This Year’s 4/20 Reflections

Today is 4/20, St. Cannabis's Day, and in its honor I'm going to not get high, because it's a Wednesday and I have stuff to do.

What I did do today was go back and read my piece from a year ago, in which I talked about how marijuana helped me get through when I was struggling deeply with depression. What I remembered most about that piece, besides that it was the closest I've ever come to missing my deadline--I clicked "Publish" that day literally at 11:59pm--was that I'd spoken candidly about a very tough time in my life. One year on, I wanted to re-examine what I'd had to say and see if there was anything worth adding or commenting on.

In the piece, I speak about how, in the face of that depression, I had gone to a psychiatrist to consider going on an SSRI. Interestingly, until I reread the piece, I'd pretty much forgotten all about that meeting. In fact, until I got to the specific description of the psychiatrist herself, I was thinking the story was about a therapist I was working with suggesting I try marijuana for my chronic insomnia. That's how far out of mind the visit to the psychiatrist had become.

If that isn't a testament to just how far I've come since the depths of that depression, how much I've healed, I don't know what is. The situation at the time had gotten to an any-port-in-a-storm level of desperation. Now, my story has changed so completely that a significant detail from that period is more or less forgotten: awesome.

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