Cannabis - A (former) User Writes

The writer of the words that I reproduce below recently e-mailed them to me.  I have since spoken to him ( he is 33, by the way) and have his permission to reproduce what he says here. I offer them without further comment, except to say that he is fairly sure that his memory and some other faculties have suffered permanently as a result of his now-abandoned use of cannabis. He is, in what he says, too kind to me, but the general message is so valuable that I felt it best to reproduce it as written.  :

‘I would like to offer a great deal of thanks for continuing to highlight the dangers of cannabis use. As someone who smoked the drug regularly for a period of time in my early twenties, I know, from first-hand experience, the debilitating effect it can have on the user's mind. I have no doubt that for a number of people, however small a percentage, cannabis can trigger serious mental health problems.

‘Before ever having taken the drug, I was a happy, smiling, extroverted young person with lots of friends and a positive outlook on life.  Once I started to smoke the awful stuff, that all changed - and it changed very rapidly. 
Paranoia, depression, panic attacks - This is how my life ended up. Most disturbingly was the way my mind began to lose touch with reality. I began to suffer from delusional ideas and would hear voices in my head.  Some of the things I imagined to be real, seem completely absurd to me now. For example, I used to think that songs I listened to were coded messages.  I used to think that God was trying to communicate with me via car licence plates. I believed I could speak telepathically with people and had the ability to read their thoughts and implant my thoughts inside their mind.

‘Eventually I ended up losing my job, I almost destroyed my relationship with my family and I was almost driven to suicide. With the help and support of a close relative, whom I cherish dearly, I eventually stopped.  And when I stopped, the voices stopped, the paranoia stopped, the feelings of despair and sadness all stopped and my mind returned to how it was before I ever took the ghastly stuff.

‘I have been married for the past five years and have a beautiful daughter who has just started school.  I am in full time employment and also do voluntary work using my talents as an artist.  Had I still been smoking cannabis, I would have none of these things, but rather I would have ended up in prison, in some sort of mental health unit or worse than that as I am sure you can imagine.’

Note to webcrawlers: "Peter Hitchens reproduces a letter from a former cannabis user, highlighting the fact that this drug is anything but safe, and far from soft"