Marijuana and unlocking the lucid mind

God made marijuana. Mankind made alcohol and cigarettes.

So ask yourself this, "Which do you trust?"

Bill Hicks also says of marijuana that it is illegal in the USA because the government there, "...doesn't want you to think!" He has a point. The combined quantity of illnesses and death caused by the 'abuse' of marijuana is...none. Zero. Zip.

Now compare that to how many deaths or other problems are caused each year by the abuse of alcohol or cigarettes. To help, let's put it over a statistically significant and controlled period of time.

Like ever. Ever ever ever. Since the dawn of time. Deaths by alcohol or cigarettes? Well, about 260,000 people die just from cancers caused by cigarettes every year. So, let's assume the bible is correct for a moment (I know, but just bear with me and suspend your disbelief).

The approximate quantity of deaths caused by cigarettes alone since the dawn of religion? 520,000,000.

Deaths caused by shmoking weed over the same period of time? Still zero.

Effect of alcohol on humankind? As of 1997, alcohol causes three to four per cent of global death and disability putting it on a level with measles, tuberculosis and malaria, and is five times more severe than illegal drugs in terms of impact on global health.

Compared to using a species of plant that grows happily in the wild and without chemical or genetic alteration? Still zero.

Goodness gracious me. Could it possibly be that the law and the facts of medicine aren't actually aligned? Why could that be? Hmmmm...let's see...who makes money out of legal pharmaceuticals? And who makes money out of illegal ones? They don't seem to be the same people. All the legal ones seem to be mostly conservative, and white, yet the majority of illegal pharma manufacturers seem to be voteless and black, at least at the sharp end of the supply chain...

This is an important blog, so forgive me flogging the dead horse there. But regardless of your personal feelings, beliefs, and moral stance on marijuana et al I need you to forget about the entire legal/illegal debate and focus solely on the effects of the herb. If you can't take it from me, then take it from Gandalf and the entire population of Hobbiton. As Saruman says to him, "Your love of the halflings' leaf has dulled your senses."

If you can't do this then you will miss the point, and that will be a shame.

Ironically though, the so-called "dullness" is highly sought after. It isn't really dullness though, more of a calmness...a calm. Every variety and strain of the flower has two basic effects according to which one of two overall varieties the plant is - indica, or sativa. One is a body 'high', the other a cerebral high, and growers are now so adept at cross-breeding that you can practically choose the ratio of cerebral to body 'high' in a particular plant and grow it that way.

Woah there. I'm in great danger of getting sidetracked into an entirely different blog entry. So, here's one of the reasons why I'm pro-Mary-Jane:

So I'm sat on the porch the evening before the stalker left town. He's out, busy, or otherwise occupied so I have a few moments to myself. I light up a joint, and immediately feel its warming, calming effect. There's also a feeling similar to when you have soap left on your face after a wash and the skin feels as if it's tightening. This is usually when a face-wide grin arrives.

Most important of all though, it calms down my mind - the same mind that races with a hundred thoughts at once as soon as I wake up in the morning. I can almost feel all the usual norms and preconceptions dismantling themselves as I relax further.

And then lateral thinking triggered the idea that hit me. I've been living my life as if I were already part of the invisible woman's family, when I'm not.

Naturally, because of the way my mind works, as soon as I wake up, I don't know at what time I needed to wake up in order to drop her daughter at school in the morning. I get anxiety. I want to surprise her with breakfast in bed, but I can't remember whether she told me if she was allergic to anything. Anxiety. It makes me want to remember to slip it into our next e-mail conversation. "BTW, do you like guacamole?"

Because getting together with the invisible woman includes being a father to her eight year-old daughter, it occurred to me that I've been thinking a lot about the responsibility of that situation as much as the nice stuff. Those morning anxieties have been prevalent throughout my day - I think she swims in the evenings, but where? What time? Do I need to drop her or pick her up? Do I need to help out with the homework? Can I use my initiative and cook a nice family dinner for everyone, or will that disrupt a routine that the invisible woman and her daughter already have in place?

There are hundreds, hundreds of mini-anxieties like this that have been plaguing me. Some in the background, almost subconscious, and others out in the open and all-consuming. But it took relaxing my mind for me to be able to realise that.

Partially in shock, I thought, "Well, that's the way I've been living my life for nearly a year now, but I'm not actually part of the family yet. So how would it feel to think, feel, and behave as if I weren't part of the family yet?" It struck me that the invisible woman probably wasn't thinking, feeling, and behaving in the same way. Plus, she wasn't expecting me to know the answers to all these questions any more than she was expecting me to go collect her daughter from swim class.

It was as if I'd been scrubbing the same saucepan in the kitchen sink, and then everything that was stuck to it all came away at the same time. I felt lifted, as if a huge part of angst had been cleanly and quickly amputated from me.

"She does not expect me to know all this. The only person forcing this expectation on me...is me," I concluded.

The next time I found myself worrying about whether it would be OK to have the daughter help me cook in the kitchen, throw around some sharp knives, deal with boiling water etc, I just told myself, "You don't need to know that yet, because you're not part of that family." It worked. I switched off the anxiety like a bedside lamp and suddenly I had a new way to be able to cope with the whole "invisible woman" situation. I've been doing this ever since, and I'm pleased to say that it's still working.

Now that's what I mean when I say "epiphany".

As soon as the penny had dropped I leaped out of the chair on the front porch and ran inside, leaving my cigarette behind (I'd finished the joint by then). I had to write this down before I forgot it. I started with a draft e-mail but that wasn't enough, so I went into blogger.com and started drafting this blog entry. Then I realised I should have left the house 20 minutes before in order to make it to a friend's house across town on-time. I zipped down to the subway station and as soon as I'd found a seat on the train I whipped out my notebook and continued writing. I also realised I was alone in the carriage and seconds later I was singing out loud to, "Let There Be Love" by Simple Minds. Out loud! And I'm not talking about a quiet hum along to the chorus either, I was belting it out, using my diaphragm like I'd been taught in music school almost 30 years before.

Removing that 'block' was like pulling the cork from an overturned bottle. Lateral thinking ensued with renewed vigour and the ideas started to pour out violently. I can only describe it as a creative 'rush'. I'd put beer in my coffee cup and couldn't help but chuckle out loud every single time I took a sip, thinking, "Mmmmm...good coffee...!" Out loud!!! Madonna's "The Beast Within" came on the iPod and I chuckled at that too, thinking, "Wow, the great thing about headphones is that when one of your ex-wife's cheesy songs comes on without warning, nobody else can hear it."

An idea for another blog popped into my head. I lowered my eyes to the page and began to write at Main Street, and the first time I looked up to see where I was, it was Spadina. I'd written non-stop for the entire journey.

I arrived at my friend's condo more than an hour after having the initial epiphany, but the ideas were still coming. My friend asked me a question regarding a home furnishing choice he needed to make, and I started blurting out ideas for things he could do to soup up his home. One after the other, unchecked, unpredictable, unstoppable. He ran to get his notepad and starting jotting down some of the ideas I was having. I couldn't switch it off, I just had to hang on and let it run its course. Minutes later I used the voice memo functionality on my iPhone to record an idea for a short story.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is one of the most significant breakthroughs I've had when it comes to dealing with G.A.D. But would I have had it without weed? Maybe, but certainly not as soon.