me rediscover myself and bring me back from a 20 year or so period where I was not happy with myself, not happy at the person I saw in the mirror, and honestly a shit person to my wife and people around me. Nothing aggressive or anything like that, just used to be reliant on lies as my defense mechanism(thanks mom). I had a lot of trauma as a kid that contributed to my behavior, which through introspection and the assistance of cannabis I was able to remember and analyze. It helped reinvent myself to the person I am today and helped me get away from the more toxic behavior(lying) I was taught as a child.
The last 2.5(43 now) years have been the happiest of my adult life.
edit: Can I also point out that medical MJ laws are a fucking joke? Like seriously, to me the Medical laws for Weed are there to just give the state another revenue stream. If your state has Medical MJ, it is basically legalized MJ for all intents and purposes.
Thanks for sharing that interesting and personal view. I cannot comment much on the behind the curtain stuff since like you said bodies are different and I don't have as much as experience with weed (and the heavier usage of bongs etc.) as you have.
What I know is that when I consume a strain with a paranoid effect then it makes me feel like my thoughts are figuring out the very fabrics of the universe. I start looking at things differently and feel extremely smart and some wild theories make a lot more sense.
Sometimes it can help a lot to have that. A different look at things from a different perspective/distance/view/scale to see where your usual viewpoint might be off. Some sort of open mindedness in a way.
That would be on a good day. Smoking something paranoid on a bad day is not a good idea.