Falling Off

I am weak. I have no discipline nor willpower. For the first time in over two months, I smoked a spliff by myself. Since Monday night when I chose to do so, I have had incredibly mixed feelings about the choice I made.

On one hand, I enjoyed it, mostly. It felt good to relax and let myself go a little bit. On the other hand, the rest of this week has been influenced by the return of cloudy thinking that has been so prevalent for the last 25 years of my life.

Let us start with the incident. I tried to write while smoking. Here is what I wrote:

First solo spliff in over a month. The clarity has been good. But, the familiarity is also good. I have had the fresh green haunting smell of memory wafting from my desk draw. However, what I was able to do today that I have struggled with previously is the whole saying no part of the equation.

Now, I am ready. I took out a tiny nug, tolerance being what it is. It crumbled up super nice, I will be 100% honest, as that lovely fresh green smell wafted through my room I find myself struggling to put into words how excited I am to smoke this spliff. Yes, I have been drinking, what's your excuse?

First things first however: what is the soundtrack? Weird glitchy electronica? Some lovely homestyle dub, the kind that gran cooked up in the kitchen? So much to choose from. I know, Timewheel.

https://soundcloud.com/timewheel/timewheel-radio-show-100-dillard?si=449051810a484c23af52e824bcdcdb76

When in doubt, smoke a zooty and drop some timewheel.

Alright. Here goes. Time to spark.

My gawsh. That is tasty. Memory flood torrents in. That is it. All the last twenty odd years in one familiar taste. There are those wonderful overtones of sativa scent, undercurrented with tobacco, and that never ending highlighting of the pixelated edges of our shared realities. I wouldn't say I have missed this, so much as why did I ever stop?

And that, my friends, is why I stopped. Comfortable like shoes that are bad for your ankles. You know, yet still they are your favourite pair.

Why is it that music makes so much sense when you are gwafted? I mean, I get it, music is the business, but smoke a bit of the green and all of a sudden, music is speaking to the centre of centres that you were previously unaware of existing. Those subtle background fills become the hidden clue to the understanding of the hidden mysteries of universes yet to be discovered.

But I guess that's half the point. I'm not baked, you are. And in such a place as this, it's easy to confuse feeling for meaning. And with this spliff and this whisky, I know quite certainly that come a few days, they will wear off, and this music, this song, this sound, will continue to exist for me to either get or to not get. The problem is other brain drugs. The ones that only exist inside your head. They are that much more difficult to separate, identify and place under the spotlight of interrogation.

Much like any other drug, they become a part of us, they become us. They define us and they motivate us. Like weed does, like crack does, like the h bomb does and like charlie does. But these are external and as such we can that much more easily separate them from ourselves.

But brain drugs? Oh, brain drugs are from us, by us and bind us. They are so much more difficult to isolate and interrogate. They are so much more difficult to quit, because we do not know where they end and where we begin.

---

That is far as I got. Soon after writing the above, I went to bed, absolutely goofed to high heaven. Seriously, I cannot recall ever being as baked as I was on Monday night. It was good, bad and necessary.

So let us now talk about the after effects. Firstly the cloudy thinking. Since Monday I have been walking in a cloud. My clarity of thought that I had been enjoying of late was right out the window. The ability to focus for extended periods on a single task had evaporated. Along with these two negatives, there was an enhanced sense of significance and meaning attached to things: music, thoughts, feelings etc. 

Finally, I slept again. Dreamlessly. I guess that is a positive.

So that brings us to now. Has it helped? I honestly don't know. I was really enjoying "sobriety". And I say "sobriety" because daily alcohol consumption doesn't exactly scream sobriety. Yet, the longer term effects of alcohol, in terms of clear thinking and ability to concentrate are not as severe as cannabis. 

Then there is the mental health aspect. It felt good to get blunted again. However, I do feel that it was a case of short term distraction from the awful reality of my life at present. I do not think that that is healthy to do. Certainly not all the time as I was doing previously (25 years of my 40 years to be precise). I must not bury my head in the sand and ignore my health, mental and physical. I need to own my life and not let my life be owned, not by God, nor money, nor drugs.

What comes next? I have been good at limiting myself to a sneaky after dinner mint every night since and apart from the cloudy mornings it has not been terrible. It has not effected my work nor my exercise. It has massively decreased my desire to be social and out in public, and when you are trying to meet people, make connections and friends, that is perhaps not ideal.

One thing is 100% certain, I will go back to keeping Mary Jane at arms length. She is not good for me. And again, to be perfectly honest, she never was, not really. But I will interrogate that in a future blog. That's all for now, I guess and don't forget: Radiate Positivity Mother Fucker!