My name is William Reilly, and I have been in long-term recovery since January 16, 2006.
No, I am not “California Sober.” It is a question I’ve been asked a lot over the years.
“You mean you don’t even smoke weed?!”
I’m not sure why this would come as a great shock to people. After all, it is a mind-altering, illegal drug where I live at.
Did I mention that it’s mind-altering.
I’m a recovering addict who used drugs to change the way that I felt and perceived life for decades, and to be honest, it all began with marijuana. I wouldn’t call it a “gateway” drug as it is described by other people. I would say it was very easy to steal from the big gold “Acapulco Gold” tin my mom hid above the kitchen cabinets when I was in grade school.
It was the drug that my neighborhood friend, Brenda, who was in high school when I was in the 5th and 6th grades, smoked with me when we hid out in the family’s motor home in their backyard. It was the drug I did before trying out for the first school play of the year in my freshman year and couldn’t stop laughing hysterically during my audition. It was magical, because I somehow got the part.
It was the first drug I smoked with the two guys I came across smoking a joint across from my new middle school when my adoptive family moved us halfway across the country and I didn’t know anyone. I still remember their names- Rufus Anderson and Mike Chase. I loved that Mike Chase lived on High Street.
Weed was a constant companion and I did not use it to relax- I used it to become a different person. I used it to escape the present moment and to ignore to the best of my ability that which was right in front of me.
I was high the first time I drank alcohol.
I was drunk the first time I was freebased cocaine.
I was stoned and drunk the first time I did heroin in my senior year in high school.
It doesn’t take much, at least for me, to see a pattern there.
I’m not here to judge anyone, or to speak to anyone else’s experience. But it feels a little insulting to me when I’m asked if I “don’t even smoke weed??”
Maybe you could ask ” Tell me what you’ve been through with drugs in your life” and let me explain my relationship to it, first.
Just my thoughts.
MISTER WILLIAM REILLY 