Fried brain cells and all I’m not going to stop smoking weed, and this creative article is one I’ve been wanting to share for a long time.
Miss Mary Jane has been helping me transmute my depression through my creative process. I’m using it now in my grieving process to help me get grounded into feeling my visual meditations. I stopped getting “stoned,” and it’s helping me to stay focused and organized.
One could assume that I am an advocate for marijuana, and I wouldn’t say that they were wrong. However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve become more aware of the affects it has on me with some of my conditionings. From the time I started smoking until a year ago, I was smoking to escape reality and to numb from the pain of living in that reality. Now, my perspective has shifted about the act of smoking, it’s a tool to ignite my creative machinery or sometimes it’s just a friendly reminder to breathe.
You gotta love the algorithm of the human mind.
Funny plot twist to the story, I used to be totally against weed and if you told me you smoked reefer, the Devil’s lettuce, or some marijuana, oh baby I judged you and you saw it written on my face.
You could say I was the face of the D.A.R.E. program, something about my soul as a child was so pure and innocent she could never imagine tainting the temple of her body. But I later learned that’s my conditioned identity, at heart, I’m a rebel.
One memory I have of high school is drinking with my stepfather in the kitchen because I got caught filling up my water bottles with his vodka. Before you judge, remember that I was raised by people who are the product of the projects, but they raised me in the suburbs. I was not drinking for pleasure then nor was I at the kitchen table; I was being taught a lesson that immediately backfired. He asked me one question, white or brown?
After pouring the sixth shot of Hennessy, he looked at my mom and said “She is going to be fine I’m drunk trying to go shot for shot with her.”
I didn’t know what that meant then, but looking back over my life, I’ve always been a sad girl with the worries of the world being carried on my shoulders. The problem is I never got help, so I just learned how to numb the pain long enough to paint the smile everyone loves to see.
In college, after emotionally hiding the pain of my secret abortion, I found weed. A few of my friends in college were heavy smokers, and my access to alcohol before twenty-one years old was limited, so I needed something quick to help me numb. I was nineteen when Mary Jane and I first met, and our relationship has been a rocky one until now.
Weed makes my anxiety worse, I noticed this about four years ago.
I knew when I refused the medication at the hospital that I was playing dangerous games with my life and quality of life. However, the way that little pill they gave me made me feel like I’d never be a human again like I would forever operate as a robot or zombie.
Sometimes it felt like I was fucked either way. As I had been conditioned to do since high school, my first response was to numb that feeling.
One day, it didn’t work, and in fact, my anxiety got worse. I smoked three blunts before realizing that I was having an anxiety attack, and that made me panic even more. My daughter was home, I couldn’t go to the hospital and say I was smoking weed in NC - they would immediately take her. Now I’m panicking, my heart is racing and I can barely catch my breath.
This was the moment I realized it.
The harder it got to breathe, I continued to take a hit of the blunt.
I caught myself and put the blunt out. I drank some water and focused on my breaths. I inhaled as if I took the hit then exhaled like I blew out the smoke. I kept this up and then it stopped. The room stopped spinning as the world’s weight began to lift from my shoulders.
Shocked by this experience, I just sat there with my hands over my chest. I thought to myself…
“Smoking makes my anxiety worse, it doesn’t help it at all.”
My discovery sent me into a denial state, I will be woman enough to admit that. For the next couple of years, I denied that my addiction to numbing the pain had backfired and was now causing me more pain. The alcohol stopped working when I turned twenty-one and by thirty weed had stopped working too.
I tried CBD mixed in, and when I was feeling super holistic, I would add dried flowers and mugwort to my blunts to inhale the healing properties and exhale the Western world bullshit. My breakthrough about my diagnosis came around the time that orange man was elected to run this country, so naturally, with him and that C word killing everybody shit was stressful for every reason. One day I was on my way to work, my last 9-5 job I ever had, and damn near clocked in to turn around and take myself straight to the ER. As the doctor ran tests and asked questions, she stopped and looked up at me. The shock on her face drew concern to mine. She said to me, “Sweetie, you’ve had high anxiety and depression for most of your life how have you been coping?”
Kinda focused on being a baddie and weed’s been aiding the process.
Part of the reason I moved to California was so I could legally smoke weed and have access to all the various forms of it. In North Carolina, it was too risky and I had been saved by an angel one too many times for my comfort. It’s nothing worse than smoking weed in a state you can be put in jail for, it makes you paranoid and you have to keep smoking to forget about being paranoid. I grew to hate the lifestyle but was not at all willing to eliminate anything other than the limiting environment.
Upon moving to California, at our pitstop along the farm, Lexi developed a love for the process of growing cannabis. The farmer had a friend that grew in Tennessee, and he gifted us with a ziplock bag full of the prettiest, quietest, seedy flower of homegrown. Although it didn’t get us high like the weed we were buying from the street plug we found, it did keep me focused and calm during my depression season. My wife noticed a difference in how she felt within her mind when she started to cocktail the homegrown with the street.
Currently, we have seeds that have made it from all over the country on our travels, and now we are finally in a position to start those seeds. That’s going to be a different post, but now that she works at the dispensary, it feels like we were put exactly where we needed to be. Everything was aligned organically in our path.
I’ve been able to explore the different varieties of weed, like exploring new genres of music. Gummies and chocolates remind me of that feeling when you hear a new female rapper song; it just gives me the energy and the motivation I need to finish the last edits on this draft. But when I cocktail it with some sativa flower, it’s like jamming out to some House Music, and I’m ready to start a whole new draft when I’m done. Sativa gets my creative juices flowing and running like water.
Those motherly duties that involve playdates and other children besides your own, that’s when I enjoy a very cute, very demure cocktail with a little splash of cannabis concentrate in my drink before we have to head out, and I’m very aware and very mindful of our surroundings but not battling with an anxiety attack. All of a sudden the Bluey theme song doesn’t sound so bad after all, it’s catchy and now you’re the cool mom.
My heavy Capricorn placement in my Sixth House is probably why I have always naturally preferred sativa over indica during the day, but best believe, at night, I’m on that in-the-couch real bad!
That indica feels like that Old Soul R&B and Neo Soul music. One inhale in, and it’s like I channel my inner Siren energy. If you aren’t familiar with this term, it’s two female types, the Saint and the Siren. Most of my recent posts have been about me recognizing that I have been operating as the Saint when I’ve transformed into a Siren. Someone recently commented that she understands my greatness because I’ve had to transmute my darkness into a shining light that can no longer be dimmed.
It’s my nature, a part of my genetic makeup, to dive into the depths of my darkness to glow in the night, just like the true Scorpion I am. Arriving turning heads as my haters smile in my face to congratulate me as I step on stage to show up for the ones there to support me. Indica ignites my inner baddie because it allows me to feel in my body so I can focus on the things that feel good to my body.
There’s nothing better than being comfortable at home with a face mask, hair wrapped, fresh out of the shower, ready to light that unwind blunt. My nighttime regimen is when I get loose. Yes, I have my nighttime gummies; however, dabs put me out for the night when my mind is racing, but I need the rest.
Smoking weed lowkey saved my life because I have intentionally allowed it to help me surrender to the things I can’t change. When I smoke a blunt, it feels like each puff fuels me with just a little more of that no fucks juice. But most importantly, I love the person I am because of the mindset shift I’ve made about my consumption of weed.
I have been drinking more water since I started smoking because the cottonmouth is real.
My skin got clear because of the increased water intake and the extended hours of sleep do my body good.
I eat way more fruit because sometimes water is not enough, weed taught me how to eat my water; H3O is worth looking into.
Weed got me taking my supplements because when you don’t use your mind it can go to waste, so I’m nurturing mine back to good health.
Weed is teaching me to slow down and what it means to be present in the process. I’ve had to learn how to honor my desires and be okay with missing out on opportunities with others that aren’t designed for me.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
I’m a blunt smoker, my preferred cigar to break down is the Dutch Masters in the blue pack. That’s how I started, I tried to change it but every time I came right back. My wife is a joint smoker, which means she prefers to use papers, not a tobacco wrap or cigar, as I prefer, but she likes to add grabba leaf “baked” into her joints.
Grabba leaf is a specific type of tobacco leaf that was introduced as a parable for the enhancement of getting high. I don’t know the history, but I’ve been around it for at least 10+ years. From observation, it seems to be a New York thing that originated somewhere in the islands with the Rasta culture. “Baked” is the term used for drying out the leaf to crumble it into a form easier to sprinkle. However, not as fine as a powder imagine crumbling a leave in your hands that’s dried out. Again I didn’t research the details of Grabba this is what I have learned over the years, I’m just giving you the overview so I can tell the story.
Recently, I decided to give up my princess lifestyle and started rolling blunts and stopped smoking her joints. The main reason is when I noticed the numb feeling I was trying to break away from. We still smoke together, but she smokes her way, and I smoke mine. When I’m done, I put mine out and pick it back up when I’m ready. I’m not peer-pressured into getting stoned; I don’t want to smoke in a group session or smoke a whole half of an ounce in one night unless it’s April 20th.
The focus is on myself, and how I’m using it to help me win mentally. This small change has made the greatest difference in our relationship. She freely partakes the way that makes her heart sing and I get to explore at my own pace this time.
I’m not promoting the consumption of marijuana, but I’ve been wanting to explore how to share my experience with it.
1. Once you said Capricorn and Scorpio placements, immediately I could relate (I'm a Libra but with a Capricorn and Scorpio stellium)
2. Active stoner here - love me some joints so this post I could 100% relate to. I had an addiction and took a break and came back using it to decrease my anxiety because I have type A qualities. ]
3. Also living in spaces where it's legal is life changing.
FELT! I just came off a tolerance break because I wasn't liking how often I was smoking and I can't afford the habit I was creating. I have enjoyed getting to know which strains affect me in ways that are productive and which do the opposite. I also get the BEST sleep after smoking the right indica or hybrid to put me out. I appreciate your authentic voice in these Substack streets sis, your authenticity is going to take you FAR!