Fried Brains: The Chronicles of My Adolescent Addiction

By Anonymous

I began smoking weed when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. I went through my dad’s drawers, drawn like Sleeping Beauty was to the spindle. But I didn’t know what my spindle was, or why or how I was drawn. I just was. And sometimes I wish I never was when I look at what this lone action amalgamated to now, and what it might amalgamate to later.

My parents were furious when they found out I was smoking so young. So furious, in fact, that they set aside their volatile disagreements to come together and parent me at the very same time. It might’ve been the only time ever. They decided to reel in the inch they had given me, the one I turned into a mile. My dad began hiding his weed and pipe elsewhere. 

But I didn’t care, because the other kids around me were beginning to learn about weed too. Some went to even bolder measures than I did for a prepubescent high—I remember calling my dad to pick me up early from a hangout, having been peer-pressured into smoking out of a can next to the local police station. When he picked me up, he wanted to confront my friend and her father about the experience, but I stopped him, unable to explain the embarrassment of him confronting a situation that involved his own weed that I supplied. Naturally, I started lying an awful lot about my habits. 

Then came high school. Anyone that went to public school knows the ease of the bathrooms, hotspots for kids with the common commodities of shitty vapes and carts galore that you could forget U.S. history or badminton with. I was a freshman when I first used a cart, having asked a senior for what I thought was her vape while we were both hiding out from tedious school spirit events. “Are you sure?” she asked. Bless her soul. I had no idea what I was trying, but felt confident enough to act like I did. It was the craziest Thanksgiving pep rally ever. 

For the next couple of years, I floated by on whatever other people had. A cart here or there, weed that my older theater friends would get. I didn’t care to have my own stash yet, what with the bloodhound nose of my Dad and the trouble I went through the last time I was caught, and also, because I simply didn’t need one yet.

But then came the pandemic. I had just started dating someone when we went into lockdown, and we began seeing not a single soul besides each other. We were inseparable, not only by government mandates, nor only by puppy-love, but also by a mutual fondness to get high and do whatever together. He had insanely easy and virtually unlimited access to weed, free of cost to either one of us. When the world was shutting down, school became a joke, and our jobs were mind-numbing—we got high every single day. It was glorious and felt harmless at the time. 

It was fun while it lasted. Eventually, I got bored. The day before I broke up with that boyfriend, I began a two week bender in which I took LSD every other day. Boredom solved. My buddies introduced me to this new (random) guy, and one thing led to another until I rapidly fell into some weird acid-infused relationship with him that lasted fourteen days exactly. I haven’t spoken a word to him, nor even seen that man in the flesh, since those fourteen days ended. I had a lot of fun; it felt like everything about me melted and remolded. 

While I can’t say that I regret those two weeks, I can definitively say that my brain has never been the same. Acid irreversibly burns new neural pathways in your brain. The effect of this new neuroplasticity treats low serotonin levels and stress-related disorders, both of which I struggled with, as well as altering virtually everything in the way I thought and viewed my world. I realized I wanted to protect and cherish my relationship with my family, a value that was never lovingly demonstrated for me growing up; I realized that I couldn’t sustain a healthy relationship with myself if I continued to depend on outside validation—namely, that I couldn’t get sucked up into the grips of social media for false validation; I realized that there was no point in trying to be anything other than my genuine and true self—to not waste the life I’m lucky to be living by being inauthentic. These might seem like apparent things to you, but they weren’t to me until that little tab of paper stretched my brain in the way it needed. 

LSD is not always fun. There are serious consequences when it’s abused. One particularly challenging and scary trip ceased my acid-craze pretty quickly. Yet the constant high persisted. I finally began to supply myself– with acid occasionally, but primarily weed. I rekindled with besties who had similar interests in smoking 24/7 and continued to smoke everyday.

I quickly began hearing criticisms and seeing judgment from my peers. Having long since departed from what was socially popular, I didn’t much care for what others thought about me or my habits, much less about the ones that made me feel good. But it stung when it came from those I cared about. One friend began distancing himself. When I confronted him, he confronted me back. He told me he didn’t want to be associated with someone whose “whole purpose was dedicated to getting high,” who further pressured our mutual friend into smoking. I thought he was such an uptight, cowardly jerk for texting me such a severance of our friendship. OK, I still think that—but looking back, I can’t help but realize that his judgments of me were kind of right; in those last years of high school, all I would really do is see my friends, who eventually whittled down to just one bestie, and get high. I went to school high, work, club meetings, theater rehearsals, anything, high. I even went to graduation a little high. Sorry, dad.

The transition to college was seamless. Sneaking my stash (3 joints rolled into innumerable dryer sheets, then stuffed into the Harry Potter wand box with, somehow, more dryer sheets) in the car for the 6-hour drive from Connecticut to D.C. with my parents beside me must’ve been what Pablo Escobar had felt like all along. There was virtually no break in my habits. Smoking everyday, now I was meeting others who liked it just as much as I did, even indoctrinating one of my best friends to pick up some of the same habits I had. Soon, this all became “too much to handle” for my then-partner. That partner pleaded for me to stop smoking all the time, and it struck me first, honestly, for the clinginess that I thought I perceived, but eventually for the fact that they had to plead with me at all—that anyone could be so concerned they would plead for me to stop. I did stop for a little bit—maybe a week. But that is a generous guess. 

I never wanted to admit that I was addicted or had a dependency. I used to argue that a weed addiction wasn’t even possible. But I look at where I am now, and more importantly, how my body feels and thinks, and I just know. There’s a haze that I bet makes my brain fluid murky, like suspicious tap water. My brain feels smoothed over like when you let a gum roll into a ball in your mouth. My brain feels fried. So fried that I fear I’ve already thrown away all intelligent and cognitive capability I might ever have. My brain has never been quite as sharp as it was before that acid bender, but maybe it never even had a chance for how much I smoked before, during, and after. While she’s not at her sharpest, my brain is highly aware of how this addiction could be my own demise.

A friend was telling me about her day a while ago in the midst of midterms. We had each gotten a gracious hit of someone nearby’s joint, and suddenly my friend, a fellow-heavy smoker, swooned. She tells me a drug she took earlier heightens one’s sensitivity to other drugs, including weed. Instantly I created the mind-map of an addict; it became clear to me that to combat the iron-clad tolerance I built over the years, all I had to do was take that pill before I smoked, and I would finally get the high that’s been eluding me for—what, more than a year now? Maybe two?

I couldn’t believe myself. That thought was the first thing in my head before my friend could even finish her sentence. I confronted myself then. I’m an addict, I thought, and this will spiral into something horrific if I let it. It will kill me if I let it.

If I probe myself more, it’s evident that I have been an addict for much longer than I’m proud to admit. I needed to be high, even if it was a shitty, metallic street cart, to get through a day of my teenhood. Up until recently, I could only ever quell big emotions by smoking. At some point, weed wasn’t enough. Sometimes it still isn’t, and that's even worse as more and more become accessible to me.  

I notice that weed dependency and addiction aren’t particularly taken as seriously as other addictions, with weed itself still being questioned about its addictiveness. But it is real. 

Perhaps it's because some addictions don’t manifest in the classic and stereotypical signs, like stealing my loved ones’ jewelry for cash, or track marks on my arms. It’s something otherwise invisible. 

“My friend with a real addiction…” my friend once began a sentence with.

 “If you want to quit, then just stop,” another once said patronizingly. 

It’s easy, at least for me personally, to hide this issue of mine very well (I think), perhaps another hallmark of an addict. And like most of my problems, especially the emotional and mental ones, I don’t easily ask for help.

In truth, because smoking is insanely social, I fear my peers will read this and begin offering me anything from placebo herb joints to binkies instead of that evil reefer that threatens my life. Yes, keeping it out of sight is a part of a way to kick the habit, but is it worth missing out on some of the best moments of the day when I can see a community of friends I love? Further, do I even want to stop smoking? 

I just don’t want it to control me anymore. I don’t want it to be what I’m known for by others—the girl who shows up to class high, work high, even the gym. I don’t want my memory to keep getting worse. I don’t want it to amalgamate into something much worse, to let it slip deeper into heavier drugs; I don’t want to be a figure in a much larger and ever-growing crisis. 

Most of all, I don’t want my dad to lose his only daughter; my grandparents their first grandchild; my friends their friend. There’s a life I want to live on this earth, one that I want to see sober and present. There’s people to love. There’s work I want to do that I can’t give up on now just to chase a fleeting high. Despite how degenerate my addiction might make me feel, I know I have a place here that drugs do not get to control. Recovery is non-linear! And I am resilient. 

Thank you for reading.