Sean O'Hare
"I was sitting in the corner with my bag of marijuana, I wanted to get higher so I set myself on fire." These were the famous lyrics sung by the 'fast set' or rather the 'slow set' at my school who would repair to the ditch at break and return to class with smoke clinging to their blazers and silly grins on their faces. The 'silly grins' bit, I hasten to add, was nothing to do with what they were smoking - they always had silly grins on their faces. Considering the lyrics , in light of recent scientific evidence proving the drug's capacity to send smokers loco, they were ironically prophetic.
I watched a friend from university descend before my very eyes into certified madness last weekend and he is now sitting in an NHS asylum, brought about by a cannabis relapse.
He arrived at a house party, found himself downwind of a joint and after about 10minutes was piling his jacket, jumper and contents of his pockets into a corner before doing circles of the room while tossing his keys in the air and attempting to catch them but each time failing. He stayed up all night while we went to bed and instead of returning home to Edingburgh, as he was supposed to, was picked up in London a few days later. According to friends who have visited him he is oblivious to his surroundings, and in fact, quite high spirited.
His parents, on the other hand, are helplessly distraught. They made the connection between weed and psychosis long ago, when he was first sectioned in the final year of university.
That time round he recovered to the point where he managed to return to uni, complete his degree and study for a further one before accepting a high profile job starting this September. What will happen now only time will tell.
He was never a heavy smoker, there are a lot worse out there. The difference is that some people's minds can handle it, other minds can't. It is as simple as that. You will get smokers, just as you will get drinkers, who have fed their habit everyday for the last 50 years and can still manage to get out of bed at the crack of dawn, do a full day's work an