Confused internal response (edited)

Just read about a youth pastor in Severn - the town where I went to high school - who has been charged with getting a couple of his charges high on pot.

I have no business feeling at all nostalgic for that substance, especially in this context which is fraught with potential overtones. Yet the echoes of its effects in me continue to reverberate even decades after I last partook of it. Here are some things I can think of rather than entertain any positive thoughts about this drug:

• The fog I lived in for most of two years, and how it sapped me of ambition for anything but itself. 
• The almost complete loss of my academic career.
• The events of New York and beyond that took place in that fog, and the person who used its effects to take advantage of me. 
• That encounter with a complete stranger on the columned porch of St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village, on a subsequent trip back to the city.  He thought I was there for the same reason he was, assuming that he'd found a willing partner, just because I was in Washington Square Park and open to partaking of an illegal substance supplied gratis by a complete stranger. (I can understand his conclusion.) He told me where he lived and made it clear that I was welcome to join him there but also that, if I did, he would expect me to "play." At least I was never so far gone in my prediliction for cannabis that I gave any consideration to his offer.

If I'm going to travel down memory lane, let's highlight the memories that aren't so fond, and the let's also remember that there are some events from that time in my life that are just lost in that thick haze.

Let me also give each of these memories to the One who was with me in the midst of it all, who shared in the hurts I received and the ones I inflicted upon myself along the way, so that he may heal them and restore peace to my soul.