Category: Marijuana

Marijuana Mage

I struggle with my perception of my addiction.

Generally speaking, I do not struggle with my addiction. I welcome it, embrace it, depend upon it. I have smoked marijuana every week for most of my adult life, and every day for the past year.

The Puritan in me thinks I should go through periods of abstinence whenever I notice side effects creeping above a certain level. If I notice my short term memory slipping, or my mornings sluggish, or my irritation levels high, my immediate response is to go into a period of abstinence to correct the effects.

For a time, this worked well. I would smoke casually, and take a week or a month off when it seemed right, and this kept me in a constant state of recalibration around my balanced center.

With the seizures, things changed.

I had an early Kundalini awakening in my mid-twenties. My investigations into meditation and energy exercises opened a door which I was not ready to enter, metaphysically speaking. The seizures would take me at irregular intervals, and I identified stimulants such as coffee, eroticism, and flashing lights as contributors to a state where seizures could enter.

Marijuana moderated the effects, to such a great deal that I began medicating myself more regularly.

Three hits from a joint every day; that’s been my dose. I haven’t had a seizure in a long time.

Marijuana affects me differently than most people. I use it as an appetite suppressant; if I am hungry, and unable to eat, I can smoke and the hunger cravings go away. This is because of my late teenage years, when I lived rather poor and homeless. Even if I didn’t have money for food, I usually had a bit of pot that I could scrape together to make the hunger go away.

This peculiarity in my own bodily chemistry has led me to consider if marijuana affects me differently in other areas, as well. I still get foggy-headed, happy, and mellow. But I prefer to do things while I am high, whether it is the dishes, or writing, or playing guitar, or, often, exercising. I love to exercise when I am high, and when I was in elite athletic shape, I was a regular smoker.

Yoga, in particular, stands out as one of my favorite intoxicated activities.

So, what of magic?

Every magical text and authority I read is unanimous regarding the perils of mixing drugs or alcohol with ritual work. They all condemn it.

For a time, when I was in apprenticeship with another mage, I entered a period of sobriety that was longer than I cared to keep.

My personal life suffered drastically as a result of the inability to properly manage my moods. With three children in a small house, my life is a constant exercise in accommodation, as I drop whatever I have been focusing on to attend to the loudest and most urgent siren calls in the moment they arise.

Marijuana allows me to allow for this improvisational redirection of my attention. Without it, I get frustrated incrementally every time my focus is taken forcefully away from the object of my attention, and the cumulative effect makes me a bad father.

So I smoke, to be a better parent.

And I daresay it makes me a better mage.

By smoking before a period of ritual work, I enhance my inner perceptions and subtle energy currents. I withdraw from the outside world. I allow.

This state is not easily come by for one of my temperament, yet with one dose of this drug I can attain this state instantaneously.

I am calm. I am present. I am whole.

My investigations into the perils of mixing this drug and magic have borne no fruit. I stay open to the possibility during my inner examinations that there is some unforeseen roadblock in my usage that I have not noticed, but I am unable to find any.

The Puritan in me thinks I should be heeding this ubiquitous advice, and on any day when I find myself exceptionally tired from a binge, I want to throw myself into abstinence to correct the effects.

But the symptoms of withdrawal soon creep in, making me an irritable and unlikable father. I take one dose and all is aright again.

As much as I examine this question (which I will continue to examine throughout my whole life as an addict, to maintain an open and honest relationship with my drug) I continually come to the conclusion that it is better for me to remain an addict, for medicinal, personal, and spiritual reasons.

I cannot ignore what I am, or pretend I am anything different.

I am a Marijuana Mage.

A letter to Tshombe

Hey Tshombe,

Fantastic call today! Its really reinvigorating to resume our masterminding conversations again.

I left something important out of our talk; something that, as my accountability partner, I have a duty to tell you.

This was written down in my Challenges section, and we have so much to be grateful for in our lives, we spent most of our Skype time talking about what’s going right in our lives! Thats a really good sign. It means our lives are really good, and we’ve got lots to be grateful for. Then we went over our monthly and quarterly plans, which will (I think) be the real value for our upcoming masterminding stage – keeping each other accountable on our longer-term plans, and helping each other to complete monthly and quarterly planning.

It just so happened that I came across some worksheets today from your Claim Your New Year Now seminar for 2012, and you were kind enough to create monthly and quarterly planning sheets. I had printed out all of your worksheets and put them in a binder with some other worksheets I have been using for digital product brainstorming; so I found the sheets for this quarter, and I’m going to write up my goals and put them up on my closet door.

Thank you for the workshop you gave six months ago; I am still reaping benefits from it.

What I left out of our conversation was a failure to keep a commitment to myself, a commitment I declared out loud to you a couple weeks ago; a commitment that jump-started our new masterminding and quarterly planning sessions.

I fell off the wagon.

After ten days of not smoking pot, the longest period since I came to Costa Rica, I smoked on Tuesday. And then again on Wednesday. And then again today.

What I want right now is not necessarily a period of abstinence, but rather, a lessening of the negative effects that comes with being a regular pot smoker.

I have realized, after this latest period of sustained sobriety, that there are equally negative effects I experience that are alleviated by smoking.

First, there are my seizures. Regular, moderate intake of marijuana keeps my seizures at bay. This condition qualified me for my medical card in Oregon, and after seven days dry I had a seizure at dinner.

This was the first moment when I doubted my original commitment, to refrain from smoking for six weeks.

Three days later, I was finishing my work, and I was agitated. It is difficult for me to put down the high-paced, super-mental world of work in which I engage every day, especially without a commute. Since I work from home, I turn around and get in the kitchen, pick up a baby, and before I can fully discard the API integration tweaks I was troubleshooting just moments before, I am absorbed in the ever-changing turbulence of family life, before I have reset myself.

This, I realize, is what I really need after a workday; a reset.

A beer, a shower, a run, there are plenty of other ways that I can reset my psyche. Taking three hits off a joint, however, has been my preferred method of resetting myself, and preparing for family time, because it is easy, portable, effective, and enjoyable.

On Tuesday afternoon the kids were having tantrums, my wife was exhausted, dinner was in shambles, and my irritation was only making everything worse.

I took one hit, happily did the dishes with my son, and then we sat down with some reading cards and both my children started reading. Their education up to this point was sufficient enough that when I broke out these cards, and started engaging with them directly, having fun, they started sounding out words; both the 6 year old AND the four year old child were reading.

I am a better dad when I am stoned. And I enjoy my life more.

This is, partially, why I have continued to smoke daily since then. (By ‘daily smoking,’ I mean, three hits off of a thin joint, which is my preferred doseage.)

However, I know I am obligated to revisit my broken commitment, if for no other reason than I declared a commitment to you, my accountability partner. Whether or not I decide to resume my commitment is a different question, one which I can comprehensively ask myself by writing you this email, and reviewing the pros and cons of smoking pot.
PROS
-I am a better father when I am high.
-My mood is better, and I take unexpected interruptions (a big frequency in prenthood) easily.
-I am more creative, and it is easier for me to generate ideas within a project.
-I write more. My word count is much higher.
-It serves as the most satisfactory reset when transitioning from work to family time. Beer can make me sleepy, unable to keep up with my kids, grumpy when it gets late, and unable to work at night (which I have to do frequently). Pot in the early evening allows me to work stoned later at night on content creation, a major portion of my career, which is supported by my habit.
-Sometimes I want to exercise while high. I love doing yoga, juggling, and even lifting weights when I am high.
CONS
-In the mornings, I am extraordinarily tired for the first ten minutes after waking.
-I can be short-tempered during non-high portions of my day.
-I have a tendency to binge on weekends, and occasionally smoke in the middle of a workday, which affects my productivity levels.
-My endurance is not as high, and without a dedicated exercise program, my health deteriorates.
-If I am in a dedicated exercise program, my endurance is depressed. I cannot finish P90X routines with regularity.
-My focus and productivity can potentially deteriorate, especially near periods of binging. The quality of my written work deteriorates noticeably for a few days after getting very high.
Its difficult to discuss these considerations in the everyday, due to the legal nature of pot. We can mention in passing how too much wine + not enough water = bad morning this weekend, and share tips conversationally on being better drunks. As a society we don’t have the same camaraderie around pot, limiting our ability to self-monitor by social conversation.

Also, I am not a typical stoner. I don’t get hungry when I am high. Actually, I use it as an appetite suppresant. If I am hungry, but dont want to or cannot eat, I can smoke, and my hunger goes away. This probably comes from my high school years, when I lived in my car, delivered pizza at night, and dealt small bags of marijuana during the day. If I had no food, I always had pot, and that would keep me sated.

Consequently, I draw great comfort from being high. I feel more like myself when high than I do during any other point of my day, other than when I am working, or writing, and in a trance of flow.

Feeling more like myself when I am with my family (which is 80% of the high times that I spend, is with my family) means they get more of me this way.

So now that I have successfully lauded the reasons why marijuana is a part of my life, I need to revisit the original reason I wanted to abstain for six weeks in the first place:

I need to focus and work hard during this period of my life.

I am broker than I’ve ever been, financially. I’m off in Central America with a 30-hour-a-week telecommuting job that pays me less than I need to support my family, and my business (which is supposed to fill the gap) relies on my focus and dedication. I have a side project (The Phoenix Seminar) which has the potential to become the landmark content that defines the next stage of my career.

If I do a good job now with Ace of Sales, I have the very real opportunity to be a C-level marketing executive of a multimillion dollar public company in five years, and being responsible for the growth that propels it to that status.

I don’t want to jeopordize any of that with a bad habit of self indulgence.

I started exercising again because my body was hurting all the time. After only a few short weeks, I’m better, and I’m focused. My goals for exercising were shooting way over the mark of what I need; I don’t need to do P90X again and achieve an elite level of fitness. I need to sweat a few times a week. P90X just happens to be the easiest way for me to do that; I put down a yoga mat, click ‘play’ on my iPhone, and Tony Horton is guiding me through an exercise routine I know well.

Do I need to rise at 5 am every morning to accomplish this? If so, smoking pot is holding me back, because the past two days I have snoozed until 530. This cut into my workout time, which, wouldntcha know it, complemented my plan to reduce my exercise intensity, so I liked it.

I am hacking out a plan of moderation here, not only to justify my continued use of marijuana, but also to attain the goals that I wanted to achieve through abstinence, making a period of sobriety moot.

I’m considering swapping my workout time; by working out at 330 every day, I can get a reset before transitioning to family time, and exercise at a time my body is likely more ready for it. I would still need to wake up super early, and work on my own projects early in the AM. Work for Ace of Sales would be between 8 and 330, which gives plenty of time to fulfill my 30 hour a week commitment.

So now, I’m going to take this brainstorm to the calendar, so I can transition my thoughts into action. Thanks for being a sounding board.