That's true, Guest. It would be interesting to find out why marijuana affects different people so differently. Could have a lot to do with expectations, but I think it probably has more to do with emotional state and brain chemistry.   Pot doesn't seem to affect certain people at all, while others become overwhelmingly paranoid and scatterbrained. Others go green with nausea. Some people get pleasantly energized, 'uplifted' and creatively inspired. Others just get so tired they can't get off the couch.

As a teen, I turned it down for quite a while because of the scare-mongering by police at school. Pot was no different than heroin, in my book anyway .... till a few months before my 16th birthday. I'd been sent up north to a Catholic boarding school that year, and I wasn't adapting to my new surroundings very well at all. The nuns didn't seem to appreciate my company much either. They labelled me a "live-wire", and picked on poor little me about every little thing I did! Got myself suspended / sent home twice in 4 months, the first time for smoking a cigarette while hiding out in the mausoleum. (You had to be 16 to smoke, and I wasn't yet ... and here I figured the dead nuns wouldn't mind one way or another... guess I was wrong...)

All in all, it was a very miserable year. ANd then one gloomy winter's day, out for a walk with 3 of my best friends, I had a joint passed to me (again). Seeing my reluctance, they convinced me that it wouldn't affect me at all "because it was my first time". I'd heard that before, and I was more than ready for a change of pace anyway, so I took a little puff. ANd then about 2 more.

Well! 5 minutes later I felt like I was on another planet. The ditch beside the road looked like a mountain-side, and the clothes hanging on the line looked like a work of art from the Group of Seven, and I thought we'd been away from school for hours and HOURS ... and all that because of three little puffs of lousy Ontario homegrown leaf (!?!)

Managed to get back to the school somehow, only to find the nun who was my "dorm-mother" waiting for me at the door. She was upset with me (as usual), started yelling at me for something I'd done or neglected to do (again). My friends took off, and I stood there trying to focus on whatever it was she was yelling about. But then my mind started wandering. Her voice faded out, and her face got huge ... and I stood there just spell-bound by the amazing new-found ugliness of that angry, contorted face ...

Well, woe is me, all of a sudden that face started looking unbearably funny.   In spite of my horror and my best efforts to stifle it, a little laugh slipped out ... and then, holy jumpin! Once I started, I couldn't quit!   I got "the laughs!!!" for the first time in my life, right in poor ole Sister Dolores' face! Stood there racked with helpless convulsions, tears streaming, knees quaking ... egads ...

Well, I'd never seen that nun rendered speechless before. Ordered me to my "cubicle", called my mother, and between the two of them they decided I was definitely 'emotionally disturbed'. (Which I was, but not quite the way they imagined). Booked a psychiatrist's appt for me the following week, but that's another story ...

Anyway, it would sure be interesting to find out why some people have no reaction to pot, while it catapults others right into the next world so to speak. In my case, it expands my "sense of humour", makes everyday reality seem brand-new and surreal. Which can be construed as beneficial, I suppose, when that everyday reality feels like it's too much to bear. Depression and anxiety just disappear - temporarily, anyway.