Roberto Bormann's Grandiloquent Oath

Pietr Brueghel painting's detail.

Roberto smoked joint for the first time on a trip to Canada to visit relatives who, having emigrated from Germany in the same wave in which his parents came to Rio de Janeiro, had decided to live in Toronto, thus neglecting the delights of 'our paradisiac climate' (his words).

A dedicated and capable student, at that time he was in his last year at a famous medical school, one of those colleges whose vacancies are always the most sought after by medical entrance  candidates. On vacation in July 1989, escaping from the ugly and weak São Paulo winter, he went to know the 'mild summer' of Toronto, and to meet his cousins.

"It was impressive to see how often people did smoke marijuana in Canada: practically everyone at the university did, something most natural for them. My cousin was the one who offered me, and I accepted, the first cigarette." - he commented in one of his first sessions in my office.

At that time, the pressure for the decriminalization of cannabis consume was still not so disseminated worldwide. Despite being so frequently used as a recretional drug, pot was still an illicit drug but authorities were choosing to turn a blind eye to it.

After starting on the 'pull a little smoke' habit at age 23, he quickly became a heavy user. He was unlucky, as he soon had his first paranoid psychotic break, a devastating event that affects a small but significant percentage of potheads.

Roberto came to my office for the first time after having had about three outbreaks, between which he tried to recover his productivity, his affective life, his studies, a life project.
He then got drunk, associating alcoholic beverages, cocaine, and cannabis.
There were several attempts to wean him from his addiction, and during the year of treatment with me, he even had promising periods of partial abstinence, in which he said: 'only three joints a week, a single packet of powder on Saturday and almost no alcohol'. Such numbers were dependable, and in his case, total abstinence in the short term would not be a realistic goal.
The periods of moderate use alternated with some others of relapse, sometimes worrying.
He was, that late summer of 1999, in a renewed period of abstinence, when before me, with all pomp and strength, he took that solemn oath, the synthesis of our joint efforts, mine and his, to keep him away from the miserable life that was being your fate.
Right at the beginning of the consultation, he reported to have resisted the temptation to go out on Saturday night, about three days ago, with a 'heavy gang', with whom he would inevitably have consumed many doses of drugs in a few hours.
Emphatically did I congratulate him!

Following my enthusiastic greeting, gesturing in the Italian fashion (to imitate me?) and with absolute seriousness, emphasis, and rhetorical vehemence, he said:

-- Doctor Wagner, you may now be absolutely certain and sure of what I now must tell you, something that comes from the innermost depths of my heart and of my conscience:
'I, Roberto Bormann, swear to God, G‑d, gods, non-gods of the atheists, to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, that NEVER AGAIN IN MY LIFE WILL I SMOKE MARIJUANA, OR SMELL COCAINE, OR TAKE ANY OTHER DRUG THAT CAN ALTER MY CONSCIOUSNESS! NEVER, EVER, NEVER!'

There folllowed a complete silence for about 60 seconds in that room, and then he complemented all his blunt grandiloquence:
“PERRRRRRRHAAAAAPSSSSSSS!”