This probably won't show up in Cincinnati crime statistics, but marijuana use dropped like a stone three months ago - when Phil the doper yanked his weed habit out by the roots.

Make that Phil the former doper.

"I know where my glasses are at all times now," he said, sounding like a cripple who has kicked away his crutches and entered a marathon. "I know where my car keys are. And my cigarettes. You've heard 'It's morning in America' from Ronald Reagan? Well, it's morning in my life again."

I first spoke to Phil a year ago, when he called to argue for a truce in the war on drugs. "I'll put my brain up against anybody, and I've baked it for 25 years," he said at the time.

The west-side owner of a painting business hasn't changed his mind about legalizing drugs or not using his last name to protect his family from embarrassment. But he has changed his mind from stoned to stone-sober about using drugs.

"Since I quit, I haven't been depressed once," he said. "I've discovered my ambitions have come back. My dreams are back. I haven't had those in years."

Near the end of his habit, he was firing up joints four times a day. He would light up as he climbed out of bed, then watch his initiative drift away in a cloud of smoke. "I'd hold the phone next to a fan and say, 'I'm on I-71, traffic is a (mess).' "

He wasted his life away surfing the Web, high in the Ethernet, following the mental possum tracks of a scatterbrained pothead. His life ambition was the next Metallica concert. "I was a case of arrested emotional development. I got to be a teenager until I was 40. But when you're 39, you shouldn't be doing that. You should be into Paul Simon or something."

He also realized that the Cheech & Chong-grade pot he liked was burning holes in his pockets. He was spending $1,000 a month on it when an economic downturn cut his income, and something had to go.

"I realized life is what you make of it. I had lost my dad's respect," he said. "Being able to look the old man in the eye is worth giving up a lot of stuff."

Being stoned "is like being an alcoholic, but not to that extent," he explained. "You let people down."

He cut off his long hair. He smiles more. And he sees infinite possibilities where before his horizon stretched only as far as his misplaced cigarettes. "You can change your whole life," he said, amazed.

Even the most "harmless" drug, marijuana, is a destroyer of initiative, he realized. "I had a PhD in procrastination. It's so insidious, you will start accepting the unacceptable. I figure it will take me a complete year before I can sit down and say, 'OK, this is who Phil is.' "

I'm pulling for Phil to stay straight. He's just one guy who is discovering new high-definition hopes and dreams by kicking his drug habit. But as I learned last time I wrote about Phil, there are many drug zombies who are walking through life half-dead.

They are lawyers, stock brokers, dependable workers, moms and dads who think it's completely harmless to get "baked."

"It's no worse than beer," they argue. "It doesn't cause violence and accidents."

They have a point. Decriminalization of "stash" amounts of marijuana is already a reality in most jurisdictions. But the old drug-pusher pitch has been turned on its head: They don't know what they're missing.

As far as Phil is concerned, they are missing a powerful new "high" that makes him feel happier, younger and smarter. It's called real life.

E-mail pbronson@enquirer.com or call 768-8301.