About three and a half years ago I was going through a bad time and was feeling reckless, so I tried pot for the first time. (I interned at a recording studio for a year, so I was constantly around musicians, and those folks always have some around.) I overdid it and ended up standing in a corner for a few hours, somewhat afraid for no reason and completely forgetting how to talk. It was rather odd, to say the least.
I tried it several more times over the next few months, but it never quite agreed with me the way it does for other people. In general I found using it to be slightly unpleasant, so after a while I just kind of stopped. Thankfully it has no addictive qualities, so there’s absolutely no compulsion to keep going if you don’t want to.
The one thing about it that is rather remarkable is that if you’re really stoned and involved in creative activity, it puts your mind into places it wouldn’t ordinarily go. That first time, I was sitting in the room with my audio mentor as he worked on mixing a song (he himself gets high on a regular basis and loves it), and I had the rather extraordinary feeling of being ‘inside’ the music. It quite literally felt like my mind was inside the song itself, and everything about the way it was written, performed, and mixed just made so much sense, in a powerful way I can hardly describe. When that happened I began to understand why musicians use it so frequently, and I have to admit I’d probably use it more if I didn’t dislike the physical sensation of breathing it in. I’m not sure I could actually function as an audio mixer if I were that stoned, though!