Sawzaw, I agree with your every point in your 2nd to last post, and I'd have to say my experience has been virtually identical to yours. After having been around many pot smokers for years and years, I eventually tried it on a handful of occasions...simply in order to investigate and find out what the experience was like and why people would bother. I didn't want to remain ignorant of the actual experience, since it seemed to be of such concern to so many people.

My conclusion was the same as yours: I "made a decision that it distorted my perception of things and I could live without it. After the buzz went away everything was back to normal so what is the need? I will take normal over distorted any day."

I think there is a strong desire to avoid (or alter) reality in a great many people. One reason for that is...they find life painful to a greater or lesser extent. They'd like to escape the pain for awhile, so they injest a substance that helps them escape the pain for awhile. This could be alcohol, pot, crack cocaine, tobacco, a cup of hot tea, food, whatever... ;-) Anything that's a diversion helps you get away from the pain of life for awhile.

(I mentioned food because some people are "recreational" eaters who way overdo it. They eat far more than their body needs, get very overweight, and hurt their health. That's a form of addiction too, and it's based on emotional problems in most cases.)

You've got to decide for yourself whether the thing you're injesting to make yourself "feel better" is worth whatever negative side effects you may suffer from it. My impression of pot was, it wasn't worth it for me. I wasn't all that impressed anyway, and like you, I prefer not to artificially distort my perception of reality.

For someone who is in chronic physical pain, though, it may definitely be worth it.