Some Thoughts on Cannabliss
I woke up today missing being high. I miss that feeling of euphoria, that sense of complete calm where every muscle in my body relaxes, no worries exist, and I don’t even care or know what year it is. I felt a sense of eternal bliss. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt anything like it sober. I don’t know if I ever will.
That feeling for me is like an ocean of euphoria. That feeling is my escape from all the horrible things that make life so hard. Personally, I experience racism, homophobia, job stress, economic stress, and I’m healing from the trauma I’ve lived. The problem is that that feeling is an ocean that I’ll drown in because I don’t know how to swim in there. That feeling is an ocean I get brought to with magic, but I don’t have the ability to swim back to shore. And worst, it’s an ocean that doesn’t tell me when I’m drowning, because the water in my lungs would make me feel happy.
Right now I’m thinking of something from Sailor Moon of all places. In an episode, an evil sorceress almost kills Sailor Moon by trapping her in a beautiful field of dreams. Flowers tell her to stay safe and not fight the good fight or rescue her loved ones because it’s scary. Her friend can’t get through to her. And the evil sorceress explains to Sailor Jupiter, who came to rescue Sailor Moon, that this isn’t a typical nightmare because you want to wake up from a nightmare. This is a beautiful dream she’ll never wake up from because she’s so happy. It takes seeing and touching a fallen earring as Sailor Jupiter loses and nearly dies, to send a shock to her system and trigger all of her memories of what matters to her to get her to snap out of it.
What I see from here is that that ocean of bliss is exactly like that dream. Luckily I too have memories and loved ones that make me want to snap out of this dream. But it’s still hard. I could easily want to go into that ocean, and explore other oceans of euphoria. I’m not saying that drowning is inevitable; after all, physical overdose on cannabis is extraordinarily rare. Though I have nearly drowned in the feeling I get from alcohol, too. A friend stopped me from drowning in this ocean with prescription painkillers after I was in a motorcycle crash. Even with other drugs like opiates, amphetamines, and alcohol, plenty of people use them and then stop before ever getting to a place of getting lost in the sea. What I’m saying is that I don’t want to expend the energy of building a life boat to get home from a sea that’s an illusion anyways. Visiting that beautiful place in my mind got me through some really tough times, and I got to feel something I’d never felt in my life before: bliss. My view may change, it’s only day 41. But I continue to survive things and heal without it, and I remember now that I am strong enough to withstand this world without self-medicating.
I understand Angel by Sarah McLachlan so much better.
