Smoking Weed For The First Time

Hey Gorgeous Souls,

As you all know I have been spending the week up in Rochester with my best friend and I have been having such a freaking blast. It has been a trip full of revitalizing my energy, creative flow, inspiration, and firsts. Meaning this week for the first time ever in my 36 years of existence I smoked weed. 

Now I know what you are probably thinking, really? You've never smoked before? Everyone has tried it at least once in their lifetime, but I haven't and I want to talk about why I have never smoked and why I chose to smoke this week. 

I am an elder millennial who grew up in the area of D.A.R.E, of the war on drugs, of how weed was a gateway drug that would ultimately lead to you becoming addicted to every drug known to man, etc. But I can't blame all of my hatred and fear about even trying weed on society because it didn't really have much to do with the fear of smoking that lingered in my soul, that fear was installed by my family. 

I come from a large family, my Mom is one of 13 children, I have 30 + first cousins on her side alone. My Dad is one of 9 children, all with kids of their own, and both sides of the family have their struggles with addiction, whether its booze (the majority of it), drugs, pills, etc both sides of the family struggle with this aliment. 

But no one as much as my Dad who became the entire reason I am hyper aware of my drinking habits and when they are getting too frequent and why I never touched a single fucking drug. I've never really spoken about it before, mostly because I was afraid he would read it or watch me, and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But there comes a point that not talking about it starts to eat at your soul. Everyone in my family, including him, are aware it exists, and the only time we talk about it as a whole is when shit gets really bad, but it has always been there. But it's time I allow myself to express the story from my point of view, because it was a pivotal part in my journey as a human being. 

From a young age I can remember my Dad being a heavy drinker. One of the earliest moment I remember is hearing him, my uncle, and a friend in the living room laughing their asses off and waking me up . I was probably no more than 5 years old, and I stumbled out into the living room. I am sure they were high and probably a bit drunk, but they sat me down on the couch and asked if I wanted to them to read me a story. I remember grabbing the book The Fox in Socks by Dr Seuss and watching my uncle nearly piss himself while trying to read it to me. He struggled to get through the rhyming, stumbling over each word, laughing hysterically while my Dad and his friend were doubled over in their seats crying with laughter. 

When I was 7, my Grandfather (my Dad's father) passed away suddenly from brain stem cancer. He went into the doctor in October because his thumb had gone numb, he found out that day he had stage 5 brain stem cancer, he passed away two months later on December 23. This is when my Dad's drinking got so much worse. My Dad's father, Dan, was a struggling addict himself. I grew up on stories about how he struggled with drugs, booze, and women. He was my Dad's best friend, they would always spend time together, go out drinking together, before he passed away they had started renovating our house together, and when he passed away I truly believe it killed my Dad, it broke him. But being a "tough guy" he decided rather than going to therapy (because of the stigma attached to it) he would just numb his pain with booze. 

Through out my teenage years, he feel off the cliff. Him and my mother divorced, he got remarried to a raging alcoholic, and we basically saw him once a year, if we were lucky twice. His drinking got worse, he eventually divorced again, and started experimenting with pills. He was working overnights for a while and the last day of his work week, would go to his house, pop an Ambien, not let himself fall asleep, but instead spend the entire day drinking. He once told me he liked the high that the Ambien gave him when he wouldn't allow himself to fall asleep. 

There are more stories, more gory details, but you get the idea, he struggled. I got to spend my entire life watching his struggle, suffering from his struggle, worrying about him and his health 24 fucking 7. I was afraid to talk to him about how it hurt me, in fear that it would drive him into a drinking binge. I've fought with him about it over and over again. There were days where I couldn't get ahold of him because he wouldn't answer his phone and I would fucking panic. I would message his neighbors asking if they'd seen him, asking my brother to stop over to his house and check on him, always fearing that he had gotten too high or too drunk and hurt himself, that one day I would get the call from my brother saying how Dad was drinking and.....

 I was close to my Dad, still am, so I took every single time he pulled shit like this as a personal attack. I wanted him to get better, begged for him to get better, and as he has aged, he has slowed down and gotten a bit better, but every now and then I receive a late night drunk text from him, barely legible, and my stress level shoots through the roof. 

I grew up hyperaware of his addiction and I truly believed deep down in my soul, that because I shared DNA with him because I was his daughter, that if I even remotely tried a puff of weed, I would become so fucking addicted that I wouldn't be able to stop. I thought that I would start with weed, love the feeling, and before I knew it would be trying to do anything and every thing to get some high, the search for the high getting greater and greater. I believed that I couldn't be different from him, that I was him and so I figured, if I never do it, never even try it, I won't ever become addicted, and so I never did. 

I had reinforced this idea that I was just like my Dad with drinking. In college, I partied hard, and my drinking got a bit out of hand every now and then. We partied a lot, every Wednesday-Sunday we would drink, and I would drink to the level of absolute fucking stupidity, completely losing control of myself, acting a straight fucking fool, saying shit to people I didn't mean, starting fights, blacking out. However, when I noticed it was getting a bit too frequent, I would stop cold fucking turkey. I would tell my friends "not tonight",  I would DD to ensure they didn't bother me begging to drink, I would not go out. 

All of college and my early 20s were like this, times of binge drinking, times of rest. It was reinforced further when I joined the culinary industry and I would go out with all of the servers to bars and drink the night away, but still never touched weed. I knew I could handle the drinking and being able to pull back on it because when it got bad I physically felt like shit, but I didn't believe I could pull back if I started smoking. 

So why now? Why try it after 36 years of feeling like I would lose control? Why risk it? Because I needed to prove to myself that I wasn't my Dad and I would never be him. I have spent my entire life (and still do) fearing that I will turn out like my parents, as I am sure you have from time to time. My parents made mistakes, they were young, foolish, selfish, and these mistakes had a lasting effect on me, but these mistakes are their mistakes not mine. 

This fear of repeating their mistakes, of becoming just like them, is exhausting. I have built this belief that just because we share DNA I am doomed to share experiences and that isn't true at all. Just because I am made up of pieces of them doesn't mean I am not me,  it doesn't mean that I don't have my own individual thoughts, experiences, memories, mistakes. It doesn't mean that I am going to walk the same path they did because I am not them, I am me, and me...she is different.  

And so I smoked to prove to myself that I could trust myself. That one puff wasn't going to send me on a spiral of addiction. That I could do it, enjoy it, and wouldn't need to go to the extreme of needing it every single second of the day. I needed to prove to myself that I was different because I am different. 

 We have got to stop holding ourselves to our parents mistakes, we have got to stop comparing ourselves to them, because we aren't them, we were never them, and we will never be them. Their experiences and mistakes showed us exactly what not to do and built trauma into our souls that make us veer the complete opposite direction when we are faced with a similar situation. We have learned through their mistakes and this has caused each and every single one of us to become self aware of when we may be following their same path. 

I am not justifying my Dad's actions, but they are his actions not mine  and I deserve a better life than always worrying I am going to turn into him, that I will lose control, that I can not handle things. 

And so I smoked, and you know what? Life didn't drastically change, the earth didn't shift on its axis, I didn't need another hit or something that would make me higher. I just fucking did it, that's all. It isn't this big boogie monster that is looming over my head anymore, it doesn't have that power anymore, 

I took back my power

I proved to myself that I can trust myself 

I proved to myself that I am me

And that she can always be trusted

Love your freakin face,

Amanda