Escaping Life

Wanting to escape a world filled with depression, family issues and the stress of high school, 15-year-old Tayla Smith took what she saw as her only way out: marijuana. Smith smoked weekly for the entirety of her freshman year and saw her grades plummet, depression spike and the relationship with her mom vanish.

Diagnosed with depression in middle school, marijuana gave Smith an escape from her mental illness. When high, she didn’t have to deal with the dark voice in her head telling her life was pointless or the gaping feeling of loneliness. Her friends were only there for her to get high together and forget about their problems.

“It made everything blurry, to the point where I couldn’t focus as well as I normally could. It kinda made it harder in school. I couldn’t focus and I just wanted to be high all the time. Not being high was being depressed,” Smith says.

The only thing that mattered to her was getting high, and the deterioration of Smith’s grades and her relationship with her mother reflected that. Smith, an honor roll student at the start of freshman year, found that marijuana made the stress of school disappear. Smoking marijuana had other consequences, however, as it ruined Smith’s ability to concentrate on anything but the drug itself. Her grades went from A’s to D’s and F’s. Smith even went to school high, thinking it would help her focus, but it only led to detentions and problems with administration.

While she originally started smoking marijuana to help with her depression, the drug only worsened her illness. She became unmotivated and miserable. She lied to her mother about using weed, and when her mother started getting suspicious, Smith lied to her face. Her mother began drug testing her weekly.

“Even when I failed, I lied to her and told her I wasn’t doing drugs. When I lied, she took my phone for a year, but it didn’t change. It pushed me away from her and to my friends whose response was just to give me more drugs. My mom and I didn’t talk much after that, and when we did it was normally to argue,” Smith says.

Smith isn’t against doing marijuana anymore. She stopped when she and her dealer lost touch. Smith says she wishes she had been smarter about using the drug.

“I wish I didn’t come home with the smell of weed on me, and then lie to my mom after I failed the drug tests. I wish I didn’t lie and tell her I was hanging out with other people,” says Smith.

Smoking marijuana caused devastating effects to Smith’s life, which she’s still dealing with today. She completely dropped all honor classes and has a shaky relationship with her mother. – Emily Enriquez

This was part of a section in MASK The Magazine where we heard real stories of high school students .

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