by Angus Macdonald

Created on: February 14, 2007   Last Updated: May 15, 2007

Weed. Ganja. Marijuana. Pot. Lots of terms for one plant. Lots of terms for a major issue which is spawned around not very much at all. Many people have expressed many different views here concerning it. Most of them, I noted, seem to be on the positive side of the debate. Weed is a good thing, it would seem. Public opinion, at least as far as this article goes, points only one way. Why is it illegal? Well, that's a whole different topic.

My own personal experience with weed began when I was about 15. I smoked 'hash', or cannabis resin, long before I started smoking cigarettes. I can't say that it made me feel any more creative as such, or that it learned any great mysteries of life. It did, however, give me an altered perspective on life. It made things seem much easier to deal with, the general stresses of teenage life became entirely irrelevant. At school I was somewhat of an outsider, always had been. Smoking cannabis didn't change that, if anything it amplified my position. It did make teasing and such things easier to deal with as I came to realize that the opinions of others could only affect me if I let them. I can't say that weed was the only factor in this, but it did play a very important part.

I continued smoking all forms of cannabis through my years of discovering alcohol and music. Nightclubs became a frequent hangout. Weed became a great hangover cure, an after party socializing catalyst and a method of relaxation. The thought never entered my head that it could be a bad thing, it never seemed much like a good thing either. It never seemed that important at all really, certainly not worthy of such debate as this. I never saw any real reason why it should be illegal as it never made a huge impact on anyone around me, certainly not as big an impact as drinking.

I started DJing, at first in my bedroom and at my mates' flats. We would often switch the decks (or turntables if you prefer) on and play tunes for hours, smoking constantly with no ill effect. Weed is one of the few things in life that everyone is happy to share, so everyone around me at the time would be smoking. I had a great time, not because I was stoned but because of what I was doing while stoned and the people I was with. Then I started writing music and performing in nightclubs, something which I had always dreamed of doing. I found that writing music while stoned was much easier, not because weed made me more creative but because I felt less pressure and less irritation when things

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