J. Guzmán
When I Started Smoking Weed for Real is volume 5 of the series On Being, a self-referential, metaphysical case history where the author J. Guzmán, as the protagonist Ana, psychoanalyzes her own consciousness throughout Time, uses tools like astrology to facilitate the investigation, and documents the entire process. On Being is a life-long, narrative, archival data set of her life in the form of diaries, whose purpose is to assist astrologers and other researchers in the detailed demonstration of how their respective theories, methods, techniques, and practices function in a real life.Volume 5 is Ana’s documentation of her year 2013, when she was 22 years old. In it she finishes university before leaving for South America. That year Pluto was conjunct her natal Moon. When Venus conjoined Pluto on the degree of her Moon she began a relationship with a man that eventually became unbearably, emotionally toxic, in classic archetypal fashion. That man, called Alex, taught Ana how to truly enjoy marijuana, hence the name of this volume. Yet it was not this drug’s influence that she became addicted to. It was Alex’s poetic, self-deprecating, cabalistic charm that she began to obsessively consume, even when the mask came off and she found anger, mania, and gaslighting. She found herself chasing the high she got from Alex through rabbit hole portals to the Underworld. But the Underworld sounds sexy only until you go there.Unfortunately, because Ana started smoking weed for real and didn’t know at the time she was writing an astrological, self-psychoanalytic case history, she didn’t document all the intricate nuances of her and Alex’s relationship in as detailed a manner as was possible. Luckily she saved email correspondence with him. With the help of extensive commentary on the matter by J., the reader can get a clearer picture of what happened.
