Andy the Pothead

Sorry, I have no pictures that relate to dope, so here is a picture of my altar instead.

Considering that I smoked very little pot, my short-term memory is garbage. The first time that I tried pot, I was twenty-seven years old and all I remember is that I got very angry because the pot was interfering with my drinking. I tried pot one more time, up in Colorado. We had one neighbor who pretty much smoked constantly and he gave me some (at my request). Again, no big deal—pot just did not impress me. I wanted something better than sex, not smellier than sex.

A reasonable question to ask would be why I tried pot at such an advanced age. That’s an easy one—alcohol had started to fail me. I was not reaching the stage of euphoria I sought and it was taking more and more alcohol to get there, and once achieved, nausea quickly replaced the euphoria. I was hoping that pot would be a potential replacement for alcohol because even then I knew that alcohol was not doing for me what it used to.

I consider myself an addict and an alcoholic despite my failure with marijuana and the fact that I have not tried other drugs. The reasoning behind that is pretty simple: I was so easily addicted by caffeine, nicotine and alcohol, I assume that speed, coke and heroin would have been right up my alley, so I did not try them at all. Even as a teenager, I felt that those were just too dangerous for me. Besides, alcohol did for me what I could not do for myself, so those things were not necessary.

Nowadays, sometimes in AA meetings I will hear people talk about their drug addiction on occasion and I am glad to be reminded that those things are dangerous. When they talk about how it was when the drugs worked for them, there is a small part of me that thinks, hey Andy, you really cheated yourself by not trying these things.

I think I would have loved speed and cocaine—I could see those becoming my life if I tried them. Andy the speed freak, hmmm, I think I will take a few moments, right here and right now to just stop and say Thank You that it was not necessary for me to take that road.

Okay, that’s funny! I stopped to pray and thank the Goddess that I am clean and sober, looked at this piece to see where I was and realized that I had completely forgotten that this piece was supposed to be about how bad my memory is getting! That is priceless.

Goddess, I’ll just leave this as is. Thank You and blessings to all.