In my observations, weed effects people differently.  I’ve known people where the only thing that happened to them is they get very tired or paranoid. One person said that the one time she got high, she felt like she was floating. She HATED it and never did it again.   With another friend, there was no outward change whether she was high or sober, but she smoked all the time.

As for me, I have nothing but good things to say about it. :). Well mostly good things anyway.

For the sake of disclosure, I was a regular smoker for years, but now only very occasionally (only partly because of marriage to a lawyer for the state.)  I’ve also been drunk and have used pain-medicine non-recreationally.

Anyway, here’s what I generally experience in no particular order.  I will break them down into positive and negative experiences. Keep in mind this is all subjective as I have no way of quantitatively measuring any of this.

Positive

-Euphoria:  Simply put, being high physically feels great, almost as good as an opioid pain killer.  I can’t describe the sensation any more than I could explain what the taste of a banana feels like.  However it feels good.

-Enhanced sensations:  Particularly taste and hearing.  Remember Jon Stewart’s cameo in Half Baked*?  I can relate.  My senses just seem so much more intense under the influence.   eating a chocolate chip cookie was great sober, but when high, it is almost unbearably pleasurable when high.  When Listening to Music, I’ll often pick up details that I never noticed before. Soft details in the music will often sound much louder. Also, and this is hard to describe, listening to good music PHYSICALLY feels good.

-Perception of time can slow down: I mostly notice this when listening to music, but I’ll sometimes notice that the time between beats feels a lot longer than it should. Sometimes a 5 minute track feels like it went on for 20 minutes.

-Mild hallucinations/visions:  These aren’t really the right words but I don’t have any better description at the moment. If I’m listening to music and close my eyes, ill see…interesting things.  Often times it’ll look like a music visualizer like MilkDrop.  Other times ill see pulsing geometric shapes.  Yet other times I’ll see full fledged visions like flying over a landscape. It works best in a dark room when I’m lying down. If I open my eyes, the effect immediately disappears.

-Short term memory loss:  Not really a positive thing, but I think it is funny.  Sometimes when I get to the end of a sentence, I’ll forget what I said at the beginning.  It’s also a reason I prefer to be alone, or at least not in a social situation when smoking.

-Lets me fall asleep: I suffer from insomnia fairly regularly.  The ONLY thing that would let me Fall Asleep regularly is marijuana. Even Ambien stops working after a few consecutive days of use. It wouldn’t make me tired per se, but when I was ready for bed, I’d fall asleep in minutes.  Consequently I mostly smoked in the evening an hour or two before bed.

-Non addictive: I used to smoke nightly years. I took several breaks that lasted months with no physical side affects or mood changes. I stopped almost entirely 3 years ago with no problems. I do miss it sometimes, but much in the same way I miss eating donuts, which I also gave up.   Usually I just don’t think about it.

Negative

-Munchies: Eating is insanely pleasurable, and when you get the Munchies, you stay hungry. However when trying to lose weight or keep in shape, this is a curse more then a blessing.  Still it is manageable. I lost 40 pounds despite smoking regularly, mostly  by keeping healthy, low cal snacks nearby.  Before I

-Trouble concentrating:  I know one person who loved doing housework when high.  Another liked coding.  Not me though.  Anything more active than watching movies required to much energy to focus. I preferred laying around listening to music.

-Paranoia: Didn’t happen all that often, but sometimes I’d experience it. I knew it was a side effect of smoking and therefore could ignore it.

-Low talking:  I tended to talk in a whisper when high. Probably because everything sounds louder.  People therefore have trouble hearing me. Combine that with short term memory loss and I’m sure I’m just a treasure to converse with.

-Hangovers:  Not the right term, but again vocabulary fails me. Mornings after aren’t painful, like with alcohol.  But, something just doesn’t seem right.  No matter what I could never smoke in the morning, and not at least until late afternoon/early evening at the earliest.  (depending if it was a weekday or weekend)  Usually it would be after 7 or 8.

-Bad Trips: This only happened a few times, but being high was incredibly unpleasant.  Combination of nausea, paranoia and just feeling like crap.  It was a reason why I took a long break.

-No desire to be social:  I’m very introverted to begin with and being out with people can be draining after a while depending on my mood.  When I’m stoned and with people, it takes that much more energy to be able to converse and concentrate.  Most of the people I know who smoke are social smokers, so I’m in the minority here.  Incidentally, being drunk socially isn’t much better, but I rarely drink anyway.

What I never experienced:

Lack of motivation:  Granted, you aren’t all that motivated when you are high, but it never seeped into my daily sober life.  As I mentioned earlier, I actually managed to lose 40 pounds and get in shape despite smoking regularly.

Desire to try other drugs:  Pretty self explanatory.

Now, I’ve been drunk, high, taken pain medicine (not recreationally) and hallucinated on Ambien. I’ve found the effects of marijuana to be the most pleasurable and agreeable to me by far.  While being drunk can be fun, I don’t actually like the taste of most alcoholic beverages.  Plus, there’s a certain spot I have to hit to enjoy it.   Too much and the nausea and spinning room simply isn’t worth it.  Pain killers certainly feel pleasant, but they don’t do much else for me. Even worst is the strong risk of addiction.  Ambien can make me hallucinate (if I haven’t had any in months), I WILL be fast asleep in minutes.

Would I recommend to someone to try it?  Not really. For one, it IS illegal and I’d never suggest to someone it is worth the risks.  There’s still a social stigma to being a stoner.  Also, not everyone considers altering their consciousness their idea of a good time.