Coping with Marijuana

(And why it’s a sign that you don’t actually love yourself.)

I’ve been struggling with marijuana lately. I mean, I’ve battled my addiction to it for years now, but over the last year and a half it’s gotten harder to do. Everywhere I look I hear about how acceptable it’s become, legalized in some states, even. And I’m not here to tell you that it shouldn’t be or that it’s dangerous or anything like that. But for someone like me who struggles with impulsivity and self-control, marijuana is not always a healthy option.

The last woman I dated seriously loved to get high. She loved it so much she once tried to describe to me in detail that feeling of going from sober to high. She and I smoked together on and off for the duration of our relationship. Often it was fun and goofy and harmless. But more often than that it was a way for both of us to cope with being together — to cope with what our relationship had become.

Toward the end of it we smoked almost every time we saw each other. It was the only way we could stand being in the same room together without arguing.

So when we broke up I found it hard not to fall back on my addiction and start piping out clouds all by my lonesome as a way of avoiding those painful emotions we all go through at some point. I went three weeks without, cried myself to sleep, and relied on my willpower to make sure I processed some of my emotions at the very least.

Then I went on my first date since our break up and felt on top of the world after it, like, why the hell had I been so sad when the single life was what I’d wanted for months now? I was so energized and excited about what my dating life would look like from that night onward that I texted my dealer and bought $60 dollars’ worth from him outside of a fast-food restaurant. I went home and listened to The Impressions for the first time off a recommendation from my Uber driver.

And things didn’t feel all that bad anymore…

Until two weeks later when my habits started to die off one by one. No longer was I writing and meditating every day. No longer did I ride my bike to work when it dropped below sixty degrees or drizzled outside. I found excuses for myself because I knew at the end of the day, regardless of how my day went, Mary would be waiting for me at home all rolled up and ready to burn. I lived day-to-day waiting to go home and get high and pretended that because it was just a couple hits before bed, there was nothing wrong with what I was doing.

Granted, I’m the first to say, I am too hard on myself. Sometimes decompressing and doing things you may not want to develop as habitual is a good thing. And when that’s what I’m doing, I am so self-critical that I don’t even enjoy those times.

Since then, about four or five months have passed. In that time I have smoked more than I haven’t. I stopped writing and meditating all together for nearly a month. I spent more money going out to eat and taking Ubers and even buying material things, which is unusual for me. I also became much more anxious and sleep deprived than ever before. Even on nights when I put eight or nine hours on the board, I woke up groggy and depressed, annoyed that I had to get out of bed at all.

Marijuana was a big contributor to this. But the main contributor, and something I haven’t openly written about on here before, was the process of publishing my memoir.

When it was released and I started doing promotion for it, I anticipated a polarized reaction. Most people didn’t know half the things I wrote about because I’d kept it all bottled up for years. I was ridden with shame and living an emotionally isolated life because of it. Nobody really knew me. What I didn’t anticipate were the attacks on my person from people I considered family.

I don’t know shit about marketing or promotion or even book publishing, to be honest. I don’t know much about editing or the technical aspects of writing. I know even less about social media and advertising, so taking on this process alone was daunting. It took twice as much time out of my life as I expected and didn’t result in what I’d hoped — my book getting into the hands of the people that I wrote it for.

I also hate sitting at a computer to think, which may sound counter-intuitive because I am a writer, but isn’t really, because I rarely think when I write. It’s one of the few activities in my life that takes me outside of myself and allows my brain to rest. And I traded it for promotion and the anxious states that trying to get your name out there on social media can create.

My mother called me to question my mental health rather than to congratulate me. My sister insisted that “there aren’t as many people like you as you think out there” and encouraged me not to publish the book. My father called me to say that he didn’t care what I wrote about, said I could write whatever I wanted to write and he would still love me, and then told family friends behind my back that his son was “writing horrendous things on the internet”. My childhood nanny messaged me to tell me that sick people can’t help other sick people. She said none of my current friends were real friends or else they wouldn’t be encouraging this behavior in me. She invalidated my traumas because I was never physically abused like she was.

A lot of these people say I’m doing this out of anger, spite, or resentment. They think my story is theirs to tear down — that it belongs to them somehow. The truth is not that I am doing these things to get back at them. I have made it my life’s mission to get as far away from them as possible because the majority of my life this is exactly what they’ve done to me. Tried to shut me up and kill my creativity because of how it makes them feel.

I am not doing these things out of anger, spite, or resentment, but I am very angry and resentful of them because they continue to display the behaviors they are so ashamed of. And they act as if they are doing no wrong. They call themselves victims.

And the reason I bring this up is because I am twenty four years old and still relearning how to navigate my emotional landscape, how to navigate the world without parents I can turn to who love me for me, without a solid support system. It’s hard turning down drugs and opportunities that are detrimental to your well-being when your whole life you’ve lived the narrative that you aren’t good enough as you are.

So I’ve turned to marijuana more often lately.

Not because of this, but because I am also weak.

I’m also prone to making bad decisions.

I’m not put-together all of the time.

I’m not the man I want to become yet.

I’ve learned that I have a hard time letting people see that I’m flawed. I carry shame and pain with me and have done so probably from the day that I was born.

But who doesn’t? And why is it that we tend to go after people who speak openly on difficult topics?

I’ll end this with a short conversation a loved one and I had about a year ago. This person had been sober for two months when I called them.

ME: “So how’s life been now that you’re not smoking?”

LOVED ONE: “Actually, I started smoking again.”

ME: “Really? What changed?”

LOVED ONE: “I don’t know, I just missed it and…well, I don’t see the harm in it. I think I’m a much better person when I’m high.”

ME: “It’s hard, isn’t it? I’ve been going through something similar. Are you glad you’re smoking again?”

LOVED ONE: “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”

ME: “OK…tell me more.”

LOVED ONE: “I guess it just got too hard moving through the world without it. Whenever I’d wake up, all I wanted was to go back to sleep. And during the day it was the same, just waiting for bedtime when I could close my eyes and make it all disappear again. But now that I’m smoking again that’s all gone.”