Random life update and reflections
Phew! Been quite the weekend. My partner was experiencing shortness of breath, which got worse over the course the week. Ended up having to go to ER last night. The nurses did the basic triage diagnostics, and thankfully she has no other Covid symptoms, her blood oxygen levels were fine, and her lungs sounded ok too, so we were able to avoid waiting around for 3-4 hours on Sunday night to see a doctor. She'll still see her GP in the coming days, but it helps to know there's nothing immediately life-threatening.
The past week was also interesting and significant for other reasons. For the first time in my life, I've started explicitly self-medicating with cannabis in the morning. I've refined a basic dose of decarbed herb and AVB that turns off the "doom machine" in the morning and leaves me functional for work etc. It took my partner a moment to understand that I wasn't simply looking to get hammered every morning. But now she's happy that I've found something other than benzos to help with anxiety.
It's been a long journey that started in a recreational context, like so many of us. But over time, as I've simultaneously been developing my interest and methods with cannabis and cultivation, and working on my own physical and mental health, it has rather naturally led me to this point. Where I can begin to really refine and closely examine my relationship with this plant in a therapeutic or medical frame, rather than a purely recreational one.
And it was a big deal, for me, somehow. To acknowledge to myself that even though I'm consciously thinking about it in those terms now, that probably I had been self-medicating for many years. It is humbling to acknowledge both the reality of my mental health, and that of my relationship to the plant.
I am grateful to be able to be part of this community, where I don't have to worry about stigma, or let stigma define my own self-judgements or my judgements of others. In fact, I suspect that if I had not been here, I would probably still be in some degree of denial about all of this. This has been a great space of safety and permission.
Zooming out yet again, I marvel at the feedback loops that have arisen between me and the plant. I am responsible for the plant's wellbeing, and in many ways, the plant is also partly responsible for mine.
And it doesn't stop there, for me. It draws my attention outwards to the many things in the world that we tend to and nurture. Our relationships and people, our homes, our bodies, our memories, our capacities to learn, think and do. They are all, in their own ways, "living" things that require care, constant attention and work. And in turn they are also things that will take care of us, in their own ways.
