Life Will Be the Death of Me

by Chelsea Handler

  * * *

  • • •

  I once fell out of a seaplane and into the Hudson River. I was flying out of Manhattan to visit a friend upstate. After the plane landed, there was a little rowboat waiting to ferry us back to the dock. I slipped stepping into the boat and landed in the Hudson River in my boots, jeans, sweater, and wool peacoat. It was Thanksgiving weekend and we were less than ten feet from shore. You know those babies being taught how to swim in YouTube videos where they are bundled up in sweaters and boots? That’s what I looked like. It was freezing and it was funny. Chunk bypassed the little rowboat too and jumped right into the water after me.

  Bert and Bernice are never going to rescue me. Even if Bert tried, he’d drown. Bernice would probably just look the other way.

  Some people are not built for drugs and alcohol. I believe that I am. I believe I am built for the apocalypse.

  I reconnected with marijuana in my late thirties. As I’ve previously shared, I’m open to most drugs as long as they don’t leave you with a hole in your arm, or staring through a keyhole of an apartment door, looking out for drones. At this stage of my life, I find it prudent to avoid apartments altogether.

  I loved pot when I first discovered it in high school—or pretended I did, because I thought it made me look cool—but after a few years of recreational abuse, it just ended up leaving me paranoid and self-conscious, and in one instance, getting up to leave the theater when a movie ended, only to realize I was on an airplane.

  Then, one year, my family and I were on our annual Christmas ski trip to Whistler, Canada, and our chef made special “adult” cookies. Every night, my brothers and sisters would line up in the kitchen on our way to dinner, and I would dole out half of a cookie to each of them—and if any of my nieces and nephews stole any without me seeing, it was none of my business. Our family thrived that year. Our family doesn’t really fight, because we’re all so exhausted from our childhoods, but it definitely marked the beginning of a new era for the Handlers.

  * * *

  • • •

  The legalization of marijuana in California raised standards at dispensaries. The educative component that was lacking for so many years was now available on all store-bought weed. The labeling of strains, along with the labeling of THC vs. CBD ratios, was all right there in black and white. With the advent of medicinal-grade, controlled micro-dosing, there aren’t a lot of people I wouldn’t recommend it to. I’ve turned straight-arrow people into people I can actually spend time with. I’ve gotten friends who have never done any drugs, friends who have had terrible experiences with edibles, my Mormon sister, people’s parents, Muslims, and one nun to imbibe. About ninety percent of the people I’ve introduced to marijuana are now frequent users. I take a lot of pride in being an enabler or, a term I’d like to coin, a “pharmacological intuitive”—one who instinctually knows the exact right dosage for each consumer.

  After Trump was elected I came the closest I’d ever been to depressed. My anger rose to the surface, rather than simmering just beneath it. I had something identifiable to be angry about. So, instead of masking it, I treated it.

  That’s when the news started to get fun. Kellyanne Conway, stoned, is a good time. It’s up there with Eddie Murphy’s Raw. Same for Sarah Suckabee Sanders. One day, Sarah Suckabee Sanders came out for her press briefing with emerald-green eye shadow shrouding one eye, and zero eye shadow on the other eye. I’d find myself laughing when Chris Matthews would interrupt his guests while spitting all over them, and I started to see the news for what it was: a twenty-four-hour spin cycle filled with conjecture and speculation about whatever idiotic or racist comment Trump had tweeted that day. I realized that I had allowed this administration to rob me of one year of my life, and I wasn’t going to give them another. I needed a channel change.

  The thing that non–cannabis users fail to recognize is the way cannabis bends your frame of mind. It allows access to a recessed part of your brain that I, particularly, was deeply needing to engage. How to be less reactive, how to sand down the edges—these were things I had been working on with Dan. As a result, things became slightly more poetic. Less final, less “end of an empire.” My sleep got better, my moods got better, even my dreams got better. I stopped watching the news on a loop, and I even started waking up laughing. Pot, politics, and Dan summed up 2018 for me. The year I had to fall apart in order to come back together.

  * * *

  • • •

  I was sitting in Dan’s office one Monday morning, telling him how passionate I had become about this new marijuana renaissance.

  “My opinions have always felt fully formed,” I told Dan. “With pot, it feels like they are finally unfurling. Every canvas is blank. Everyone is so much less annoying and everything is a little more tolerable when I’m a little bit stoned,” I explained. “I also don’t feel compelled to talk as much, and with my voice, that’s a bonus.”

  “In what way is everyone so annoying?” It was always funny to hear Dan use “annoying” in a sentence. “Annoying” seems like a word that expires after adolescence, like “conceited.” I liked that I was finally rubbing off on Dan.

  “The thing I’m realizing, Dan,” I said, leaning on one elbow, but missing the arm of the chair and falling into my own lap, “is that I’m the one who’s annoying. It’s like, I’m just now finding out, this whole time, I’ve been the annoying one.”

  Dan stared straight at me, and it was hard to discern his take on my new hobby.

  “I used to think that something was wrong with everyone, and now that I know I’m the one with the problem, everyone seems a lot more interesting,” I explained.

  “I don’t think you should judge yourself so harshly,” Dan said. This was a phrase Dan repeated to me frequently, and one I’ve never quite gotten on board with.

  “I do,” I told him. “I feel like that’s what’s been missing this whole time. Circling around other people in order to avoid myself. I deserve to be on the receiving end of my own judgment. It’s my comeuppance.

  “It’s like this little porthole into a whole new world has opened up,” I continued. “When I’m stoned, I can find joy in shaving my legs.”

  This was when I realized I was stoned. I had popped a chocolate-covered Kiva blueberry on my way out the door that morning. I don’t usually take them in the morning, but I had therapy and thought—Why not? That’s my favorite thing about edibles: forgetting you’ve taken some, then feeling a little psychological twinkle, and suddenly things get just a wee bit more dynamic. Weed lit up my curiosity in things I hadn’t had interest in for years. That’s what I was missing—getting lost in life a little more.

  Dan told me that if I could access that state of mind when I was high, it was already part of my psyche—which meant that I could access it without anything at all, or through meditation.

  “I’m not there yet,” I said. I had been trying for months to meditate, and it was going nowhere, fast. I could only do forced meditation when I was with Dan. He made me short recordings and long recordings, and I’d try it for a few days at home, and then forget, or remember—and then forget.

  “Not only is it easier for me to be around people, it’s definitely easier for people to be around me. I am able to have conversations with people I never had the patience to listen to before. I’m so much less judgmental. Everything becomes a little bit softer, less apocalyptic. No black and white. More middle. More pleasant.”

  “Well, that’s great. I don’t have a problem with you taking edibles,” he told me.

  “The other good news is—it’s cut my drinking in half.”

  This was a sentence that I never expected to come out of my mouth, so I want to be very clear: I have no intention, now or in the future, of giving up alcohol. This isn’t a book where I get sober at the end. However, cutting my drinking in half was an unexpected perk, and that is when I started to g
et serious about cannabis.

  * * *

  • • •

  I had been approached by various weed companies to start my own line of cannabis products, but I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon until I had done due diligence and fully investigated what was available on the market. This meant that it became my job to know everything about every available oil, weed, candy, herb, and food item that contained cannabis.

  I was sitting around my house in Los Angeles one weekend, with Glen and Shana, doling out the new edibles that I wanted them to try.

  “Chelsea,” Glen asked me, dripping in sarcasm. “Would you consider yourself a medical practitioner?”

  “No, I think of myself as more of a pharmacological intuitive,” I said, testing out the term in everyday usage. “I have a history of helping people, Glen, yourself included.”

  Glen and I both suffer from psoriasis, but only one of us had clear skin until I shared with Glen the prescription that had knocked it out of my system. Two doxycycline, twice a day, for ten days.* I gave the very same prescription to my hairstylist when she had a terrible bout of acne. Twice a day, ten days, never on an empty stomach. Glen no longer has psoriasis, and my hairstylist no longer has acne, and there are several African villagers who now have the cure to malaria.

  My sister Simone is required to give formal presentations at work, which makes her nervous. Her anxiety causes dry mouth, so I gave her a bottle of Propranalol, which is a beta-blocker that cuts off the signal from your neurotransmitters that tells your brain it’s anxious.

  “Thank God we have a doctor in the family,” Simone said, after her second promotion.

  My area of expertise isn’t only limited to cannabis and pharmaceuticals. I have had a 100 percent success rate helping many women—friends who, prior to my intervention, hadn’t gone number two in years—become regular. Women in particular struggle with regularity, so it is important to have bowel movement advocates out there. There are over-the-counter calcium magnesium pills called Mag O7 from Aerobic Life, and if you start with four each night, typically by day three you will start to have regular bowel movements. At that point, I advise patients to reduce their intake to three pills in order to avoid morning diarrhea.

  Breast inflammation before your period? Rose hips, once a day for a month. (Molly told me that one.)

  Hangovers? Two Excedrin, and the headache will be gone in less than ten minutes. Caffeine is the antidote to headaches caused by alcohol, and Excedrin contains caffeine. If you’ve been drinking, milk thistle helps if you take it before you go to bed, but it’s hard to remember to take something when you’re shit-faced.

  All in all, I’ve had an incredible track record with curing people, and the only mistakes I make are usually with myself, like the time I swallowed a yeast infection pill that was supposed to be administered vaginally—and then waited expectantly in the forty-eight hours that followed for a loaf of bread to pop out of my mouth.

  I know if people have the personality for Xanax, or if they will do better on a lighter sleeping pill, like Sonata (generic brand is Zaleplon). I also know that Xanax isn’t a sleeping pill, but that’s what I use it for. Adderall is good for some people, but too much for certain personality types. High-energy people like myself do not need Adderall, no matter how tired you are, unless you want to wake up in the middle of the night cracking your knuckles. If you like Adderall, you should also look into Provigil or Nuvigil. That’s what people in the government and the military use when they travel through different time zones. Provigil is the best thing I have ever taken for jet lag, or if I really need to focus. But again, if you have a knuckle-cracking problem, then you might want to start with a half. There is nothing I love more than getting on an international flight, popping a Xanax, and sleeping for twelve hours straight, but I have become so disgusted with the pharmaceutical industry in this country, I have redirected that passion and dedication into the healthier alternative—cannabis.

  “Chelsea,” Glen said, putting his fork down. “You should be a late-stage companion. That’s something you could do. You’re fun. Something activity-based, somewhere by the mountains, or a pool. Older men seem to be drawn to you, you’d get hired all the time.”

  “Who’s in the late stage? Me or the companion?” I asked.

  “The companion,” Shana said, laughing. “Always the companion. You have a lot in common with older people.”

  “This can be the perfect foil for your identity crisis, Chelsea. Since you can no longer date older guys, this is a way you can still hang out with them all the time.” Glen wiped his mouth and took a sip of Mike’s Hard Lemonade, which he had brought to my house. Glen and I are a lot alike. We find something we like, then abuse it for two months, and then we’re on to the next thing. Glen was having a Mike’s Hard Lemonade renaissance, and although I was repulsed, I understood it.

  “Chelsea,” Glen asked, “in your professional opinion, what procedure do you think Donald Trump is getting to make his face look like it does?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “I don’t think he’s actually getting work done to look that bad. What he should be doing is resurfacing the texture of his skin, and at the very least, getting the fat sucked out from underneath his eyes. And maybe lipo, but he obviously can’t even see clearly, if he thinks that what he’s presenting is presentable. His ass is the size of Bert’s—that should be first on his to-do list.”

  “You don’t think he’s doing stuff to his mouth?” Glen asked. He was being serious, so I looked up.

  “Like what?”

  “Is there some sort of surgical procedure or face treatment that makes your mouth look more like an anus?”

  I had to think about that.

  “I don’t know anything about that. I mean, people usually make their lips bigger, not more anus-like.”

  “He may think that it looks good. It’s as if his mouth keeps getting tighter and smaller.”

  I liked the idea of Donald Trump sewing his mouth closed, one surgical procedure at a time.

  “This country has had a rough year.” Glen sighed.

  “Men have had a rough year,” Shana said and laughed, looking at Glen.

  “Well, you only have yourselves to blame. It’s a wrap on old white men,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Shana said, walking back to the table, a frozen ham in her hands. “Are you saving this for a special occasion?” She was definitely stoned if she wanted to cook a ham. I redirected my attention back to the only male in the room.

  “Let me tell you a little story. Every week I go to the nail salon, where I get a massage on my forearms after my manicure. Getting a massage on my forearms is the closest thing I can relate to what getting a hand job must feel like. It’s so specifically terrific, I could easily see myself climaxing at a nail salon, but I don’t. That is the difference between men and women. We are more prone to controlling ourselves.”

  “Yes,” Glen agreed, most women are. “But I would place you in the category of people who have trouble controlling themselves. It’s a good thing you weren’t born with male genitalia.”

  “I can guarantee that if I were, you would still never find me jerking off into a fucking plant.”

  “Who did that?” Glen asked, laughing.

  “I don’t know. One of those guys. Louis C.K. or Harvey Weinstein. One of them jerked off into a plant. I mean, seriously.”

  “Can you imagine jerking off into a plant?” Glen asked, disgusted. “What is wrong with everyone?”

  “I’m stoned, high, drunk, and stoned,” Shana said, with the frozen ham tucked into her armpit.

  “You’re not drunk,” I reassured her, and guided her upstairs to my bathroom, where I placed the frozen ham on the floor of the infrared sauna and told Shana it would be ready first thing in the morning.

  “Is the sauna even on?” she asked.

&nbs
p; “Yes,” I told her as I guided her to my bed. “How do you feel?” I asked as we climbed into bed.

  “Super warm and fuzzy,” she told me. I got out my medical journal and made a note of her condition.

  “And hungry?” I asked her. I had been working tirelessly on finding the right mixture of ingredients that didn’t give you the munchies.

  “Not really. The ham just reminded me of something Mom would have made at Christmas.”

  “Do you feel sad?” I asked her, taking out my medical notebook again.

  “No, just warm and fuzzy,” she repeated.

  We lay in my bed, holding hands, looking out at the backyard lit by the lanterns hanging in the trees. I felt grateful in that moment that I was lying next to my sister, and for all the gifts life had given me, and for all the girls life had given me.

  “I just want everything to go on forever,” I told Shana, and then stuck my finger in her butt.

  “When are we going to be too old to act like this?” she asked me, giggling.

  “We’ll never be too old to act like this,” I reassured her.

  Shana yawned. “Just because I get colonics, doesn’t mean you can treat me like shit.” Then she rolled over and fell asleep.

  * Needless to say, I am not a doctor, nor can I examine you as you read this. So please don’t follow these protocols as genuine medical advice that’s meant for you. Use your head and see a real doctor.