Marijuana Gave Me a Delusional Sense of Control.
Marijuana was nowhere near as boring as I’d originally thought. Apparently I hadn’t gotten truly high in high school – which was interesting and confusing, but no longer mattered now that I understood the effects of marijuana.
The first time I drove a car high was an eye-opening experience. I saw a stop sign ahead and I had no concept as to whether the stop sign was ten feet in front of me, or ten miles in front of me. Everything moved in extraordinarily slow motion and then – wham! – the stop sign was right there, directly in front of my car nearly hitting my bumper, and I slammed on the brakes without having a clue where I was.
First and foremost, I realized I should never again drive a car under the influence of marijuana. Driving while drunk was more of a necessity, since I was always drunk, but I tried not to drive high quite so much.
While I still preferred the feeling of being uninhibited and careless to the feeling of being stoned and stupid, I discovered that combining alcohol and marijuana gave me a feeling that was slightly more bearable than the lack of control that came from being just wasted.
Marijuana gave me a delusional sense of control over my alcohol and drug use.
I still vomited, blacked out, passed out and generally behaved like a typical drunk. But I’d added a new chemical to my system, one that made me focus more on my internal compass than on randomly spewing the rage I’d acquired as a daily drunk.
“It’ll mellow you out,” Larry had said. He’d tired of me being angry at him all the time.
And while I didn’t feel like I liked Larry more, I did feel more like getting high than arguing. This, as he predicted, worked like a charm.
It did not keep me from seeking cocaine everywhere I went, every day. Cocaine was by far my favorite drug and when cocaine entered my body, all bets were off. I could drink beer, do shots, smoke joints – none of it mattered. From the first line of coke, all I wanted was more coke. Nothing else mattered but the coke.
Larry realized this and, still trying to do whatever it took to make me happy, he even bought some cocaine on occasion. Given that I was drinking all of his money, and smoking the rest of it, I’m not sure how he managed to buy cocaine at all – even in the minuscule amounts he acquired.
But I was grateful for it. Not for him, but for it. And when it wasn’t around, I drank as much as I could consume, and smoked as much pot as I could, before passing out wherever I landed.
Soon it was every day.
Because right around this same time, I started getting high at work.