When You Smoke Weed You Will Get High. When You Read, You Will Get Educated.

So when you smoke weed and read, you will be highly educated. Correct?

Now, doesn't that make perfect sense to you? No, me neither.

They say that smoking weed is damaging to mental health nowadays, and quite rightly so, in my field of experience. Not that I smoke it nowadays. Yes, I used to when it had purity, and was not concocted as strains of hybrid from places such as the Sensi Seed Bank, where it's grown for commercial gain and profit.

I will always be eternally grateful for the many benefits gained from enjoying the odd spliff, here and there, similar to someone who may well enjoy a rare Scotch whisky, or a fine Cuban cigar at the end of the day as something to relax with before bed.

I would enjoy the deep spiritual insights and the peace and calmness a smoke would provide as an antidote to the madness of the world around me. To be able to block all of that crap out and find deeper and more logical insights that kept me sane and more focused on self-healing were blessings beyond anything manufactured pharmaceuticals could provide.

For what it's worth, I have quite a high IQ. Although untested, it is believed to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, and, as such I have a brain that is fairly quick to process and assimilate information in a practical and logical, rather than an emotionally driven way, and where, I guess, historically society overall required me to dumb it down in respect of being a negative. For me, the answer was more to slow the processing down in a positive way so that I didn't overburden myself with debilitating mental crashes that historically were both frequent and at times life-threatening to me because I couldn't cope.

Now, having said that, as much as I appreciated the weed, converse to this I didn't always enjoy it as most did. Well, at least not to the same extent. For me, it was simply a tool, a mental enabler, if you will, and something I was very conscious of in terms of me controlling it, rather than it controlling me. Unlike a lot of people who were seriously into their weed, and virtually lived to smoke, I was never going to be that person.

I was without it for many years as, like a great many other things in life, we move on from it because the time feels right to do so. Then, I decided around three years ago to buy weed to make tea with, rather than smoke. I'd read great things from people with all manner of health conditions who all spoke in detail about how their overall well-being had improved since using cannabis, and, to be honest, I felt impressed enough to go back down that road and try for myself once again.

What I didn't account for at the time was precisely how much the world of cannabis had changed, and, instead of making a simple purchase of very basic sativa, I was now faced with choices of what to buy that would make even a Chinese restaurant menu look sparse in content, by comparison. So, I tried a few flavours and became enticed by all manner of exotic-sounding names of various strains, to conclude that similar to fine wines, one now has to be some kind of weed connoisseur.

I can fully imagine training academies; quite possibly in America, where they train 'Dope Sommeliers' who, when asked, will provide a running commentary on the legend of a particular strain, and in a typically superior voice to clueless fuckwits who believe they're god's gift to dope-smoking, will pay premium prices for a gram of vintage weed, and wholly deserved to be rinsed of every dollar they have for being such absolute pricks in the pincushion of life.

Meanwhile, on ground level, people buy whatever is on offer, and hope it's not some concoction made up of a tiny bit of weed, and the rest from the stuffing of a sofa that'll send you purple in colour and taste like Satan's arsehole when you light it. Whatever that tastes like beyond sulphur! Now, there's a thought to ponder for the remainder of your day.

Anyway, it's safe to say that, in fairness, this curated hybrid stuff, although kind of pleasant and fine in small measures, was just ridiculously strong and way too potent for an old-school smoker, as was me.

I don't really care if it was grown on the side of a mountain that only sees the sun twenty-seven hours a day, and pissed on by herds of wild goats as they enjoy munching on the surrounding vegetation that would otherwise encroach upon the potential harvest. I don't care if said goats leave enough droppings to enrich the soil and add a certain piquancy to the overall taste of the weed as it's smoked lovingly by harvesters who, through munching the odd leaf, or several along the way, will spend innumerable hours of their time - if not days, lost in appreciating the mere sight of the plant before gently picking each leaf a week, maybe even two later.

I'm just happy that I've been there, and done it when it wasn't so bastardised and commercialised as it is nowadays and to me, at least, ruined as is everything that can be commercialised and commodified for a profit. I'm happy that through it, as with many other things, I've found my centre, my inner peace and harmony that so many in life will never find. The calmness, and stillness of an inner meditation keeps me balanced in this increasingly insane world, which allows me the wisdom and humour to see things as they really are, and not what the world and media want us all to see in this increasingly media-driven illusion of life we so readily buy into without so much as a second thought.

You see, people are not really required to think for themselves too much nowadays, as the great illusion of the world provides answers to absolutely everything via the Internet. Thinking is almost done for us, all we have to do is decide which is the best option and click on a mouse. The free-thinkers of this world are few, and far between.

Even here, writing my blog I go to publish and AI suddenly jumps in and wants to rewrite everything for me, and in doing so, if I chose to give in to it, my entire personality would just disappear and it would no longer be me. Just a version of. Although, I very much doubt it, maybe I should just go back to smoking, or, enjoying cannabis tea and saying 'fuck it all' like so many others. However, I've never given up, or given in to anything that takes me away from who I am within.

The humorous, free and outside of the box, slightly crazy character person who I am. The person it's taken a long time to find and be entirely comfortable with now. The hopefully confident, somewhat self-assured, don't give a flying fuck what anyone thinks writer of 'The Almighty Gob'.