To them it's just weed...

I remember my teenage years. That one night, I went to a party with my friends and it so was jam packed we weren't able to get in. As we were waiting inside the "abribus" to go back home, defeated from our failed outing, I noticed un unusual smell. "What's that smell?" I asked. My friend at the time, who visibly had more experience than me in the things of life, replied "It's weed, duuuh!" I remember feeling ashamed and ignorant for not knowing what weed smelled like. Over the years, I would have a few encounters here and there with the substance, which even though was illegal at the time, was quite common in parties and pretty much anywhere where young people gathered, with the exception perhabs of Church groups. After trying a couple of times, by the time I was 20 I had lost interest in having any more of it, so I would pass when being offered.

Perhabs because by then, I had seen the destructive effects it had on some particular young people. People who had made smoking weed a way of life and were consequently stripped of their ability to make plans, stay focused, go forward in life. A friend of mine who literally had everything and much more was eventually sent back to Cameroon after years and years wasted at university, studying a program he never finished. He later told me he was dealing  at the time .

Yet, none of these cases affected me like this particular one case. It started with one psychosis. Then another one. Than another one. So many desperate attempts to keep him from from smoking weed went pretty much without results. 

I thought it was just him. I thought perhabs we had done something wrong. Or perhabs someone overseas was doing something wrong. In Africa, you never know...

But then, in Brazil, I met Alex. Tall, handsome, charming, he had from "Hello". He told me early on that he was recovering from drug addiction. He told me how weed practically destroyed his life, and how Narcotics Anonymous helped him save it. He told me about the psychosis, and how he still felt bad sometimes. No one could relate to his story more than me.

Here in Toronto I met another young man, close to us, who went through all the same: the psychosis and its consequences. Handsome as well, yet constantly in and out of the hospital.

  
While Alex had the strength to change the things that he could change, the courage to accept the things he could not change and the wisdom to know the difference, most young people in his shoes refuse to even acknowledge the root of their problem. And now we have given them a validation to think there is no problem to begin with.

 "I remember feeling ashamed and ignorant for not knowing what weed smelled like."

That is something 15 year-olds won't get to experience from now on.