You know you want some...

I was eighteen when i started smoking cigarettes. My parents were away on a business trip and with my siblings studying abroad, i was free. I had the house to myself. Over came a friend of mine. My best friend at the time who had recently started smoking.

I had always seen my dad smoking. 'I want to try it as well', I told my friend as he lit up in the terrace. 'Are you sure you want to do this?' he replied. 'Yea, yea, I'm sure' I said as he passed me a Benson and Hedges and the lighter.

Spark, light, taste, inhale. Cough. Cough. Cough. 'What the fuck man' I remember thinking while choking on that first drag ever. I had a few more after returning to my normal breathing and then threw it away.

That evening I went by myself and bought my first pack of cigarettes. My heart was pounding violently against my chest. I drove back. Lied in bed. Lit up. I stayed awake the entire night and had five cigarettes altogether. I got high on the nicotine rush. I lied awake on my bed with my body going into shakes. I had fun. I had found a new pastime that would last the next twelve years at least.

With my new found habit came new ways of hiding the pack of cigarettes from my folks, an investment in breath fresheners, and new ways of sneaking out of the house for a smoke during the day. Night time was better; just lock the room, open the windows and smoke away all night long. I had a fear that the people living downstairs would discover the cigarette butts and talk to my folks about it so i used to collect the butts and packets and keep them in a locked closet which when almost full was discovered one day by my mother. She was horrified to say the least. She used to cry telling me not to smoke. I'm a bad son. I didn't listen. Now she just prays silently to God hoping I would quit one day. She's a sweetheart. I love her.

Experimenting with smoking cigarettes was fun. I wanted to experiment more. So the natural progression was drugs. I tried my hands at hemp when I was still eighteen for the first time. Friends were having some at a party and I decided to stick around and be part of the 'in crowd' and try my hands at it as well. The first joint I had was a thorough disappointment. Nothing happened. So I decided to have some more later and then some more and then some more and then some. I had a total of five joints during A levels but discovered that it was a downer and decided never to touch the damn thing again. Why do something that depresses you? And I went through an art school education without touching drugs and graduated on top of my class without doing drugs. I used to look down upon drugs. I had morals and values and ethics that proudly made me who I was. I wouldn't even be caught with people doing drugs or alcohol. And everyone knew this about me. It's just who i was. Who i used to be.

I sat on the balcony of his third floor apartment. Sea breeze blowing. Buildings towering around us. The night sky stretching out beyond our imaginations. Watching him roll a joint and then passing it to me he said 'You know you want some...'

This was a year or two after I had graduated from Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and was well into my freelancing career. I frequently went over to a friends place who would smoke up while I sat and spoke to him about fuck all.

The clouds of time fog my memory. I don't remember the exact conversation or persuasion that took place but all I remember is that after years of abstaining, I gave hemp another shot. A few drags later I burst out laughing. I liked it. I felt happy and floaty. I had rediscovered an old friend.

Days faded into weeks and months. Time would slow down and sometimes even crawl as I spent more and more time indulging into substance abuse. Met new people. Shared drugs as a common interest. Would go out, get high, enjoy the evening, come back and sleep. Hemp or Marijuana was a common indulgence in Karachi at that time. A small investment in Curine eye drops to fix the red eye syndrome and I was good to even go home for dinner and have a conversation with the family. Then came the investment in bags of dope for my own consumption which would be hidden in this box that only I knew how to open. Since I was freelancing and working from home, I would wake up, enjoy a joint and start the day off. At night, I would enjoy a joint and go to sleep. This invariably became accompanied by Vodka and grape juice to quench the thirst. I spent a few years being a junkie.