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June 2010
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Highways to heaven
The interviewees: Flex: Has been smoking for 16 years. Smokes five or six times a day. How does weed affect you? Flex: Well first off, you have to understand the different types of high yuh does get with weed. You have body high or what you call a body stoned, where you smoke and you feel lazy. You just want to lie down. You get that sleepy vibe, you understand? Thas a body stoned. And then it have a mental high where you just irie. It kinda hard to describe. Some people expect ... (He tilts his head and sticks his tongue out the side of his mouth, making a dim-witted expression to show what he means.) It aint nothing like that dred, yuh understand? Yuh in that zone where yuh just... Fix: Relaxed Flex: Yeah. Now you’ll have the same stress, but somehow you’ll think it through and you’ll see a solution. You’ll realise that it’s just to put it into gear and get on with things. Whereas when you not high, everything is just gloom and doom. Fix: Everything seems clearer. But if you have a lot on your mind, you probably study it more. You in deep concentration bout that. Panda: Sometimes it does make you start to think and wonder. You block out everything else and just think about one particular thing. But that one particular thing does bring up a whole set of questions. Real tings does go through your head. Fix: Sometimes you smoke a weed and you get paranoid. You feel jittery. But I believe that stage over for me. I started to smoke in school and I used to get paranoid to the point where every time I come home from school, I takin off my jersey and airin it out, tryin not to smell smoky. Mukesh: I get real paranoid. I could reach home an hour from now and I will still tell myself I smellin of weed and I doh really want to pass close to anybody. I just run in my room and change my clothes. Fix: I believe if you dwell on something that will make you paranoid, you will get paranoid. You will. Because your mind does be on it and when you on weed, you get stupid. Flex: Different times create different zones. Weed at times can be an aphrodisiac. You smoke with yuh chick and you find allyuh eyes lean the same way and you start watching one another. Fix: Weed makes sex feel good. Bee: Because you feel more relaxed. It’s not like it feels better or anything, but the process is just more fun I guess. I always want to have sex when I’m high. Fix: Ganja makes it all better: food, conversations. People you can’t have a conversation with dred, yuh could smoke a weed with them and realise – aye, he not makin any sense, but I high. Yuh understand? The ideas behind conversations when yuh high dred, does be different. Yuh doh study stupidness. Flex: Your tolerance level is more too. You’re more tolerant about it because you just tend to brush everything off. Whereas when you not high and you find a man tell you sometin – well doh talk bout if yuh drink – is bacchanal! Fix: Yuh understand? As de man was sayin, different weed different head. Flex: If I in a dance, I’ll smoke 10,000 weed, well thas an exaggeration, but I could never really say I get high, yuh understand? But watchin TV. Yeah, weed and TV go together real good with me. You would watch the same show when you not high and then watch it when you high and really notice stuff and hear stuff that you weren’t aware of. Your awareness kick in nah, you know what I mean? Bee: I love to read when I high. I get so immersed in the story it feels like I’m a part of it, like I standin up right next to the characters when all the action happens. I’m a part of their conversation, you know? Like I can hear their words and see their expressions instead of just reading it off of the pages. Flex: Some people like weed and music. Me? I like meh blunts while I vibesin meh songs. Before I write I try to find that creative zone and it does really put me there. When I learnin an instrumental, I blaze a couple and let the creative juices flow. Weed does that. A lot of songs (he points at himself proudly) thanks to weed. You could listen to the same music but that music gives you a different vibe, you could hear things in the music that you would never hear before because you in that zone where you could really concentrate. Fix: Stoned. Thas the easiest way to put it – stoned. Bee: But, not just stoned. Like when I feelin real tired and stressed out, weed makes me calm. My mind would be all over the place, because I’d have a million things to do and I’ll struggle to finish them all at the same time and feel like I not gettin anywhere. But, if I smoke a weed, it’ll calm me down and help me to focus on just one thing. Panda: Well it could depend on your mood too eh. Sometimes you get real happy dred and yuh’s jus be in a zone and everything does jus be funny. (He recalls a wedding he attended recently.) I sit down in the back eh, and everybody quiet while they sayin their vows and ting. And I start to laugh horse! Serious. I sit down there and start to laugh. People was watchin me and wonderin what I laughin for. Dat ting keep me high for de whole day! Fix: For me, everytime I smoke weed I does get munchies. But probably not right away. I will be out a de house limin and from the time I reach home I does want to eat out everyting in the place. Munchies is a normal ting. Bee: Yeah. If it’s one time I get hungry, it’s when I high. Fix: People tend to think that weed makes you stupid. That weed smokers ... they doh have a life. But it not like that. We smoke and we get a vibe yo. It don’t make me a different person. When I smoke weed I doh want to go and rob or shoot nobody. I just want to be around the people I care about and just be in that vibe. And that vibe brings out who you really are, because everything tends to be relaxed dred, you talkin and you free. The stress of life, whatever you thinkin bout, does subside yo. Everything ... life seems sweeter.
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