If you ask 100 people why they smoke weed, or do any other drugs, I guarantee at least 75 percent of them will use the excuse that it helps them control their mental health. This reasoning behind why people choose to smoke is, in my opinion, baseless.
A few months ago, my friend was going through a really rough time. They would constantly talk to me about the mental challenges they were facing and I did everything I could to help them. Eventually though it seemed like no matter what I would do for them, and no matter how many times we would talk to each other about what they were going through, nothing seemed to work.
Unfortunately, that’s when they turned to marijuana. They heard from a couple of their friends that smoking helps them clear their head and that it helps them get rid of their problems. However, for my friend that was unsuccessful. The way that they described it to me, was that mentally they felt the exact same before, during, and after the effects of smoking, and that all it did was make them overthink their problems more.
The feelings that I felt from this were all over the place. I was upset because they were always the friend who would agree with me when saying they would never smoke, so I felt they might have been peer pressured into it a little bit. Although they promised me that they made the decision all by themselves, it was still very worrisome for me. While being upset, I was also terrified. I was terrified because I couldn’t help but think about the possibility of them becoming addicted to it, and having to rely on that for a benefit mentally.
Obviously I want my friend to find a way out of feeling like they are mentally in the dumps, but hearing that they didn’t feel any different mentally after smoking was definitely a relief though. It was a relief because I knew that the possibility of this becoming an addiction was low. The worst outcome of trying a drug, or drinking, or in this case smoking, is becoming heavily reliant on it. Becoming reliant on a drug is one of the worst things that a person could do to themselves, and imagining my friend having to rely on smoking in order for them to feel good about themselves mentally was a nightmare for me. One because I felt like if they had to rely on a drug, then personally I had failed them as a friend, and two because I was afraid of seeing my friend go down that path.
Luckily they realized that smoking did not do any good for their mental health, but I just kept thinking to myself, what if the outcome of my friend trying this was the worst outcome? What if my friend smoked, felt free from their mental problems in the moment, and became reliant on smoking? My strong opinion on that, is then they would have just made it all worse, because whenever you become reliant on something like this then in reality you’re really just pushing away your problems instead of facing them, and you aren’t truly overcoming your mental health issues.
