Me, Marijuana and Magic: A 25-Year Love Story
Most people go to Ireland to drink Guinness, listen to music and explore their ancestral roots. Me? I’m gonna kick my weed addiction with magic.
I’ve smoked weed almost every day since I was 15. Often compulsively. At times with sacredness and ritual. Sometimes with control and thoughtfulness. But ALWAYS, always pining for that burst of turned-on aliveness that seems nearly impossible to access on my own.
I’m almost 40, and I’ve tried to quit a million times since then. What stops me? I’m afraid I can’t access that tingly, awakened state without it. At least, not on demand.
Now, maybe for you, weed makes you sleepy or paranoid. But I know some of y’all know what I mean, right?
When you smoke that highly energetic, creative, psychoactive, THC-laden weed? How it makes you all lit up with magic and mischievousness? Where your body feels active, energized, dance-y? Where the natural world pulses toward you, where plants and animals have secret messages and divine guidance to deliver?
When I think about quitting weed forever, I’m afraid I won’t be able to access immanence—that known feeling of the sacred, the divine, living HERE, NOW— without it. And, DAMN I need that presence. I’d die without it.
I’ve learned to access this state in meditation. And sometimes sex. And sometimes with ritual and magic. But damn, psychoactive substances just know how to kick ‘ya right in that zone.
Except — it’s not consistent. And it’s not entirely predictable. At best, I have a stop smoking for a little while so I can come back and get that brand-new-to-weed feeling, where my heart explodes and the birds are insistently delivering me important messages.