A Really Good Day

by Ayelet Waldman

  * * *

  *1  The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971, and the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988.

  *2  Richard A. Posner, “We Need a Strong Prison System.”

  *3  Glenn Greenwald, Drug Decriminalization in Portugal, p. 28.

  *4  We are actually well on our way to legalizing marijuana. In addition to Colorado, the states of Washington, Oregon, and Alaska and the District of Columbia have all recently legalized the possession and sale of small amounts of marijuana. Polls show that more than half the country favors this reform. Twenty-four states allow for the possession and distribution of medical marijuana, a policy supported by over 70 percent of the population. As people come to appreciate the tax revenues of legalized marijuana, and notice the few negative effects of these schemes, support is likely only to increase.

  *5  I’m willing to bet that the average consumer of Jell-O shots is even younger than the average consumer of bubble tea.

  *6  Tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive substance in marijuana. There are over a hundred cannabinoids in marijuana, including cannabidiol (CBD), which is less intoxicating and has anxiolytic, antipsychotic, antiemetic, and anti-inflammatory properties. See, e.g., M. M. Bergamaschi et al., “Safety and Side Effects of Cannabidiol, a Cannabis Sativa Constituent.”

  *7  Drugs such as 25I-NBOMe and 5-MeO-AMT, both synthetic hallucinogens.

  *8  The Wesleyan students who nearly died took K2 or AB-FUBINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid infinitely more dangerous than the relatively safe MDMA they thought they were getting.

  *9  Interestingly, treatment with ibogaine, a psychedelic drug derived from the African iboga plant that works to alleviate withdrawal symptoms, shows much more promising (though preliminary) results in treating addiction than either drug-replacement or traditional abstinence-based programs. See Kenneth R. Alper, M.D. et al., “Treatment of Acute Opioid Withdrawal with Ibogaine.”

  *10  See, e.g., Breaking Bad.

  *11  Carl L. Hart et al., “Is Cognitive Functioning Impaired in Methamphetamine Users? A Critical Review.”

  *12  M. G. Kirkpatrick et al., “Comparison of Intranasal Methamphetamine and D-Amphetamine Self-Administration by Humans.”

  *13  Kofi Annan, “Why It’s Time to Legalize Drugs.”

  Day 28

  Microdose Day

  Physical Sensations: Slightly dizzy about three hours after dose.

  Mood: Activated. Edgy.

  Conflict: Disagreement with my husband.

  Sleep: A better night’s sleep than on other Microdose Days.

  Work: Productive workday.

  Pain: Minor.

  It began when I lobbed a passive-aggressive salvo through the closed bathroom door. My shoulder was hurting, I said, and it had to be from writing while lying on the uncomfortable couch.

  “Let’s agree that the next time we buy a couch we will consult one another,” I said.

  As if we spend our days buying couches. As if we are likely to buy another couch in the next decade.

  After a moment, my husband answered: “Your problem isn’t the couch, or my chair, or the eight-track players. Your problem is that you want a room of your own.” Here we go again. They should write a play about us called Who’s Afraid of Admitting Virginia Woolf Was Right?

  “I do not. I just can’t work in there.”

  “Exactly. You can’t work in there. You want your own space. But you don’t feel like you deserve it.”

  He’s said that before, and I always respond that he’s the one who wants me out of his studio. We bicker over who it is that wants me out, and then we make up and resolve to share the space more cooperatively. But this time I remembered the day a few weeks ago, when, in a fit of pique, I packed away my things from his studio: the photographs of the children, my row of books, my little laptop stand. After I had put the bin in the storage shed, I had been perfectly comfortable on the uncomfortable couch. I had felt at ease, as I feel when I write in a café. In a café, the space doesn’t feel like it’s mine, because it’s not mine. It was when I treated the studio as my husband’s, and myself as the guest that I always felt I was, that I finally felt comfortable.

  I remembered that feeling, and I was finally able to admit that he is right. What I want is not a corner of his space, or even a precisely delineated half of it. What I want is a room of my own. But I don’t feel I deserve one.

  In part, it’s about money. In the words of Virginia Woolf, “Money dignifies what is frivolous if unpaid for.” Though I have always been paid well enough for my writing, I earn a fraction of what my husband does. Not just the typical seventy-nine cents every woman earns to a man’s dollar. Even less than that. From the very beginning, this has bothered me. There was a while, when our kids were small, when I became obsessed with the salary of the nanny we hired after our third child was born. At the end of every year, I would do an assessment. If I earned more than I paid the nanny, I was relieved. If I earned less, I was devastated. How could I justify this frivolous career when I couldn’t even pay for the child care I needed because I was pursuing this frivolous career?

  I was aware of how irrational I was being. We employed a nanny not so I could work, but so we could work. My husband was no less responsible for child care than I was. He is a feminist, born and bred, and never for a moment did he consider child care solely my expense, but both of ours. So why did I offset the nanny’s salary only against my own? Why did my mental equation not include what he was bringing in?

  For the past five years, I have earned a good living. Not as much as my husband, but enough so that if I had to I could support a middle-class lifestyle for our family. Was it because I was making more money that I suddenly felt free to resent his vast collection of obsolete audio equipment and his uncomfortable couch? Could it be that simple?

  Like every other young woman in a “Take Back the Night” T-shirt, I read A Room of One’s Own in my first Women’s Studies class. And my second, and my third, and I think pretty much every single Women’s Studies class I ever took. Woolf’s message is clear, compelling, and seductive: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”

  Actually, Woolf was quite specific. If a woman is to indulge in the literary life, she must have five hundred pounds a year. According to a number of Web sites whose authority I have decided for no particular reason to trust, five hundred 1929 pounds sterling is worth $38,383.44 today. I make more than that.

  So I’ve got the money. What I don’t have is a room of my own.

  My husband came out of the bathroom, dried his hands, and turned to me, loins girded for the fight he anticipated.

  I cut him off at the pass. “You’re right. You’ve been right all along. I want a room of my own.”

  “Finally!”

  “I want my own studio.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I have been fighting with you for months—”

  “Years.” Okay, he was starting to get a little drunk on my capitulation, but I guess he had earned it.

  “I have been fighting with you for years because I couldn’t accept that I deserved my own workspace.” Finally, we could put this stupid argument to bed. We knew the answer!

  My husband opened his arms and I fell into them. Then my face fell.

  “We have a problem,” I said. “Studio space is just too expensive. And there’s nowhere here for me to work.”

  “What about Dr. Schaeffer’s consulting room?” my husband asked. “Could you work there?”

  “It’s dark and gloomy,” I said. “It’s a vampire’s lair.”

  “Paint it,” my husband said. “Paint it white.”

  “But that’s the original woodwork!” I reminded him of what happened with the Gamble House in Pasadena, the masterpiece of Arts and Crafts architecture designed and built by Charles and Henry Greene. Th
e son of David and Mary Gamble, the couple for whom the house was built, put the house on the market, only to change his mind after overhearing a prospective buyer flick a derisive finger at the floor-to-ceiling teak and mahogany woodwork and say something to the effect of “First thing we’ll do is paint all this dark wood white.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t the Gamble house,” my husband said. The woodwork in our house is lovely, but it’s fir, not mahogany. Moreover, we’ve preserved it throughout the rest of the house. “It’s just the one room. And we don’t ever plan on selling. Let the kids worry about the resale value.”

  I wasn’t done arguing. “The office isn’t empty,” I said. “The assistant uses it. Where would she work?”

  Who, he wondered, needs a room more, the assistant or the person who is ostensibly to do the work the assistant is meant to facilitate?

  Well, when you put it like that, the answer was so obvious.

  “She does,” I said.

  This feeling of being undeserving, then, and not money, was the heart of the matter. All of this rootlessness, this squatting in corners, in cafés, at the kitchen table, has been a manifestation of my insecurity—not about my failure to earn as much as my husband, but about the inherent value of my work. I don’t feel I deserve a room of my own, because I feel, no matter how much I earn, that my work is worthless.

  These are some of the things I’ve said about my work:

  • “They’re meant to be read with the amount of attention you can muster while breastfeeding” (about my murder mysteries).

  • “It’s kind of glorified Chick Lit” (about Love and Other Impossible Pursuits).

  • “It’s more of a polemic than a novel” (about Daughter’s Keeper).

  • “I’m not an artist, more of a craftsman.”

  I suppose much of this has to do with how I got my start, as the author of a series of commercial murder mysteries, the kind you might find on a rack in a drugstore. When I published those books, I loudly proclaimed I had no literary pretensions. I thought I was being honest, but now I realize I was just being cowardly—saying what I worried others might say about me before they had the chance to. If I dared to nurture creative ambitions, I would put myself in danger of failing to fulfill them.

  Though I am proud of my books, there is a vicious voice in my head that tells me I’m worthless. Even when I hold in my hands the finished product, even as I feel my chest expand with pride, the voice says, “This book isn’t any good,” or “It’s okay, but you’ll never be able to do it again.” Every single time I sit down to work, I hear that ugly whisper in my ear. How can I expect others to take me seriously as a writer when I look down on myself?

  As I write this, I realize that during this past month that ugly voice has been quieter. There were even days when I didn’t hear her at all. It can only be microdosing (or the mother of all placebo effects) that has allowed me to distract my inner self-loathing insecurity-monster long enough to have what has turned out to be the most productive month of my writing life.

  The painter is coming on Wednesday with buckets of white paint. I know there are those who consider what I’m about to do to the paneling, wainscoting, and trim to be a sacrilege, but if Dr. Schaeffer’s consulting room is to be mine, I want it to be bright and clean, antiseptic and new. My room. My own.

  Day 29

  Transition Day

  Physical Sensations: None.

  Mood: A little low, but as soon as I started to work, it passed.

  Conflict: None.

  Sleep: Decent night’s sleep.

  Work: Productive.

  Pain: First really painful day in quite a while.

  Why is my shoulder pain back? I had such a great day yesterday, with such profound realizations and resolutions. It sucks to be back in this place of pain. Although, when I sit and really consider my shoulder, I think (though I may be deluding myself) that there’s a different quality to the pain. It’s not merely a matter of intensity, though it is indeed less intense. It feels less…permanent. Or perhaps it’s merely that, having experienced pain-free days, I am optimistic that this bout will soon all be over.

  The experience of optimism is an unfamiliar one for me. I am by nature a pessimist, able to anticipate the possibility of doom in virtually any circumstance. Even when the glass is full, I know that it’s likely to get toppled over and its contents spilled, probably right into my open laptop. I imbibed this cocktail of negativity combined with misanthropy and laced with a heady combination of arrogance and self-loathing from my father, without realizing either how unhappy it made me or that there were ten other ways to look at things and I was always choosing the worst. It wasn’t until I met my husband that I realized that a belief that the fucked-up world is filled with stupid people isn’t a necessary corollary of intelligence. It’s actually kinda dumb.

  Each morning, I find myself astonished anew at how my husband wakes up convinced that his day will contain a series of delights and pleasures, as if he’s holding a golden ticket to visit Willy Wonka’s factory. Unfortunately, only one of our children shares his seemingly boundless capacity for optimism. When she was younger, this child routinely woke up in the morning and announced, “This is the best day of my life!” She would probably have gotten annoyed at all the looks the rest of us exchanged over her alien sunniness, but she doesn’t really get annoyed, bless her little unblackened heart. The other kids and I, on the other hand, are confident, until proven otherwise, that what we have to look forward to is a more or less typical amount of shit.

  And yet here I am, feeling hopeful and optimistic. Is it microdosing with LSD that has allowed my newly plastic brain to wiggle its way out from beneath its typical fog of negativity?

  I wonder what would have happened had my father been born ten or twenty years later. What if he had been young when psychedelics first began infiltrating the culture? He was, after all, a political revolutionary. He despised capitalism, hated “the man.” If he had been a young man in the 1960s instead of in the 1940s, perhaps his ideological commitment might have been to the kind of free-range West Coast socialism that flourished right here in Berkeley, rather than to the Zionism of the Israeli kibbutz.

  What if my father had taken LSD?

  I’m not naïve. I don’t believe that a single tab of acid would have cured his bipolar disorder, reordered his grim view of the world, made my parents’ marriage happy, but it is not impossible to imagine my father’s life being different. I have a friend close to my father’s age, a Hungarian immigrant whom I’ll call Laszlo. During the Holocaust, Laszlo, then a child, was saved by a Gentile friend of the family, who smuggled him out of the village where he had been staying with his grandparents, to his mother in Budapest. The rest of Laszlo’s large extended family in the village was deported to Auschwitz and murdered. In Budapest, Laszlo, his mother, and his sister were once again saved, this time by Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian former Fascist party member who, posing as the Spanish consul general to Hungary, provided documents, protected housing, and eventually even food to over five thousand Jews. Laszlo’s father, who had been conscripted earlier in the war into the Hungarian forced-labor battalions, never returned.

  A college student in Budapest in 1956, Laszlo was active in the failed revolution, and was forced to flee when the Soviet military invaded. He escaped to Austria and eventually to the United States, where he, like so many of his fellows, flourished. A former engineer who came to Silicon Valley in the early days, Laszlo is a venture capitalist and a philanthropist, with a foundation that initially focused on human rights, education, and health issues, and has lately shifted its concentration to mental health in young people. Laszlo was married and divorced twice. Despite accomplishing so much, for most of his life Laszlo has also been profoundly unhappy. He told me that when his children were young they used to ask him, “Dad, how come you’re never smiling? How come you never have fun?”

  I first met Laszlo through a friend who knew I was researching and
writing a novel set in Hungary. At the time, I seemed to be collecting Hungarian gentlemen friends of a certain age. Laszlo was an invaluable resource, and a lovely man, whose sadness was palpable. Then, when I saw him again recently, I found him profoundly changed.

  Over dim sum at our mutual favorite restaurant, Laszlo told me the most remarkable story. Like my father, Laszlo missed the era of drug experimentation. During the sixties, he was focused on going to school and earning money to support his mother and sister, and eventually his wives and children. Smoking weed or taking acid was not something he had time for.

  Recently, a friend who knew that Laszlo had struggled with depression suggested that he take the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, commonly used by native peoples of the Amazon. Laszlo initially rejected the idea. It seemed crazy. But he was in pain, and he was desperate, much as I was when I began this experiment. He agreed to accompany his friend, a physician and an expert in early-childhood trauma and its effects on mental and physical health, and fly to a place where ayahuasca could be legally consumed with the guidance of a “shaman.” If Laszlo had any expectations, they were only that he might spend a night in intense intestinal discomfort while seeing wild shapes and colors. Instead, he saw his father.

  Laszlo was four years old when his father vanished, and he had never understood why his father had not said goodbye. With a child’s naïveté, he imagined that it was his fault that his father left, that he had been a “bad boy.” That pain lingered into his adulthood. Under the influence of this brew of the Banisteriopsis caapi vine, Laszlo heard his father’s voice.