Pangs from an Old Addiction

I went downtown today, to go to a smoke shop to buy incense and rolling tobacco.

As I entered the smoke shop I walked past hookahs, Buddha heads and psychedelic images on the walls. I surveyed the merchandise placed underneath glass counters: bongs, knives, pipes, and flasks. Welcome to New Hampshire's counterculture.

I felt little pangs of desire as I visually examined the multicolored, glass-blown pipes. It's been almost one year and eight months since I last smoked marijuana, yet there is still a part of me that wishes I could buy a glass piece, take it home and sit back and smoke a little nug of weed. I'll just do it on occasion, I tell myself, but the plea is short lived. I know myself better than that. I wasn't a casual smoker, and I doubt I ever could be. When I smoked, I smoked up all the time. Before work, after work, before dinner, after dinner, before hanging out with friends, while hanging out with friends, before bed... all the time.

That's how it was, and then I stopped, cold turkey. I have not smoked marijuana since the day I was admitted to the mental hospital in San Diego. From the hospital I came back east with my mother, leaving my California life behind me.

Had I stayed in Cali, it would have been incredibly hard to quit; it was part of my routine and my social life. Back home in New England, I was divorced from all the elements that would have drawn me back to the drug. Sure I craved it and longed for it... and I still have moments of nostalgia for my favorite herb... but I know keeping clean is the best decision: research has shown that those who have schizophrenia and smoke marijuana are more prone to relapses. I don't want to put my mental health in jeopardy.

My thoughts were wisped away with a pleasant, "What can I help you with?" I looked up, and saw a young, attractive woman with plenty of piercings peering back at me from behind the register. "I'll take these," I said, placing three small boxes of Nag Champa incense on the counter, "And I need some rolling tobacco."

I left the store satisfied with my purchase: sweet scented sticks and my second favorite plant to roll up and smoke. Sure, someday I'll need to quit that as well, but for now I'm just happy to be sober.