The CANNABIS JOURNALS

MY FIRST JOINT

CHAPTER THREE

I think everybody who smokes Cannabis remembers their first joint. It's a rite of passage for many. My first joint was when I was 15 years old and it was more exciting then when I lost my virginity.

Nowadays I am pretty jaded. A joint just sort of relaxes my mind briefly. But my first joint was like a miniature acid trip. One of my best friends named Justin was the first to introduce me to cannabis.

I was primed to do this. I was a massive Beatles fan and my taste in music was beginning to broaden to Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley as well. On top of that I was a budding musician and songwriter. So there was something inevitable about me smoking weed. I know it's a generalization but let's face it: where there are musicians there is also weed. I wish my family understood this. They prefer to talk about urban developments under the influence of absolutely nothing.

So fucking boring.

In Calgary they will give you a jaywalking ticket downtown at the drop of a hat. They bought a police helicopter that they would use to fly over bars that had their patios open later than 11 pm to intimidate them. (What is noisier?). These days if you park without paying in downtown Calgary even for a minute there is an unmarked vehicle that just drives by and takes a picture of your car and you just get a ticket in the mail. The mayor bragged that this was a great way to make revenue.

You see, Calgary is a bit of a fascist state. Alberta is a right wing oasis in the middle of a fairly liberal country - in comparison to the States anyway. This is because the Province was largely settled by Americans that came up from the mid west. The fact that the economy was almost completely oil based meant that the people who moved there from all over the world were fairly right wing as well. They had decided to make their living by extracting a hazardous material out of the ground just to make money even though it was destroying the planet.

That's right wing.

So although my childhood friends were made up of many different races from different countries, it was a melting pot of right wing families from all over the world. This is how the far right Reform Party was able to form, gain influence and eventually take over the "progressive" Conservatives. They dropped the "progressive" and renamed themselves simply the "Conservatives" and their leader was Stephen Harper who ruled the country with an iron fist for ten horrible long years.

He used to put ads on TV with a brain looking like a dirty bong saying "This is your brain on WEED!" He even stated that cigarettes were better for you during his last campaign. Just to clarify: cigarettes cause cancer and cannabis is used to FIGHT CANCER!

This oppressive environment is where I did something illegal in the eyes of that society.

I smoked a joint!

But weren't they destroying the planet? Yes. In retrospect I believe they were in the wrong and still continue to do something far more illegal. The fact that we had to worry about this harmless flower causing us to go to jail was a crime in itself.

My friend Justin and one of my best friends from elementary school named Ahmed from Trinidad were my first smoking buddies. We smoked it in downtown near a head shop on the pedestrian plaza on eighth avenue.

It all started with a terrible anxiety attack. I believe these anxiety attacks occur because instead of being relaxed you suddenly realize you are doing something illegal that could have you thrown in jail or juvenile. What a shame, because if you can just relax it can be a beautiful trip.

"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. You are not dying, You are not dying," John Lennon, Tomorrow Never Knows.

I remember staring at the mud on the side of Ahmed's cousins' car. The patterns of mud became paintings to me. I could see battles between warring factions and buffalo all running towards a cliff to their death. I was just staring at it.