Even though Ted advised us not to place too much importance on the numbers, I recorded the days on my Canadian Rockies wall calendar. October 8: first day with no weed in three years. Not only weed, but no alcohol. I drew a black X stretching from each corner of the square. Every week or so I marked it: October 21: fourteen days sober. November 1: twenty-five days. November 18: forty-two days.
To reinforce my commitment, I scribbled the words “Weed = feel bad. Sobriety = feel good” on a thin ribbon of notebook paper and kept it in my wallet. It was a simple formula but difficult to follow. I slid it in the space in front of my IDs so that, even without reading the words, a glimpse of the clean white paper reminded me of what had at some point become a quest for purity.
In group, the bitter prep cook detailed his week’s struggles: his ex-wife was bugging him for money; he felt old, hated his job; the stress made him want to drink. We offered encouraging messages which came out canned such as, “Hang in there man, you’ve made it so far.” He wagged his leg, mumbled thanks.
Carolina seemed to be progressing. She wasn’t using coke. Her boyfriend never called or came over, so she peered under the curtains less frequently. But she was lonely. She missed the company of a romantic companion and the bustle of so-called friends coming in and out of her old house. Ted discussed the necessity of staying single while adjusting to our new lives, recommending extreme caution when making new friends. To be safe, I decided to make no friends at all.
Years later, I saw that I failed to use group as a safe place to examine the forces that compelled me to use. Back then, I spoke only vaguely of my anxiety—how I’d once been the outgoing, congenial ham in my circle of friends, but had degenerated into the mercurial isolationist. I didn’t describe how now, when I wasn’t hiking or riding my bike, I spent my days in my small dark apartment with the blinds drawn. No one called. No one visited. I chain-smoked cigarettes and read natural history and watched Pulp Fiction over and over, savoring the surf music and coffee shop scenes, and envying the ease with which John Travolta’s character plunged a needle into his arm. He seemed unburdened by guilt or repercussions. Aside from his murderous profession, he led a somewhat normal life despite his habit, or at least a social one. He danced with Uma Thurman, read books and talked food politics over breakfast. My envy of his character scared me. Part of me wished I’d enrolled in more than one college class that semester to get me socializing and out of the house and away from these unhealthy thoughts. The other part of me still winced at the prospect of going outside more than necessary. I’d started having pizzas delivered to lessen interactions.
Ted said he would check the literature, but he’d had marijuana dependents in previous groups and knew cessation could produce insomnia, agitation and anxiety. “Just stay committed to sobriety,” he said with a smile. “I assure you the symptoms will pass.”
Bitter didn’t take my issues as seriously. While I talked, he sighed and tapped his foot. I could feel his disdain like heat from a radiator. While getting seated he’d once asked me, “Staying away from the herrrb?” Another time he muttered something like, “How’s the big green battle?” I wanted to punch him in the face. Instead I taunted him, said, “How’s the lettuce chopping? Probably prepping a lot faster now that you’re not drunk.”
“Okay,” Ted said smiling. “Simmer down.”
Simmer down? This motherfucker and countless others thought my problem was a joke. On their website, NORML, The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said, “Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America (behind only alcohol and tobacco), and has been used by nearly 100 million Americans.” Even though US Federal law outlawed the drug, NORML believed that public policy should reflect rather than deny pot’s widespread popularity and its benign nature. “Marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco,” the group said. Comparing it to the 400,000 annual tobacco-related deaths and the 50,000 people who died every year from alcohol poisoning, the group stated that marijuana “is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.” It even quoted the European medical journal, The Lancet, which claimed that “The smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health.” In light of such sentiments, how else was I supposed to feel if not defensive? The message seemed to be that, unlike my groupmates’ hardcore boozing and drugging, my problem was just another figment of my anxiety.
Like the built-up THC then draining from my body, the smothering residue of this line of thinking sometimes clouded my mind. “I’ve tried heroin, too,” I blurted in group. “And coke and meth.”
It was true. But the group smelled desperation. Ted said, “Does that mean you had a problem with those drugs?”
I said no, my friends and I had only tried them. I imagined Bitter rolling his eyes, but I didn’t look. And I didn’t take the opportunity to broach the subject that I knew I should have been exploring: that deep down, what I feared most about myself wasn’t my relationship with pot, but the way I related to the world. I had what many laypeople called an “addictive personality.” My life to that point had been composed of a series of passing fancies, phases so clearly defined that a historian could chart them like periods in European landscape painting. I didn’t just like my favorite things, I structured my life around them. The way I was then obsessed with ecology and nature writing was the same way I’d been obsessed with Star Wars, bootleg records and the beach years before. And it was the same way I was becoming fixated on exploring Tucson’s alleys.
I didn’t mention how I’d enjoyed the heroin and had recently started thinking about doing more. I didn’t complain about how it seemed like everyone I knew outside of group could, like Travolta, somehow function despite their use, and I didn’t admit how, even though there was no shortcut to healing, part of me wanted to take the easy way out. And I didn’t mention that I had finally started to see my problem for what it was: a deep-set change in mindset that had started during a period of hedonism and developed into a full-blown dependence on self-medication. No one is just a drug addict. We’re escapists. Or avoiders. Or we’re in pain because we’ve been traumatized, or self-loathing, or scared, the sum of our genetic disposition and the products of our primary relationships, always the children of people who can’t raise kids perfectly.
When Ted asked why I used marijuana, the others stared at me and I shrugged, muttering something about having “gotten into the habit.” What was the point of talking about it? This endless discussion hadn’t kept Bitter from relapsing. I was doing everything I was supposed to. I’d quit visiting Brett. Quit going to Phoenix. Thrown out my paraphernalia. And in pot’s place I read, hiked, explored my city on my bike, cooked healthy vegetarian meals, and at home I marked my calendar.
December 1: fifty-five days.
December 16: seventy days.
December 31, New Years Eve: eighty-five says.
January 26: one hundred and twelve days.
Wasn’t that enough?
During our late teens, my friends and I watched The Stöned Age more times than I can count, not that I could remember how many times if pressed for a number. Although the movie was often considered the little low-budget brother to Dazed and Confused, we thought The Stöned Age a thousand times better. Its premise was simple and mirrored our own M.O.: the never ending quest to get “drunk, stoned, and laid.” Random lines like “I don’t want no chicks with zits, I want fine chicks!” were not only hilarious, they captured the unrequited longing and nonsensical nature of our average teenage lives. Plus, the soundtrack included Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” and I loved that song.
As my own stoned age came to an end, I kept peddling around town. Through Iron Horse and Rincon Heights, Sam Hughes and Armory Park, Pie Allen and Barrio Viejo—through every available alley in all the historic neighborhoods, my Schwinn’s plump, whitewall tires glided across the uneven dirt.
Things were unruly back there. Lacking the exposure and pruning of the streets, alleys
are where people stashed their secrets: the car parts and chassis’s residents hoarded in backyards; the racks of jars full of nails, screws and wires they stored beside their laundry room; the porn, soiled undies and yellowed sheets they stuffed in the dumpster at 11:00 p.m. so the neighbors wouldn’t see.
Certain sections felt like a purgatory for castaways who had yet to make it to the grave, as if shed cells from the city’s aging skin fell and settled there. Other sections felt like gardens where life thrived in the fertile bed of decay. Broken glass and a dented hubcap sat beside fragrant spring flowers and sapling trees. Lizards crawled across crumbling walls, living their entire lives around piles of yard debris that residents had left to desiccate beyond their fields of vision.
One morning I passed an old, very tan man lying on his back beside a ten-speed bike frame in the shade of a tamarisk. His eyes were closed. I thought he was asleep. But at the sound of my footsteps his lids parted to display bloodshot eyes. “Mornin’,” he said, “You know anything about some food for some services?” I asked what kind of services. He said, “Me singing you a song.” I gave him a cigarette, and he started making up lyrics to a formless melody as I sauntered by.
Carolina missed group one week, then the next. She hadn’t called Ted to announce her absence. While he advised us not to assume anything, the rest of us speculated during smoke breaks: she’d relapsed; she’d returned to her boyfriend; he broke in to her apartment and did something horrible. I considered the possibility that I’d been wrong about her conviction, that maybe she rather than the others had been our weakest link. Bitter hadn’t relapsed in months.
I’d started to regret my tensions with him. Surely he had some redeeming qualities that the confessional setting failed to bring out. Who knew what kind of troubled life he’d led before this—a rough childhood, mean parents. I needed to lighten up. One night, out of the blue, he told me: “Out of everyone here, you’re the one I worry least about.” I’d wished I felt the same.
I don’t know if Carolina ever returned to group, because eventually I too quit attending. No personal triumph signaled it, no magic number on my calendar. I simply told myself I’d learned all I could from listening to other addicts and was tired of having the same conversations. I’d been sober for five months. I wanted to fill my time other ways.
Then an old friend came through town. She and her girlfriends were driving from Kansas to southern California for spring break, and they brought a few bags of Midwest dirt weed. To save them money I let them stay in my apartment. I took them hiking and out to Mexican food. They smoked during their one-night stay; I did not. They slept on my floor, all tan and excited for the beach, and when we awoke the next morning, I found myself thinking as much about their herb as their enviable trip. I knew better than to ask for weed. I should have also known better than to allow it in my apartment given my tenuous state, but there was nothing to do now except resist temptation. As they each took showers and I cooked them breakfast, I decided to ask for a little—just a little. I stopped short of asking and cursed myself for considering it. I had worked too hard at sobriety to throw it away. Six months, I told myself glancing at the calendar, six months. I poured them coffee and we ate in my living room. Then, as the girls stuffed their clothes into their bags and collected their toiletries, I blurted, “Think you can leave me with a little pinch?”
Of course, they said.
The moment they left, I fired it up in a pipe I made from a soda can. Confusion, isolation—the experience was as bad as I’d remembered it. Hiding in my apartment, the blinds drawn, time seemed to tick backwards. I couldn’t remember why coffee beans sat on the kitchen counter. Had I made coffee already, or was I preparing to make a pot? I couldn’t find my lighter, which had been in my hand what seemed like minutes before but could’ve been an hour or two. Too edgy to go outside, I sat in my living room chair listening to surf instrumentals at high volumes and lost myself in the melody until the effects subsided.
I still didn’t return to group.
There’s a scene in the movie Half Baked where Dave Chappelle’s character gets up in front of a group of recovering addicts. It’s a small room, lined with bench seats and filled with people. Chappelle stands at a lectern on a stage, a sign listing “rehab” hanging behind him, and he greets the crowd. “Hi. I’m here today because I’m addicted . . . to marijuana.”
One infuriated rehab patient jumps to his feet. “You in here ’cuz of marijuana?” he says. “Marijuana? Man, this is some bullshit!”
Bob Saget, playing a fellow addict, stands up and tells Chappelle, “Marijuana is not a drug. I used to suck dick for coke.”
The first patient mutters, “I seen him.”
Saget says, “Now that’s an addiction, man. You ever suck some dick for marijuana?”
Chappelle pauses. His eyes dart back and forth. His faces scrunches in concentration. “No,” he says, shaking his head. “No, I can’t say I have.”
The first rehab patient screams, “Boo this man!” And the angry crowd pelts Dave with trash as he runs off stage.
A month after I quit group, a man stood in the alley, peeing behind the dumpster near my truck. I was taking out the trash. “Howsit going?” he said. I told him good and asked how he was. He zipped up and said, “Wudyougot going today?” He had on dark Levi’s, a black t-shirt and a red bandana to absorb the sweat from his black hair. I gave him a cigarette and we sat on neighboring parking blocks along my building’s rear wall. He laid a large green duffle bag beside us. When I asked where he was from he said, “From the other side.” When I asked where he was headed he said, “Chasing that poon tang, dude, you know that’s what it’s all about.” He smacked my shoulder with the back of his hand, and laughed until he coughed then spit on the asphalt.
Poon tang, I thought, have some respect. It sounded like a line from The Stöned Age. We sat and smoked in the shade, smoked and watched the spiraling forms of our exhalations rise into the scorching blue sky as sweat streamed down our temples.
LAND SPECULATION
By the time the nurses led Kari down the hall, the mushrooms had so scrambled her mind that she didn’t realize it wasn’t the drug causing her discomfort, it was the bees. Yellow-jackets actually, forty-nine stings we later counted.
I left my truck running in front of the ER, trying not to arouse Kari’s suspicion by slamming to a halt. “I’m going to get your Sprite,” I told her. “Just stay lying down and I’ll be right back. Promise to keep your head down.” Then I raced to the nurse’s window and said, “My girlfriend and I just got swarmed by bees and she’s allergic.”
With the languid calm of a grazing elephant, the nurse said, “What are her symptoms?” I listed them: red eyes, blotchy skin, numb feet, shallow breathing.
Through the glass partition, the nurse studied my eyes and my breathing, making me think she had already diagnosed my condition: early-stage psilocybin toxicity, questionable character.
“And where is the patient?” the nurse said. As I pointed to my truck, Kari sat up, her bulging eyes and gaping mouth visible through the windshield.
I patted the counter. “I’ll be right back.” Then I rushed outside, swung open the car door and told Kari, “It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
“What are we doing here?” she shrieked.
On the frantic drive down from the Redwoods to Eureka, I’d lied and told her we were going to a convenience store. “Just lay your head on my lap,” I said, “stretch out, and I’ll get you a Sprite. Does that sound good?”
She lifted her legs onto the passenger seat and lowered her head onto my lap. “It sounds great,” she muttered. She liked Sprite. It calmed her stomach. Acting as if I was just massaging what she called her “itchy feet,” I peeled back the cuffs of her jeans to inspect her ankles. They were swollen, growing puffier by the minute, and cloaked entirely in splotches of ghost white and pink. Same with her back. I lifted her shirt. Discoloration spread above and below her waistline, creeping all the
way to her neck and spilling over her ears and onto her cheeks. And her eyes: the whites and hazel irises had darkened to scarlet. This was the mortal stain of spilled pig’s blood, diseased liver crimson. Devil red.
My fear was that her throat would shut. That’s what I heard happened to victims with bee allergies: their trachea constricts, then they suffocate. But how do you ask someone if they can breathe without implying that they might soon not be able to? While we had only eaten a few small caps, this was one of her first mushroom trips. I didn’t want to throw her into a six hour nightmare of screaming panic by giving her terrifying news to fixate on. She was already a worrier. She worried about homework, worried about calories, worried about whether she would make a better school teacher or counselor. She worried if I thought she was a wimp because she preferred to hike on- rather than off-trail, worried if I loved her as much as she said she loved me. On shrooms, she would flip, and it would be my fault.
“Honey,” I said, “do you hear that whistling? Is that you or the car?” As soon as I said it, I knew it made no sense. I laid my palm on her chest. “Take a deep breath for me.” She took a deep breath. I said, “Everything feel normal in there?” She nodded an exhausted nod. Then I drove the forty-five miles to the closest hospital at ninety miles an hour.
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