Existential Blues

My relationship with marijuana was tainted from the start. In high school I briefly dated a girl who would smoke, snort, eat, drink, and pop anything you gave her. She hung out with nasty people and lived a nasty lifestyle. So naturally, I had assumed that weed was a nasty thing, exclusive to nasty people.

I didn’t come around to it until I was twenty-one. I knew reasonable people who smoked and after being exposed to it for so long, I figured “maybe it’s worth a try.”

I took a low-dose edible but never felt anything other than tired. A week or so later, I took a puff off of a joint. I didn’t immediately become a hardcore addict or grow hair on my palms like the DARE program promised I would.

Instead I became loose. There was humor in everything I saw and pleasure in everything I tasted. I ate so much junk food that night my stomach was still hurting the next morning. I took another puff a few days later and became deeply introspective. All I could do was think about everything that had happened in my life so far, and how it all influenced who I was today. I learned a lot about myself and a lot about weed. It got boring after a bit and I put the pipe away.

Then the pandemic came along.

I was living in a party house with no rules or inhibitions. I’d get home from work at nine-thirty and roll hard until sometimes as late as four in the morning. Doing nothing more than watching documentaries and speculating on the nightmarish politics of the 2020’s with my roommate. We’d burn the bong until neither of us could see straight, then pass out, just to wake up and do the same thing the next day.

We didn’t have anything better to do. He was trapped in the house taking college classes from home, but I was considered “essential” and had a place to be five days a week. But as soon as I was home, it was party time. Every night, every occasion, every opportunity. Even when I came home to a rare quiet house, I’d raid a private stash and smoke it through a two dollar glass pipe.

It was a disgusting, hedonistic, and beautiful time we had together in that house. But eventually, we had to move out. Sam moved out to be alone with his girlfriend, and I moved out to be alone with mine.

She was well over the thrill of weed, so it was pretty rare that I would smoke. I had been responsible when I lived in that mid-century House of the Rising Sun, never smoking before work or if I had to drive, but now I was something resembling a respectable member of society.

I was normal. I’d retreat into my office, take a pull or two off of the pipe, and play video games for a few hours every Saturday. But that was the extent of my smoking. It was reclassified as a tool for special occasions, maybe as it should be. I’d only smoke if the circumstances were RIGHT. And it was rare that they ever were. The domestic responsibilities that come with a partner, two cats, and a three bedroom house were constantly pulling me away from my usual leisure activities.

Until one Thanksgiving.

I ate a big meal with my family. The pandemic was still on, so I had to eat at a card table just outside the dining room window. Isolated during a social holiday. Alone in the cold November air. I left with a full stomach, fully ready to embrace the day’s call for hermitude. I lit a special pre-roll in the backyard and took a big puff.

I had my afternoon all planned out: I was going to lock myself in my office all afternoon. I’d be alone, unbothered, doing my own thing.

I came inside and the weed hit me fast. It hit me hard. My girlfriend wanted to make a vest for one of our cats out of an old jacket sleeve I had cut off. I was functional enough to make the appropriate cuts, but soon lost my ability to speak and move when she tried to fit the cat into the vest.

“Poor thing” I thought. He struggled and wiggled and meowed and fought her every step of the way as she tried to fit his front legs through the holes I had made in the little vest. I felt for him. He was trapped in the hands of something much bigger and much more powerful than himself, unable to understand why someone he trusted was forcing him to do this. He obviously didn’t want to put the vest on, but she ignored him and made him anyway. In my head I was begging for her to stop. Silently pleading for her to put the cat down and let it go. But she wouldn’t. And I couldn’t do a damned thing about it. Even if I could, it was now too late. The vest had been successfully slipped on, and now our cat waddled around in shame.

How could I stand by silently? How could I permiss this cruelty? My mind turned to divine judgment, and I was convinced that He Who is Above All Else would not overlook this traumatic incident. Saint Peter would stop me at the gates of Heaven and ask why I didn’t do anything to defend this helpless animal. And I would only be able to mutter “I was too high” before the ground beneath me split and I was cast into an eternity surrounded by agony and inferno. I tried to distract myself with music, but I couldn’t focus long enough to type out the song I wanted to hear. I made the mistake of indulging my anxieties and spiraled into all kinds of hellish thoughts.

I believed that I had figured out a very Ugly Truth about our reality. And it was so terrifying, I dare not tell anyone else, lest they be cursed with this awful knowledge. My mind was racing. My sanity was slipping.

This is it. I was going crazy.

The next step was a mental institution, where counselors would work day and night, trying to talk me down from this delusion. I’d life the rest of my miserable life in a padded cell, constantly haunted by the truth with no way to ignore it.

After pacing up and down the house a million times, my girlfriend asked me what’s wrong. And I couldn't tell her, otherwise she’d know too. I couldn’t do that to her. I couldn’t tell anyone. The word would spread and the world would plunge into chaos; all because I got high and speculated on death and what comes after.

She offered me a hydroxyzine tablet and suggested I lay down. I woke up six hours later, but would occasionally revisit this “truth” for the next two weeks. In the morning, at work, at home. It didn’t matter. I would wonder if I was right and a wild fear would shoot through me. I’d feel sick and get anxious, then pull myself together only to repeat the vicious cycle a few hours later.

It took a Russian Orthodox deacon to calm me down. After our phone call, I felt simultaneously better and worse. I knew the truth now. But I wasn’t scared anymore.

I didn’t smoke weed for a year after that. And when I did, I was extra cautious. Anything to avoid the highmare I had experienced in late 2020. That was a hard year. It was the first time I had been confronted with imminent death, what with the pandemic and the deteriorating political atmosphere. I coped with it by convincing myself I was going to die. And I am. And (I hate to tell you this,) you are too. Maybe in sixty years. Maybe tomorrow.

But we have today. And having accepted the temporary nature of life, I was able to carve meaning out of it:

Live a good life.

And make sure everyone else can live a good life too.

It would be easy to live a life of simple pleasures and escapes. Running from responsibility day in and day out until we meet our inevitable ends. That’s what that first girlfriend did. I asked her why she did it all, and her only answer was this: “I like it.”

For a short period of time, I thought I understood. Maybe she was right. I’ve only got one shot and time is running out. May as well enjoy it, before it’s too late.

But I never quite felt comfortable with that.

As I drifted through the delirium of hedonism, I always felt a bit guilty. Why can’t everyone have this? We certainly deserve it.

And that’s when I came to realize: enjoyment is the goal, but enjoyment is itself contained within that. The struggle to meet your goals is part of the high. The white-knuckled tension to see if all the work and anticipation pays off. The inevitable end of those who embrace pure hedonism without regard for others is a tragic life of vapidity. The drugs stop working. The avenues of enjoyment are exhausted. I saw it in my ex. And I started to see it in myself. To get what you want would mean an end to the fight. There’s nothing left to chase, and the chase is most of the fun.

I had to ask myself what was important. What did I care about? What kept me up at night? What occupied me during the day? What sent me into an anxious spiral that Thanksgiving Day so many years ago?

It was the disturbing fact that the majority of the world agonizes in injustice and corruption. Workers everywhere are being slipped into symbolic jackets across the world, from wicked forces that are entirely apathetic to their suffering. Am I again to stand idly by? To ignore the plight of my brothers and sisters? Or will I speak out to ensure that they too can over-indulge in the earthy pleasures we are surrounded by?

It’s a never-ending struggle to liberate myself and my neighbors from the confines holding us back from that care-free life we all foolishly hope for, knowing that we can never have it.

But that’s no reason not to fight. To give up would not only be admitting defeat in the face of personal satisfaction, but in the intangible, looming facade of universal justice. Fight like hell, knowing that the forces against you are overwhelming and boundless.

And enjoy the struggle while you do. Sleep well at night and rest easy on your deathbed knowing that your life was a long one of toil and stress. Just make sure it’s for the right reasons.