California Sober
I Survived Thanksgiving Sober — But I Had a Hell of a Friendsgiving!
I Can Only Be Upset for So Long — Time to Rock!
Teenage guitar phenom Brandon “Taz” Niederauer’s final solo on a very Jimi Hendrix-inspired “Watchtower” kept my ears ringing for the rest of last night, after a fantastic Friendsgiving Twiddle concert, with Special Guest Keller Williams. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving brought more sad news and tears.
I just lost a long-time friend to natural causes at age 64 last week.
Since childhood, my wife has been best friends with a close relative who is our age, was diagnosed with a severe illness. She told my wife during what we thought was just a Thanksgiving call. This news made me lose it further. Fortunately, there is hope that she will survive the illness, but it is hard to deal with so much sadness in such a short time.
So how did I stay sober on Thanksgiving? In hindsight, I was in no position to be in a fancy restaurant. After more sad news on Thursday, it would be too fast and easy to change “Perrier” to “Pinot Noir” in a heartbeat and take the relapse train to hell. Fortunately, my wife lost her appetite for the Thanksgiving dinner we had planned at the Benjamin Steakhouse. We just decided to stay in our room at the Hampton Inn in Elmsford, eat a big stash of junk from a convenience store, and lay low.
I immediately got online. I was in a hotel with my wife and did not want to turn into a walking pity party. Fortunately, G.R.A.S.S.: Green Recovery and Sobriety Support was running a 24-hour Thankathon on Thanksgiving Day. “GRASS: Green Recovery and Sobriety Support” has several meetings on Zoom each day, as well as a Facebook group with almost 2,000 members. Thanks to the magic of zoom rooms, I was able to go to two meetings a day over the Thanksgiving weekend without interfering with my wife’s enjoyment of our vacation.
This Thanksgiving, I am filled with “grassitude” for the silver lining on the continuing pandemic. I have found greater authenticity and self-honesty in my life about my use of marijuana-assisted sobriety. I am delighted by the formation of online communities that support the use of cannabis for harm reduction to avoid relapses on nicotine, alcohol, opioid, and other addictions.
The “Stoned Sober” private Facebook group has over 2,200 members who support each other through the Facebook group. Other smaller Facebook groups sprouting up, such as “Cannabis4Recovery,” and “California Sober.”
My regular group, Medically-Assisted Recovery Anonymous (MARA), has several zoom meetings each day. MARA was formed by opioid addicts who use methadone, Subutex, and buprenorphine. Still, the MARA fellowship is very tolerant of plant-medicine assisted-sobriety. Nonjudgmentalism is truly practiced in MARA.
I look forward to 2022, where the stigma directed toward medical cannabis starts to end because twelve step programs are losing members to the above groups. I look forward to the medical community facing the evidence that cannabis works for many addicts to reduce harm. I also hope for federal legalization so I can carry my medicine with me when I travel.
I simply did not feel like writing for Medium.com, so instead, I focused on my book, now hovering around the mystical 50,000-wordmark. I made headway, writing, editing, and expanding upon my book. I felt productive even though I took a few days off publishing articles. Given what Medium pays me, I don’t feel guilty about taking as many vacations as I want.
I checked back in with my friend, who had been expecting a family nightmare during Thanksgiving dinner. Instead, he pulled off a plan with finesse and ended up hiding away and watching football.
And I smoked a lot of weed. I brought a half ounce with me on Wednesday, and on Saturday, I am down to the last eighth. I have also been killing off my disposable vape pens. I am grateful that I have had marijuana to help me deal with my emotions so that I do not go back to drinking over them.
Having written this article, which is also part of my recovery, I now feel fine. I am watching “The Game” on Fox, hoping my recently departed friend is pulling the strings for the Michigan Wolverines. I am going to the second Twiddle Friendsgiving show with Eggy tonight at the Capitol Theater with some of the best seats in the house. Tonight, we rock! Life goes on.
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