So, I’m sure you’re all wondering how my “quit smoking pot” New Year’s resolution is coming along. Admittedly it’s only been 3 days, but there was a time when I couldn’t make it even that long without a sack in my pocket.

It’s been fine, thank you, though I did have to toke until noon on the first in order to eradicate the quarter ounce I had received 3 or 4 days earlier. I’d been given a couple of bowls to tide me over about a week and a half ago. I could have just stopped then and there…I was more than prepared to do just that. But the deal was already in the making and the lure of a final hoorah was too much to resist.

The “charity” bowls were…I want to say “really good”, but I’d have to add that such a description only implies that the weed was incredibly potent. It brought me to the point where I was actually frightened to take another hit. I really wish I could explain the feeling/mindset…maybe that’s why I’m alternately fascinated and terrified by it. I cannot comprehend it or understand it at all. After all the years of getting high I automatically look at it as an adventure, and I suppose it still is. The only difference is that I can’t handle it like I used to. Because I’m older? I don’t think so, though that may play a role. Is it because of my bipolar and the medications I take for it? Again, I have doubts. Whatever the reason, I think it’s time I took it seriously before I go mad. And that is exactly what I fear will happen. I would go so far as to say that I believe I’ve skirted the edges of madness a few times while under the influence. Sounds really cool to put it that way…very Jim Morrison-esque. But every time I’ve “been there” it has been a mortifying experience. One that I don’t want to repeat…I mean, I’ve had times where I doubted my own perception of reality without the aid of narcotics. But I don’t have any control of when those occasions rear their ugly heads. I do know that they are magnified when brought on by chemical influence. Why do I take the chance, then?

The last bag was about the same. Unlike the usual routine, the first night was kind of “blah” and the second night the stuff kicked in pretty hard. I knew it was gonna get wild about 5 songs into the Bruce Springsteen Hammersmith Odeon 1975 DVD. I became caught up in listening for individual cheers in the audience applause. In the time between songs I would listen to the people who yelled…the whole intensity of the show itself, the idea (fascinating to me) that this show was recorded 35 years ago…ah, as you see I am stymied as to how I can convey it. It was GREAT, but at the same time I was freaked out by just how awesome it was. I had to turn it off, go into the bedroom, lie down and listen to some really challenging classical music just to occupy my brain and get it off of what had just happened.

Maybe that’s what makes it so weird. I LOVE the way it’s making me feel, and yet for some reason that very thing scares the hell out of me.

At any rate, it was pretty much the same thing until 12 o’clock on the first day of the new year/decade. I look back, even so early in the resolution, and I can’t figure out why I didn’t stop getting stoned the first time I thought I was going to die that hazy afternoon at Sam’s Club (see my previous post). It was never the same after that. Not that there weren’t some decent times between then and now (even if I CAN’T remember most of them). But the glory days were over. Marijuana has been like a traitorous lover who I’ve become so used to that I wouldn’t abandon her, even though she would like nothing more than to drag me down.

I’m sure, three months from now, I’ll start feeming again. I’ll have forgotten the power of the things that have made it so easy to consider quitting. I suppose I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I want nothing more than to be drug free.

Until the shit is legalized, that is! J

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