“Getting High or Being with the most High”

“Hmmmmmm, In whatever way you choose to ask the above question, my answer will forever be to stay and remain with the most high. And yes, you can ask me if I have had a taste of both to be so confident about my answer and I’ll tell you my story”

This is a true life story to open us up into the “Once upon a time” series on Faithplane.

The Beginning

“My name is Tolulope, I am 21 years old and some may be amazed and may have questions on their minds about what kind of experience I may have to share as a 21 year old.

Well, to that I’ll simply say the earlier we realize that the devil is not waiting for us to grow old before initializing his works, the very much better for us.

I’ll be sharing with you my experience in the world of “getting high” and how I got saved by the “most high”. But ofcourse, before then, there’s a need to give a little gist about my environment and background.

This boy narrating this to you was born into a Christian home, of which my dad was and is still a pastor and my mum was and is also still a minister in the church. I am the third of the three sons of my parents, coming ahead of my two younger sisters.

Even though my parents were fervent christians, I wasn’t fully interested in the church business and I only attended with no understanding of what was being done in the church. My two elder brothers who ought to lead the way that I should follow were interested in the “social life of the streets” and I’ll say that contributed to my early interest in the street life.

 

“Dear parents, your salvation doesn’t cover for us. Don’t just stop at taking us to church. Help us to realize that early and help us to gain understanding of what it is to be a Christian”

 

The First show

The memory of my first experience with substance intake is always restored with a picture of the boy’s quarters in our compound inhabited by some other young guys who were also into the street life. It was a funny and unforgettable experience in a season of celebration and festival, on the 26th of December 2019.

My parents had gone for a church program that day and I didn’t go with them because I chose to stay with my brothers and the other guys in the boy’s quarters for a party. I saw them drinking what they called “skushi” and I decided to taste it. Well, “skushi” is a always mixture of high percentage of alcohol (Spirit) and a sweetening agent like the popular “eve drink powder” and so it was very sweet and chilled that I couldn’t stop taking it till I got to the eighth cup and started misbehaving. No one stopped me by the way, they only kept on giving comments like “Tolu, how many cups are you on now”, “Tolu take it easy”, but I thought it was nothing till I lost consciousness of my surrounding.

The full details of all of my drama was shared with me the next day and ofcourse it was terrible. That made me lose interest in the whole drinking affair and I just continued with my life up until I was introduced to smoking “weed”.

 

De-Kush De-weed

Smoking for me, started when I went to write my post utme. I was just 17 at the time and I had to stay with my brother and his friends who were smokers and just so I won’t keep on staring at them like I novice that I was, they introduced me to it and asked that I try some “puffs”, which I did.

You might be wondering why I didn’t give any resistance. Well, I think my gist about the type of life my brothers lived, especially my eldest brother should give a pointer to my willingness. I saw how they lived their lives and it looked to me like they were enjoying all the way and so I was ready to do anything to be like them, it felt normal to me.

The influence environment has on a child cannot be overemphasized.

Meeting Bob

I left them when I was done with my examination and returned home, but my grandma’s house was my new home then. I was awaiting admission when the COVID-19 pandemic era in 2020 set in and I decided to go learn cake baking to keep busy. There I met a guy who happened to be the real agent the devil sent to fasten the destruction of my life. I’ll call him Bob.

Bob introduced me to his brothers who were all Bosses in smoking and getting high. I didn’t want to act like a novice anymore since I already got a taste of it on my last visit to Ogun state to write my post utme. And that was the beginning of my addiction to smoking, we dedicated mornings and evenings to go get high, before the day’s work and after. I was becoming very good with the rolling of the sheets and my friend soon started calling me “stoner” because he claimed I knew how to “mole” so well. Those are terms that are used in that space and you will most likely not understand it if you’re not a part of them or know anyone who is a part of them.

Fast forward to January, 2021, I had gained admission into a tertiary institution in Abeokuta and I had to resume and so I left my friends and travelled down to Abeokuta. Howbeit, you can be so sure an addiction can drive you to any length. I took some along with me to school but as soon as those got exhausted, I went in search for sources because I couldn’t bring myself to think of surviving without smoking and getting high and I got three sure plugs. Bob also traveled to Lagos to meet with his sister but soon afterwards he reached out to me and asked if he could come join me at Abeokuta and I agreed. He lied to his sister that he had gained admission and would have to travel down to Ogun state to process it and prepare for resumption, so she could give him cash and permit him to leave.

 

Kush Business

Meanwhile, before he left Lagos, I remembered the business idea he gave me which was to start selling “kush” when I resumed school and at that remembrance I quickly brought it up again since he was in Lagos and it is believed that there were more sources over there. My dad had given me a sum of thirty thousand naira to get an apartment but I because I was still opportuned to be staying with a sister while I searched for an apartment for myself, I decided to invest some of the money in “kush business” by sending ten thousand naira to Bob to help me get some “weed” when coming to Abeokuta and I spent the remaining twenty thousand naira on clothes.

When Bob finally came, he bought the “kush” as agreed but had already taken a great amount of it and only brought back little quantity. I used that to retry my ability to “mole” and after three trials, I was good at it again. Bob, after the lies he told to his sister was connected to girl who happened to be in my department to help him with accomodation and other necessary things. This girl helped him get a space to stay which was one of the campus fellowship buildings, but being a street guy, Bob was not free and so he asked that I should allow him stay with me. I was resistant to that and explained to him that I was also living rent-free in that sister’s apartment and won’t want to cause an extra burden for her but he was persistent till I got my brother to help him speak with another guy also in the same apartment but a different room, to allow Bob stay with him.

 

The effects

Now, this is going to sound funny, but as much as I was getting high on “kush” I cultivated the habit of reading Psalms from my bible every morning, even though I didn’t have an understanding of any of what I was reading. Another interesting part was how fast I assimilated my school books when I read after smoking. I don’t know how that works but I think it is a proof that the substance is actually having impact on my nervous system.

My character was far from being calm because when you get high, you feel high and mighty and sometimes it becomes hard to actually show respect or to be cool but we had to struggle through it all. The sister I was staying with, who I usually called my school mother was beginning to complain about the attitude Bob and I were displaying.

Ofcourse, each time we smoke, we become overly hungry and we end up stealing her foodstuffs to feed ourselves and my school mother couldn’t cope with it again. Her landlord gave warning about authorities coming to arrest us if we didn’t stop and I think that made her more worried that she began to showcase some attitude that made it obvious that we had overstayed our welcome.

 

The desire for Freedom

Following this, Bob suggested that we go to stay in an uncompleted building so we could be free to do whatever we liked and since academic activities had been taken to a virtual setting, I didn’t have to worry about going to class and I agreed. To do this though we planned to go to Ibadan to see if we could get resources that we’ll be needing to cater for ourselves. Bob suggested that he’ll go steal his mum’s gold to sell and make money while I decided to steal from my grandma. I went to my grandma’s house and took a large sum of money from her safe and ran out of the house. While Bob on the other hand was unable to get the gold. We actually searched the whole house together in his mum’s absence but we didn’t see the gold and so we took so many foodstuffs instead and left the house. At the time, Bob’s sister already got the information that he was actually not admitted and was only lying and so he could not go home, and we had to figure out how to survive together.

We moved back to Abeokuta and we got an uncompleted building close to my school mother’s apartment but though she sees us sometimes on the street, she never knew we were staying in an uncompleted building. We had our clothes with us, we got curtains, buckets, and stole gas cylinder and pots from my school mother’s apartment so we could cook and do basic things. All the while, I had to read my books and sometimes attended tutorials and would go to my course mates to study together with Bob always following me everywhere I went.

 

Another stream of income

Did we stop smoking? Not at all, we got money from stealing but that soon wasn’t enough and I joined the popular cyber fraud “yahoo yahoo” to make more money.

I don’t know what others have to say about their experience with weed but it made me so hard and inconsiderate that I never felt any remorse for the bad things I did or for what I was putting the affected people through. I just needed the money and that was the easiest way I think I could get it.

Bob finally decided to get a job which he did as a receptionist in an hotel, I also checked in to see if there was still vacancy and the management took me in as a bartender. The job made life easier for us because we were given a room to live in and we moved from our uncompleted building apartment.

Now, this was a time close to my examination and so when examination commenced I would go to write my exams and return to work. Some workers at the hotel discovered that we were into smoking and they warned us to be careful as authorities always visited the hotel frequently and so we subscribed to smoking only at night after work.

My exams were over but I didn’t go home, I stayed back with an intention of saving enough money to go to a traditionalist to get “soap” to foster my “yahoo” business. In the course of working to save up this, a day came I began shivering all of a sudden and I was so scared that I told Bob to take me back to Ibadan though I had worked and was yet to get paid. I just wanted to go home.

 

Dealing with fam

I think it’s safe to say the most High began the orchestration of my salvation from this point because I don’t know what would have happened if I had gone ahead with the spirit medium and gotten myself involved in dark deals.

Bob took me home to my parents and after taking herbs prepared from mango leaves and some other leaves I was well again but I told Bob to return to Abeokuta without me which he did. Now, I was at home and I continued smoking but my mum and dad didn’t know I was smoking, though my mum complained about the odor that comes from my breathe but she didn’t recognize what it was.

I left their place soon after and went back to my grandma’s place and I was there with my immediate elder brother who wasn’t a smoker but was also social and not a full christian. My brother noticed I had become addicted to it but didn’t say much about it, he just said things like “you don’t have to be told, you’ll learn yourself” and left me to it. My grandma on the other hand noticed that my character had changed, my appearance and countenance had changed and she recognized the odor so well being a woman who had stayed around people that smoked “kush” but as much as she was beginning to show her observations, she didn’t have any proof and I was always very strategic about where and when I gave myself my “kush treat”.

I would get high every morning and evening, taking like three sticks per time, and return home very late with eyes so red that my grandma’s attention was now so much on me and she was waiting for the day she would catch me red-handed so as to report to my parents.

 

There was no caught

On this fateful day, I was in the room and don’t know what came over me, I took out a stick of “kush” and lighted it. Immediately I puffed it , the smoke must have traveled to the sitting room because my grandma started shouting from outside the room that she recognized that odor but before she could come in, i immediately put it out and sprayed my brother’s perfume to cover up. When she started questioning me, I denied with all seriousness, just as I had been trained by Bob to do when caught.

After that incidence, she informed my dad about her suspicions and I still denied. My dad looked to me and told me that I won’t be able to hide it for so long before I get fully exposed.

I was less concerned and then I had become so addicted that I wasn’t satisfied with just the morning and evening treats outside the house. I started taking it inside the house when everyone was asleep and I was still doing my “yahoo” business anyway so I had to be awake overnight.

 

And finally

On the day there was going to be “a caught” (smiles). I must have been so into the satisfaction I was getting that particular day that I walked into the compound even when people were still going about with their businesses and house chores and lighted a stick. Unknown to me, one of our neighbors had seen me but she didn’t say anything to me.

The next morning, the daughter of the woman that saw me was sent to call me and when I entered the sitting room I saw the setting as of a courtroom and I knew there was trouble. Grandma spoke first in yoruba and said “this person said she caught you smoking weed”. Immediately I denied again but the woman who had caught me was ready to argue with me. To make matters worse, there was another witness against me who had seen me sometimes before that day but pretended like she didn’t see anything. She was also present that day and I couldn’t deny it any further.

My grandpa came to me with a strict approach and told me to pack all of my belongings and be ready to go meet my dad in church the next morning, which was a Sunday. Very early on Sunday morning, I got a text from my dad expressing his disappointment and including that he has disowned me as his son. That got me triggered to get my revenge on the woman that exposed me to my grandparents.

 

Exposing my exposers

You remember the daughter of hers that came to call me for the courtroom meeting, I had her secrets and so I took a sheet of paper and wrote about how Bob had enjoyed himself by having sexual intercourse with her over three times and how that she got pregnant and aborted it and said my grandpa was responsible for it. I wrote all of the stories and pinned the paper on a wall where many people could see it..

I’ll call the daughter Pat. Her father saw it and was mad at me, he took up a long and fat wire and was ready to injure me with it and I didn’t move an inch away from where I was. He was threatening to wound me and I returned the threat to hit him in a way that he would almost lose his life; that’s the effect of weed right there. I had been visiting the gym and was well built so I guess he got scared too and my grandma intervened asking what had gone wrong again. After everything was explained to her, she shouted that I leave her house and go to meet my dad which I did without hesitation.

 

To be continued……

Let the comments roll in on what lessons you have picked so far.