Walking a Tight Rope on a Slippery Slope

Walking a Tight Rope on a Slippery Slope

Applying the term addiction to me, as it relates to my use of cannabis, can be likened to walking a tight rope on a slippery slope. I have a mood spectrum disorder, for which I have been prescribed an assortment of Corporate ‘Merica’s answer(s) to all the problems a bipolar individual might encounter.

All I can say is that my original issues pale in comparison to those brought on by my “meds.”

Cannabis use allows me some hope of being able to contain the frenzy within my mind, that exuberance for life that has such an iron grip on me, that I cannot sleep more than five hours per night. It used to be no more than four hours, but physical labor has added an extra hour onto my nightly allotment. 

I grow my own medicine.

If you look up synonyms for “mania,” it gets downright ugly. Here are a few of my personal favorites: “craziness, dementia, lunacy, rage, delirium, derangement,” and of course, the coup de grace, “fetish.”

I prefer “frenzy” because that’s reasonably accurate. At least three mental tracks compete for my attention in my mind, most of my conscious existence. This is a phenomenon that I used to think was unique to me, until I conferred with others, and found it to be the same for them.

Music occupies one track, whether it is being funneled in through my headphones or originates in my brain; a flow of consciousness controls the second track and the third is what I simply refer to as my creative track. This third track operates exclusively from the right side of my brain.

I do my most creative work from one in the morning until six or seven. By the time you are sitting down to your first cup of coffee, I have been up for six or more hours. I ain’t proud but I ain’t skeered either.

The three tracks do not so much as compete for my attention, as they simply exist. That alone creates a fair amount of, well, frenzy. Not craziness, or lunacy and not derangement. I’m sorry; I wish I could be more helpful.

Where does the slippery slope come in? Unfortunately, some people still view cannabis as something only musicians and drug addicts do, and it’s OK for musicians because they are cool people. Otherwise, fergeddit, because cannabis is an illegal drug, despite the legal existence of 215 cards.

Everyone knows that if you need to rely on illegal drugs, then you’re not fit for society. I found that out the hard way when I almost got the rug pulled out from beneath my son Ben’s wedding, for the egregious act of not only smoking the devious demon, but making it available to other adults for the same purpose.

I knew the rules, I broke the rules and I had therefore earned consequences, even if my behavior was based on my need to control my social anxieties. Unfortunately, those in control of the facility, threatened to shut down the entire function until I met with them privately and pleaded my case.

It was a demeaning experience and I learned a valuable lesson: Don’t get caught in the future.

I could have relied on edibles; I could have gone out through the rain and sat in the truck (though probably not with 20 others); I could have stayed home. But I should not have jeopardized such an important event by doing something that was prohibited.

That’s the slippery slope. One man’s medication is another man’s object of disdain. “Different strokes for different folks” doesn’t quite cover all the territory here because there is just too wide of a chasm between those who fear it, and those who recognize cannabis as the gentle giant that it is.

Corporate America certainly fears this medicine, and has done so since the government systematically went about destroying its credibility with mainstreamed America back in the 1930’s. Hemp was the basis for so much of our country’s basic needs, that it had to be shunted aside in order to open up the door to a whole new world of synthetic fabrics and plastics, all of them far more lucrative than hemp.

And of course, perish the thought that the FDA should actually recognize this plant as beneficial, and catch up with the rest of the medical and real world. As a medicine for cancer, epilepsy and countless other maladies, cannabis is unparalleled.

I am not the only person who has chosen cannabis
over Corporate 'Merica, as the steady flow of exultant,
215-Card-carrying patients attested to Saturday, at Area 101.

As a money-maker, not so much. 

I grow my own medicine, and aside from basic organic amendments and a summerful of time, all it costs is the ‘boo and a few rolls of green plastic tape. Corporate America knows that it can’t charge ten thousand dollars per month for a cancer treatment that can be grown in the ground, as it does now for synthetic drugs, so it keeps up the “reefer madness” rhetoric.

I would say that it drives me nuts but “nuts” is a bit too close to “lunacy” and “craziness,” for comfort.

How about I just say that this artificially constructed prejudice against cannabis saddens me immensely, and I hope it ends some day soon?