There’s a huge gap in this current writing. Something I’m not reporting.
I’ll start with my past experiences, while keeping the present ambiguous.
In high school I began smoking weed with my friend Joey. We would sit out on a chaise lounge in my mom’s backyard. Dad had left the scene years earlier. So, we’d smoke on the recliner and watch the lapping water of Lake Austin. In one memorable moment, when we got real pot and not oregano, Joey lost his mind when he noticed the space ships floating upwards across the lake. I humored him for a few minutes and went along with the “holy fuck, what’s that?” They were cars going up Mt. Bonnell Road on the other side of the lake.
We’d laugh about that still, but Joey died a year ago, joining his mom in the degenerative Huntington’s disease, which takes an ungodly amount of time to kill you. He suffered. We suffered around him. I had to opt out. But this was much later, when I was in my fifties. I tried to be part of his care team, I took him for haircuts and lunch. And then, I couldn’t anymore. I had a choice. I wasn’t required, and at some point, not even appreciated. The team fought on, raising money for awareness, for a cure. The cure never arrived.
But in those weeks before I left for prep school up East, Joey and I had some blissful moments together. When I returned to high school here in Austin, Joey was the only popular kid who stayed friendly to me. I had tried to escape Austin. I had tried to get higher, move on, escape velocity from the pull of my sick father, calling and harassing me when he was loaded. I did not escape.
I struggled through the first semester. Depression was not a word in my vocabulary yet. I was confused. Sad. Unable to concentrate on Spanish 101. I was failing. My advisor was a young woman whose only advice was to see the school counselor. He offered platitudes. Optimism about the Spring semester, when I could restart Spanish.
I had a great roommate. We had made a pact. We were not going to smoke dope, like most of our dorm. We were going to stick together and make it through this gruelling first semester in prep school. We studied during study hall, with Alice Cooper and Mott the Hoople providing the soft accompaniment. Spanish was not getting into the recesses of my mind. It was like a foreign language, even though I was from Texas, which, even then, was about half Hispanic. I took the failure like an arrow to my confidence. I was concerned that my brain simply was not working.
For Christmas, I stayed with my mom and sister in New York City. My dad wasn’t happy. The big house was sold. I had nowhere I wanted to go, back in Austin. New York was alive with punk and the arrival of The Talking Heads, The Cars, and The Ramones. It was a hell of a time to be in NYC. We were too young to get into CBGBs, but there it was. Dwight, my roommate, came up from New Jersey for a day of wonderleaping in the city. I bought a cheap electric guitar and carried it around in a triangular cardboard shipping box.
This was the last good moment on record. I mean, there were some amazing moments to come, high moments, but this was the point on the map where I lost my grip. The new semester gave me a new Spanish teacher from Barcelona. He spoke Catalan Spanish, with the “th” sound added everywhere. He was hilarious and bold. He was committed to helping me pass his class. I can still see his proud 5″ 7′ frame, with a puffed out chest, and dark wild hair. He was great. Spanish didn’t go any better for my brain, though, and this began to spiral me into a meltdown. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t understand much of what was happening. Chemically, I was losing momentum each week, as my poor grades kept coming, and my intervention tutoring sessions didn’t help. I was failing again.
Now, this is not the novel of my high school crack-up, that’s not where I’m headed here. I was seeking relief from the pressure and stress. Probably a lot more sadness than I’d like to admit. My father was drinking himself into the grave. There was nothing I could do about it. And in some fucked up administrative move, Dwight and I were separated. Two jocks wanted our double on the ground floor, so they could jump down on the weekend nights and go partying with the other stoners. Turns out, our dorm was known as the “stoner dorm.” What luck!
So, Dwight was taken out of my orbit. He was in a double with another stoner. It’s true, everyone in our dorm was into getting high. It was the late 70s. We were young white boys with an excess of money and ideas of how to break rules and create havoc.
I was kicked out of my dream academy two weeks before the end of my freshman year. I was caught smoking dope in my room on a Sunday afternoon with two other students. I was giving them a concert. A very high concert. I had my guitar from New York strapped on, and they were lying on my bed, pretending to be fans. We were extremely stoned. I kept turning up the music. Eventually, the wife of the tennis coach knocked on the door to make us turn down the music, and that was the end. Busted.
After years of recovery and therapy, I began to unravel the poor teenage boy’s fall from the heights. I crash-landed back in Austin, saw a terrible hippie therapist, and began cultivating an affinity for being high. Blissed out. Feeling no pain.
It might be argued that my mystical days have come again, with the legal variety now making the dosage and application so much more efficient. I’m going to say no more about it, but I will remind myself of a conversation during my most recent catastrophic collapse, “You might be self-medicating,” My friend, the life coach, said.
“I am, for sure.”
But, what’s the problem? Right? Am I delusional? Is the entire free world addicted to something? Pick your poison, right? Booze never had the same appeal. A good margarita, sure, but after a bit, it wears off, and the headache starts. So, gummy-variety delta 8, then 9, and then…
My ex-girlfriend’s friend gave me a tub of “canna-butter” as a thank you for some tech support I gave her with her PC. I was intrigued. It was Christmas break, and I had a loose schedule in my 100% remote marketing job. I had a great idea.
I made some of my “dad’s famous French toast.” And I used a small dollop of canna. It was delicious.
I went back to my computer and began using AI to apply for new jobs. As I was sitting there, wondering if I was going to notice anything effects, when I watched in amazement as my email inbox started magically filling up with “Got your resume” messages. I had forgotten that the AI was flooding job applications. “Holy crap,” I said aloud. And then it hit me. I was super high. Uncomfortably high. Like, “Now, what am I going to do with the rest of my day, high?”
I tried reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, but I couldn’t keep the thread. Okay, music usually calms me down. Nope. Maybe a movie? And, again, no. I was too high to make any art or even enjoy others’ art. A nap was indicated. Too high is no good. The butter would prove to be a gateway. Unlocking my mystical mind and pouring out of this… This… Masterpiece? Delusion?
Does it matter? Am I enjoying my life? Yes. In spite of my current financial issues and my shitty job, I’m happy. Alone, happy, and high. Wait, strike that.
Happy. In the moment. In the cosmic pocket.
