I'm Glad Pot is Largely Legal. I Just Wish I Didn't Exert So Much Time and Effort to Circumventing Laws That Never Should Have Existed in the First Place
Up until about a year and a half ago, I self-medicated poorly for anxiety, depression, insomnia, and what I would discover was a whole host of neurological conditions with alcohol and marijuana. I haven’t smoked pot or drunk alcohol since then. I had to stop smoking for my dental implants, and I chose to stop drinking because it seemed like the right thing to do. I have not regretted that decision at all.
I’ll never forget telling my doctor that I smoked pot because it helped with anxiety, stress, and depression. She shot me a skeptical look that suggested that the intense, overwhelming anxiety, depression, and stress I talked about in every session suggested that my strategies for combating them were, at best, ineffective and, at worst, incredibly counter-productive.
Yet I smoked pot and drank modestly if consistently because I thought it helped me sleep and calm the sadistic voice inside my head that thought night-time was the perfect time to revisit every interaction of the day, with a special emphasis on shaming me for the many inexcusable faux pas I undoubtedly committed.
This mean voice inside my head was like John Madden as a broadcaster, only instead of diagramming football plays, it helpfully reminded me of the many ways, major and minor, that I had screwed up and the terrible consequences that would inevitably follow. It would put my behavior under a microscope, patiently explaining why I made people uncomfortable and was unworthy of love and acceptance.
The problem with marijuana used to be that it was illegal and consequently often challenging to procure. You couldn’t buy it from a store or order it online. You had to know a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy who dealt drugs.
The problem with alcohol, then and now, is that it is legal and incredibly easy to procure when it’s much more dangerous and destructive than marijuana.
For decades, my paralyzing social anxiety and fear of strangers competed with my need for the sweet, sweet leaf that would make an unconscionably cruel world seem at least marginally less terrible.
My need for weed generally won. That forced me to interact with people I did not know, something that often brings me to the very brink of a panic attack.
I find human behavior baffling under the best of circumstances. Buying even harmless marijuana from strangers had its own set of codes and customs I barely understood, yet had to abide by if I was going to be successful in my quest to buy illegal drugs.
I couldn’t just text someone, “Hey, do you have the illegal drugs that I want? If so I can swing by some time tonight to buy them.” Police might find that a little suspicious.
No, you have to use at least some level of finesse and guile.
I ended up spending a fair amount of time in the homes of people I did not know, or knew only as drug dealers, wondering when it would be acceptable for me to leave and how I could signal my exit without offense.
And the aquriums! Every pot dealer I’ve ever known has had an elaborate aquarium that gave sellers and users alike some cool shit to look at while stoned.
It would be anxious even if it were not for the outside chance that I’d be arrested, fined and/or imprisoned for doing something that tens of millions of Americans did nightly and did not hurt anyone.
That would suck! The specter, however faint, of arrest and imprisonment, made every interaction with a pot dealer even more stressful.
Now, thank God, recreational marijuana is available in 24 out of 50 states. Where marijuana is still illegal, stoners can buy Delta 9, which I can vouch has the same effect as marijuana but that you can buy at the gas station or order from DoorDash.
It took our country way too fucking long to change its laws regarding marijuana. I’m grateful that it happened but frustrated that I wasted so much time trying to navigate the tricky terrain of buying illegal substances from people you don’t know.
So much time and energy and effort were needlessly exhausted trying to circumvent needlessly cruel and racist laws that never should have existed in the first place.
I’m a pessimist who never thought he’d live long enough to see legal weed be the law of the land. I’m glad that this source of free-floating anxiety has ended, even if Georgia has what I see as unnecessarily severe laws involving Delta 9.
Like marijuana’s maddening illegality, being in a massive amount of credit card debt has made my life harder, crazy-making and exhausting for decades. It’s a cycle I’ve had a motherfucker of a time pulling myself out of even as it has played havoc with my mental health and general happiness.
I have a strategy for getting out of debt but I’m going to be honest: I fail a lot. I have big ideas and elaborate schemes that have an uncanny way of falling apart or never realizing even a fraction of their potential.
I’ve lost a lot of faith in myself as I went from wunderkind to has-been. I have no idea what people want or how to give it to them.
Yet I remain hopeful that if I keep paying off the settlements I’ve arranged with my creditors, have a robust launch for The Fractured Mirror, my massive upcoming book on American movies about filmmaking and experience a lucrative crowd-funding campaign for my follow-up to The Fractured Mirror, I’ll be able to pay down my credit card debt to a reasonable level. I’m not arrogant or optimistic to think I can pay it off completely. I just want to get it to the point where it does not feel like a massive burden that I carry unsteadily on my shoulders until my dying day.
When I say get by financially I’m not talking about retiring comfortably or being able to afford vacations. I’m talking, instead, about having enough money to get through the day without humiliating myself or selling off my cherished belongings in a mad bid to not lose what little I have left.
My hope is that someday I’ll look at my decades of massive credit card debt, and all of the guilt, shame and desperation it engendered, the same way that I look at marijuana being illegal: as a huge aggravation that made my life much harder on a daily basis for reasons that don’t seem to much sense but that I don’t have to worry about anymore.
Will I succeed? I honestly don’t know. I don’t have a great track record. But I am going to try, and that effort must mean something, even when it feels futile and wasted.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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