Addicted to Change

This is a story of loss, of despair, of unmentionable deeds, that only slaves to the most intoxicating of all desires will live through, this is the story of how I got hooked on marijuana laws. It starts just like any other story of a suburban child, with all the opportunity in the world presented before them, meeting a grim fate. It was the winter of '04-'05 when I was first introduced to that one way street to addiction called Bob Dylan. As winter turned to spring and spring turned to summer I had my first experience with pot laws. I remember it just like my first kiss, it was a sunny day, the kind like in beautiful paintings where the sun reflects as it sets, and I was just hangin' down by the bookstore when it came up, and I figured yeah sure I'll try reading that marijuana book. Next thing you know I'm burning through pot books like it's going out of style. I was addicted to marijuana reform.

I remember my mother just screaming at me from down the hall,

"John you need to get your life straightened out, you can't just be rollin' through papers and papers about pot all day!"

"C'mon ma! Just a little more! I gotta read just a little more! I NEED THIS!" I would lash out at her in reply.

By the beginning of the next school year things seemed perfect, when in reality they'd only gotten worse. I was turnin' everyone on to cannabis books. I thought I was untouchable, "Ain't no one stoppin' me," I'd laugh as I walked down the halls. I was going to school full time, and working my job four days a week just to stay on top of all the money I owed to different book dealers. Everything was perfect, it was beautiful and yet chaotic. I lived for marijuana legalization, it was my passion, my love.

Just as summer had turned to fall, fall would eventually turn to spring and after a year hooked on pot laws, it looked like there was no turning back. Word on the street was that there was going to be a huge amount of people going to a marijuana march going from downtown Tampa to Clearwater. My friends and I thought we had it all figured out, we were gonna intercept the marijuana march about 25 minutes en route. We were all so high spirited we were delirious, we started handing out flyers telling people where the marijuana march would be in hopes that they'd attend, thinking there'd be safety in numbers. From that first flyer, everything would go to pot. Quickly I no longer felt untouchable, I was a target and it was only a matter of time until authorities would catch me.
It was a few weeks before the marijuana march would go out, could've been any other day of my life it seemed so regular. Yet, it was far from a normal day at school. I would arrive at first period to a letter telling me to go down to the office, my assistant principal wanted to see me.

Minutes later there I sat, trembling in front of Mr. Harrison's desk thinking about all the pot books I had sitting in my car that may soon be unearthed by this man. He enters the room and sits down, I could feel the intensity shoot through the roof. The next few minutes go by like a blur as he interrogates me and I let it pour. I tell him about everything, the pot books in my car, the marijuana march downtown and the names of all the sellers I've bought pot books from, everything. Just like that I was ruined, enter mother, enter father, lights go on, movie reel spins off the track and the screen burns away as days melt into years and I crumble.

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It's almost 3 years later and I currently sit in a tiny cell the size of a hummer with a cell-mate sleeping only 4 feet away. The sun rises in my westerly window every morning reminding me of my life what seems like centuries ago before all the pot protests and mayhem. Yet every morning as that very same sun rises, I reach deep into a box containing marijuana news and sit back and relax, and everything is as it always was, from this dream I can't escape.