I’m a stoner.

My cannabis use isn’t exactly a secret—most of my friends know, a few of my colleagues, some acquaintances. But it isn’t not a secret either. Even now, as I’m writing this, part of me wants to delete the draft, turn off the computer, and flee the scene. I can feel my heart beating faster. My palms are sweaty; I have to stop typing periodically to wipe them on my pajama pants. Roll my shoulders, stretch my neck, take deep breaths: regulating my nervous system because, yes, my body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline when I try to write about weed.

There are, I think, two reasons for this:

1. Now, I live in a state where cannabis is legal, but when I started smoking, I lived in a state where it was decisively not legal. That didn’t stop me, but I was paranoid any time I smoked—I was and am terrified of our fascist carceral system—and now every time I smoke, I feel an initial rush of paranoia. It feels natural to me, such that I’m often experiencing the physical symptoms of my fear without any actual paranoid thoughts accompanying them. But it’s also lessening each time I smoke, which in turn makes it easier for me to write this essay.

2. My parents, like many parents, were adamant that I never do drugs. That rule, like many other axioms in my childhood, sank deep into a lake in my chest where the light doesn’t reach. Out of sight but ever-present, ice cold and impossible to fish out. Breaking these internalized rules, even though logically I know I’m doing nothing wrong, triggers that old fear of… Of what? That I will be disciplined by my parents, I suppose, that I will be “in trouble,” whatever that means. But that feeling, too, is lessening the more I use cannabis, so that it pangs less often and with less intensity.

These are old wounds—scarred over, the pain a dull throb. Anxiety and shame, slowly fading.

But still present: hence the slight panic at the idea of confessing. Because it feels like a confession, writing this. “I admit it! I’m a pothead!” a tiny voice shrieks in my ear.

I know what you’re thinking: you don’t have to tell us if you’re so scared. True, technically. I don’t have to tell you, have to meaning am required to or else. In another sense, though, I do have to tell you, have to meaning feel called to. I have to write this essay because I have set out to write about cultivating pleasure in our lives, especially in these wretched times. And right now, cannabis is an essential element of my pleasure.

I don’t want to feel ashamed about that. My rational self doesn’t feel ashamed, but the—

[An interruption: Jozef just sat down cross-legged next to me on the blue rug by our writing desk, and performed a short monologue—i.e., narrated one of the many ticker tapes running through his mind at once—about his mocktail, ginger ale mixed with pink lemonade-flavored fizzy water: “I actually think this tastes like cough syrup. The ginger adds the sort of burning you’d get from the alcohol, and it has the cherry flavor. I was enjoying the drink at first, but then I noticed it tasted like cough syrup and now that’s all I can taste.” I share this with you so that you understand why I lost my train of thought—distracted by the neon sign that lights up in my heart, a glowing God, I love him. It doesn’t help, of course, that I’m a little bit high while writing this, which makes me far more distractible.]

Anyway. My rational self doesn’t feel ashamed, but the part of me that’s forever in college, that strange period in my life—that part of me seems to only feel shame.

I’m not in college anymore though. So, I want to confess: I’m a stoner.

I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my whole life. Panic attacks trying to order at restaurants or raise my hand in class or drive a car, extended periods of melancholy, suicidal episodes. I was in college when the COVID-19 pandemic began, and in lockdown I developed aggressive agoraphobia that I’ve been dealing with ever since. I have chronic pain and struggle to relax my muscles to get any relief from the tension. These and other disabling conditions have made “being a person” difficult for me. And my symptoms have been exacerbated by—imagine me waving my hands in the air, gesturing at the space around me—the overwhelming tsunami that is fascism: the technocratic takeover of the United States, the continuation of centuries of oppression, the intense pressure of financial insecurity, the aggressive anti-trans politics, and so on. What Jozef and I refer to as The Horrors.

The Horrors often leave me feeling frozen in fear and dread. My thoughts spiral; I panic often. Cannabis helps me ease those feelings so that I can function semi-regularly.

Since January, I’ve gotten stoned almost every day. Before that, I was using cannabis several times a week, but as my symptoms have worsened, I’ve turned to weed to manage them. It’s helped me in a way that psychiatric medications never have. (I still take my meds though, don’t worry.)

When I tell you that I can function semi-regularly with weed, what I mean is—for example—that I can do something like go to a movie theater with my friends. Going to the movies is something I enjoy and something that my disabling conditions have made incredibly difficult to do. If I take an edible thirty minutes before we leave, my anxiety is able to ease enough for me to go watch a movie and spend time with my friends. Even just a couple years ago, when I was mostly sober, that would’ve been impossible. I once had a full breakdown—sobbing, hyperventilating, paralysis—thinking about going out with Jozef for a get-together with some dear friends of ours before they moved away. In the end, I couldn’t go.

This is a big part of why I haven’t talked about my cannabis use, honestly. The shame I feel now is in part due to the two reasons I outlined above, sure, but it’s also because I’m ashamed of myself, of my disability, of my struggle to lead a life that people like my family would consider normal. That’s a painful truth to confess. One I’m only just coming around to saying aloud.

I don’t think I have a normal life right now. But I have a life that I like. There are The Horrors, yes, so many of them. But there’s also pleasure.

A few days ago, for example, I was having a rough time. A stressful day at work, a shitty news cycle, pain making it difficult even to stand. My anxious thoughts were rapidly spiraling, and the fear had me frozen in place. When work ended, I took an edible and put my phone in another room. As the cannabis hit, the coiled-spring tension lessened in my body without flying all over the place. The rumination that drives me to doomscroll—a vague feeling of if I just know a little bit more—eased. My physical pain eased, too, which meant I had more freedom to move my body the way I wanted to. I was able to spend the entire evening away from my phone: I wrote, had dinner with Jo, watched some television, played Scrabble on the living room floor (and won somehow!1), had sex, got a decent night’s sleep. It was pure relief from The Horrors.

I do my best writing when I’m stoned, too, especially when I’m writing fiction. Sober, I can’t get through more than a couple sentences—I erase and rewrite the same few words again and again. But smoke a little weed first, and I can sit with one of my beloved lo-fi beats videos from the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s YouTube channel and write for a couple hours.

The quality of the text itself is… imperfect. But the problem is that if I try to write while anxious, I end up writing and editing at the same time. How am I supposed to edit a novel that doesn’t exist? I need help lowering the barrier that is my worry so the words can flow onto the page.

The pleasure isn’t just from what weed allows me to do, though. There is also pleasure in the act of getting stoned.

When I take an edible, I love the slow spread of warmth through my body, the released tension of one muscle after another. The feeling of settling into my body, getting out of my head and just really being one with myself.

Smoking is, of course, more immediate. A top-down effect, the cannabis flooding from my head down to my toes. I love the ritual of smoking: grabbing the jelly jar lid I use as an ashtray, the joint, the cheap 7-Eleven lighter; situating myself in a chair by the kitchen window or a seat on the front porch, Jo usually close by for company; the initial hot inhale as I light the joint; watching the thin stream of smoke spiral out from it as I take a breath before my next hit. The moment when, finally, the tension in my neck and shoulders lessens.

And then I’m high, and much sillier, and able to find joy in the tiniest things. I get very lovey-dovey. With Marmalade especially—I cuddle her, talk about her nonstop, have impromptu photoshoots and end up with a few dozen new photos of her that all look essentially the same. But also with Jo, because my body starts to feel like mine again, no longer at the mercy of all my various disabilities. I’m less insecure, less self-conscious, less scared.

I was conditioned to believe a lot of things about drugs and the people who use them. More often than not, those things have proven to be untrue. Especially, at least for me, when it comes to weed! I like being a stoner, and I don’t want that to be ensnared by feelings of shame. Weed plays a significant role in my pleasure, and honestly, in my life.

My biggest misconception about cannabis use, I think, was that drugs were both means and end—that people who used drugs were doing so for drugs’ sake.

And sure, that’s the case for some people with some drugs. There was a time when that was the case for me—I would work relentlessly, pushing my mind and body to their limits, and then get so high I couldn’t think or move. I had an unhealthy relationship to cannabis, but also an unhealthy relationship to all sorts of coping strategies. I had a drinking problem; I was addicted to social media—which I still struggle with on bad days; there was even a months-long period of time when I was addicted to, of all things, the Kim Kardashian: Hollywood app and spent hundreds of dollars on it while in a fog of depression.

When I misused cannabis, the problem wasn’t the cannabis. The problem was an unhealthy dynamic between work and pleasure in my life: a struggle to set meaningful boundaries for my own peace and security, a lack of knowledge regarding what pleasure really looked like for me.

I don’t believe in “rock bottom.” But I’ve hit some low points in my life. I didn’t trust myself to know what I wanted or, more importantly, what I needed. Instead of adding pleasure to my life, I was numbing myself to any and all sensations, “good” and “bad.”

There was no particular come-to-Jesus moment that changed that for me. Rather, I came to the slow realization that I wanted to live—to really live, to live a full and happy life. I fell in love with Jozef. We adopted Marmalade, which gave me a whole new little creature to care for. I began noticing a dream bubbling up in my heart: to become a father. And I knew that tending to those relationships would require me to tend to myself; I might not be able to eliminate my anxiety and depression and chronic pain from my life, but I would have to take care of myself and find ways to manage them.

So, I spent hours and hours in therapy—developing coping skills, expanding my window of tolerance. I worked with psychiatrists to try different combinations of medications. I just went to an orthopedist and got orthotics for my shoes to see if that alleviates some of my pain.

I continued spending time on hobbies I’ve enjoyed for a long time: playing video games, knitting, reading, writing. I tried new hobbies, found new things that bring me pleasure: paint-by-numbers, quilting, collaging. I set limits for my social media use; I started using the Finch app to keep track of my self-care tasks.

For much of that work—because it was work, believe me, even as I was finding pleasure—I was sober.

At the same time, though, my anxiety and chronic pain were worsening. Not because of anything I was doing, but because the state of the world was worsening, the demands of my work were increasing, and my body needed more support. Often, I was frustrated by the mismatch between my desire to do things that brought me pleasure and my physical ability to do those things. Even when I wanted to spend time with friends, for example, my anxiety was still too intense for me to go out for very long or to socialize for an extended period of time. I was in too much pain to go for long walks. My obsessive rumination kept me trapped in my head when I tried to start creative projects.

So, after that period of sobriety, I decided to revisit cannabis, my old friend. I felt more capable of identifying my own limits than I ever had before. I took lower dose edibles than I had in the past—five or ten milligrams instead of fifty or a hundred. When I recently started smoking again, it was in smaller amounts over a longer period of time.

I have rules for myself—or, maybe rules isn’t the right word, but I have benchmarks against which I measure my cannabis use. I have similar benchmarks for all sorts of things I do or use, to help me ensure I’m respecting my own needs and not falling into old, addictive patterns of numbing out. When it comes to cannabis, I ask myself:

1. Am I using cannabis at times that are appropriate?

2. Am I using cannabis in amounts that make me feel good and present in my body, rather than feeling numb or dissociated?

3. Am I using cannabis as a tool to enable me to do the things that bring me joy and pleasure?

As long as the answer to all three questions is yes, I’m not concerned about my usage. And if the answer to even one of them becomes no, then I know it’s time to step away from that coping strategy and reevaluate my needs.

So, yes, I’m a stoner.

When I hang out with my friends, I take an edible or smoke a little weed first. My physical pain and my anxiety lessen, which extends my social battery—I can spend more time with the people I love in a way that is more comfortable. I also feel less self-conscious as my anxious symptoms are eased. I am a better friend to spend time with as a result. Instead of getting lost in my ruminations, worrying about what I’ll say the next time the conversation turns to me, I’m able to be more present in the moment, really listening to what everyone is saying and jumping into the conversation more naturally. I can unmask and be more authentic.

I love doing paint-by-numbers kits, but I found myself wanting to try painting without the lines to fill in. I was anxious about trying something new, worried about wasting the canvas and paint. With weed for anxiety management, I was able to let go of those worries. I made my first real painting of my own—and it was included in a community show!

Going to movies. Writing the first draft of my novel. Taking walks in the park. Hell, even being able to do the dishes without too much pain. Cannabis is a tool I’m able to use to empower me to live life on my terms, the way I want to.

There is pleasure in smoking weed or feeling an edible hit, yes. But more importantly, I use cannabis to relieve severe symptoms of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. In turn, my capacity to do things that bring me pleasure is expanded. My life is fuller because I am better able to do joyful activities, to spend time with people I love. As I wrap up writing this draft right now, in fact, I am planning to smoke a little bit of weed so that I can go garden with Jozef—with less anxiety about being out in public and less pain in my hips, knees, ankles, feet, shoulders, and chest. I’ve never gardened before! I get to try something new, spend time with my husband, enjoy being in the natural world.

What a gift.