Students experimenting with weed is nothing new, but living in a 24/7 stoner house can get pretty weird. Here's what it was like...
Looking back on it, my university experience was pretty surreal. Living in a city full of medieval ruins and working in a haunted cinema (wild, I know, but sadly a story for another day!) was, at times, pretty trippy. But by far the strangest thing I experienced at uni was living in a house with four massive stoners.
I want to preface this by saying I have no issue with people smoking weed. But when you live with several habitual users for a couple of years, things can't help getting a bit weird.
Second year was by far the most enjoyable, and moving into my first proper house share with a bunch of mates was a huge aspect of that. The vibe in the house started off really fun and sociable, but from day one it was clear that weed was going to be a big part of things.
At this point I hadn’t really smoked weed since I was a teenager (if you didn’t share a badly rolled joint between six people in a bush, did you even go to secondary school?), but I embraced the situation, and became a weed tourist - occasionally visiting, but never quite committing to living there.
During the first term of second year I felt like I was living in a Seth Rogan film. It wasn’t uncommon to come home to a huge pile of weed on the living room table, walk into my housemates' room to find him rolling a ridiculously big joint, or see someone putting a burger inside a kebab in our communal kitchen.
At first it was all pretty entertaining. I never really took part in the smoking shenanigans, but it was comforting to know that no matter how brutal uni had been or how uncertain I was feeling about what I was doing with my life, I could guarantee there'd be a nice atmosphere in the house when I got home. Plus, seeing people collectively spend £180 on weed for no other reason than “it’s Tuesday” definitely made me feel better about my spending habits.
It wasn’t until the stresses of university and adult life began to appear that I started to notice a change in the atmosphere. The regular visitors were invited over less, and people wanted to be alone more. The big piles of weed became a substitute for a week's shop, the ridiculously big joints lost their novelty value, and the communal kitchen became disgusting.
By the end of third year, everyone had isolated themselves.The house was full of closed doors, indistinguishable sounds from different TV’s and the faint smell of weed. Feeling the good vibe we'd built deteriorate was horrible, but by far the saddest thing was watching people withdraw and slowly become more dependent on smoking weed. Eventually the stoner antics stopped being funny and just became sad.
It sounds deep, but this change in atmosphere taught me a lot about human behaviour and how people handle stress. It also made me reflect on the way I was handling stress as well. No, I didn’t smoke weed, but was eating an entire bag of M&M’s every time I sat down to do an essay any healthier? Or what about the people who were using alcohol to destress after a tough exam? These coping mechanisms are more socially acceptable, but ultimately they’re still destructive.
Seeing how my housemates and other people at uni coped with stress made me ditch any form of coping mechanism, and just... be stressed. By working through those feelings rather than suppressing them, I felt more ready for the adult word.
More importantly though, living in a stoner house taught me to really look at other people’s behaviour. It’s only after I graduated and left that environment that I realised some of the people I was living with were most likely depressed. Looking back,the things that used to annoy me - the untidiness, the lack of motivation, the compulsive behaviour - were all most likely manifestations of depression. One of my biggest regrets from my time at uni is not realising this sooner, and therefore not offering them support they might have needed.
I don’t want to make my stoner house sound totally negative though, because overall it wasn’t. It’s not an environment I’d want to go back to, but I learnt a lot about myself and human behaviour, and I’ve taken all of this into the adult world with me, which is ultimately what uni should be about.
