It is really all up to you. I have friends who started smoking grass/hash in the 60s and are still in the same pattern and their lives have stayed pretty much at the same level. Getting stoned keeps you from working through the situations that keep you "down". When you keep smoothing out the wrinkles with grass or hash - you do not progress. You do not face or deal with reality and especially with the things about yourself that you must find inspiration and motivation to work on so that you can become more mature, more evolved and progress to a higher level.

But many people enjoy wallowing in sadness, it is an excuse to take it easy and stay in an abstract drifting kind of state. It is a trap but in order to escape from it when you are dependant on artificial mood smoothers it is really really difficult. Most people just keep smoothing it out and believe me, it doesn't get easier to change. The longer you put it off the harder it gets - you become more patterned and the patterns become more engrained - until you let most of your life go by without achievement and realize that it may be too late. This gives another excuse to remain in the rut.

I hope for your sake that you have the courage and wisdom to get away from the drugs and pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and kick your ass back into reality and onto a productive, dynamic, clear-headed goal oriented path to a worthwhile life.

Good Luck!

"Now, as a home school student, I am confined to my home without pot, friends, or happiness" - IN THAT ORDER

the friends you have while smoking pot arent really your friends and the happiness you gain from it isnt happiness. I used to smoke pot, so I dont want to sound like a boring old adult but I wish you could see that what you are looking at is not the world. You need to find some meaning in life before pot becomes it. Yes, it is a "harmless" drug but let me tell you one thing. I work with mentally ill people and there are so many of them who are just hitting their twenties hooked on psychosis from smoking pot. Psychosis, if you dont know what it means, is a horrible illness because you loose touch with reality and you may have voices that put you down all day or the impression bugs are crawling all over your body. You may think aliens are out to get you or evil faces are talking to you and there isnt an awful lot doctors can do for you. And this goes on all day long for sometimes years and years. I have patients you were just like you and they can never go to school or College and have that bright future in front of them- they will be ill for the rest of their lives struggeling to be able to live on their own not able to do their own shopping. Just last week one kid told me that he wished someone had told him what smoking pot can do to you and he would have never done it. I just told you so you cant be that kid who said noone told me what it can do to you. In a way, your friend in rehab may be better off.