…how do you tell them that’s it’s wrong? This is very stressful…
It depends on the situiation. If he needs to get some work done, tell him that the weed will stop him from doing it well. If your friend is going to drive a car while he still high, tell him that’s DUI and dangerous. Since I don’t know the circumstances, I don’t know how’s the best way to handle it.
Perhaps the best thing is to explain to him why you think weed is wrong. Perhaps not.
The best method is always one: try to discuss the reasons your friend thinks he wants to try this. Most probably he doesn’t know what leads him to these thoughts. Through the discussion he will become aware of his hidden thoughts and impulses. It doesn’t matter if you have to aggree with him or not, but just letting him speak out his thoughts is enough. At the last end, the decision will be taken by him, you will only work as the catalyst that helps him to clarify his views and intentions. Curiosity is seldom the ONLY reason, and though feelings of emptyness and vainness are there, these are results of deeper emotions, very often cntradicting each other.
The best method is always one: try to discuss the reasons your friend thinks he wants to try this. Most probably he doesn’t know what leads him to these thoughts. Through the discussion he will become aware of his hidden thoughts and impulses. It doesn’t matter if you have to aggree with him or not, but just letting him speak out his thoughts is enough. At the last end, the decision will be taken by him, you will only work as the catalyst that helps him to clarify his views and intentions. Curiosity is seldom the ONLY reason, and though feelings of emptyness and vainness are there, these are results of deeper emotions, very often cntradicting each other.
I agree. If the person seems to be influenced to try drugs (weed), then a good friend, such as yourself, could possibly influence him/her not too try it. If you are stressing about losing a friend because you tried to do something to deter the use of drugs, then take the risk. There are worse ways to lose a friend…if you know what I mean. I’ve been there myself by taking a few risks. Lost a few friendships along the way. But I tried. Glad I did. I think if something bad were to happen and did nothing…my soul would have rotted away… 
Well the situation I’m in is that my friend wants to try weed to take a ‘break’ from life for a while because of stress. And my friend is saying, “Well it’s not really that bad.” So I’m not really sure how to go aout doing this. I don’t think I want to run up a bunch of statistics. I want to show that it’s the first step on the wrong path.
If your friend grew up the same way I did, she is probably very familiar already with the reasons not to do drugs. If she wants to do them anyways, you will need to come up with something more original than what you learned in drug education if you wish to have some impact on her. Repetition in this case is not conducive to learning. Marijuana is probably the least bad of the illegal drugs, and I personally would not be very worried about it, but that she wants to do it to escape reality is a frightening motivation and could lead to worse things.
optime…efficiens ergo medicamentum propono.
You live in Boston? If he wish to escape real life then take him to Capeside by the lake of dawson’s creek, dress in a skirt a long brown wig pink sandles immerse yourself in the character of joey, climb dawson’s window just as she does in the films and belly flöp him into dan lacum. quid mali?
I hope this will aid you, this is what the bishôp would do were he fortunate enough to live trans mare 
~E
If it’s any consolation, these are the reasons that I always did . THey are also the reason that I became a addict (almost 10 years clean and sober thank God). They are also the same reasons that I am now 33 years old, and just now hitting senior status in college. I effectively screwed myself out of about 10 years of life cause I wanted to “take a break”…it was never my intention to take that long of a break. And BTW…I started by smoking pot…only once a month or so…until eventually I was buying it (and selling) by the quarter pound…that lead to coke, meth,l.s.d., mescaline, yada yada yada.
My point…if you can’t handle reality and feel like you need to take a break, you need to take a look at yourself, delve into your being, and examine where your faulty logic, and exasperation are coming from. Work towards resolving these things. Because the problem with “taking a break” is when you come back from your break…you are still there, and so are you problems.
If only I had chosen to not take a break…I’d probably have my PhD by now and be a Classics Chair at a major university (which is now my big dream).
Kopio that is quite a story!
And I thought myself sinful after taking the crude 80% Casein 20% Whey Milk Protein Concentrate instead of 97% pure Calcium Caseinate like a good bishôp!
~E
Thankyou, this is very good information.
I have persuaded my friend to not try weed, but I’m still kind of hurt. My friend still wants to do it, and is upset that she can’t. So in a way, it implies that weed means more to her than I do. I understand weed is not really that bad of a drug, like Ben said. I just don’t want her taking a chance when there’s really no point. We’ll see how things go I guess.
Its NOT that bad. At first. But if you become addicted you find you can’t hold down a job, can’t even look after yourself. And it doesn’t really help you take a break from life. If anything it can make you focus on the bad parts.
I’ve seen it happen, to a high-school friend who was only in his mid-teens at the time. Eventually I realised that it was his decision, and his family’s way, so there was nothing I could do. And as harsh as it may sound, there isn’t anything you can do if your friend is determined to do it. Not all who try weed become addicted or even do it more than once or twice in their life though, with a bit of luck she’ll hate it.
What’s so wrong with a little weed?
I have the odd glass of wine or two of an evening?
OK So dope is illegal - that is a problem, you end up with allsorts of stuff inside the dope, I imagine (ain’t done any roper-dope or a good ten years now) but tobacco is a much worse drug.
That’s a real killer.
There are a lot of people at my school who do weed or have tried weed. There’s a very strong attitude of “What I smoke is not your buisness!” - and I remember one time in government class, when I discussed laws which banned cocaine, I was a little surprised how loud the reaction was in the class “Who are you to say what people should do in privcay”. Mind you, I strongly belive that cocaine is a serious enough drug to be illegal, and I think the more quiet people in my class agreed with me. But it shows you the attitudes at my school.
Generally, when people bring up the topic of weed or drugs, I don’t completely speak mind but say "I don’t even take caffeine, but that’s my choice " I know it’s not worth the debate to say “Drugs are bad. Almost all should be illegal.”
I remember a few months ago I talked with a student in my year who had dropped out in the middle of junior year and is currently working on his GED. “Have you ever done pot?” he asked. “No” I said. “You should. It’s a different experience.”
One time at the bus stop a girl was talking on the phone with her mom. Apparently her mom had just found some hash in the house and wanted to share it with her daughter. When the conversation was over, the girl asked me to not tell my parents. I said that I wouldn’t - after all, they were going to do it at their home, not at school, her parents obviously approved, and I knew her parents are well-balanced people, not drug addicts.
Later that year a guy got caught with liquor on campus and suspended. He was bitching about how he wasn’t drinking it on campus, he was just carrying it, and when so-and-so came to class high on weed nobody did anything about it. That so-and-so is the best friend of the girl mentioned above.
A year later, there was a theatre show, in which both of these girls were in. One rehearsal one of them didn’t show up in time for her entrace. The scene went on with someone reading her lines. Then she came in late. And she was horrible. In the next scene, three of her friends were horrible. According to the people who were near them, they could smell the weed.
They got a lot of lecturing, and later on the whole cast got lectured. We were told that it was unacceptable to come to rehearsal high, since it stops you from doing the necessary work, and how in the professional theatre an actor who came to rehearsal high would get blacklisted within weeks. Since they were not caught in possesion of weed, they could not be suspended, but they were removed from the show. I don’t know to what degree the other three girls cared, but it really upset the girl whose mom shared the hash since she is very serious about theatre. This was a little more than a week before performance time. Their roles were redistributed among the other cast members (including myself). The show went on.
I guess the point of these stories are, um, weed is a genuine weed in the garden of life.
EDIT : I think tobacco should be illegal too. Yes, it would hurt all the poor little tobacco farmers who barely make a living, but it hurts far many more Americans’ health every day.
This is one of the all time worst arguments for support of anything.
What you do in the privacy of your own home can affect so many other people than yourself.
If you want to do coke or cr@ck or meth in your own home why is that a problem???
First off …look at all the l)ruggies in prison…I’m paying for that! Those are my tax dollars at work to give them three hots and a cot for however long they are incarcerated.
Second…how about their children? So now I’m not only supporting addict dad in jail (or prison), but now through our glorious welfare system…I’m supporting his family because he’s in jail and unable to support them himself.
Third…how about rehab costs, how about food stamps, govt subsidised housing, the tremendous health care costs because you have destroyed your body and can’t afford to fix your teeth, or have the surgery, etc…
That has to be one of the most assinine arguments there is for “what I do is my own business” Tell whoever said that to pay taxes for twenty odd years, and realize that a good chunk of what they pay goes to supporting addicts and their families…
As you can see…it can be a bit of a sore spot 
GGG, I know this is not your position, or your argument…but next time you hear it from someone, please by all means…smack them upside the head with a good dose of logic, and then tell them to get a life!
Why is it wrong? It’s wrong only according to the law. Why is it the first step on the wrong path? Well, if it is, it’s thanks to the law again. And if not, trying a beer is ALSO the first step on the very wrong path because marijuana is a soft drug, alcohol is hard. And only the latter is addictive. Only the reasons can be bad and wrong, the same as using internet to escape from reality.
I do not follow your logic on this one. I mean, if that girl had kept her weed to her home and under her mother’s supervision, nothing bad would have probably happened to her. But she went further on the path and did weed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Getting high when you’re supposed to be doing serious work is not acceptable. It’s probably a good thing she got the consequences when she did, because it will probably stop her from going too far down any bad path. But how is it a step down the wrong path only thanks to the law?
It will be no surprise to anybody here that, since I avoid caffeine, I abstain from alchohol too, and intend to lead a life of temperance. In my opinion, no drug, from caffeine to alchohol to meth, is my friend. EDIT : Unless it is a drug to treat a medical condition, in which case it is merely a lesser evil than the disease.
(Mind you, I think making caffeine illegal is going way way too far.)
That is a problem with anything, including computers, biking and sex. When you have work to do, you should do it.
Getting high when you’re supposed to be doing serious work is not acceptable. It’s probably a good thing she got the consequences when she did, because it will probably stop her from going too far down any bad path. But how is it a step down the wrong path only thanks to the law?
Well. Maybe it’s my mistake. I understood the “path” in a different way. I thought you meant that using marijuana is the first step on the path to other drugs. It’s often called “gate drug” or something like this… By prohibition the law makes marijuana tempting… in a wrong way. Trying something prohibited you make another steps easier. So you try another prohibited things. It wouldn’t be a problem if marijuana weren’t so… physically harmless (no more than a cigarette) and if not so many people around kept on using it. Forgive me my English 
I haven’t been using it for a while and actually I have never learned it as I should. Well, marijuana is associated with underground and is wrong thanks to tha law as well. Isn’t it a hypocrisy… that the alcohol is legal, yet it’s far more addictive and not good for health? There is alcoholizm, which is a physical and psychical illnes, but there is no marijuanizm.
It will be no surprise to anybody here that, since I avoid caffeine, I abstain from alchohol too, and intend to lead a life of temperance. In my opinion, no drug, from caffeine to alchohol to meth, is my friend.
(Mind you, I think making caffeine illegal is going way way too far.)
Caffeine stimulates But if you want to eradicate all stimulators from your life, forget about green tea too. Caffeine is also a drug, but nobody calls it like that.
I avoid green tea, and I call caffeine a drug. I get enough stimulation from my hormones, thank you.
I know a number of caffeine addicts, and they have a consistent lack of energy. By creating all those highs, caffeine ruins the body’s own mechanisms for sustaining energy. From what I’ve seen in life, maintaining a good sleep cycle is a much more effective way of keeping energy up.
I was being deliberately open-ended about my usage of “path” - so it could be construed as either consistent lack of responsibility or “the drug path”. I agree that marijuana is better than alcohol, and I think medical marijuana should be legal. I agree that it is unfornuate that marijuana is often depicted as being in the same class as meth and other hard-core drugs, and this association is part of what makes it a “gateway drug”. But alcohol can work as a gateway drug too, and alcohol is legal, so I don’t think you can completely blame the law.
Often people want to ‘drop out’ for a while and the use of marijuana is irrelevant. The people I know who smoke the most marijuana make the most money. I have another aquaintance from college who does nothing. No marijuana, nothing at all. He just plays video games and eats junk food and feels he can chastise my pro-marijuana friends for smoking pot despite the fact that they have their lives together.
That said, using marijuana as an aid to ‘dropping out’ constitutes abuse in my opinion. That is the real error in your friend’s plan. I would voice my concerns to him but to abandon a frindship over something like that would be an overreaction. Besides if you think your friend may need help you ought to be there.
CharlesH
Exactly. I was in college last year and I smoked a lot of herb. It was the first thing I did when I got up for the day, I had a bowl between classes, I had a pair after classes, one before homework, one after homework, and one before bed. The cost added up but I ended up on the Dean’s List and probably had the most successful academic year yet.
Then I ran into some (unrelated) medical troubles (a litany of them; it’s a zoo) in the summer and decided to stay home and take a semester at the local community college, and that ended nine weeks on medical withdrawal. I’m currently at home with no friends for miles around and with absolutely nothing to do and I haven’t touched an illicit drug since May (although my doctor’s been liberal with the amphetamines and benzodiazepines!) and I’m more miserable and useless than ever and am going nowhere in life very fast. I’m trying to do some self-study but it seems like my happiness and motivation are going down by the day.
The world works in funny ways.