the weed that destroyed my life

marijuana was behind so much of this

it’s obvious now that it wasn’t just the stress of homelessness which nurtured these delusions but also heavy consumption of marijuana with origins in early 2020.

several at the time thought the weed was good for me, but now i can see where it led to: the six weeks of homelessness i experienced stemmed from behavior related to my marijuana use. it’s clear how these delusions intensify when i’m using weed; it’s clear how had i never started taking edibles and vaping, i would never have created this blog or used it to destroy my life.

two summers ago i read stephen king’s “on writing,” and i always remember a scene in that book of memoirs. king was addicted to coke and his wife gave him an ultimatum: choose between the cocaine and your family. ultimately he realized how badly distorted were his priorities when he found himself briefly considering the choice of cocaine.

i know this: i need to give up the weed.

i walked through millennium park this afternoon. millennium park has always been a favorite of mine and today much of the lake was frozen over.

as i walked around the park i thought about stephen king and his breaking point: when he realized he was losing his whole world for drugs. in some sense, with the emptiness around me now every day, i feel as though that’s what i did: lose my whole world for drugs.

i know i can build my world again, somehow, even if i can never have the world i had before i started using marijuana. that world is lost. i can’t have any world but this one and what i put in it. but if i could do everything again, i wouldn’t touch the weed.