Mahatmaganja

So, how did I come by the name for this blog?

Well, pull up a chair; fill (or refill) your cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all about it... in the form of telling you the story of the telling of a story.  It was in an MA meeting, where I coined the term to describe someone I met the first time I got high.  

As the story went, I had just started high school; had been there for a day or so, when a kid I'd met over the summer told me he could get me some weed.  It'd be five bucks; come and meet him in the parking lot after school.

The end of the school day rolled around, and I met my buddy in the parking lot, where he introduced me to a friend of his.  We all piled into his friend's Volkswagen squareback, and drove off campus.

The guy with the car pulls out a sandwich baggie full of weed, and trades it to me for five dollars.  This was not a bag of buds, mind you, but a bag of leaf.

Anyway, to commemorate my first purchase, the driver pulls out another bag, and a red, plastic bong.  He loads up a bowl full, and passes it to me, in the back seat.

I smoked it all the way down, until the ash pulled through the stem.  Then, he loads one for my friend, and then one for himself.  Then another for me, another for my buddy, another for himself...

I don't know why I was keeping count, but we each smoked twenty-six of those bong loads of his leaf.

Then he pulled out some bud, and we all took a toke or two of that, and another toke or two each of some hash he had.

To say I got stoned would be an understatement.  I literally couldn't sit up, and was giggling like... like I was on drugs or something.  I've had a few epic smokeouts, but that one has always taken the cake.

Anyway, my friend and I took our leave, and ended up visiting another friend of his, who had a little apartment in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood.  When we went in, I was introduced to my friend's friend, who not only had a drawing of Bugs Bunny with a bong in his hand, but also gave me some advice about smoking pot.

Now, I expect that everybody can point back to places in their lives where they can say, "wow, I should have listened when..."; this is one of mine.

The guy with Stoney Bugs told me that if I was to look to smoking pot, or using other drugs to find inner peace, that I'd be screwed.  It would turn on me.  The only way to inner peace was to achieve inner peace by itself, and then I could enjoy smoking some pot or drinking some wine without it taking me over.

Flash forward a number of years to the meeting where I was describing this.  I was describing what I was thinking while this guy was attempting to enlighten me.  My comments were along the lines that I had wanted this guy to "shut up with the hippie bullshit; did he think he was the 'Mahatmaganja' or something?"

A bunch of people laughed, and 'Mahatmaganja' became one of a number of names given me.

-M