The Siren Bowl

I am high as I write this yet my relationship with pot is a conflicted one. I am by no means one of those stoners who hail it as an unmitigated good. I do not think the plant a physical manifestation of God, or the spirit of the universe. Rather, I think it’s a damn fun thing to ingest. For me when the THC enters my blood stream it’s like I’ve just put on an immersive virtual reality kit wherein everything is the same, just a little bit better. Sometimes a lot a bit better. Emotions are felt more intensely and it seems like the threshold for emotional activation is lower. In other words, sadness can be felt more often and more intensely, yet laughter can too. This later emotion is the one I strive for often in my personal life but with pot, the laughter finds you.

It’s not just that all sorts of inanity suddenly become funny. Sure, I do tend to laugh at dumb shit that I wouldn’t when high. But it’s also the case that pot allows the brain to make connections, usually to some degree tangential that can give rise to the creation of novel and truly funny jokes. Hell, it can allow for the creation of truly interesting anything. I have utilized pot when writing for pleasure as well as when writing stand-up comedy. I am by no means a creative type whose output should be judged as anything good, but it is this very point that I wish to underscore. I am not usually a creative type, and there are some sort of defenses that pot helps to dismantle, or it activates something else entirely, perhaps in tandem, which allows me to put finger to keyboard and pen to pad.

But it’s also unquestionably the case that I have used pot too frequently. Yet even during those phases I often feel conflicted, wanting to abstain for a period, take a tolerance break, engage with life clearly, all the while viscerally feeling the Siren call of the bowl. It’s clearly a temptation much stronger for myself than for others. There are times when I am smoking all the time, engaging in risky shit or just plain stupid shit. But why?

For me it has become clear that I am a shame-prone person and from that I feel a great deal of self-consciousness. Pot can overwhelm one’s sense of self-consciousness by shining a magnifying glass on parts of self that are unexamined, perhaps out of fear. This is a well-documented phenomenon. Although by no means fully examined, I consider myself a fairly examined person, aided by introspective coursework in mental health counseling, my own therapy, reading and journaling, and just being a deeply curious person in general. Oh, and pot has helped in that pursuit, too. But I think that because I am sufficiently examined, whatever that means, that pot doesn’t trigger the self-consciousness and paranoia in me as it does so many. Instead, it diminished my shame-proneness, allowing me to more fully be myself.

What’s nice is that I am noticing that the behaviors I engage in while high are starting to sync up rather completely with my sober behaviors. It feels as if I am starting to feel comfortable in my own skin in a way that’s new for me. The divorce has helped this, kicking me out into the land of singlehood, but more importantly into the land of freedom in being alone. I don’t have another person against which to check my emerging, or unveiling, sense of self, saving me from judgment, real or imagined. As this process unfolds, I feel good, yet I still like smoking up. Perhaps too much.