ForEverAfter
Ex-Bluelighter
0:00
I haven’t had any weed for six days which is like some kind of record for me. Can’t remember the last time I made it this far. I’ve been smoking five or six joints a day, minimum, for months despite the fact that I own a perfectly good vaporizer. In the end there were more roaches in the house than roaches. And I have a serious infestation problem. My cats catch multiple rats a day. They can hardly keep up with the booming rodent population. Sometimes they eat so many rats that they are disinterested in cat food. Anyway, being really stoned makes me go on tangents.
I’m not a tidy person. You might even call me a slob. I blame it on the booze and the drugs, but really I’m lazy when I’m sober too. I used to ash on the table, the carpet, other furniture. The house was one big giant ashtray. The floor was always scattered with bits of rolling paper and clumps of ash. The carpet decorated with stains. Over time, the filth narrowed in on me. The area on the couch that didn’t have ash or beer spilt all over it shrank and shrank until I could hardly move while seated. My point is that smoking is fucking dirty; especially if you’re lazy, and everybody is lazy when they’re stoned. Same goes for alcohol. The amount of waste produced, and caused, by alcohol is massive. Directly: bottle tops, corks, bottles, cans, cups, glasses; and indirectly: spilt food, beer, cordial, piss, vomit, etc. Alcoholics and perpetual smokers frequently neglect basic hygiene. Plates go unwashed. Carpet stains are ignored. In extreme cases, houses turn into swamps. For alcohol and weed, the ratio of sloppiness to waste production could do with improvement; to say the least.
I put half a gram of bud into my coffee grinder and pulverize it until it becomes such a fine powder that I can no longer hear the pieces hitting against the blades, then measure out two equal sized heating plates. The vaporizer in my hand I suddenly forget what temperature I used to set it on, which is annoying because I found the perfect setting once. A single degree that ensured the process was both gradual and efficient; providing me with just the right amount of vapour over time. The brain cells responsible for that memory, evidently destroyed by alcohol.
Three-hundred and forty degrees, Fahrenheit, seems like a good place to start. I have a vague idea that it was somewhere in that vicinity. The bag inflates in slow motion. It appears to take for ever, the anticipation towards being stoned compromising my patience. I watch as the plastic separates further and further apart. The contents of the bag are completely invisible. This seems wrong. Like, I remember there being a thin mist rather than nothing. Though, I doubt this memory. It too is vague.
I remove the bag and put a lid on it, trapping the vapour inside. A second bag is then attached to the vaporizer. As I slowly inhale the first, I watch the second inflate. It is like watching my lung, outside my body; an exterior plastic organ. The vapour is smooth. I breathe it in, deep into my lungs, and hold it for a couple of minutes. When I exhale, I don’t feel all that stoned. The temperature isn’t correct. I consider the fact that I may not be stoned at all. I stare out the window, zoning out, wondering why I am not stoned. The sky looks beautiful. I realize that I am stoned. It feels weird. Still, not strong like a bong or a joint; but, more peaceful, cleaner.
I remove the second bag and put a lid on it, replacing it with the first. While I’m at it, I experiment with the temperature; three-hundred and fifty-five degrees, Fahrenheit. Again, as I’m inhaling I watch as the bag inflates. This time it is full of dense vapour. Thicker than mist, more like slightly dissipated smoke. By the time it is full, I can hardly see through the bag for the grey cloud inside.
The vapour makes me cough my lungs out. I have to put a lid on the bag half-way through to regain composure. It has been three days since I’ve had a cigarette and six days since I’ve had a joint. I walk into the bathroom, taking the bag with me, and start hocking shit up into the sink. The vapour clears me out. I keep inhaling and coughing and spitting. By the time I’m done with the third bag, I can breathe again. It feels like a chimney sweep shoved a dust broom down my throat. I am absurdly stoned. My head is swimming. It feels like my scull has been opened up and somebody is massaging my brain. I go back to the lounge and grab the fourth bag from my vaporizer, also full of whitish-grey smoke. I sit on the front step of my house, keeping the bag closed by pinching the opening with my thumb and forefinger, intermittently inhaling and coughing and spitting into the garden-bed. One of my neighbour’s kids goes by riding a bicycle. He stares at me like I’m some kind of fascinating creature, far removed from his collective perceptions of suburban life. I don’t like the way teenagers look at me; like I’m something to aspire to, simply because I am not their parents. It reminds me of my own mentor figures. The older brothers, the old hippies, the friend’s parent who grew weed in his backyard. By the time drugs came along, I had decided that life was not for me. Disillusioned by the fact that, one day, I would be like my parents; more or less. Then, when this alternate life came along I knew not to question it. For, it is better to be deluded than disillusioned.
These people, up the drug-chain, that I aspired to as a teenager; they were just as flawed as my parents if not more. If I had really thought about the reality of their lives, rather than dreaming, I would have been able to see that. This kid on the bicycle, he reminds me of myself. He also reminds me of the countless kids who have looked up to me as some sort of tripped-out super hero. No matter how plainly obvious my misery, it appeals – this lifestyle – because it is not life as we know it. That is why people take psychedelic drugs. They are perception altering. Drugs are not good per say; just different. Change is as good as a holiday. If inebriation was normality, than sobriety would be a trip; which is exactly what I have discovered, since getting sober. This kid on the bicycle, his life is a trip for me; and my life is a trip for him. Being sober is not bad per say; just different. Aside from chemical tolerance, the major reason that you feel more stoned when you haven’t partaken for some time is contrast. To go from a crystal clear sober state to a blob of jelly is far more satisfying than to go from a blob of jelly to a blob of jelly; and, along the same lines, going from a blob of jelly to being crystal clear is more satisfying than going from crystal to crystal. This is why moderation makes sense. Not because you have to be sober in order to be high, but because they are both equally enjoyable. Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that being sober was a nightmare. It’s not. In many ways, I prefer it to being high. To not appreciate sobriety is a depressing notion. The thing is, my life used to be an actual nightmare; now that it isn’t, neither is sobriety. I feel like I have institutionalized myself by self-medicating because, for a long time, I have been unable to cope with reality. The idea of releasing myself upon the world frightened me, just as psych patients or prisoners are often terrified of the outside world. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. I don’t need drugs to shield me from the nightmare. The nightmare is gone.
Today, I get stoned because I want to get stoned. And it feels great. I am relaxed, which doesn’t mean that I’m normally anxious by contrast. The desire to be stoned is not indicative of stress any more than the desire to have a hot bath or do some yoga is. Animals are naturally on edge; prey and predator. This state of extreme relaxation is not how I should feel, without an anxiety disorder. It is relaxed upon relaxed, upon relaxed, layers and layers of sedation; far removed from the natural order of things. Real-life considerations are irrelevant. A wolf and a lamb could get stoned together and not have any issues, theoretically, because neither of them would be thinking about their daily concerns. Of course, the wolf would probably get the munchies and bite of the lamb’s head; but that is beside the point. These instinctive considerations are meaningless for humans. I do not need to concern myself with hunting or being hunted. The predators and prey in my world are, predominantly, financial and emotional. In the animal kingdom prey is always on the lookout for predator and predator is always on the lookout for prey. It never ends. That is why wolves and lambs don’t take drugs; because, in the animal kingdom, the survival instinct cannot be switched off.
The appeal of being stoned is that you don’t give a fuck. Clarity is achieved by removing all of the layers of bullshit that we, as responsible and functioning people, have to deal with; it is achieved by turning off the human survival instinct. I take drugs so I don’t have to care about myself. Just like parents hire sitters so they can have a night without constantly caring for their kids. The problem with my scenario is there is no sitter. Without moderation, I am an unsupervised child. That’s why the house becomes a swamp; why everything falls apart: because, sometimes I need to care. On the other, hand sometimes I don’t; when all my responsibilities are taken care of, for example.
This is not one of those times. I am moving house early tomorrow morning and I haven’t begun packing. Earlier in the day, I moved my cats to the new property so the commotion won’t disturb them. I had to put them in the garage, to avoid them anxiously pissing on the carpet. I got my friend to give me a lift. But the garage turned out to be easily escapable. There were holes everywhere – in the roof, in the walls, under the door – and my cats are like Houdini.
We patched up the escape routes as best as possible with bricks and bits of wood, but I was still worried about them escaping. My friend assured me that they’d be fine, convincing me to return home and get packing. Writing this, though, I am concerned again. I can’t help but thinking of them pushing their way out of the garage and running onto the street or something. I am not stressed; I just know that I couldn’t forgive myself if one of them died. I love my cats.
+2:00
I catch public transport to the house to check on them. It takes forty five minutes to get there. I am not worried. I am perfectly calm. Without the weed, I would be experiencing negative emotions; frustration, regarding the long journey, and fear about my cats. I feel none of that. Nothing bothers me in this state. I am at peace.
When I get to the house, I go straight for the garage. Before I get there, I see a dark cat-sized silhouette scuttling through the shadows. It looks like the fattest of my feline friends. But I can’t be sure. Whatever it is, it disappears before I can get close.
There is no sign of an escape. The bricks are in the same position I left them. I have to duck inside, quickly closing the door behind me. There is no electricity, yet; the garage is dark.
I use my mobile phone as a flashlight; it has a range of one or two meters. After a quick scan, I conclude that there are no cats; that they’ve all escaped. Still, I don’t panic. I keep looking, peering under table tops and inside cabinets. Eventually I find two of them, sitting side by side on a shelf near the ceiling; their eyes glowing, illuminated by the phone. The fat cat is nowhere to be seen. It baffles me as to how he has managed to escape, considering his size. Then, just as I am about to go on a search for him in the garden, he leaps down from the rafters – dropping about three meters onto concrete – and landing directly beside my foot.
Shining the light up, I realize there is an area near the ceiling obscured by a small platform. Perhaps, there is also a hole up there that we didn’t see. In complete darkness, I stand up on top of a rotten workbench and stick my head up into a small opening. A wig of cobwebs resting on top of my head, the tiny feet of insects crawling along my neck, I raise the phone and find nothing.
Whatever that silhouette was in the garden, remains a mystery; most likely the new arch-nemesis of my feline friends: another neighbourhood cat, another endless series of territorial battles. The cats seem okay. I pat each of them, briefly, before heading back home.
The entire journey takes roughly two hours. It is now about eleven o’clock at night, and I have so much to do. Too much; I don’t want to think about it. The dishes aren’t even clean. I need to clean them, dry them, and then wrap them all in packing paper before putting them in a box. Same goes for my dirty clothes. I am going to be up all night. So, I figure I might as well get stoned again. It’s been four hours since I hit the vaporizer and the effects are well past their peak.
+4:00
I do the other quarter gram, on three-hundred and fifty degrees, Fahrenheit. By the end of the first bag I am so fucked that I hardly know where I am. Way more stoned than I intended. I cough my lungs out again. I take a long time with the first bag. The second is almost bursting it is so full. It destroys me. Halfway through, I realize I have to stop. But it’s too late. The third bag is half full. I can’t stop. I have to keep going. So I inhale a huge lungful and hold it. The vapour tries to rip its way out of my body. I hold it back like restraining a wild dog. Then I cough, my eyes watering, stumbling around the room, as I force myself to finish the bag. I turn off the vaporizer and take the last bag out onto the front step. I am hallucinating pretty hard by this point. Bright patterns made of primary colour flashing across the night sky. I glance across my garden: the broken fence; overgrown grass. And I realize it was a good day to get stoned. Nice way to end my tenancy. Bit of drug-induced closure. I’m going to miss my house. But at the same if change is a trip; from sobriety to intoxication; moving from one state of mind to another; then, moving home qualifies too.
Physically relocating yourself is a trip. People say it’s one of the most stressful things in life because people don’t like change. Change threatens the delicate balance they call happiness or contentment. The same goes for people who fear psychedelics, people who are afraid of bad trips; and, people who fear sobriety. If you twist your spine into the shape of an S, and never exercise, eventually it will reset itself like that. Given enough time, people can grow so accustomed to routine that they become the routine, both physically and psychologically. Just as someone with bad posture is incapable of straightening themselves out at will, so are those who limit themselves to a small portion of their potential for fear of change. People don’t like drugs because they are afraid of them. That goes for everyone: D.E.A. agents; priests; concerned parents; teachers. People who oppose the use of drugs without ever partaking are lying to themselves and – the smart ones – they know they are. Whether or not you repress it, everybody wants to do drugs. You can convince yourself you don’t. But really you do. What human activity has existed for the entire length of civilization, has been as widespread, and as culturally influential, and not been a positive thing? The anti-drug lobbyists must be curious, neglecting themselves of such a large part of the human experience.
These days we get called addicts. People look down upon us. A lot of them live these totally fucked up loveless emotionless repressed lives and, yet, they judge us for something that makes us happy; something that has existed for thousands of years; something that arguably sparked the evolution of man; created religion; inspired artists. Throughout the millennia, countless civilizations have used a variety of intoxicants to induce altered states of consciousness; as long as we have records, there are cultural indications, somewhere on the planet, of drug use. One thing I find really bewildering is the non-drug people who go to a different country and indulge in some ceremony that involves illegal drugs, only to come back and maintain their stance as if it’s a tourist activity; like, it’s okay for people in South America to do drugs but not for people in their own country.
In Australia, you can legally order some illegal stimulant as long as you belong to a religion that exists almost solely on the ivory coast of Africa. Basically, if you’re African then you can take this drug. But if you’re English, or Chinese, or Irish, you can’t; because drugs are legally acknowledged to be associated with religion. The association between illegal substances and various religions is so common that it must be acknowledged. So, can I start my own religion – in this free country – because drugs connect me to God, as I genuinely believe they do? Can I create a religion around psychedelic drugs – in this so called free country – and consume them under the religion act? No. They don’t look down upon those drug users. Why this discrimination? It all comes down to social evolution. The aboriginal communities of the world are the ones internationally exempt from local laws pertaining to drugs. We take it for granted that Native Americans are allowed to use peyote for religious purposes. It doesn’t seem weird. If I Chinese person openly smoked opium in Melbourne, that would be totally bizarre. Because China is a developed country and this exemption only applies to relative primitive, in terms of industrial development and what not, cultures. Drugs are incompatible with capitalism. Drugs show you what is really important. The reason they don’t exist, as a socially acceptable concept, is because developed countries have lost their connection to the universe. The human race, for the most part, is side-tracked; off on a never ending perpetual crash course towards the trophy for most impressive species. And if you’re on the team, that’s that; there’s no swapping sides. I am white therefore there is no drug I can legally consume except for alcohol. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s racist and it’s ignorant.
People who look down on drug users and make assumptions based on inexperience, fuck them; I’m tired of being perceived as a burden when I’m high. I’m sick of this world filtering out every positive experience that the drug world has produced. Newspapers are always full of drug busts and overdoses. In the paper today, I read a comment in the voice section that said: “young people do not think they’re invincible to the side-effects of drugs… their addiction compels them to continue using. Most hate the fact that they are unable to stop themselves.” First, who the fuck is writing this, speaking for hundreds of millions of people; categorizing all drug-users into one stereo-type? And, second, would they publish the opposite opinion? If you wrote in and said: “young people do not think they’re invincible to the side effects of drugs… they just enjoy the positive effects produced so much that they get a bit carried away sometimes. On the whole, users are fairly responsible. What you see in the paper are the worst case scenarios?” Fuck no. Because the opinion of drugs being relatively safe is so unpopular that you can’t even voice it. It has to be a secret, only heard by select ears. I have to pretend to my extended family that I don’t do drugs, because it is something I should be ashamed of. That’s what society teaches me; what the media teach me; what I observe in the world around me. I have to hide myself from the world, for fear of legal consequences, because the world doesn’t like what I am. But Native American people and people from the Ivory Coast, they don’t have to worry about any of that shit; why, because I should know better being from a developed country?
I was sitting beside a woman at the bus stop today, looking particularly presentable; white shirt, suit pants, etc. She took a shine to me despite not being able to speak English. I guess my non-threatening appearance was a refreshing change from the usual lunatics that hang around the station. Obviously she hadn’t seen me spitting mouthfuls of wine at people like a cobra. Anyway, we had this weird wordless conversation. She started talking to me without words; miming and making noises to compensate for her linguistic limitations. I understood what she meant, and replied with English words. But, that made me feel like that kid talking to Lassie; like we were different species. We weren’t different species and my words meant nothing to her. If she had been speaking Chinese to me, I would have found it confusing and mildly annoying. So, I started miming and making noises and facial expressions too. The old lady; she commented on a man walking through heavy traffic, despite the presence of an easily accessible underpass. Her ability to convey complex thoughts through universally comprehended mannerisms astounded me. I agreed, noting that people these days were reckless and idiotic: although my performance was less elegant; more of a pantomime. A man screamed through heavy traffic, swerving across three lanes and almost causing an accident. The old lady; she said, you’re right people are idiots. We laughed. And on it went, a very ordinary conversation conducted in a very unusual way.
If she knew I used drugs; if she knew I was stoned: it would have been very different. The way I dress, and look, I’m weirdly approachable despite being a nut-job. I wear collared button up shirts and have a fairly conservative haircut. I wear glasses. I am softly spoken and I speak well. You might assume, having glanced at me, that I am a nerd. And, perhaps I am. But I also like my drugs. People on the street assume that I don’t do drugs, when I’m acting respectably, just like people on the street assume that junky-looking folk are on drugs even when they’re not. This is part of the reason I dress like this and act the way I do; because I like to be approachable. At the same time, it annoys me that I have to exist within such a broad comfort zone for the sake of having access to a larger portion of the population. Junky types don’t care what you look like. I’ve found that people lower down on the financial ladder tend to be more open to people at the top than people at the top are to them. I can start a conversation with a guy with tattoos and a beer in his hand, regardless of whether or not I am in respectable mode or I’m pissed off my fucking head. Poor people don’t discriminate, so much. If you go to India you can pretty much live in people’s house. They’ll feed you and shit. What little they have, they are more likely to share than someone in Beverly Hills who has everything. I have to conform to this ideal of presentation in order for the judgemental types to give me the time of day. But it’s worth it. This wordless interaction with the old Asian woman is priceless.
Dressing like a businessman does not compromise my individuality. Every sub-culture has a fashion element and an attitude. The hippies wore flowers in their hair and celebrated peace. But the flowers in the hair and the peace are two separate things. One of them is fashion related. And the other is political. The same goes for punk, emo, goth, etc; they all have an outfit and an orientation. The attitude is more important than the costume. I’d go as far as saying that the costume is stupid. I see people walking around with chains connecting their belts to some sort of clip on their pants, piercings in their face like pieces of shrapnel, haircuts that appear to be randomly generated by some sort of malfunctioning hair monster. And, I’ve got to say I don’t get it. I don’t understand vanity either; why so many women are consumed with thoughts relating to their physical appearance. I say women because women are vain. Personally, I don’t find it appealing. It’s just as weird for a guy to wear make-up as it is for a girl. But if a heterosexual guy wore make-up, for the same reasons as women, the girl would say he was a freak. Laugh him, mock him. Maybe she should mock herself. Or, alternatively, just take a big shit on the equal rights movement; the part, of course, that doesn’t pertain to her. God forbid. People say they want equality, but really they want more. It’s always the people who have less that say they want equality. They demand to not be discriminated against. Equality becomes not about issues for both parties, but issues pertaining to the underdog. The compromise is one-directional, which ends up throwing it off balance in the other direction. Women take power of men, black over white, etc. The only way for this to end, as far as I can see it, is the normalization of everything. For men and women to be equal there needs to be no difference between the two. Cosmetics are off balance. They shouldn’t be. I’ve argued this with people before and they said that women wear make-up because they want to. It’s not because history has dictated that they be sexually subservient to men; and spend enormous amounts of time grooming themselves while we sit around and scratch our nuts. They don’t do it for men. They do it for themselves; they do it for other women. I’ve heard this repeatedly. And, maybe it’s true. I don’t think so, personally. But it doesn’t matter. The point is: it is a social convention that is gender specific, just like the ability to consume peyote is a social convention that is race specific.
Depending on genetics, it is pre-decided for us what we can do and what we can wear. There are different laws for different races within single societies; a social faux-pas for a man may be perfectly acceptable for a woman. We discriminate legally, sexually, socially and politically. What is important is not what people look like, what colour their skin is, or what they chose to wear; what is important is who they are. Fashion is one of the most meaningless of man’s pursuits. Hairstyles are a waste of time. It says a lot about a person, the amount of time they devote to grooming themselves. I am a slob, which is by no means something to aspire to, and I dress plainly. But, at least I’m not oozing with vanity. My appeal, if indeed I have any, stems solely from my personality. Those old science fiction films in which future civilizations wore the same costume, although lame and overdone, were making the observation that social enlightenment goes hand in hand with the disposal of vanity among many other things. What’s weird about those films is that the future societies throw away the positive with the negative. They are emotionless, like robots.
In my opinion, enlightenment is bliss not tedium. The future of our species, if we survive to see it, will hopefully consist of happy people living full and free lives without discrimination. If you take a person and remove vanity along with all of the rest of their negative attributes, you wouldn’t be left with a statue. Heaven is not inevitably boring, because nothing bad ever happens; good things are interesting too. The world we live in, without murder and rape, would be just as beautiful. Evil is not required for good to exist; it is only required for the labels. Good doesn’t need an opposite. Enlightenment is not achieved by transcending matter and becoming pure energy. This makes as much sense as the literal story of Jesus as the son of God.
Enlightenment is a state of mind, achieved by transcending the distinction between matter and energy; transcending the distinction between man and woman; mammal and tree; star and planet. These things they don’t cease to exist as they become one – the individual parts remain, unopposed, but you can see them joined together into life. You understand that everybody is everybody and everything is everything. Adherence to sub-culture dictated costume-design or gender-specific social conventions has no place, the more we advance – spiritually – as a species. Though, I believe drugs are integral for spiritual advancement; religions without drugs are a dangerous thing. If Christians smoked marijuana for spiritual purposes there would not have been so many wars. The drug is needed to shepherd religion. Without intoxicants, man will assume power over religion and the real purpose of spirituality will be lost over time. The aboriginal societies that use drugs for spiritual purposes are, in many ways, more evolved than we; they have yet to lose the plot; they are not destroying the entire planet. We could learn something from these so-called primitive civilizations, rather than treating them as mere curiosities.
+5:30
It is one o’clock in the morning. I have eight hours to pack up the entire house. But, I couldn’t be bothered thinking about that now. I’m going to go vaporize some more weed. One way or another I’ll get the stuff moved in. There’s no need to stress about it. Better to get stoned now, than do it later when I have to lift shit in and out of the truck with my brother. Being stoned like this feels amazing, by far the best stone I’ve had this year. Vaporizing; for the win. It’s crazy that I always end up returning to smoke, because of convenience; usually, I’m so lazy that setting up the vaporizer is too much of a hassle. The transition from smoke to vapour has been difficult, but I’ve got to take a stance. Fuck the slight inconvenience. I don’t want to burn holes in the carpet of my new place; don’t want to have ash everywhere. And joints are horribly inefficient, you lose so much smoke; balloon-style vaporizers, on the other hand, lose nothing. I stopped using bongs long ago. There’s nothing worse than dirty bong water especially when you spill it on something. There’s something really disgusting about combining burnt material with water. I’ve used so many filthy bacteria ridden bongs; had black water splash up against my face countless times; found tar on my lips like a chocolate milkshake. Smoking bongs is a really filthy habit; more often than not people keep them in pretty questionable conditions. They also turn weed into junk. If you mix weed with tobacco, as most people do who smoke it through bongs, the chance of becoming a total junky for the shit goes way up. There’s a big difference between people who smoke joints, or vaporize, and people who smoke bongs. The desperation is thicker with the bong user: the need to smoke cones, or bowls or whatever you call them, until the end of time; rather than just having a joint and chilling out. This is a generalization, obviously; I have encountered bong users that manage to partake moderately. It just seems to me that there’s a subtle crack-head element to the bong user. When I smoked bongs, even without tobacco, it was very different; more of a compulsion, than an inkling.
Vaporizing is the least addictive way to consume weed. I think that’s another reason that it’s difficult to transition; because I want to be addicted. My addiction to marijuana has served as an emotional blanket for over a decade. The idea of not being compelled to get high bothers me, to some extent, because I don’t have an excuse any more. When I vaporize weed, I do it because I want to: which means that I can’t do it all the time; because I don’t want to, despite how much I want to want to. It’s something that frightens me about sobriety in general: that I might realize the error of my ways and decide to go straight permanently. Really sobriety always points me towards moderation. Being an addict is something I don’t want. It is a choice to become addicted; a bad decision orchestrated during a moment of weakness. When you’re a hopeless addict, you can’t help it. You have to get fucked up every day. Well, I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to get fucked up when I want to get fucked up and be sober when I want to be sober. Addiction is automation. I want to be free.
The pot-head phase of my life must come to an end. Being stoned every day is not an admirable quality. I’m getting too old to be an irresponsible stoner. I need to get shit together; get fucking proactive; improve the quality of my life. I don’t want to be sober all the time, either. I want to be a drug user not a drug addict. I don’t want to lose weed. I love it. I want to be a guy that gets high occasionally, but has it in control; a recreational user. I’m tired of calling myself a junky.
+6:00
I empty the remains of the vaporized weed into a zip-lock bag, so I can make into edibles at another date, and grind up another quarter of a gram vaporizing at three-hundred and forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Play the old beat the clock, bag-swapping game. That’s why I put a quarter of a gram in the tray, because that is the most that will fit and, when I get started there’s no turning back.
+7:00
I am what some people might describe as too stoned. This guy used to try and convince me that there was a limit to the effects of marijuana; a plateau that you reach after six cones or so. Anything beyond that, being pointless; the high you achieve a result of the lack of oxygen to your brain. Obviously this is bullshit. If you eat four grams worth of edibles you will be fucked out of your brain. Similarly if you vaporize a gram of weed in short succession you get more high than possible via joint or bong. The amount of weed you have to smoke, to achieve the same effect, will make you sick. When joints aren’t being inhaled, they keep burning away. And it’s much more difficult to keep two lungs full of smoke. Vapour isn’t as hot, which means it’s less harsh on the body. Smoke is over two-hundred degrees Celsius, I think. Nobody drinks water that is two-hundred degrees Celsius. This is why people use bongs, to cool the water, or long pipes for the same reason. Smoke is just too hot. Vapour isn’t. It doesn’t feel like it is bad for you, like it is lacerating the inside of your throat like a hurricane-inhalant full of tiny airborne particles of glass. People weren’t meant to inhale smoke; we are not designed for it. It is not a co-incidence that the carcinogenic properties of marijuana are released when heated past two-hundred degrees Celsius. Marijuana is not carcinogenic; smoke is.
There should be an alternative way to consume tobacco. I’m not sure if anybody’s attempted to vaporize it, or if there have been any studies done on the subject. It’d be worth a try, as a method to help tobacco smokers quit. Tobacco ruins weed. It really does. Tobacco is worse for weed than the bong is. It also changes the effect in negative ways. Paranoia is associated with marijuana, but from my experience it stems more from the combination of tobacco and marijuana rather than marijuana itself. Personally, I don’t get paranoid from vaporizing or eating; most of it has occurred due to smoking weed mixed with tobacco through bongs. If drugs had personalities, the mushroom would be a happy little critter, playful and a mischievous. LSD would be the mad hatter, or some similarly deranged mad man. Tobacco, I don’t know. It’s a parasite that feeds off people and offers nothing in return. It’s a hypnotist; a salesman; there is nothing good about it. Tobacco is dark. It is a void. It has no personality. I keep seeing cigarette butts on the ground and part of me wants to grab them and just have a drag, but I can’t do that. Fucking awful drug, nicotine; I have no interest in it.
There is no way to justify taking research chemicals or amphetamines; anything that doesn’t exist in nature shouldn’t be consumed. LSD, LSA, psilocybin, psilocin, mescaline, muscimol, and opium have been consumed for so long they cannot be harmful when consumed with moderation. MDMA, or methelyenedioxymethamphetamine, pretty sure I spelt that wrong, on the other hand is one of an infinite number of chemical constructions. They can’t all be good for us. At least with MDMA, you have a good number of decades as a trial run. Consuming research chemicals is pretty fucking stupid. And amphetamines are downright toxic. They make people go crazy. They are like a slow working acid. Your skin melts off at an imperceptible rate. Days pass; weeks; months: until one day you look in the mirror and discover that you’re just a skeleton. I love speed but it is poison.
Natural psychedelic drugs aren’t poisons, as far as I’m concerned and there is no convincing me otherwise. I believe that they are meant for our consumption. Nothing is accidental. Humans aren’t capable of interrupting the master plan, whatever it happens to be. If we destroy ourselves, that is part of it; just as the demise of the dinosaurs was part of our evolution. We were meant to evolve from animals to hunter-gatherers and discover psychedelic fungi.
Drugs are part of God’s plan. Join my church. If you don’t wear any pants and you live in a tent, you get to smoke bud in public. It’s the new religion. Keep in mind that you have to be of European ancestry to qualify for membership. Caucasian, yes; I’m sorry about that; it’s gender specific.
+7:45
Got about six hours left to pack up the entire house. Guess I’m going to be just chucking shit into boxes as I always do. Still very stoned; going to watch the new episode of Community.
+7:50
Going to vaporize one last bit of bud and make it an even gram; I set the vaporizer to three-hundred and forty-four degrees Fahrenheit.
+8:15
Hallucinating like crazy, some of the strongest visuals I’ve ever had from weed. Smoking weed causes you to retain shit in your lungs, vaporizing weed cleans you out. Been coughing constantly when I inhale; don’t know if it’s true that this gets you more stoned. But it feels like it.
+8:30
While watching Community, I fall asleep.
+12:00
I wake up, still a little stoned from the night before. It is seven thirty in the morning. I have an hour and a half to pack up the entire house. Frantically I start racing from room to room throwing things into boxes without thinking. I discover two ounces of long lost dried mushrooms and the missing lids for my vaporizer bags, among many other treasures. My brother arrives an hour late, due to the fact that he is also a habitual stoner; and, somehow, I have finished packing by the time he arrives.
Moving takes all day.
+18:00
I arrive at the new house to find my fat cat, the one I thought escaped, outside the garage. I follow the sounds of his voice to a bush. He sticks his head out and makes an annoyed sound. I still can’t work out how he managed to escape, and why the others stayed put. It doesn’t matter, though: he’s not going anywhere; he is happy to stay in the bush until we have finished moving.
+25:00
I chop up half a gram in my coffee grinder. I don’t want to get into the habit of getting stoned all the time, but it’s been a long day. I’ve been lifting fridges and washing machines in and out of a truck for the past six or seven hours, with – maybe – three hours sleep.
Three-hundred and forty-four degrees, Fahrenheit, is a nice balance. I fill up three bags with vapour and put lids on them all. This way, I don’t have to play beat-the-clock. I can take my time, giving the vapour time to cool down some. Still, it is harsh. No matter how long I hold it in, I exhale visible clouds. Each bag is a third of a third of half a gram, or one eighteenth of a gram. I inhale each bag in three breaths, making each breath a third of a third of a third of half a gram, or one fifty-fourth of a gram. Every breath fucks me up. After two bags, or six puffs, I am fucked. I leave the third bag sitting there for a while, my mind unravelling as I listen to the Beatles; Lennon is singing, “Nothing’s going to change my world,” over and over again like a mantra. My cat, the girl, she runs into the room making squeaky noises and leaps onto my lap purring before I pat her. She has grown accustomed to the new territory already. I haven’t. The fuse box is all fucked up. The hot water isn’t going yet. I haven’t had a bath in over two years, on account of not having one at my old place. All I wanted to do was get stoned and soak in the tub. The light in the bathroom’s out on account of the fuse situation, but I don’t care. I just want to lie there in the dark, stoned off my brain, and relax.
After this long day, manoeuvring furniture around doorways and dropping things on my foot, I was more than a little frustrated when I realized there were some issues with the house; worldly concerns were weighing me down. I wanted to get stoned and have a bath, but now that I’m stoned I don’t care. Hot water would be amazing right now, but I don’t need it. I don’t need anything.
I finish the third bag.
+28:00
I do another round of vapour bags then check on the water on last time to find that it is hot. But I can’t have a bath, because the plug doesn’t fit. I walk around the whole house looking for another plug, but I can’t find anything. The plug tapers. I turn it upside down and it fits perfectly. The bath starts to fill up. I am using a lamp to see in the otherwise darkened bathroom. I pry the nub of a burnt candle off my coffee table and put it on the bathroom sink.
The water is hot; I ease my way into it as candle shadows dance on the tiled walls. My cat, the fat one, the escapee, jumps up on the rim of the bath. He always watches with curiosity, this ritual. Since it’s been two years, he’s extra curious. As he walks along the thin edge of the bath, I imagine him falling in and thrashing around like the ferret in Big Lebowski; my cat clawing me to pieces; ripping my dick into shreds. But he doesn’t fall. He jumps up onto the sink and hangs over the edge staring down at me. It looks like he’s going to dive. But he doesn’t. Eventually he leaves and I close my eyes, curling up into a ball.
Through the walls I can hear a muffled version of Karma Police by Radiohead. I inhale slowly, taking a long continuous breath, my body rising up to the surface of the water; and exhale, my chest sinking to the bottom. As I rise, my head submerges far enough to expose my ears and I can hear the song muffled. As I fall, my head goes under and it becomes distorted. Like an adult in Charlie Brown. This goes on. The playlist I made for myself repeats at least four times. I empty some of the cooling bathwater and replace it with boiling hot soup. I am basically in the womb. My thoughts have slowed down to a steady crawl.
I remember a dream I had two nights ago, about the rapture. I had to leave the damned behind. In the dream, I wondered why I had been chosen, given the sort of person I am. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t deserve it. When I woke up, it felt like I had been touched by God; that a divine presence had once again been communicating to me through my dreams. Again, I don’t deserve it. Then, maybe I do. Maybe everyone does. Turnaround by Nirvana is playing through the wall.
When I open my eyes the candle has gone out. My fingers are prune-sausage links.
I get out and vaporize the rest of the weed.
I haven’t had any weed for six days which is like some kind of record for me. Can’t remember the last time I made it this far. I’ve been smoking five or six joints a day, minimum, for months despite the fact that I own a perfectly good vaporizer. In the end there were more roaches in the house than roaches. And I have a serious infestation problem. My cats catch multiple rats a day. They can hardly keep up with the booming rodent population. Sometimes they eat so many rats that they are disinterested in cat food. Anyway, being really stoned makes me go on tangents.
I’m not a tidy person. You might even call me a slob. I blame it on the booze and the drugs, but really I’m lazy when I’m sober too. I used to ash on the table, the carpet, other furniture. The house was one big giant ashtray. The floor was always scattered with bits of rolling paper and clumps of ash. The carpet decorated with stains. Over time, the filth narrowed in on me. The area on the couch that didn’t have ash or beer spilt all over it shrank and shrank until I could hardly move while seated. My point is that smoking is fucking dirty; especially if you’re lazy, and everybody is lazy when they’re stoned. Same goes for alcohol. The amount of waste produced, and caused, by alcohol is massive. Directly: bottle tops, corks, bottles, cans, cups, glasses; and indirectly: spilt food, beer, cordial, piss, vomit, etc. Alcoholics and perpetual smokers frequently neglect basic hygiene. Plates go unwashed. Carpet stains are ignored. In extreme cases, houses turn into swamps. For alcohol and weed, the ratio of sloppiness to waste production could do with improvement; to say the least.
I put half a gram of bud into my coffee grinder and pulverize it until it becomes such a fine powder that I can no longer hear the pieces hitting against the blades, then measure out two equal sized heating plates. The vaporizer in my hand I suddenly forget what temperature I used to set it on, which is annoying because I found the perfect setting once. A single degree that ensured the process was both gradual and efficient; providing me with just the right amount of vapour over time. The brain cells responsible for that memory, evidently destroyed by alcohol.
Three-hundred and forty degrees, Fahrenheit, seems like a good place to start. I have a vague idea that it was somewhere in that vicinity. The bag inflates in slow motion. It appears to take for ever, the anticipation towards being stoned compromising my patience. I watch as the plastic separates further and further apart. The contents of the bag are completely invisible. This seems wrong. Like, I remember there being a thin mist rather than nothing. Though, I doubt this memory. It too is vague.
I remove the bag and put a lid on it, trapping the vapour inside. A second bag is then attached to the vaporizer. As I slowly inhale the first, I watch the second inflate. It is like watching my lung, outside my body; an exterior plastic organ. The vapour is smooth. I breathe it in, deep into my lungs, and hold it for a couple of minutes. When I exhale, I don’t feel all that stoned. The temperature isn’t correct. I consider the fact that I may not be stoned at all. I stare out the window, zoning out, wondering why I am not stoned. The sky looks beautiful. I realize that I am stoned. It feels weird. Still, not strong like a bong or a joint; but, more peaceful, cleaner.
I remove the second bag and put a lid on it, replacing it with the first. While I’m at it, I experiment with the temperature; three-hundred and fifty-five degrees, Fahrenheit. Again, as I’m inhaling I watch as the bag inflates. This time it is full of dense vapour. Thicker than mist, more like slightly dissipated smoke. By the time it is full, I can hardly see through the bag for the grey cloud inside.
The vapour makes me cough my lungs out. I have to put a lid on the bag half-way through to regain composure. It has been three days since I’ve had a cigarette and six days since I’ve had a joint. I walk into the bathroom, taking the bag with me, and start hocking shit up into the sink. The vapour clears me out. I keep inhaling and coughing and spitting. By the time I’m done with the third bag, I can breathe again. It feels like a chimney sweep shoved a dust broom down my throat. I am absurdly stoned. My head is swimming. It feels like my scull has been opened up and somebody is massaging my brain. I go back to the lounge and grab the fourth bag from my vaporizer, also full of whitish-grey smoke. I sit on the front step of my house, keeping the bag closed by pinching the opening with my thumb and forefinger, intermittently inhaling and coughing and spitting into the garden-bed. One of my neighbour’s kids goes by riding a bicycle. He stares at me like I’m some kind of fascinating creature, far removed from his collective perceptions of suburban life. I don’t like the way teenagers look at me; like I’m something to aspire to, simply because I am not their parents. It reminds me of my own mentor figures. The older brothers, the old hippies, the friend’s parent who grew weed in his backyard. By the time drugs came along, I had decided that life was not for me. Disillusioned by the fact that, one day, I would be like my parents; more or less. Then, when this alternate life came along I knew not to question it. For, it is better to be deluded than disillusioned.
These people, up the drug-chain, that I aspired to as a teenager; they were just as flawed as my parents if not more. If I had really thought about the reality of their lives, rather than dreaming, I would have been able to see that. This kid on the bicycle, he reminds me of myself. He also reminds me of the countless kids who have looked up to me as some sort of tripped-out super hero. No matter how plainly obvious my misery, it appeals – this lifestyle – because it is not life as we know it. That is why people take psychedelic drugs. They are perception altering. Drugs are not good per say; just different. Change is as good as a holiday. If inebriation was normality, than sobriety would be a trip; which is exactly what I have discovered, since getting sober. This kid on the bicycle, his life is a trip for me; and my life is a trip for him. Being sober is not bad per say; just different. Aside from chemical tolerance, the major reason that you feel more stoned when you haven’t partaken for some time is contrast. To go from a crystal clear sober state to a blob of jelly is far more satisfying than to go from a blob of jelly to a blob of jelly; and, along the same lines, going from a blob of jelly to being crystal clear is more satisfying than going from crystal to crystal. This is why moderation makes sense. Not because you have to be sober in order to be high, but because they are both equally enjoyable. Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that being sober was a nightmare. It’s not. In many ways, I prefer it to being high. To not appreciate sobriety is a depressing notion. The thing is, my life used to be an actual nightmare; now that it isn’t, neither is sobriety. I feel like I have institutionalized myself by self-medicating because, for a long time, I have been unable to cope with reality. The idea of releasing myself upon the world frightened me, just as psych patients or prisoners are often terrified of the outside world. But there’s nothing to be afraid of. I don’t need drugs to shield me from the nightmare. The nightmare is gone.
Today, I get stoned because I want to get stoned. And it feels great. I am relaxed, which doesn’t mean that I’m normally anxious by contrast. The desire to be stoned is not indicative of stress any more than the desire to have a hot bath or do some yoga is. Animals are naturally on edge; prey and predator. This state of extreme relaxation is not how I should feel, without an anxiety disorder. It is relaxed upon relaxed, upon relaxed, layers and layers of sedation; far removed from the natural order of things. Real-life considerations are irrelevant. A wolf and a lamb could get stoned together and not have any issues, theoretically, because neither of them would be thinking about their daily concerns. Of course, the wolf would probably get the munchies and bite of the lamb’s head; but that is beside the point. These instinctive considerations are meaningless for humans. I do not need to concern myself with hunting or being hunted. The predators and prey in my world are, predominantly, financial and emotional. In the animal kingdom prey is always on the lookout for predator and predator is always on the lookout for prey. It never ends. That is why wolves and lambs don’t take drugs; because, in the animal kingdom, the survival instinct cannot be switched off.
The appeal of being stoned is that you don’t give a fuck. Clarity is achieved by removing all of the layers of bullshit that we, as responsible and functioning people, have to deal with; it is achieved by turning off the human survival instinct. I take drugs so I don’t have to care about myself. Just like parents hire sitters so they can have a night without constantly caring for their kids. The problem with my scenario is there is no sitter. Without moderation, I am an unsupervised child. That’s why the house becomes a swamp; why everything falls apart: because, sometimes I need to care. On the other, hand sometimes I don’t; when all my responsibilities are taken care of, for example.
This is not one of those times. I am moving house early tomorrow morning and I haven’t begun packing. Earlier in the day, I moved my cats to the new property so the commotion won’t disturb them. I had to put them in the garage, to avoid them anxiously pissing on the carpet. I got my friend to give me a lift. But the garage turned out to be easily escapable. There were holes everywhere – in the roof, in the walls, under the door – and my cats are like Houdini.
We patched up the escape routes as best as possible with bricks and bits of wood, but I was still worried about them escaping. My friend assured me that they’d be fine, convincing me to return home and get packing. Writing this, though, I am concerned again. I can’t help but thinking of them pushing their way out of the garage and running onto the street or something. I am not stressed; I just know that I couldn’t forgive myself if one of them died. I love my cats.
+2:00
I catch public transport to the house to check on them. It takes forty five minutes to get there. I am not worried. I am perfectly calm. Without the weed, I would be experiencing negative emotions; frustration, regarding the long journey, and fear about my cats. I feel none of that. Nothing bothers me in this state. I am at peace.
When I get to the house, I go straight for the garage. Before I get there, I see a dark cat-sized silhouette scuttling through the shadows. It looks like the fattest of my feline friends. But I can’t be sure. Whatever it is, it disappears before I can get close.
There is no sign of an escape. The bricks are in the same position I left them. I have to duck inside, quickly closing the door behind me. There is no electricity, yet; the garage is dark.
I use my mobile phone as a flashlight; it has a range of one or two meters. After a quick scan, I conclude that there are no cats; that they’ve all escaped. Still, I don’t panic. I keep looking, peering under table tops and inside cabinets. Eventually I find two of them, sitting side by side on a shelf near the ceiling; their eyes glowing, illuminated by the phone. The fat cat is nowhere to be seen. It baffles me as to how he has managed to escape, considering his size. Then, just as I am about to go on a search for him in the garden, he leaps down from the rafters – dropping about three meters onto concrete – and landing directly beside my foot.
Shining the light up, I realize there is an area near the ceiling obscured by a small platform. Perhaps, there is also a hole up there that we didn’t see. In complete darkness, I stand up on top of a rotten workbench and stick my head up into a small opening. A wig of cobwebs resting on top of my head, the tiny feet of insects crawling along my neck, I raise the phone and find nothing.
Whatever that silhouette was in the garden, remains a mystery; most likely the new arch-nemesis of my feline friends: another neighbourhood cat, another endless series of territorial battles. The cats seem okay. I pat each of them, briefly, before heading back home.
The entire journey takes roughly two hours. It is now about eleven o’clock at night, and I have so much to do. Too much; I don’t want to think about it. The dishes aren’t even clean. I need to clean them, dry them, and then wrap them all in packing paper before putting them in a box. Same goes for my dirty clothes. I am going to be up all night. So, I figure I might as well get stoned again. It’s been four hours since I hit the vaporizer and the effects are well past their peak.
+4:00
I do the other quarter gram, on three-hundred and fifty degrees, Fahrenheit. By the end of the first bag I am so fucked that I hardly know where I am. Way more stoned than I intended. I cough my lungs out again. I take a long time with the first bag. The second is almost bursting it is so full. It destroys me. Halfway through, I realize I have to stop. But it’s too late. The third bag is half full. I can’t stop. I have to keep going. So I inhale a huge lungful and hold it. The vapour tries to rip its way out of my body. I hold it back like restraining a wild dog. Then I cough, my eyes watering, stumbling around the room, as I force myself to finish the bag. I turn off the vaporizer and take the last bag out onto the front step. I am hallucinating pretty hard by this point. Bright patterns made of primary colour flashing across the night sky. I glance across my garden: the broken fence; overgrown grass. And I realize it was a good day to get stoned. Nice way to end my tenancy. Bit of drug-induced closure. I’m going to miss my house. But at the same if change is a trip; from sobriety to intoxication; moving from one state of mind to another; then, moving home qualifies too.
Physically relocating yourself is a trip. People say it’s one of the most stressful things in life because people don’t like change. Change threatens the delicate balance they call happiness or contentment. The same goes for people who fear psychedelics, people who are afraid of bad trips; and, people who fear sobriety. If you twist your spine into the shape of an S, and never exercise, eventually it will reset itself like that. Given enough time, people can grow so accustomed to routine that they become the routine, both physically and psychologically. Just as someone with bad posture is incapable of straightening themselves out at will, so are those who limit themselves to a small portion of their potential for fear of change. People don’t like drugs because they are afraid of them. That goes for everyone: D.E.A. agents; priests; concerned parents; teachers. People who oppose the use of drugs without ever partaking are lying to themselves and – the smart ones – they know they are. Whether or not you repress it, everybody wants to do drugs. You can convince yourself you don’t. But really you do. What human activity has existed for the entire length of civilization, has been as widespread, and as culturally influential, and not been a positive thing? The anti-drug lobbyists must be curious, neglecting themselves of such a large part of the human experience.
These days we get called addicts. People look down upon us. A lot of them live these totally fucked up loveless emotionless repressed lives and, yet, they judge us for something that makes us happy; something that has existed for thousands of years; something that arguably sparked the evolution of man; created religion; inspired artists. Throughout the millennia, countless civilizations have used a variety of intoxicants to induce altered states of consciousness; as long as we have records, there are cultural indications, somewhere on the planet, of drug use. One thing I find really bewildering is the non-drug people who go to a different country and indulge in some ceremony that involves illegal drugs, only to come back and maintain their stance as if it’s a tourist activity; like, it’s okay for people in South America to do drugs but not for people in their own country.
In Australia, you can legally order some illegal stimulant as long as you belong to a religion that exists almost solely on the ivory coast of Africa. Basically, if you’re African then you can take this drug. But if you’re English, or Chinese, or Irish, you can’t; because drugs are legally acknowledged to be associated with religion. The association between illegal substances and various religions is so common that it must be acknowledged. So, can I start my own religion – in this free country – because drugs connect me to God, as I genuinely believe they do? Can I create a religion around psychedelic drugs – in this so called free country – and consume them under the religion act? No. They don’t look down upon those drug users. Why this discrimination? It all comes down to social evolution. The aboriginal communities of the world are the ones internationally exempt from local laws pertaining to drugs. We take it for granted that Native Americans are allowed to use peyote for religious purposes. It doesn’t seem weird. If I Chinese person openly smoked opium in Melbourne, that would be totally bizarre. Because China is a developed country and this exemption only applies to relative primitive, in terms of industrial development and what not, cultures. Drugs are incompatible with capitalism. Drugs show you what is really important. The reason they don’t exist, as a socially acceptable concept, is because developed countries have lost their connection to the universe. The human race, for the most part, is side-tracked; off on a never ending perpetual crash course towards the trophy for most impressive species. And if you’re on the team, that’s that; there’s no swapping sides. I am white therefore there is no drug I can legally consume except for alcohol. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s racist and it’s ignorant.
People who look down on drug users and make assumptions based on inexperience, fuck them; I’m tired of being perceived as a burden when I’m high. I’m sick of this world filtering out every positive experience that the drug world has produced. Newspapers are always full of drug busts and overdoses. In the paper today, I read a comment in the voice section that said: “young people do not think they’re invincible to the side-effects of drugs… their addiction compels them to continue using. Most hate the fact that they are unable to stop themselves.” First, who the fuck is writing this, speaking for hundreds of millions of people; categorizing all drug-users into one stereo-type? And, second, would they publish the opposite opinion? If you wrote in and said: “young people do not think they’re invincible to the side effects of drugs… they just enjoy the positive effects produced so much that they get a bit carried away sometimes. On the whole, users are fairly responsible. What you see in the paper are the worst case scenarios?” Fuck no. Because the opinion of drugs being relatively safe is so unpopular that you can’t even voice it. It has to be a secret, only heard by select ears. I have to pretend to my extended family that I don’t do drugs, because it is something I should be ashamed of. That’s what society teaches me; what the media teach me; what I observe in the world around me. I have to hide myself from the world, for fear of legal consequences, because the world doesn’t like what I am. But Native American people and people from the Ivory Coast, they don’t have to worry about any of that shit; why, because I should know better being from a developed country?
I was sitting beside a woman at the bus stop today, looking particularly presentable; white shirt, suit pants, etc. She took a shine to me despite not being able to speak English. I guess my non-threatening appearance was a refreshing change from the usual lunatics that hang around the station. Obviously she hadn’t seen me spitting mouthfuls of wine at people like a cobra. Anyway, we had this weird wordless conversation. She started talking to me without words; miming and making noises to compensate for her linguistic limitations. I understood what she meant, and replied with English words. But, that made me feel like that kid talking to Lassie; like we were different species. We weren’t different species and my words meant nothing to her. If she had been speaking Chinese to me, I would have found it confusing and mildly annoying. So, I started miming and making noises and facial expressions too. The old lady; she commented on a man walking through heavy traffic, despite the presence of an easily accessible underpass. Her ability to convey complex thoughts through universally comprehended mannerisms astounded me. I agreed, noting that people these days were reckless and idiotic: although my performance was less elegant; more of a pantomime. A man screamed through heavy traffic, swerving across three lanes and almost causing an accident. The old lady; she said, you’re right people are idiots. We laughed. And on it went, a very ordinary conversation conducted in a very unusual way.
If she knew I used drugs; if she knew I was stoned: it would have been very different. The way I dress, and look, I’m weirdly approachable despite being a nut-job. I wear collared button up shirts and have a fairly conservative haircut. I wear glasses. I am softly spoken and I speak well. You might assume, having glanced at me, that I am a nerd. And, perhaps I am. But I also like my drugs. People on the street assume that I don’t do drugs, when I’m acting respectably, just like people on the street assume that junky-looking folk are on drugs even when they’re not. This is part of the reason I dress like this and act the way I do; because I like to be approachable. At the same time, it annoys me that I have to exist within such a broad comfort zone for the sake of having access to a larger portion of the population. Junky types don’t care what you look like. I’ve found that people lower down on the financial ladder tend to be more open to people at the top than people at the top are to them. I can start a conversation with a guy with tattoos and a beer in his hand, regardless of whether or not I am in respectable mode or I’m pissed off my fucking head. Poor people don’t discriminate, so much. If you go to India you can pretty much live in people’s house. They’ll feed you and shit. What little they have, they are more likely to share than someone in Beverly Hills who has everything. I have to conform to this ideal of presentation in order for the judgemental types to give me the time of day. But it’s worth it. This wordless interaction with the old Asian woman is priceless.
Dressing like a businessman does not compromise my individuality. Every sub-culture has a fashion element and an attitude. The hippies wore flowers in their hair and celebrated peace. But the flowers in the hair and the peace are two separate things. One of them is fashion related. And the other is political. The same goes for punk, emo, goth, etc; they all have an outfit and an orientation. The attitude is more important than the costume. I’d go as far as saying that the costume is stupid. I see people walking around with chains connecting their belts to some sort of clip on their pants, piercings in their face like pieces of shrapnel, haircuts that appear to be randomly generated by some sort of malfunctioning hair monster. And, I’ve got to say I don’t get it. I don’t understand vanity either; why so many women are consumed with thoughts relating to their physical appearance. I say women because women are vain. Personally, I don’t find it appealing. It’s just as weird for a guy to wear make-up as it is for a girl. But if a heterosexual guy wore make-up, for the same reasons as women, the girl would say he was a freak. Laugh him, mock him. Maybe she should mock herself. Or, alternatively, just take a big shit on the equal rights movement; the part, of course, that doesn’t pertain to her. God forbid. People say they want equality, but really they want more. It’s always the people who have less that say they want equality. They demand to not be discriminated against. Equality becomes not about issues for both parties, but issues pertaining to the underdog. The compromise is one-directional, which ends up throwing it off balance in the other direction. Women take power of men, black over white, etc. The only way for this to end, as far as I can see it, is the normalization of everything. For men and women to be equal there needs to be no difference between the two. Cosmetics are off balance. They shouldn’t be. I’ve argued this with people before and they said that women wear make-up because they want to. It’s not because history has dictated that they be sexually subservient to men; and spend enormous amounts of time grooming themselves while we sit around and scratch our nuts. They don’t do it for men. They do it for themselves; they do it for other women. I’ve heard this repeatedly. And, maybe it’s true. I don’t think so, personally. But it doesn’t matter. The point is: it is a social convention that is gender specific, just like the ability to consume peyote is a social convention that is race specific.
Depending on genetics, it is pre-decided for us what we can do and what we can wear. There are different laws for different races within single societies; a social faux-pas for a man may be perfectly acceptable for a woman. We discriminate legally, sexually, socially and politically. What is important is not what people look like, what colour their skin is, or what they chose to wear; what is important is who they are. Fashion is one of the most meaningless of man’s pursuits. Hairstyles are a waste of time. It says a lot about a person, the amount of time they devote to grooming themselves. I am a slob, which is by no means something to aspire to, and I dress plainly. But, at least I’m not oozing with vanity. My appeal, if indeed I have any, stems solely from my personality. Those old science fiction films in which future civilizations wore the same costume, although lame and overdone, were making the observation that social enlightenment goes hand in hand with the disposal of vanity among many other things. What’s weird about those films is that the future societies throw away the positive with the negative. They are emotionless, like robots.
In my opinion, enlightenment is bliss not tedium. The future of our species, if we survive to see it, will hopefully consist of happy people living full and free lives without discrimination. If you take a person and remove vanity along with all of the rest of their negative attributes, you wouldn’t be left with a statue. Heaven is not inevitably boring, because nothing bad ever happens; good things are interesting too. The world we live in, without murder and rape, would be just as beautiful. Evil is not required for good to exist; it is only required for the labels. Good doesn’t need an opposite. Enlightenment is not achieved by transcending matter and becoming pure energy. This makes as much sense as the literal story of Jesus as the son of God.
Enlightenment is a state of mind, achieved by transcending the distinction between matter and energy; transcending the distinction between man and woman; mammal and tree; star and planet. These things they don’t cease to exist as they become one – the individual parts remain, unopposed, but you can see them joined together into life. You understand that everybody is everybody and everything is everything. Adherence to sub-culture dictated costume-design or gender-specific social conventions has no place, the more we advance – spiritually – as a species. Though, I believe drugs are integral for spiritual advancement; religions without drugs are a dangerous thing. If Christians smoked marijuana for spiritual purposes there would not have been so many wars. The drug is needed to shepherd religion. Without intoxicants, man will assume power over religion and the real purpose of spirituality will be lost over time. The aboriginal societies that use drugs for spiritual purposes are, in many ways, more evolved than we; they have yet to lose the plot; they are not destroying the entire planet. We could learn something from these so-called primitive civilizations, rather than treating them as mere curiosities.
+5:30
It is one o’clock in the morning. I have eight hours to pack up the entire house. But, I couldn’t be bothered thinking about that now. I’m going to go vaporize some more weed. One way or another I’ll get the stuff moved in. There’s no need to stress about it. Better to get stoned now, than do it later when I have to lift shit in and out of the truck with my brother. Being stoned like this feels amazing, by far the best stone I’ve had this year. Vaporizing; for the win. It’s crazy that I always end up returning to smoke, because of convenience; usually, I’m so lazy that setting up the vaporizer is too much of a hassle. The transition from smoke to vapour has been difficult, but I’ve got to take a stance. Fuck the slight inconvenience. I don’t want to burn holes in the carpet of my new place; don’t want to have ash everywhere. And joints are horribly inefficient, you lose so much smoke; balloon-style vaporizers, on the other hand, lose nothing. I stopped using bongs long ago. There’s nothing worse than dirty bong water especially when you spill it on something. There’s something really disgusting about combining burnt material with water. I’ve used so many filthy bacteria ridden bongs; had black water splash up against my face countless times; found tar on my lips like a chocolate milkshake. Smoking bongs is a really filthy habit; more often than not people keep them in pretty questionable conditions. They also turn weed into junk. If you mix weed with tobacco, as most people do who smoke it through bongs, the chance of becoming a total junky for the shit goes way up. There’s a big difference between people who smoke joints, or vaporize, and people who smoke bongs. The desperation is thicker with the bong user: the need to smoke cones, or bowls or whatever you call them, until the end of time; rather than just having a joint and chilling out. This is a generalization, obviously; I have encountered bong users that manage to partake moderately. It just seems to me that there’s a subtle crack-head element to the bong user. When I smoked bongs, even without tobacco, it was very different; more of a compulsion, than an inkling.
Vaporizing is the least addictive way to consume weed. I think that’s another reason that it’s difficult to transition; because I want to be addicted. My addiction to marijuana has served as an emotional blanket for over a decade. The idea of not being compelled to get high bothers me, to some extent, because I don’t have an excuse any more. When I vaporize weed, I do it because I want to: which means that I can’t do it all the time; because I don’t want to, despite how much I want to want to. It’s something that frightens me about sobriety in general: that I might realize the error of my ways and decide to go straight permanently. Really sobriety always points me towards moderation. Being an addict is something I don’t want. It is a choice to become addicted; a bad decision orchestrated during a moment of weakness. When you’re a hopeless addict, you can’t help it. You have to get fucked up every day. Well, I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to get fucked up when I want to get fucked up and be sober when I want to be sober. Addiction is automation. I want to be free.
The pot-head phase of my life must come to an end. Being stoned every day is not an admirable quality. I’m getting too old to be an irresponsible stoner. I need to get shit together; get fucking proactive; improve the quality of my life. I don’t want to be sober all the time, either. I want to be a drug user not a drug addict. I don’t want to lose weed. I love it. I want to be a guy that gets high occasionally, but has it in control; a recreational user. I’m tired of calling myself a junky.
+6:00
I empty the remains of the vaporized weed into a zip-lock bag, so I can make into edibles at another date, and grind up another quarter of a gram vaporizing at three-hundred and forty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. Play the old beat the clock, bag-swapping game. That’s why I put a quarter of a gram in the tray, because that is the most that will fit and, when I get started there’s no turning back.
+7:00
I am what some people might describe as too stoned. This guy used to try and convince me that there was a limit to the effects of marijuana; a plateau that you reach after six cones or so. Anything beyond that, being pointless; the high you achieve a result of the lack of oxygen to your brain. Obviously this is bullshit. If you eat four grams worth of edibles you will be fucked out of your brain. Similarly if you vaporize a gram of weed in short succession you get more high than possible via joint or bong. The amount of weed you have to smoke, to achieve the same effect, will make you sick. When joints aren’t being inhaled, they keep burning away. And it’s much more difficult to keep two lungs full of smoke. Vapour isn’t as hot, which means it’s less harsh on the body. Smoke is over two-hundred degrees Celsius, I think. Nobody drinks water that is two-hundred degrees Celsius. This is why people use bongs, to cool the water, or long pipes for the same reason. Smoke is just too hot. Vapour isn’t. It doesn’t feel like it is bad for you, like it is lacerating the inside of your throat like a hurricane-inhalant full of tiny airborne particles of glass. People weren’t meant to inhale smoke; we are not designed for it. It is not a co-incidence that the carcinogenic properties of marijuana are released when heated past two-hundred degrees Celsius. Marijuana is not carcinogenic; smoke is.
There should be an alternative way to consume tobacco. I’m not sure if anybody’s attempted to vaporize it, or if there have been any studies done on the subject. It’d be worth a try, as a method to help tobacco smokers quit. Tobacco ruins weed. It really does. Tobacco is worse for weed than the bong is. It also changes the effect in negative ways. Paranoia is associated with marijuana, but from my experience it stems more from the combination of tobacco and marijuana rather than marijuana itself. Personally, I don’t get paranoid from vaporizing or eating; most of it has occurred due to smoking weed mixed with tobacco through bongs. If drugs had personalities, the mushroom would be a happy little critter, playful and a mischievous. LSD would be the mad hatter, or some similarly deranged mad man. Tobacco, I don’t know. It’s a parasite that feeds off people and offers nothing in return. It’s a hypnotist; a salesman; there is nothing good about it. Tobacco is dark. It is a void. It has no personality. I keep seeing cigarette butts on the ground and part of me wants to grab them and just have a drag, but I can’t do that. Fucking awful drug, nicotine; I have no interest in it.
There is no way to justify taking research chemicals or amphetamines; anything that doesn’t exist in nature shouldn’t be consumed. LSD, LSA, psilocybin, psilocin, mescaline, muscimol, and opium have been consumed for so long they cannot be harmful when consumed with moderation. MDMA, or methelyenedioxymethamphetamine, pretty sure I spelt that wrong, on the other hand is one of an infinite number of chemical constructions. They can’t all be good for us. At least with MDMA, you have a good number of decades as a trial run. Consuming research chemicals is pretty fucking stupid. And amphetamines are downright toxic. They make people go crazy. They are like a slow working acid. Your skin melts off at an imperceptible rate. Days pass; weeks; months: until one day you look in the mirror and discover that you’re just a skeleton. I love speed but it is poison.
Natural psychedelic drugs aren’t poisons, as far as I’m concerned and there is no convincing me otherwise. I believe that they are meant for our consumption. Nothing is accidental. Humans aren’t capable of interrupting the master plan, whatever it happens to be. If we destroy ourselves, that is part of it; just as the demise of the dinosaurs was part of our evolution. We were meant to evolve from animals to hunter-gatherers and discover psychedelic fungi.
Drugs are part of God’s plan. Join my church. If you don’t wear any pants and you live in a tent, you get to smoke bud in public. It’s the new religion. Keep in mind that you have to be of European ancestry to qualify for membership. Caucasian, yes; I’m sorry about that; it’s gender specific.
+7:45
Got about six hours left to pack up the entire house. Guess I’m going to be just chucking shit into boxes as I always do. Still very stoned; going to watch the new episode of Community.
+7:50
Going to vaporize one last bit of bud and make it an even gram; I set the vaporizer to three-hundred and forty-four degrees Fahrenheit.
+8:15
Hallucinating like crazy, some of the strongest visuals I’ve ever had from weed. Smoking weed causes you to retain shit in your lungs, vaporizing weed cleans you out. Been coughing constantly when I inhale; don’t know if it’s true that this gets you more stoned. But it feels like it.
+8:30
While watching Community, I fall asleep.
+12:00
I wake up, still a little stoned from the night before. It is seven thirty in the morning. I have an hour and a half to pack up the entire house. Frantically I start racing from room to room throwing things into boxes without thinking. I discover two ounces of long lost dried mushrooms and the missing lids for my vaporizer bags, among many other treasures. My brother arrives an hour late, due to the fact that he is also a habitual stoner; and, somehow, I have finished packing by the time he arrives.
Moving takes all day.
+18:00
I arrive at the new house to find my fat cat, the one I thought escaped, outside the garage. I follow the sounds of his voice to a bush. He sticks his head out and makes an annoyed sound. I still can’t work out how he managed to escape, and why the others stayed put. It doesn’t matter, though: he’s not going anywhere; he is happy to stay in the bush until we have finished moving.
+25:00
I chop up half a gram in my coffee grinder. I don’t want to get into the habit of getting stoned all the time, but it’s been a long day. I’ve been lifting fridges and washing machines in and out of a truck for the past six or seven hours, with – maybe – three hours sleep.
Three-hundred and forty-four degrees, Fahrenheit, is a nice balance. I fill up three bags with vapour and put lids on them all. This way, I don’t have to play beat-the-clock. I can take my time, giving the vapour time to cool down some. Still, it is harsh. No matter how long I hold it in, I exhale visible clouds. Each bag is a third of a third of half a gram, or one eighteenth of a gram. I inhale each bag in three breaths, making each breath a third of a third of a third of half a gram, or one fifty-fourth of a gram. Every breath fucks me up. After two bags, or six puffs, I am fucked. I leave the third bag sitting there for a while, my mind unravelling as I listen to the Beatles; Lennon is singing, “Nothing’s going to change my world,” over and over again like a mantra. My cat, the girl, she runs into the room making squeaky noises and leaps onto my lap purring before I pat her. She has grown accustomed to the new territory already. I haven’t. The fuse box is all fucked up. The hot water isn’t going yet. I haven’t had a bath in over two years, on account of not having one at my old place. All I wanted to do was get stoned and soak in the tub. The light in the bathroom’s out on account of the fuse situation, but I don’t care. I just want to lie there in the dark, stoned off my brain, and relax.
After this long day, manoeuvring furniture around doorways and dropping things on my foot, I was more than a little frustrated when I realized there were some issues with the house; worldly concerns were weighing me down. I wanted to get stoned and have a bath, but now that I’m stoned I don’t care. Hot water would be amazing right now, but I don’t need it. I don’t need anything.
I finish the third bag.
+28:00
I do another round of vapour bags then check on the water on last time to find that it is hot. But I can’t have a bath, because the plug doesn’t fit. I walk around the whole house looking for another plug, but I can’t find anything. The plug tapers. I turn it upside down and it fits perfectly. The bath starts to fill up. I am using a lamp to see in the otherwise darkened bathroom. I pry the nub of a burnt candle off my coffee table and put it on the bathroom sink.
The water is hot; I ease my way into it as candle shadows dance on the tiled walls. My cat, the fat one, the escapee, jumps up on the rim of the bath. He always watches with curiosity, this ritual. Since it’s been two years, he’s extra curious. As he walks along the thin edge of the bath, I imagine him falling in and thrashing around like the ferret in Big Lebowski; my cat clawing me to pieces; ripping my dick into shreds. But he doesn’t fall. He jumps up onto the sink and hangs over the edge staring down at me. It looks like he’s going to dive. But he doesn’t. Eventually he leaves and I close my eyes, curling up into a ball.
Through the walls I can hear a muffled version of Karma Police by Radiohead. I inhale slowly, taking a long continuous breath, my body rising up to the surface of the water; and exhale, my chest sinking to the bottom. As I rise, my head submerges far enough to expose my ears and I can hear the song muffled. As I fall, my head goes under and it becomes distorted. Like an adult in Charlie Brown. This goes on. The playlist I made for myself repeats at least four times. I empty some of the cooling bathwater and replace it with boiling hot soup. I am basically in the womb. My thoughts have slowed down to a steady crawl.
I remember a dream I had two nights ago, about the rapture. I had to leave the damned behind. In the dream, I wondered why I had been chosen, given the sort of person I am. It didn’t make any sense. I didn’t deserve it. When I woke up, it felt like I had been touched by God; that a divine presence had once again been communicating to me through my dreams. Again, I don’t deserve it. Then, maybe I do. Maybe everyone does. Turnaround by Nirvana is playing through the wall.
When I open my eyes the candle has gone out. My fingers are prune-sausage links.
I get out and vaporize the rest of the weed.
