This is the last picture I had taken with my father before he died of a heart attack while driving cross-country on February 27th, 2014. This was a selfie he took of us while waiting in line to get my face painted at the Topsfield Fair in November of 2013. And yes, though it was not technically legal yet (decriminalized in 2008 & medically approved in 2012), we were high.
This is not a story specifically about this fun day at the fair, but rather it is a warning about how any vice we choose to use to the extreme can hinder our lives, whether it be alcoholism or in my daddy's case, a cannabis habit.
If you talk to cannabis smokers, most will say the same thing, that marijuana is not habit forming and a safer alternative to other legal vices. However, around the same time that we were having a high-old time at the fair, there was actually a study being done about Marijuana Use Disorders (MUD) in the U.S., which was later printed in JAMA Psychiatry in 2015. Their study found that 30% of users had some form of MUD, which is described as a dependency where the user will feel withdrawals when not smoking regularly. If I was to be totally honest with myself, I would say that even I probably have a small level of MUD because it has been a pretty long time since I was last "out." My father on the other hand definitely had MUD and made some terrible decisions during his lifetime because of it.
For starters, how does a man making over $80k a year in the 90s have a hard time paying his bills? Since I was so young, and there are certain things you just don't ask your parents, I'll never know exactly how much he spent a year on cannabis, but it had to be quite a lot to get into the type of debt he ultimately incurred before his death. And no, marijuana did not lead him to harder drugs, nor was he an alcoholic, but still his chosen vice cost him dearly.
His money is not all that he lost due to smoking weed. Around 1993, my father took out a loan behind my mother's back, from their join bank account, in order to come up with bail money for his dealer (it was still very illegal then, which is why he was called a dealer instead of a salesman). This choice, along with choosing to smoke just way too much, lead to my parent's eventual divorce. My mother was his fourth wife, but I cannot comment as to why his other relationships ended.
It's really sad to think about the pain he put himself and his loved ones through over his lifetime use and abuse of marijuana, because at the end of the day he was actually a really kind, silly and loving man, whom I absolutely adored. Over the last four years, the couple of weeks between 2/27 and 3/10 (the anniversaries of his death and his birthday) are especially hard for me and brings up a lot of these thoughts about my father, both the good and the bad.
My daddy never made it to his 65th birthday. Of course there is nothing to prove that my father died because of his marijuana use, but I have seen the proof of what smoking too much cannabis can do to someone's life, and it's not pretty. So though I too enjoy days of wake-and-bake and smoking a bowl before watching a movie, going out to eat, or even just before bed, I am aware that cannabis can be habit forming and that I need to limit how much and how often I smoke.
So just remember that any vice used to an extreme can be bad for you, and smoking weed is no different.
Comments working yet?
ReplyDelete