A fictional story by Anne K L-F
She blinked and thought of all the totally crazy, random thoughts she could have come up with at one time. Smoke tendrils curled into her nose, smelling of cigarettes and weed. She tried to remember when that time was, but her mind was filled with a caricature of them all as kids from That 70’s Show, sitting around a table smiling and laughing.
She would definitely be Kelso, stupid but ridiculously good looking, she decided. Or Hyde. Hyde had better taste in music, rebellious/idiot ways, and because he knew better, he enjoyed doing wrong so much more. She tried to picture herself hiding weed in her best friend’s underwear drawer. Then she remembered she had no clue when she did it “just for the feeling,” and she stopped smiling.
She was barely aware of the fact that it was no longer about being “high”. Sometimes it was because of a head ache, sometimes because it was “there,” and who doesn’t want to have a good time?, sometimes to “make things go quicker”, but mainly it was because of habit, pure and simple habit. It had occurred to her many times before that habit is another term for addiction, but she could easily quit… if she wanted to.
She never felt unusually giddy. Munchies were so far away it seemed mythical. They were stuff made of dreams and stories from amateurs or on magical, awesome trips experienced smokers rarely take.
When did it become a habit?
How long had it been since she’d felt like a child on it?
She felt old, old, old. The excitement was all used up.
She remembered countless times before where she’d literally jumped up for joy when she got pot. Smiling, warm, golden times that felt like they happened half a century ago. Never memorable moments at the time, but as she looked back it seemed there was an air of child-like wonder and gratification. The fact that she could never feel like that again made her look back wistfully, and with a sense of jealousy of someone she could never be.
There were also times she didn’t wish to count---times when she became desperate to find it, desperate to get her hands on it, willing to do too much. She tried to shake off the clinging feeling of desperation, something like a time before when she drowned the fears in Xanax and whisky. That too had a sense of desperation.
Where could she find a permanently satisfying habit? While she tried to think of something to relax, she lit a cigarette, tasted the smoke in her throat and felt it in her lungs.
She sat back for a moment, resting her thoughts on the thrills and chills of an artist’s life. Were they all so depressed, so attached to a hope of physical and emotional release, so obsessed with a high? Was this really a lifestyle, this-this-this always needing to experience? Were the others all so disgusted, contemptuous even, of plain reality?
She hated reality regardless of whether or not it was “normal.” Maybe she rejected reality because it was the definition of normal. Yes, she decided with a languid wave of the hand, yes, that is definitely it.
There was a sudden rise in her heartbeat even before she brought the lighter to the glass and watched the crystals turn to a homogeneous liquid. Perhaps, she realized just as she inhaled the bluish-tinted smoke, there was a natural high in life and she didn’t need drugs, but the thought was lost amid swirls of movement and motivation. By the time she would come down, sometime in the next two days, the hope of existence in a world without drugs would be forgotten.