"Hobbies" The Minotaur has given up - Cannabis

I gave up smoking weed two months ago. I had smoked it habitually for over twenty years due to an ongoing need to find relief from a lifetime of abuse. As with all vices, I knew I wasn't alone in doing this (30% of the British public have tried cannabis at some point in their life) I didn't see myself as a criminal. I agreed with Bill Hicks on the fundamental reason weed shouldn't be criminalised:

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit . . . unnatural?” - Bill Hicks

Despite my latter pro stance on cannabis, I wasn't a teenage drug user, in fact I was a bit of a spod before my 20s. I was part of the "Just Say No" Grange Hill generation. I was afraid of drugs lest I become Zammo shooting up heroin in the disabled toilet. I was taught it was a gateway drug, and a slippery slope to your almost certain ruin.

https://youtu.be/kkQXnQ0plDA?feature=shared (convincing I think you'll agree)

I was an innocent kid, with undiagnosed autism and ADHD. Extremely anxious anyway, I grew up with an abusive mother who was an alcoholic with a side-line in abusing pain killers. Those things, and the melodic warnings of the Grange Hill cast, naturally put me off traversing down the road of addiction.

I said no pretty consistently until the age of 22. I was working as an account handler in the glamourous world of commercial insurance. I had just come out of a two year abusive relationship, a relationship that not only stripped me of all of my friends, my confidence and inconveniently my flatmates (he slept with them while constantly accusing me of being unfaithful).

I had started to lose my trust in others, and I was extremely alone. I was desperate to find some way to stop hurting.

I didn't leave my flat in Croydon apart from to go to and from my job, the odd trip to Blockbuster Video, and a late night food shop. God I loved the 24 hour supermarkets in London. You had to forego access to the deli counter at 2am, but you could fill a trolley in total peace with barely another cunt in sight. The joy!

I had one social event that got me out each week. Tuesday night Bingo with Karen from the car insurance team. Karen was a mother type figure to me, she didn't drink, but she did smoke a bit of weed. Once a week we'd take our chances at Mecca Bingo, dibbers at hand, and afterwards I'd buy a bit of solid resin off of her.

Almost immediately, I felt like I'd found my saviour. I began to laugh again, and I started to feel like I could relax enough to make new friends. (Obviously ones who smoked weed too). I didn't smoke at work, and for £20 a week, I slowly returned to some semblance of normality... confidence wise. I felt like it was harmless considering I was able to function again.

In hindsight, what I should have had was therapy, but I was extremely skint and I thought therapy was for Americans. I grew up with the notion that it was for Woody Allen types, whining about their ex wives and how the concierge in their apartment building made too much eye contact. I didn't see therapy as something that was in my price range, and I was still at an age where talking about my problems felt very alien. I thought it was an admission of weakness. That's what I was taught by my family and elders; you don't talk about your problems, you suck that shit up, people have been through worse.

I soon became reliant on it. It helped me laugh and relax, and it gave me a way out of really dealing with the trauma I had experienced. It helped me avoid the pain and grief of being betrayed and physically abused. I self medicated because it felt safer than taking anti-depressants, and with far fewer side effects.

As I stated before, 30% of the British public have tried cannabis at some point in their life. (That's 3,000,000 people) It's a pretty low grade drug in terms of how it affects your demeaner (in my opinion.) Having been around an aggressive alcoholic from the age of seven, I can tell you this, I'd sooner be around someone giggling, chatting shit and feeling a bit peckish, than the violence and aggression I've seen when people are pissed up. It doesn't lower your inhibitions in the same way alcohol does, but the blanket of fog that feels like a gift when you're hurting, certainly does become a necessity to get through the day for some (like me).

As with all illegal substances, you never know what's really in them, the exact strength you are buying or how many victims were involved in you scoring your wee baggy of skunk. It seems very strange to me, that we the British public are reliant on illegal growers and sellers when the UK is the largest exporter of medical grade cannabis globally. Especially ironic when evidence suggests medicinal cannabis has many therapeutic benefits.

In 2021 according to the International Narcotics Council Board the UK dominated cannabis exports, contributing 43% of all global production. - WHO KNEW?

https://releaf.co.uk/research/statistic-series-is-uk-medical-cannabis-a-cash-crop#:~:text=It%20was-,reported,-by%20the%20International

IT'S FINE FOR THEM, BUT NOT YOU

Politicians, patients and industry organisations have asked the relevant authorities to reveal what financial effect the thriving cannabis industry is having on the UK, but each time the issued Government response is to refute the need to investigate.

Strange that.

Some suspect that this refusal to answer any questions may be a self-serving move. This may be due to the usual conflict of interests and personal relationships between Britain's biggest medical cannabis company (Jazz Pharmaceuticals) and extremely important Politicians, such as the former Prime Minister, Theresa May.

When asked what the naughtiest thing Theresa had ever done, she prudishly suggested it was running through wheat fields. Surely potentially hiding the financial benefits of investing in the devils lettuce supersedes that?

Maybe it's just my own moral code talking, but it seems a touch hypocritical to criminalise users of the drug, but to then decriminalise your own "dealing" in that area. Maybe running through wheat fields helps reduce the mental conflict caused by such illicit reaping.

It seems especially immoral when you consider the disproportionate amount of black youths who are stopped and searched and jailed under the Conservative party's persistent talk of a "war on drugs"

The small scale users seem be the main target of the police. People who are smoking this shit, just like me, to escape the deprivations and awfulness of modern life. People who feel like they have no other therapeutic options. People just looking to relax after their demoralising days.

Officers will search you if they have a "reasonable" suspicion that you are engaged in an illegal activity. That suspicion seems to be heavily weighted based on the colour of your skin. Black people are nine times more likely to be searched for drugs than white individuals and are heavily represented in cannabis prosecutions (20% of prosecutions while only making up only 5% of the population)

A "reasonable" suspicion... I have a reasonable suspicion that the police are as racist as the rest of the UK population. We all need a scapegoat right? (see my other blog post The Scapegoat (theempress.online)- I HAVE TO TRY AND GET YOU TO READ MY SHIT SOMEHOW - any segue will do!)

You can do what you want

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't some sanctimonious holier than thou reproach for seeking relaxation. I would personally make all drugs legal. I would rather as a society we didn't feel the need to escape the reality of living quite as much as we do, but I totally understand the need. I also love stoner comedies and music. (looking at you Afroman)

Making drugs legal makes it easier to help users, reduces crime and makes the drugs safer. Who wants to be sensible about these things though? Not a high priority when you need votes.

I will also never say never again. (Is that a Bond?) but what I experienced in the latter stages of my dependency was no longer fun.

Because of all of my built up trauma, I started to spin out when smoking or eating cannabis. I would mentally sit in the abuse, and replay it on an endless loop. I couldn't seem to focus on anything else but my trauma, and the injustice of it. Like all mind altering substances, the state of the mind that's being altered is key to the effect on your psyche. Mine wasn't in a good place.

On a lighter note, it also made me a passive observer - a consumer and not a doer. Weed is great for listening to music, watching TV or gaming, but (for me) it stopped me from actually doing. I would talk the good talk while rolling spliff after spliff, but I never fucking started anything.

I just had enough of talking. We don't all have Steve Job's motivation to create telephone based bollix while high.

Now that I have stopped indulging, I noticed that my natural boredom and twitchy ADHD brain wants to engage in more things. I have started creating. Whether those things are worthwhile is up for debate, but for me, it's a vast improvement on talking.

I also started therapy in earnest. Feeling all the things without the fog hasn't been easy. I don't think it's supposed to be. I am at last being honest about my feelings. I now know it's the only way to deal with it all.

I feel like I wasted twenty years hiding from myself for the sake of a false comfort. The slippery slope isn't heroin, it's lost time.

The concierge definitely makes too much eye contact tho.

All the breast,

The Minotaur (also known as Em)

Afroman - Because I Got High (youtube.com)