It’s com­ing close to a year now that I end­ed my affair with mar­i­jua­na. As refresh­ing, pro­duc­tive, and lucid as it is to be sober, I’d be lying if I said that I did­n’t miss it.

THC has the delight­ful abil­i­ty to make every­thing bet­ter: music, food, girls, writ­ing, rid­ing the bus, doing the laun­dry. There are also things that can only be appre­ci­at­ed after a joint. You don’t see, hear, feel things the same way.

It turned into a lifestyle, a word I like to use because it sounds so much bet­ter than “addic­tion”.

Weekends were straight wake-and-bake, espe­cial­ly if there was a par­ty, a camp­ing trip, or some good old dim sum.

I was a com­plete light-weight too; it did­n’t take much to have me float­ing for a night. As a result, one ounce of BC hydro would last me more than a year. An added bonus was that I nev­er need­ed a deal­er; there was always some con­ve­nient source through a friend of a friend. O Canada, land of the free, the Inuit, and the plen­ti­ful bud. I’m sure that Pierre Burton would agree.

Sessions were a habit­u­al provider of great mem­o­ries (from what my brain was actu­al­ly able to retain). I still think of Darren at the wheel of the Civic, look­ing over at me and whis­per­ing “Vanilla Sky” as he’d taunt our mor­tal­i­ty by let­ting the wheel drift the car into the oncom­ing lane. It was at once ter­ri­fy­ing and invig­o­rat­ing, some­thing you could only feel after a ses­sion in the park. Even a few of my favourite entries were either inspired by weed or writ­ten under the influ­ence.

Food was also a big thing. Every meal was like nec­tar and ambrosia. I nev­er real­ly stopped eat­ing over the course of the day, as I’d have food around me at all times. Pretty soon, I hit a sat­is­fy­ing all-time high (no pun intend­ed) with my weight. Now that I’ve stopped, I lost it all. They won’t even let me donate blood any­more because I don’t meet the min­i­mum weight require­ments. This is what I looked like, cir­ca ear­ly 2005, and this is what I looked like cir­ca ear­ly week­end. How I miss the full­ness of my face.

Sobriety is dif­fer­ent. Everything is clear­er, but toned down. Life gets evened out.

As much as I miss it, I won’t go back to smok­ing weed again. I had a hard enough time stop­ping in the first place, and the risk of get­ting addict­ed again isn’t worth it.

Instead of the rac­ing ideas and inspi­ra­tion from when I start­ed, I turned into a zoned-out waste. I’d be com­plete­ly use­less when it came to talk­ing or think­ing. I stopped lik­ing myself when I was stoned. My stom­ach felt like it was slow­ly digest­ing a sack of peb­bles, and my throat became sore and dry. Even now, I still come across the odd stash of hon­ey lozenges in the back of a draw­er.

It was espe­cial­ly scary in the last few months when I could feel my tol­er­ance build­ing up. I was con­stant­ly chas­ing after that head-trip­ping peak from the ear­ly days, smok­ing more and more, but it’d nev­er last longer than a half hour. The weed would help me sleep, and when I stopped I turned into an insom­ni­ac. For a while, the will to do any­thing elud­ed me because noth­ing was enter­tain­ing.

Now I’ve quit my vices alto­geth­er. No alco­hol, no caf­feine, noth­ing. Sobriety is under­rat­ed.

I know I’ll nev­er go back to that time in my life, but I sure do miss it.