Numbing

I'm sure I used to have a button like this one when I was in college.  I would have gotten rid of it, however, after I was busted for trying to carry marijuana onto a plane in 1972, the very fist year of required security screening of passengers.

I wound up spending all the following year's school money on paying off the lawyer who got the charge reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.  Since then my relationship with the "weed with roots in hell" has been an off and on thing.  I was never high on the job, whether I worked at McDonalds, as I did in 1979, or at the University of Utah.  But I did enjoy a weekend high or the occasional one week blowout to shake the dark stuff of reality out of my head OR to deal better with it.

 A typical one week blowout during my working years occurred in 1980 when I was staying with a friend's folks near Santa Cruz, California.  I remember one night eating pasta at the bar of a restaurant near their house and watching Ronald Reagan accept the GOP nomination for president.  As I listened to him in my altered state of consciousness (which increased my ability to recognize powerful rhetoric, and I said, "Well, he's going to be the next president of the United States."  And it didn't bother me.

Sadly, my occasional use turned into a problem with the "perfect storm" of Will's failing brain, my retirement, and legalization in Oregon.  Occasional use turned into every day then, over time, a couple of times a day, then all day.  This didn't happen all at once.  I started a business and took some web classes.  I got free training in dementia care through Oregon Care Partners.

But I kept falling into the addiction cycle of relapse and recovery. I recently listened to a wonderful book by Leslie Jamison that explains this cycle:  The Recovering:Intoxication and Its Aftermath. 

I have, since the first time I got high in 1971, used weed because I liked the experience of the high -- the insights it gave me into the power dynamics of the world, the release it gave me from always having to care, and the simple experience of enhanced physical pleasure.  But beginning in 2014 I was using it to escape my reality, the everyday complicated grief of the long goodbye of dementia.  I allowed myself to be triggered into smoking or vaping every time Will told the same story three times or put dishes away in the wrong place;  every time the slow dissolution and approach of death appeared in front of me.  In spite of the warnings of my therapist, I was numbing myself, not "being present to my grief."
I used to hate that concept.

I'm in recovery again but, sadly, I've noticed that I am drinking too much -- and for me that means having two drinks a day.  I have one with dinner and one before going to bed. The one I have before bed is one of those "drinking alone" things -- not a good sign.  I'm not happy about this.  I know I "should" be distracting myself with something else that's fun but so far it's been difficult.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm not all that good at living with the grief from day to day.  There's only so much heartache I want to carry.

by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Fortunately, I am working again, facilitating a ministry course for my church.  And I'm writing this blog.   And promoting my new poetry book.  I'm keeping busy.  I hope all these activities help me better resist the sometimes overwhelming temptation to numb myself into happiness.