Aloha Letsgo...those are both depressants for me different delivery systems and
same result as Dean said and you also...I get altered and never knew why I had
to be altered.   I drank and my life went away.  I started smoking weed and it
didn't come back.  I stopped all mind and mood altering chemicals and found a
way to enjoy life especially mine without using anything.  I don't hang with drinkers
or users anymore and it seems neither of us really care about that.  Biggest drug
I most recently did was a scoop of Jamoca Almond Fudge over a scoop of Pralines
and Cream with my wife.  I drove there and back without a hitch we communicated
in reasonable comparable tones and language and there was nobody around we
needed to impress.  Didn't cost much and I won't or don't need to do it.  Never was
that way when I was your age and almost didn't make it to mine. 

19 was a very hard time for me also had to go thru it twice.  

Keep coming back.  Hanging with a bunch of ex drinkers and users is very trippy.

Switching one problem or one addiction for another never worked for me either, I did the "pot" thing for years but over time alcohol "worked" better, then there I was, back where I started

Thing about these "experiments" like smoking weed or drinking is we do it because we like it, it makes us feeeeel better, it makes us feel normal, it's a great coping mechanism, it makes us smart and sexy, not shy, whatever it does for us that's "special" so we begin to rely on it, we go back again and again, but it's like being a frog being put in a pot of cold water and turning on the heat, that frog will sit in that water until it's dead, that's the scary and dangerous thing about drug use/drinking to make yourself feeeel better, by the time you realize the water's boiling, it's too late to jump out, 19 out of 20 of people who even TRY to quit CAN'T, and in many cases they have cooked their brains and their lives and not only ruined their lives but their spouses and children get pretty sick as well

I'm not saying don't do it, hey it's your life, I did it, I'm saying if you do it realize the odds are good with a reaction like that to alcohol you have a genetic/physical/physiological predisposition to eventually wreck your life along with everyone you come into contact with.

For you with a reaction like that to alcohol it's like playing Russian Roullette with bullets in 5 out of 6 chambers instead of the Gen Pop which is like 1 in 20 or something, odds just aint good, but by the time it's starts going bad, you waaaay far gone taking a vacation wrestling allegories on the banks of denial

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I'm a little different because I even ran out of pot a couple weeks ago and my guy I usually buy off was out so I was pretty much forced to be sober for like two weeks. But I honestly had like no desire to touch alcohol. Not even on new years I just hung out with my friends and they drank. It really wasn't that bad tho. The days went by extremely slow and I was bored a lot but at least I showed myself I can just stop for a few weeks... I guess it's not that bad tho since it's not addicting. But now that I'm back at school and can smoke again pretty much every day I'm wondering how I even made it thru those two weeks.

Hi Lewis & Welcome...
I'm 44. For 29 years my Unholy Trinity was cigarettes, booze and weed. That was my daily bread. Other side dishes were on an "as available" or "as affordable" basis.

Weed. Dependency snuck up on me. It startd with sleep. Couldn't sleep unless I smoked up. Then it was sex, music, writing, sculpture, construction, labor...pretty much everything SEEMED more enjoyable after smoking weed.

Soon I started getting anxious if I had none. That last "strawberry" of the bag meant I needed to make some phone calls.
Come up with some cash. Go to a nasty part of town. Hang out in some lunatic's freak-show of an apartment listening to conspiracy theories while they played Blizzard Of Oz backwards ruining not only their stylus but my appreciation for Randy Rhoades. Get more weed so I could sleep and stop thinking at Mach3.5

Turns out that most of my "brilliant ideas" were bullshit. I wasn't "opening up a new consciousness" I was just getting stoned.
I was also doing permanent neurological damage. My memory of the last 30 years is patchy. I don't remember the birth of my 3rd child.

The Olympic Committee is right; marijuana is NOT a performance enhancing drug.

Just like alcohol, there is USE and then there's ABUSE. I have friends who grow a couple of plants on their back-40 so that they have some for their annual canoe-trip, or smoke a little and don't over-do it.

I am an addict. I am an alcoholic.
After some life changing events which proved to me that getting f*#ked-up doesn't work for me as a lifestyle, I began the solid and sincere work of sobriety.

I'm a happy guy and The Venture Brothers, South Park & Aqua-Teen Hunger Force are STILL friggin' hilarious!

Peace,
Rob

Interesting, well see you in "X" number of years

Funny, when "normal" people here something is dangerous, possibly life threatening etc blah blah they say "well Gosh, I won't try that, that sounds DANGEROUS!!!"

When "we" (yes I say we cause you one of us lil brother) hear something is dangerous, we say "weeee" and show all the reasons why it doesn't apply to us before we say "Thanks for the advice" and jump off the cliff

I had this conversation when I was 21 or so, and it didn't sink in until I was 27, threads like this amuse me, because I knew it wouldn't make any difference, if you weren't "abnormal" you would (a) handle it on your own and (B) not be here and if you were "one of us" which you so clearly are (hello again little brother) you wouldn't hear a word we said but instead say "thanks for the advice, but I'm not like you guys, I'm different and unique" and then justify why you were going to keep on doing what you are doing

So, in the next year or two, when you start waking up with strange (pick one men/women/farm animal/in jail/bad hang overs/ blackouts/don't know where your car is/etc etc) hopefully you remember some guy on the internet said "I told you so" and come back and find me, we'll talk then

Klaatu wrote:

---

I was told that our disease will lead us to 3 different places if we don't treat it... jails, institutions, or death. I see it happen often and it's very real.

---

Well.....yeah....that's for chronic alcoholics....for the folk that over use the herb-buh they just seem to end up on the couch in front of the TV for 40 years and in SUPER f***ed up relationships, some of my friends abused pot, alcohol, and other hard drugs pretty badly (with me) in my teens and twenties, truth is most of them grew up and have wives, husbands, kids, the difference between they and I was this right here:

I started drinking like two years ago and I used to just get trashed and make a fool of myself. I enjoyed myself but was mostly a belligerent joke. So maybe a year ago I started smoking pot a little and found that I enjoyed it more and I could control myself. I think it kinda fit my personality cuz im more of an introvert and when I smoke I'm kinda in my own world pretty much. So now I hardly ever drink and even when I do I don't get drunk. I just don't like it as much andppl like me better high. So I have mixed feelings. I know it's illegal but I've never had any problems with the law and my parents found out and they don't care. But it does cost a decent Amt of money and it makes me real antisocial which I Dont really mind. Like all my friends wanted to get smashed tonight and go to the frats but I just stayed behind with my orher friend and got high and am now watching planet earth.



whats was that commercial where this 30 something guy is watching TV on the couch talking to his buddy and was saying "man I don't know WHY they say pot is dangerous...I been smoking for 20 years and it hasn't changed me a bit"

then his mother starts yelling at him from the other room to clean his room


Letsgodobonghits or whatever his name is is gonna do his Harold and Kumar impersonation, maybe he'll come out of it, maybe he won't, but I very much doubt jail, institution, or death is in his immediate future, and telling people that smoke pot that those 3 are imminent from doing a few rippers totally blows AA's credibility, because it aint always true

true theres always a chance, but there's always a chance of being killed in a car crash or dieing in plane crash if you use those as modes of transportation, and sitting in a roomful of car crash survivors and plane crash survivors will kind of give one skewed data about how safe they are, sure everyone in the room has a scary story about planes and cars, they all crash survivors, all of the people that didn't crash aren't represented, so if they all started running around and telling everyone who drove or flew they were quite certain to die if they drive or fly, it blows their credibility, all they can do is teach others what to watch for in order to minimize plane crashes and car crashes, that make sense?

We are careful never to show intolerance or hatred of drinking as an institution. Experience shows that such an attitude is not helpful to anyone. Every new alcoholic looks for this spirit among us and is immensely relieved when he finds we are not witchburners. A spirit of intolerance might repel alcoholics whose lives could have been saved, had it not been for such stupidity. We would not even do the cause of temperate drinking any good, for not one drinker in a thousand likes to be told anything about alcohol by one who hates it.

I have a lot of friends that drink and smoke pot responsibly, and a few who don't, lumping them all in one category isn't accurate or fair to anyone, and certainly won't help people sitting on the fence, that's one of the reasons I ignored the accurate facts about drugs and alcohol, is because the people saying drugs and alcohol were bad had totally blown their credibility with all that reefer madness bullshit, so I threw the baby out with the bathwater

Pot is a non physically addictive but physiologically "habit forming" drug that I know people that have smoked nearly daily for 30-40-50 years, that's a lot for "non-addictive"

Pot has some drawbacks, but it's best we are accurate about those actually are..like the munchies, stunted emotional development, anti social isolation, and it helps people tolerate the intolerable rather then making a change, and it is habit forming to an incredibly dangerous degree, things like that, jails, institutions, and death just isn't a credible threat from puffing the herbuh except for lung cancer

-- Edited by LinBaba on Sunday 16th of January 2011 01:28:09 AM

Here's where Narcotics Anonymous has got AA beat hands down.
In NA alcohol is a drug period.
If I use any mind altering substance including alcohol I release my addiction all over again.
I was at a AA meeting and this old geezer is trying to tell this newcomer alcoholism isn't an addiction it' a obsession of the mind and a craving of the body, and I'm thinking that sounds like a definition of addiction to me.
I was a beer drinking, pot smoking alcoholic, I'd snort crank if it was offered to me, mainly so I could stay awake and drink.
If I tried the marijuana maintenance program (which BTW I have, it doesn't work) sooner or later you're going to get thirty and drink.
The other thing is along as your smoking pot you're not getting any real recovery, and isn't that what the program is all about.

Smoking weeds are not good for the health, i think that is a main reason that in most of the states still weeds are not legalize. Because some weeds are also poisenoius, could be also cause dealth..

www.tpknotweed.com