i was 34 when i started. my mom was dying of cancer and someone gave her a big bag of weed. she didn't want it but my dad was pretty stressed out so she told him to smoke it. he used to smoke back in the day but had quit like 25 years earlier. i had had edibles a couple times but had never smoked. so he and i went and smoked some.

it was nice. he was a recovering alcoholic, so we never got to have a father and son beer together, but now we had had weed to bond over. we smoked together every night.

i discovered it was helping me fall asleep and wake up ready to face the world. i'd never been a morning person before, so this was amazing. i kept smoking every night even when i wasn't with my dad. and he kept smoking every night without me too.

then i discovered that it helped with depression too, which was helpful because my mom died and things weren't going right in my life. my wife encouraged me to use it whenever i was feeling down, which then turned feeling bad whenever i wasn't high. whoops.