Two Years Weed-Free

Hard to think that this time two years ago was the last time I smoked a joint. I wouldn’t have been the biggest of stoners but when I dabbled in it I fully invested in the moment of being high. I’d been smoking pure joints on and off for about four years and more enthusiastically and consistently for the last two of those years. It was all going reasonably well. As a non-smoker, non-drinker and someone who stays clear of hard drugs I’d finally found my vice (or so it seemed). I’d found an ingredient that when mixed into the recipe of my being elevated me into a wiser, more musical, more loving and adventurous person. Music sounded better. Food tasted better. Furniture felt better. If I had a smoke and decided to clean the apartment it would’ve been the cleanest it had ever been, mind you it would take a few hours longer with me singing and dancing round the place as I cleaned. On the rare Saturdays I had off I’d light up, take my three draws of silver haze, stick on my headphones and go out walking for up to four hours at a time until either my headphones or my phone died. At the time I lived in Groningen so half the time I’d go on these walks I’d end up a few miles out in the countryside with my only reference of finding my way back home being to follow the ever-visible spire of Martinitoren in the city centre (the joys of living in a country so flat that standing on a speed bump equates to climbing a mountain).

I had bouts of cannabis-induced mayhem when I went travelling with my friends whereby I’d get stoned and pretend to random strangers that I was a blogger with my own podcast and interview them on my Instagram and Snapchat stories. Trust me when I say the flights home from these journeys were full of unpleasant self-reflection about my behaviour on these weekends. Occasionally on these trips when I was well under I'd catch myself in the mirror of whatever nightclub or bar we were in and have an internal dialogue with myself. Staring into eyes so pink you’d get twelve points for them in a game of snooker. “You should be ashamed of yourself. Look at the state of you.”  the inner critic would say. To bypass this and some of the external criticism I was getting from onlookers on my socials, I’d latch onto repeating the famous ‘I’ve had my fun and that’s all that matters” line so eloquently put by Brendan Grace as Father Fintan Stack in Father Ted, as a sly coping mechanism to deny the foolishness I was showcasing.

Due to a lack of opportunities at home, I left Belfast in August 2018 to move to Denmark to start working as a Quality Manager on a Data Centre for Facebook with the intention of getting a name for myself in the world of construction without having a full University degree. I had a point to prove to myself and to others trapped in the Belfast-mindset that a considerable wage could be earned without that piece of paper. With a lot of guidance and an excellent team of people around me who would later become great friends, I was given the space to show how competent and professional I could be when thrown in at the deep end. We’d work Monday-Saturday and every second Thursday rotate so we could get home for a long weekend. I had it in my head that I’d never smoke the night before work because I knew I’d still have a melted brain going in the next morning so the only day I could smoke, in accordance with my own rule, was on a saturday night. A rule I broke only once. Saturday nights could go one of two ways; either I’d smoke and sit in the house listening and to making music or, I’d hit the moderately lively city centre of Odense and dance my cares away for a few hours in the loft of the Old Irish Pub (nothing Irish about it). Regardless of the path the night took, the end result was always the same: two portions of chicken pasta from the all-night pizza spot (man was bulking). Before I left home I was working admin in a bank by day and doing security at the local bar by night - earning buttons. Within a year and a half of leaving Belfast I’d managed to double my income as a direct result of my work ethic. This wasn’t something I was broadcasting when I went back home on rotations but I recognised for myself I’d accomplished a huge personal milestone. But somehow I felt emptier than when I left home. As I said earlier, smoking weed elevated my being. It elevated all aspects of it. It had started to elevate this hollow sensation. It started to elevate my anxiety. I became more conscious of the fact that since my late teens I’d been compromising on who I was for the sake of fitting in in highly masculine environments. I had been pushing down my sexuality since I became aware of it in my late teens and it alongside other challenges knowingly repressed had started to pile up, manifesting themselves in the form of a lack of sleep and a constant sense of feeling lost. Anywho, this is for a separate blog on dealing with internal struggles with the acceptance of bisexuality. Back to the topic.

At the start of the pandemic I got offered a higher position on a job outside Groningen for a search engine that an NDA will not allow me to name. When I started this new job I faced a refreshing set of career challenges that excited me but equally exciting was the fact that I now lived in a country where buying and smoking weed was legal. Pre-rolled pure joints were as easily accessible as my groceries. The job had rejuvenated the hunger for construction I’d started to lose in Denmark towards the end of my time there. The dissipating interest in my job in Denmark coincided and negatively correlated with my rising interest in music. I’d become part of a band during my time there and started recording original songs with a friend who was a producer. As my desire to do more with music grew, the wanting to keep up a life in construction dwindled. The unhappiness of earning all that money and having no time to spend or enjoy it hit me like a ton of bricks coated in lead. So I momentarily saw this new job as a lifeline. I shortly fell into the same trap that I’d set for myself in the last job - working like a dog as soon as I got through the door and burning myself out completely. And didn’t I surely do a good job of that. I initially didn’t want to delegate anything because I wanted all my work to be done my way and I jumped at the opportunity to take on as much work as possible because I had something to prove: I was the guy who got things done. The burn out I was heading towards was as clear to me as it was to anyone who saw me doing my thing at work but I pushed through it for the sake of my reputation. Early morning starts on the road, working on my laptop preparing for morning meetings at 6.30am getting back in the door at 6.00pm, having dinner and starting work after dinner again until the wee, small hours of the morning. Anxiety rising. Sleep decreasing. A facade of happiness and feeling fulfilled. The elephant of sexuality in the room began growing tusks and was about to become dangerous. That joint on Saturday nights was well deserved I’d tell myself. Paranoia started to creep in at work. My job was for the taking if I let my standards slip. People were conspiring against me and the company I worked for. Does anyone have their suspicions about me and my interests? All of this swirling around drove the hypermasculinity up a notch. Who could I even talk to about this? I’d done cognitive behavorial therapy (CBT) during my time there to combat my existential anxiety but who could I fucking talk to about feeling my desires were wrong? A storm was brewing inside me and the thunder told me how close it was but I walked right into the thick of it regardless of the warning.

November 2020. When shit hit the fan:

On a dimly overcast Saturday afternoon in Groningen I decided to buy three space cakes from the local coffee shop in preparation for a movie night-in with my closest friends at the time. The lads were working and I had the day off so I went for a walk, got the space cakes and a coffee and went back to the apartment. The lads wouldn’t be back from work until around 7pm so I had some time to kill and decided I'll have my space cake now while I finish watching the last episode of Death Note. While I waited for the high of the space cake to kick in, my flatmate and I started building the portable pull up/dip station that just arrived for our home workouts. As soon as I finished building it and took a step back to look at it the high had hit me but I felt strange. I didn’t feel real. And this feeling began to intensify to the point where I ran out of the house in a panic with a bag of clothes to donate to the local homeless shelter. I can’t remember how I got there. All I know is I dropped them off and called my friends to see where they were because I was not okay. All I could think was I wasn’t real anymore. A feeling that would only get worse as the weeks went on. I thought I would sleep this feeling off but it woke up with me the next day. It would be waking up with me for a while. I unknowingly stepped into a period of THC-induced psychosis. My perception of reality fell apart. I couldn’t tell the difference between my hyper realistic dreams/nightmares and actual life. Everything slowed down. The best way I can describe it is that theres a control centre in your brain and most of the time an employee operates it for you but here I was at the empty seat of the control desk with know idea how anything works. At times I couldn’t talk even if I wanted to. I didn’t laugh because I didn’t know how to do it sincerely. I remember going for a piss and looking at the urinal for what felt like eternally asking myself is this how long this normally takes. Then came the suicidal thoughts that told me I couldn’t handle this and that I’d permanently damaged myself beyond repair. They came like clockwork. All through the working day staring at a screen clicking buttons but doing no work. Constantly texting my friends looking for help. God bless them because they had a lot to put up with in that period but my inner circle at that time along with my family are what kept me from completely falling apart. I went home for Christmas and stayed with my Da. While I was home all I did was eat and sleep on the sofa. I’d wake up during the day, watch tv and sit eating biscuits by the packet while I watched endless crap on Netflix. Then at night I'd be getting chinese food watching more endless streams of crap. I was bordering on unresponsive in conversations. At a point I definitely crossed the threshold of weighing 100kg. My normal weight is 84kg. I was back and forth with my hypnotherapist on how I was feeling and during one of our phonecalls on the suicidal feelings he said something which at the time frightened me to hear but, looking back on this powerful sentence, it pulled me out of the biggest hole i’ve ever been in. He said,”The only person who can get you out of this is you.” After returning to the Netherlands after the extended Christmas break in February 2021 I started working out from home with a determination that my circumstances would change with that sentence resonating through the cracked corridors of my mind. The worst of the feelings from the psychotic episode stayed with me until around April that year after which I was left to deal with the residual damage remaining from it. I became hypersensitive to changes in light and sound levels which meant I was susceptible to panic attacks or anything that made me feel like I was going back to that place that I was in in the winter of 2020. After a while I decided to smoke lightly again until I went on a holiday to Portugal that summer. I left my job in May to focus on building a life in music full-time and do some travelling/self-discovery along the way. Sitting having stacks of craic at a house party at a private villa in Albufeira I decided to indulge in a wee smoke. The feeling of the previous November started to creep in during that high. After being cooled down by a friend and told to get my shit together I returned to the house party and enjoyed myself. I took that joint as a final warning that weed just isn't for me and since that night I haven’t looked back since. Two years and counting…

I’d like to take some time to say that what has kept me away from going back smoking joints has been the realisation that the bad times outweighed the good and if that was the case then it’s safe to say that weed no longer served me well. And whatever doesn’t serve you well should be viewed in the same light as a person who mistreats you - don’t give your energy to them. If you want to rid yourself of a bad habit that detracts from you more than it adds I do recommend you speak to a mental health professional to address whatever hole you’re trying to fill with your hedonism. Personally, I gained a lot of clarity in my adult life through hypnotherapy and energy clearing therapy, but thats for another blog. Figure out what works for you. If you can enjoy yourself with whatever you do and no one gets hurt, including yourself, then live and let live.