In Honor of 4/20, A Cannabis Story

(This is probably not the entertaining story my poker buddies were expecting when they saw me editing at the table earlier tonight.)

I have dealt with a generalized anhedonia for much of my adult life, but in late 2013 and early 2014, I sank into a profound depression. (There were reasons for it. For the sake of this story the reasons don't matter.) I was clinically depressed and struggling deeply and at its worst it hurt like nothing else has ever hurt and as I was watching the damage it was doing in my life and the struggle to move forward at all, I decided the time had come to explore a route I had long rejected. I'm lucky enough to have insurance, I figured. I might as well see what modern psychiatry has to offer.

The psychiatrist was a nice woman from India with that typically lovely Subcontinental musical accent. She listened politely, asked questions about the recent events of my life and the symptoms I'd been facing, and then, to no surprise to me, offered me an SSRI, either Zoloft or Paxil, I don't remember which. She explained that the drug's mechanism meant that, best case, I could expect relief in about two weeks, but that for most people it takes some adjustment of the dosage level, so it's usually about six weeks before the doctors get everything dialed in, and I'd experience the drug's benefits. At that point I'd continue taking the drug for time indeterminate.

She admitted that, yes, there are side effects. I don't recall that she went into particular detail about them, but she gave me a four- or five-page printout about the drug that told me everything I'd want to know.

The list of side effects was substantial, and they weren't minor league. Common side effects from SSRIs include headaches, nausea, drowsiness in some cases and insomnia in others, weight gain, increased anxiety, and loss of sex drive.

I knew all of that going in, of course. I also knew that millions of people have found SSRIs to be helpful in their lives, and I was in a place where the storm was raging hard enough that I didn't have the luxury to not at least cast a glance at every available mooring.

At this point it became a question of risk-reward. And there was another factor I had to take into account.

I've been a recreational user of marijuana since my mid-twenties. (Yes, a few years after college.) Every few weeks, I'd smoke a Friday night bowl and dissolve into the revelatory pleasures of whatever media I chose to consume that night.

In other words, getting high was fun.

But it was only over the past four or five years that I became aware of something interesting: while I often experienced a definite hungover lack-of-mental-acuity the day after smoking, my mood remained elevated, and it would stay elevated for days. There didn't appear to be any subsequent comedown. As medium-term side effects go, I was pretty much a fan.

That fall and winter, getting high still felt good. It offered me substantial and essentially immediate relief from the pain of deep depression. The effect didn't always linger as it had in the past, but sometimes I stayed feeling better for several days.

Given those experiences, I had to ask some questions.

First of all, given the circumstances I was facing, was long-term intervention the right approach? Of course trusting the solid rationality of your thinking is a bit perilous when in the throes of depression, but it seemed to me that perhaps depression of a sort wasn't an entirely inappropriate response to my situation. It occurred to me (and I think this still) that depression might not always be a bad thing, per se. Depression might sometimes be a message your body is trying to send you about your circumstances. Hurting constantly gives a strong impetus to change.

I also believed that healing would eventually come, if I could just get through.

But I don't mean to downplay the immediate need for help. This wasn't simple anhedonia, where life goes on and you just deal with it. Here there were days when I couldn't get out of bed. There were days when I got caught in loops of thought and though I could watch the loops and witness their spinning convolutions, I could not escape them, and it hurt and hurt and hurt.

Psychiatrists, and the pharmaceutical companies whom they essentially serve, put a handsome chrome gleam on SSRIs: NO MORE DEPRESSION, they promise seductively. They downplay the side effects, but they essentially ignore the most troubling thing of all: something you have to take every single day or else it fucks up your whole world? That's an addiction. That a doctor gives her sweetly musical imprimatur to that addiction doesn't make it any less so. Of course, a drug addiction might be preferable to depression. That's what I'd gone to the doctor to try to figure out.

So here was the calculus as I saw it: if I went with the SSRI, it would take two to six weeks or more before I saw any relief. There would likely be side effects. And I would be dependent on that drug for, in the best case, a long long time.

Alternately, I could use marijuana. Marijuana relieved my depressive symptoms immediately. While I was high, it gave me an immediate boost of energy, and brought some pleasure into my life.

Now, from that perspective--from treating marijuana as medicine--marijuana had one obvious and not insubstantial negative side effect, which is that it's intoxicating. There's a reason stoners aren't usually thought of as world beaters. Sure, it can engender a space of deep creativity, but in my experience the concomitant degradation of technique generally overwhelms whatever inspiration the drug offers. As with most people, pot makes me a little stupid. So writing and other complicated abstract tasks became out of the question.

But on the other hand, if I otherwise wasn't going to be getting out of bed, well, I wasn't going to be getting much writing done in that case either. At least if I got high I'd feel better and have some energy. I could do things around the house. Dishes and laundry got done. Clutter got put away. I could go outside and go for a walk. My day would be better than it was going to be otherwise.

And if the next day I felt that I could face the day without it, I didn't need to take it.

And on those days that I did need it, it was a godsend.

And once I started treating cannabis like a medicine, the question became, "How do I minimize the side effects? What is the smallest effective dose?" I experimented. How little could I take to get sufficient relief from my depressive symptoms while minimizing the intoxication? Over time the dose got smaller and smaller.

And eventually time went on and I made other changes in my life and slowly the depression lifted, and I could just go back to smoking weed for the fun of it like a normal person.

Why am I telling this story? Well, today is 4/20, the day most closely associated with stoner culture, and while every passing day that culture becomes more acceptable in our society (if no less worthy of a certain mockery), I want to raise my voice in support of this other aspect of the plant's use. I have been opposed to the Drug War since I was old enough to say, "Wait. Didn't we try this before? Didn't we call it Prohibition and didn't it make things much worse than the problem it was purporting to cure?" But between the noise of the 4/20 crowd on the one side and the "Drugs are bad" crowd on the other, there might not be much room for other voices to be heard. Cannabis helped me when I needed help the most. It's hideous that the drug that demands habitual use is the one the government makes easier to use. So on this colorfully noisy day, I am speaking up.

I know there a lot of people out there joyfully toking up around the country today, and good for them, and I hope they have a great time and bop their heads pleasurably to music and watch endless episodes of "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" and eat the entire bag of Fritos, and I hope that some of them are maybe taking a minute to thank the drug for the fun it provides. For my part, I will offer my gratitude to its ability to deflect the states of profound Not Fun I found myself in. I'm glad and a bit lucky to still be here to be able to share this story, and I will give credit where it is due.

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