Stoned In Plato’s garage

Weed has always helped me. 

Even that first sack I picked up off another kid in the neighborhood and burnt through a classic makeshift apple-pipe, four fans all running at once to steer the smoke out of the tiny suburban garage, parents not even 10 yards away...that was the first time I ever remember feeling right. Yep, despite D.A.R.E. and all the other courageous efforts to make certain that smoking pot would make me feel stupid, scared, and guilty - I still smoked it. I inhaled it. And it made me feel overwhelmingly well. I was lighter, lifted, and riding a new wave of revelation all while laughing enough to make my face hurt. I couldn’t remember ever being so happily myself, just as I was, a human doing human things. I was beginning to get it. 

So it was there, tucked away between moving boxes and yard equipment with the meditative hum of fan blades in my ears and a big stupid smile between them, that I began my long and beautiful relationship with cannabis. It hardly even registered to me that it was illegal, my rose colored glasses and I just had no clue what that really meant at 16. I connected it more to The Beatles and other hippies than to crime and serious consequences. My ignorance and privilege shielded me from such negative associations and repercussions. The munchies, discipleship to Radiohead, and “geeking out” were absolutely present during this era, but that's really the extent of the damage incurred. Indeed, I was lucky to experience smoking pot safely and I am grateful for it to this day. It wasn’t ruining our lives by making us into criminals or dimwitted failures. Instead, it was illuminating us and everything around us with life and light and color and joy. I couldn’t have told you at the time, but it was a beautiful chapter for me. At last, a lamp that had never been turned on found its switch.  

Things didn’t change all at once, it's not like I started smoking weed, reclined into a hazy nirvana, and started manifesting a world perfectly fit to my liking. No, at the time, I was just getting remarkably high. As high as possible, as often as it could be afforded, with whomever else fit the narrow crossover of having matching extracurricular interests and my parent’s trust. It became my release-valve from all the pressures of being a student, an athlete, a Christian, and a son. As insufficient as these definitions were for me, they required my all and were completely suffocating, leaving me without much else besides someone else’s half-brained ideas and manipulative outlooks, however well-intended. I was a typical sullen teenager, despondent with a less than optimal vantage on things, navigating adolescence amongst the millennial swag of being born into a period marked by terrorism, economic fall out, compounding environmental crises, and many other man-made catastrophes. I don’t remember being an exceptionally happy child. 

Somewhere in between being a 10 year-old and a teenager I finally noticed the depression. I gained weight, picked up an eating disorder, passed out, failed classes, lied to everyone, took pills, and it got just about as dark as it can get within the white picket confines of privately educated suburbia. I got in fights, I got bullied, I abused drugs, myself, and other people around me, I swung from depression to rage to depression again. I looked sick, I acted sick, I hung out with shitty people, and I got shittier for doing so. I got found out a couple times, and I hit bottom over and over. I was set to self-destruct, determined and delighted to snuff the chaos inside and out. 

But then I got high. And everything started to change. 

Call it “just getting high”, but I like to call it what it is - fucking existential relief. Each exhale released my shoulders from meta-physical tons of baggage, the wench between my temples let out some slack, and my thoughts slowed down enough to wait patiently in single file. Tension I didn’t even know I was carrying evaporated, knots in my mind and muscles came undone, I felt myself simultaneously lighten up and sink more deeply into the moments in front of me. Present. Content. At ease. If you’re unaccustomed to feeling well, you're likely unaware how badly you actually feel. You just don’t know. You really can’t know. Cannabis helped me discover a way away from my pain and into my life. I began to imagine a way to carve out a spot for who I was and who I was going to be in between the lives that others were so enthusiastically designing for me. I could endure the colorless boredom and perfectly starched discipline of private school, the intensely real torture of hyper-competitive high school sports, the hypocrisy and out-right insanity of Southern Baptists, as well the pressures of my well-meaning parents - as long as I could escape for a just a little while into a world that actually made sense to me. God, the relief. 

The fucking relief. 

One night of  letting go amidst a lifetime of white knuckling can really do wonders. Try it sometime. It’s spiritual. 

We made our pilgrimage on back roads in the middle of the night with overloaded seats and over-driven speakers. Racing and winding through the dark with a hymnal of burnt CDs, the brights flipped for seeing; not searching. Our cars and clothes were always second-hand, but we were all together something brand new. Taking refuge at a house party, sharing sanctuary in the circle, no one would ever find us out but ourselves. Young minds with their hearts in the stars. Flowers. Fellowship. Friends. It’s truly a way to become. 

Those moments still give me pause. They are still so close and important to me. I felt seen, I felt alive, and that I could, with some luck, actually belong somewhere. I laughed, I created, I connected, I dreamt, I loved, I danced, I explored, I endured, I waited, I prayed, I cried, and was really able to grow into myself and my own life. I met people who made sense, who were inspiring and intriguing, who saw the same world I was seeing, and who were able to believe in and help build another one. A better one. And we all knew that what we were doing, how we were living, was going to be part of that new world. It was serenely revolutionary, a gentle evolution had begun. 

See unlike school, church, and other things that were made out to be crucially significant, I felt like, for the first time in my life, I was making meaningful friends and having meaningful experiences. I hadn’t had the thought before, but in my own mind, I was becoming a more meaningful person - to myself. Life was becoming deeper, richer, more intentional. More worth it. It felt like I was starting to lean into life, rather than retreat as before. I realized so much about myself, about feeling, about living. I got closer to people, art, emotion, and nature, and started to really get my feet wet in the stuff that makes life life. What makes humans human. All the secrets that survived. All the magic I had been missing. 

Cannabis didn’t exactly take my hand and introduce me to important people and moments, showing me the road to perfect, endless happiness and where to eat along the way. However, I can’t deny the spark that initiated so much change in my life. The plant could generate optimism, lightheartedness, and other really enjoyable, totally new feelings for me which, in turn, allowed new doors to open. I felt calm, well, and happy in ways I hadn’t quite accessed before, and this sensation continued to produce more of itself in my own life and the lives around me. A feedback loop of good energy between me and the rest of the cosmos began, and this is the shift that has propelled me ever since. Well-being leads us to more well-being. Momentum manifests. 

The plant is special. Even beyond what we know scientifically or allegorically, it has an unquantifiable magic about it in the way it connects us to experiences and to each other. There are so many concrete advantages to be excited about when it comes to legalizing and normalizing cannabis - economic growth, environmental sustainability, ongoing efforts towards equality and equity, and the litany of medical and health advantages. It seems that wherever humans have a problem, cannabis shows up to support us. 

But what we cannot project are the compounding benefits of more people having better lives, having access to genuine well-being, and the chance to own and thrive in their authentic joy. If we, as a civilization, were categorically happier critters, what could happen? If everyone felt and practiced more kindness, patience, pleasure, understanding, compassion, delight, intrigue, wonder, and love in this life - what do you think we might collectively uncover? If we were all to lighten up and let go, would the knots in our reality come undone and dissolve themselves? This is the magic I’m talking about; a liberating and inspiring sobriety from the weight of our habitual gravitas. The ability of cannabis to convert energy, to amplify vibrations, and to inspire an awe and affection for this life is as poignant as it is paramount to the human experience. And that's what this is about - if everyone felt a fraction better, how much better could the whole become? 

To find wellness through cannabis is not a new or unique story, but it's not easy to communicate exactly why it's so deeply important to so many of us. The plant has helped me heal from wounds I couldn’t reach on my own, led me to experiences, people, and opportunities I never could have imagined, and eventually submerged me into a life that I know is worth living, even when it's not easy. It is my hope that I’ve given language to something that many other people feel and know within themselves, that my story is something like yours, and that our insights are inclusive and something we can share. I want you to feel closer to the plant, yourself, and your life. To lean in, and accept, improve, and celebrate our time on the most exceptional rock in all the known universe. To move deeper into your own thrilling vitality, this sensational chance to be alive. And then share it.