I Want a New Drug

I want to become a pot-smoker.

I know this may be a laugh line for anyone who knew me in high school or college, because they probably think I already was.  But I wasn’t.  I only bought the stuff once in my life (from my dad! – but that’s another story), and if you totaled up every time I got stoned back then, the number probably wouldn’t hit triple digits.  In fact, I think the last time I took a hit off a joint was 1980.  I was either with my brother and Christie McVie in a recording studio at the Record Plant in LA, or it was just REALLY strong weed.

Also, let it be known that I’m not looking to go all Cheech, Chong, or Spicoli.  I’m just trying to keep up with the times.  Find a new way to take the edge off… with less sugar.

From everything I’m reading about the benefits of cannabis, it’s the way to go vis a vis mood and pain management.  Not that the few aches I have these days are a problem, but I can tell you that ever since completing the change-of-life-I-never-asked-for-but-had-to-go-through-anyway, my moods have been in the crapper.  My optimism and sense of wonder have taken a powder, along with a large chunk of my libido.  Granted, a certain politician I like to call Cadet Bone Spurs (© 2018 Tammy Duckworth) has had a lot to do with my attitude these days, but so does getting older and the paucity of estrogen coursing through my glands.

And by the way, if I’m concerned about my sugar intake, you can imagine how I feel about estrogen supplements – so let’s not even go there.

Here’s the problem: unlike what seemed like 99% of every other human on the planet, I didn’t calm down when I lit up.  I didn’t sleep, I cleaned my apartment.  I didn’t get mellow, I got manic.  For every flash of insight I had about the relationship between music and color, or the representation of rape in William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” I had twelve about how my fat thighs were proof I didn’t deserve love and that the key to happiness was a neatly written to-do list.

In short, I’m afraid of how I will react.  Especially since at 61 there is soooo much more to worry about than there was at 16.  Global warming.  Terrorism.  Failing schools.  The fact that every moderate Democrat is really what we used to call a Republican.  Or, if I want to obsess on a micro level there are these gems lurking:  If my hearing loss gets any worse, I won’t wake up when a killer breaks into my house in the middle of the night.  As a parent I rank somewhere between Joan Crawford and Tonya Harding’s mother.  Or how about, I’m an empty-nester in search of new meaning in her life, which is more than half over!

Re-reading that last paragraph, it’s a miracle I’m not an alcoholic.  All the more reason to turn to THC.

“But now we know how to separate the strains,” says the salesman at my local Weed ‘N’ Things. (God bless Oregon, where neighbors now bring each other baggies from their private grows like they used to bring zucchinis).  Apparently, it was the effects of Sativa that caused me to bum out, and I need to give Indica a shot.  Or maybe it’s the other way around.  But what if it’s me and not the weed that’s the problem?  Then I’ll be stuck for hours in the private hell that is my obsessive brain.  And not only that, I am told that pot today compared to pot back in the day is like the difference between Bill Bixby’s Hulk and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk (apologies to Lou Ferrigno and Edward Norton).

But as the saying goes: a journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.  I guess for me that noble step looks a lot like sitting on my couch with a pipe in one hand and a match in the other.  Wish me luck; or, at the very least, a nice trip.