Chapter 1: Schwag

I can still remember the first time I smoked weed. Or at least the first time I attempted to smoke weed. It was my Freshmen year in high school. My best friend and neighbor Griffin had managed to buy a small bag of weed from his older brother’s friend at school. Together we made plans to smoke it.

As a teen, I was often told I looked like Ryan Merriman from the movie "Smart House". He was in a lot of Disney Channel movies when I was growing up. Also, I got Christopher Marquette from the movie “Girl Next Door”.

Imagine long brown surfer style hair popping out above the ears like wings on either side of an Element skateboards brand hat. Hazel eyes that look green when I am happy and brown when I am not. Add in the signature soul patch under my lip.

As an adult, I have been told many times by different people, that I look like Nick Helm from the British TV show "Uncle". Like many Americans I had never heard of him. Out of curiosity I watched the show (loved it). I like to think I am bit skinnier.

Griffin was a bit taller than me with broad shoulders and a buzz cut. He had brown hair he had bleached bright blond, a big nose and chin, and brown eyes. He looked a little like a young Jon Bernthal from the television series “The Walking Dead”.

I grew up in a small beach town in the South West side of Los Angeles County. It felt like one of L.A.’s best kept secrets, affordable homes and apartments within walking distance of the beach.

Griffin and I had met in Middle School. At the time we had the same hair cut and people often mistook us for brothers. We were neighbors so we always walked home the same way after school.

Griffin always invited me over to his house after school to play video games or go skateboarding.

“You ever smoke weed before?” Griffin asked me one day after school.

“Of course!” I lied.

“Ya me too!” Griffin lied as well.

“I got this from my brother’s friend. He called it Schwag! I think that means it’s the good stuff.” He added.

It was not. In fact Schwag was actually a slang term created to describe the lowest quality of weed. Neither of us really cared knew or cared about quality.

 We took a piece of white paper from his computer printer, poured the weed on the paper, and rolled it into a crude and loose joint. Then we went outside to the alley behind his house despite the fact no one was home inside.

We crouched down behind a dumpster in the alley where no one would see us and attempted to light the joint with one of those giant barbecue lighters. The ones with the child safety that is a pain in the ass.

You have to hold down the button and click the trigger at the same time. Those things really are child proof. It took one of us to hold down the safety button and the other to pull the trigger before we were able to get it to light.

The printer paper burned up wrong and caught on fire. The weed that didn’t burn, ended up on the floor and in the wind. Neither of us got high despite our best effort to suck in the smoke from the paper fire. I don’t think we even pretended like we felt something. It was an outright failure.

The two of us watched our dreams of getting high blow down the alley out of sight with the breeze.

The first time I got legitimately high was actually several months and several attempts later.

I had tried a real joint rolled with the right type of papers, but I guess I did not hold it in right or inhale properly. I had tried a pipe, but it was harsh and burned my throat before I could even get the smoke in my lungs.

It was not until my first time hitting a bong that I met the love of my life and truly experienced the joys of cannabis. It was something about using a bong that helped me learn how to properly inhale.

Griffin had gone off and hung out with his older brother’s friends and got high properly without me. He came back telling me stories of how great it was.

“I finally figured it out dude, we were doing it wrong the whole time! Next time Mike comes over with his bong, we will show you how to properly get faded.” Griffin promised.

A week or so later, Griffin invited me over. His older brother’s friend Mike had come over with his bong. Griffin’s mother worked as a nurse at the local hospital and was rarely home during the day. His house was often our party house Freshmen year.

“I know you!” Mike said pointing at me as I walked in the front door.

“You’re King Arthur!” he concluded after a moment of thought.

Mike was a Senior in high school while we were just Freshmen but Mike and I actually had a bit of a history. We had both attended the same elementary school. We had both auditioned to be in the school play, “The Sword in the Stone”.

I got the lead role of Arthur. I got to pull the sword from the stone in front of the whole school. Mike played the older “adult” version of myself, King Arthur, at the end of the play. I would not say we looked alike too much, but we both had brown hair and hazel eyes. Mike recognized me from the play right away. He even started calling me “King Arthur”.

Griffin and Mike loaded me up a bowl and gave me the instructions on how to use a bong. I started off slow, barely hitting it, and they told me to inhale harder. Mike lit the bowl for me with a Bic brand lighter. No barbeque lighters this time.

I inhaled as much as I could to fill the bong with smoke. The water made the smoke cooler and easier to handle than a pipe or a joint. I looked down at the bong filled with smoke and thought to myself so far so good.

If you are not familiar with hitting a bong. Typically, your initial inhale fills the chamber with smoke. You barely get any smoke in your lungs until you pull the bowl piece out, removing the smoke source and allowing air to flow through. This forces the smoke out the top of the bong and into your mouth and lungs.

Mike pulled the bowl piece out forcing all the smoke into my lungs immediately. I coughed and choked as I exhaled it out.

I had a small coughing fit for about five minutes.

When I regained my normal breathing and composure, I looked up at everyone in the room with eyes redder than the devil’s ass. I could not help but smile ear to ear.

“He’s faded!” they said laughing.

We sat in Griffin’s living room on his mother’s new leather couch watching the movie “Next Friday”. The movie felt extra funny. We were laughing at every scene.

I was blown away by the fact they were smoking weed in the movie. It was like I had never noticed it before. I thought it was so cool.

"Are they allowed to do that?"

"The weed must be fake!"

When the main characters sat and smoked together, I imagined we were there smoking with them. Mike did his best impressions of one of the movie characters; Pinky the music store owner. He walked around the room like a flamboyant pimp, swatting invisible flies and fixing an imaginary Jeri curl.

It was terrible. We all laughed until our sides hurt.

After Mike left, Griffin and I raided his family’s refrigerator and ate all the snacks and cereal that were saved for his younger brothers. When the two of them came home from Hockey practice they were not too happy to see us eating their Lucky Charms. Or myself wearing the free clover shaped watch that came as a prize in the bottom of the cereal box.

For Sophomore year Griffin was getting sent to some fancy military academy in Texas. At the end of the summer, he would be leaving so, Griffin and I made it our personal mission to smoke weed everyday of our summer break.

Despite not having a ton of money we somehow pulled it off by putting together cash our parents gave us for lunch and allowance. Some days we got smoked out (given free weed) by Griffin's older brother. Other days we managed to meet up with other stoner friends from school.

By the end of the summer, I had an appetite for weed on a regular basis. I knew I needed my own bong so I could get high without Griffin. Once school started up again, I bought my first bong off a classmate for $20. It was slightly used, made of plastic and had a big Sector Nine skateboarding sticker on it. The sticker resembled a billiards eight ball, so I was told the bong was called "Eight Ball".

Initially I smoked for the entertainment properties. I would buy a small amount of weed on a Friday and smoke it with some friends over the weekend. I enjoyed the fun way smoking weed made me feel. It made boring activities like sitting around in a friend's garage fun, and actual fun activities amazing.

Over time I came to realize the health benefits I was experiencing without consciously intending it.

As a teen I had a bit of an anger problem. I used to get in lots of fights at school and in my neighborhood over stupid stuff like video games and Pokemon cards. I got easily upset when people playfully teased me. I had a hard time controlling my emotions.

Smoking weed completely killed that person inside of me. It gave me a sense of patience and control.

I also experienced a lot of anxiety all the time. I have a large IQ and as a child this can be a blessing and a curse. It is like my brain is always operating at full power full speed. It does not shut off. I am constantly thinking. Constantly multitasking just to keep my brain distracted.

Cannabis slows my brain down to normal speed and lets me relax. It gives me a sense of calm.

The other major benefit I discovered was increased appetite. Everyone has heard of the munchies. Well they really worked and helped me. Some days I would be so anxious I had trouble eating. I was also a very picky eater.

Having the munchies helped me not only eat at times I might be too nauseous, but it also made me more willing to try new things. When your high and hungry you end up expanding your menu as far as what you are willing to eat. I am still a picky eater, but I like to think smoking weed made me open to trying new things I ended up loving that I might not have tried before.

During my sophomore year in high school, I started hanging out with this fellow stoner named Mark Burnbaum every day after school. I had met Mark through Griffin the year before. They were in Hebrew school together.

Mark had short curly brown hair and stylish framed glasses. He had a big nose and a loud mouth.

Mark was often the class clown in school. He gave teachers a hard time but always got good grades.

Mark and I each received $5 per day from our parents for school lunch. We both would save our money and put it together to buy weed after school. No dealers were even interested in selling a $5 sack but majority of the time we could buy a dime ($10) from someone at school.

We did not have any classes together and we did not hang out with the same group at snack and lunch. Mark would pass me in the hallways at school and if our usual plan to meet after school was on, he would say our code word:

“Three Thirty.”

3:30pm was actually the time we would meet at his house.

We would get high together in his backyard and listen to music. I used to carry a walk man CD player and my CD collection in my backpack at school. I would show Mark my newest CD and he would burn himself a copy.

Mark's family was weird and did not have a television at home.

We always smoked on his back patio. I brought my bong 8 Ball or we used one of Mark’s fancy glass pipes.

Mark was very meticulous when it came to packing bowls. He took his time and broke up each piece of weed to the perfect size. His bowls were like a work of art. Griffin and Mike had always packed "Hippie Bowls" or one giant hit for everyone to pass around. The people getting the later hits did not always get as good a hit as the first person who got "greens".

Mark packed smaller individual bowls for each person broken up into one good hit. Each person got more rips and higher off their weed, and every hit was "green". I really tried to copy him in my own efforts at packing bowls and getting the most out of my supply.

Mark got good grades and was involved in sports. He played Hockey and Volleyball, so we did not hang out too much on weekends. On the week days around 4:30pm I had to leave before his parent’s came home.

I started carrying this little kit in my pocket. Originally it was a pocket-sized box for pencils and school supplies.

I emptied it out and put red eye clearing eye drops, breath mints, and a mini bottle of cologne inside.

I called it the Stealth Stoner kit. I used this to avoid getting caught smoking by my parents.

I would come home to my house and head straight to my room. My parents would be sitting in the living room, and I always had to walk right past them without arousing suspicion. Once I got to my room I would play video games for hours. I had a study hall period at school where I basically did all my homework each day. This gave me the freedom to have fun after school.

When I was high, I could get really into a video game and lose track of time. There is just something about getting high and playing video games. For me It is a winning combination.

Chapter 2: Ganja Gamer