Written by, Leslie J.
I can’t believe it happened to me. After brushing off all the gateway drug talks, the silent, disapproving I told you so’s echo in my head. If I had only known the gate was to addiction, period—not just cross-addiction. The first time I heard about weed was in one of those anti-drug campaign classes in elementary school. Out of everything they warned us about, marijuana somehow felt like the most hip of all the options. The least dangerous—almost funny. A groovy drug that even came with promotional T-shirts and a fashion style of its own.
I quickly caught on that my older brother was a stoner. The movies he watched were stoner flicks, and the potheads actually cracked me up. Being my older brother, there was an automatic coolness to him that made everything he did feel replicable. Like it was only a matter of time before I tried it too. By the time I graduated high school, I was ready to initiate myself on my own terms.
I basically blackmailed one of my close guy friends into getting cannabis from his older brother. He didn’t even smoke, nor did he have any plans to, but I did. I convinced my two girlfriends— the only ones bold enough (or dumb enough) to follow me—to try it together.
None of us knew how to roll or smoke, so we decided to bake brownies. We loved brownie sundaes, and it felt simple enough. We didn’t know about grinding, nor had we ever seen a grinder. We were completely blind to the fact that a bud had different components, strands, and varieties.
We threw everything into the mix—leaves, sticks, seeds, all of it—and baked it like any other recipe. Cheap weed, zero knowledge, just hype and curiosity. Then came our next discovery: cannabis stinks. It fills the room, seeps into fabric, and settles into the walls. No amount of air freshener could mitigate the stench coming from that oven. Our innocent home-alone weekend quickly turned into a full-blown hotbox. The brownies came out exactly how you’d expect—sticks poking out, seeds baked into the surface. My friends were already hesitant. Their doubt grew with every bit of excitement I showed. “Just pour the ice cream on top,” I insisted. “Let’s do it.” I devoured mine with a grin. One of them threw up halfway through. The other barely ate hers. We threw the rest away and lay down, waiting. What happened next separated us.
One of them had a bad trip. The other kept getting sick. And I… I went somewhere else entirely. It felt psychedelic. Colors, sensations, thoughts moving faster than I could understand. I remember time traveling to a childhood dream of becoming a circus performer, like I had unlocked something buried inside me. My first epiphany. I came out of it feeling like I had touched something real—like I was about to transform my life.
Nothing changed, except everything. My friendships with those girls didn’t last much longer. And quietly, without naming it, something in me had shifted. The next step was smoking. As soon as the “right” crowd showed up, I was ready. This was a different kind of high—more controlled, still deep, still sensory. I loved it, hooked on the spot.
In college, I started making friends based on who could get weed, who could smoke between classes, who could keep the cycle going. Architecture school only felt interesting with a head full of smoke, ideas amplified, creativity “unlocked.” At least, that’s what I told myself. Really, I was escaping.
I had always felt misunderstood at home. Unheard. And this gave me a way to soften that feeling. I would go home every day, stand by my window, smoke, and practice hiding it—working on improving my skills. The patterns of the smoke that wrapped around me felt like a kind of protection. My own shell.
Over time, it became routine. Then constant. All day. Every day. Anywhere, everywhere.
Fifteen years went by like that. I would take breaks here and there—maybe a couple of months—but I always came back. Even the ayahuasca trips that stripped me down to nothing weren’t enough to keep me clean. I always returned.
Pregnancy came. Then breastfeeding. I told myself I would stop, but I could never sustain it for long. It wasn’t just a habit anymore. It was my constant. My comfort. My escape. Eventually, everything caught up to me. My baby daddy kicked me out for lying about stopping during pregnancy and while breastfeeding. That’s when things really unraveled. I was alone, with a baby, no savings, smoking more than ever. Never high enough to forget the pain, just numb enough to get through the day.
I hated myself for what I had done to my life. A girl from a well-off family, good schools, opportunity—now a college dropout, a stoned-out surfer with a one-year-old baby, alone in a beach town, far from her family. No plan. No direction. Just survival. A quiet pity party, with only a couple of smoking friends to keep me company. And then something shifted.
One day, a neighbor asked me how I was doing. I told her the truth—that I felt at a crossroads. That part of me wanted to fully surrender to weed, to just be one with it, but another part of me knew I was a slave to it. Trapped in my apartment, smoking while my baby breathed it in too. She didn’t judge me. She just said: “If you ever want to talk, I’m here. If you need help, ask.” So I asked.
She told me about NA meetings. She had been clean from weed for four years already. Her story was different, but something about her felt real. Possible. Her name was Kenji. My angel. She took me to my first meeting, where I admitted to myself: “My name is Leslie, and I am a Marijuana addict”.
At that moment, the decision was simple: throw away the weed, and don’t call the dealer.
I stared at it for a long time. That beautiful, sacred emerald green. Then I flushed it. It hurt. But I held on. I knew the first four days would be the hardest.
Day five hit me unexpectedly hard. Day six, I felt the shift—the happy hormones were starting to come back. A week later, I moved back in with my baby’s father. Slowly, I started seeing money in my bank account again. Small pocket change to go along with a massive life change. Today, it’s been 39 days with smoke-free lungs. I’m looking toward day 90, when I can finally take a test and see my body clean—something I haven’t experienced in a decade and a half.
I’m still scared of “just one joint.” I wish I could be that person—the one who can take it or leave it. I’m jealous of them. Sometimes I see people smoking and I miss it. I miss the feeling. The identity. The version of me who thought she was a rockstar, lighting up like we owned the streets. But I know the truth now. For me, growing up meant admitting I wasn’t in control. It meant calling it what it was: Addiction.
I didn’t hit rock bottom; I just told myself the truth—and now, I’m learning how to live with it. My inner teenager is still there. She wanted to feel free forever. Untouchable, high on life (or something like that), but it’s time for something else: a different kind of rockstar. A sober, present woman—a boss mother.
