"Here, take a hit," my friend said, passing me a joint in her basement rec room in upstate New York. It was 1980, the year John Lennon was shot. I was 13 and clueless about how that first toke would impact the rest of my life.
I didn’t even know how to inhale. Convinced smoking was cool like the alluring Virginia Slims ads promised, I spent hours in front of the mirror with a cigarette dangling from my lips, practicing a slow, sophisticated inhale that always ended in a coughing fit. Enjoying our freedom as latchkey kids, my friends and I gathered after school to watch General Hospital and get high.
As the months passed, smoking pot was no longer an experiment. It was a ritual, blessed with incense and Visine. I came out of the womb anxious.
Walking into a room full of people, my heart raced, and a gnawing dread forced me to hover near the door for a quick exit. The only time that terror melted away was when I was high. Cannabis became my savior, the thing I turned to more than anything else.
For a few hours, I'd feel giddy, free of my insecurities and comfortable in my own skin. But it always rushed back once I came down. The relief felt as urgent and necessary as breathing.
I spent every dollar from my paper route and babysitting jobs chasing that feeling. Gradually, I lit up more and more on my own, several times a day, with Scorpions and KISS blaring on my Walkman. I avoided home as much as possible.
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