“I smoke joints from morning to evening to disconnect. I also smoke to “deal” with my loneliness”

The first time I puffed on a joint, I was 14 and I was in 3rd grade^e. Like all teenagers of this age, it’s simply to test, to see the effects. In my memories, the 3^e is one of my best school years: I am popular, sociable, I have decent results. All of this is very paradoxical, because 14 is also the age when I lost my father. He committed suicide and, behind him, he left nothing, no letter. Would I have tasted smoke if my father hadn’t died? I honestly think so. Would I have become addicted? This I do not know. My sister never fell into it.

In high school, my consumption remained recreational, but it increased significantly. I see myself again with my group of friends gathering during work hours or before the start of classes to share a firecracker. At that time, I never smoked alone but I initiated a lot. At the end of my final year, I obtained the precious sesame, my scientific baccalaureate with honors. And there is a big void: I can’t plan ahead. I have always had academic facilities and I have the impression that I am expected to do what, in the collective imagination, is described as “major studies”. The problem is that I don’t aspire to a math prep course, nor to study medicine, nor to go into finance, nor to go to business school. On the other hand, I feel the need to leave at all costs. So in October, I’m flying to a distant country.

For a year, I lived on an island. I am enrolled at a university where I take English courses for foreigners. But I don’t like this experience on the other side of the world, I’m bored. At that time, I hardly smoked anymore, only when the opportunity presented itself. But one thing is certain, in my consumption, there was a before/after this trip. Years of therapy later, I think my depression was already latent. I then had neither my mourning nor my teenage crisis.

When I return to France, I am still so lost. It’s hard to admit that I didn’t like this year of travels. Added to this, I can’t find my hard core of friends, scattered around for studies, and I still don’t know which branch to choose. So, on the advice of my mother, I enrolled in a law degree. It seems that the law opens many doors. I’m a little older than my classmates and the lessons are much too theoretical, my math mind is deeply bored. The year is complicated, I’m not working. Like many, I’m typing again.

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