Drinking poison

by Jon Sullivan - 2024-04-30 - Status

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Booze is expensive legal poison with no medical use. Yet drinking it is an American virtue. We are sheep.

At some hazy point, years ago, I stopped being who I was, and started being who I am. Suddenly. I remember I was watching a BabyMetal video, and crying with joy. And joy was something I'm not sure I had ever really felt before, ever. But there was no transition. It's as if in the morning I was a cranky asshole with no faith in humans, and by evening I was reset on a new path, seeking only kindness and virtue. I'd suddenly become the sort of person I'd previously had only contempt for. And in the four years since, things have only gotten..... Gotten what??? Weirder? Better? More insane? More enlightened? I don't know. More magic? It doesn't matter. No matter where you go, there you are.

Maybe this. I am an NPC in this simulation. And that helps explain the total lack of transition. At some point on that day a software update changed the data set that powers my self/soul. And some new questline was added that required me to be befriended by the most magical and wonderful group of people I've ever known. Is this my purpose now? Am I now an NPC driven by code to exude kindness and virtue? Will a player character find me with a yellow question mark over my head and get a quest to end homelessness? No. Of course not. It's a silly and fanciful notion. Surely.

But..... I suppose it doesn't hurt to keep living as if it were true. Who knows what my joy and kindness might motivate in others, for real.

Or we could go with the more fact based explanation - I was a 40 year black out drunk alcoholic. Later rather than sooner I realized it was making me sick, mentally and physically. Then they started selling pot in the stores, even delivering it at a fraction of the prices I'd been paying to be alcoholic. And of course pot chased off the self-loathing and fatalistic mindset, and led me easily to sobriety. Then one day a balance tipped and my brain shifted from happy drunk to joyful Stoic.

The simulation theory is more fun. However, the "pot is medicine" theory is more realistic, and doesn't make me sound like an idiot. Let's go with the pot theory. These days medicating myself with pot is a more rare indulgence, with actual sobriety being my preferred happy state. But it has become obvious that booze is bad and pot is good.

[editor's note] - After a bit of "please cut the shit" discussion with Jon he has admitted that pot isn't for everyone, it may even be a pointless/bad idea for many, and that he completely lacks the education and training he'd need to responsibly call it medicine. Still, I was forced to admit that perhaps eating a properly dosed pot brownie was better than most alternatives if one seeks inebriation. YMMV.

Irregardless of cause, that one day was radically transformational, and easy to explain if we accept that perhaps drunkenness only makes you happy in the worst way possible. And if it had ended there, just sobriety, it would have been a cool story. But it didn't end there. Oregon, and Marilee's friends, and maybe even pot, have me questioning everything I've ever believed. I still put my faith completely in the scientific method. But I'm now way way way into the place where there is much magic science has yet to explain. Where my pompous conceit is forced to listen first, rather than reject automatically. A world without magic may be more soothing and benign to the scientific mind. But it fails to fill the gaps. And even if it is "magic of the gaps" alone, it still fits, still completes the puzzle.

So I'll eat some pot. Sit bundled up on my balcony. And watch the magic of spring happen in front of me. And feel true joy. And wonder if it all came to me when I quit sucking down expensive poison, and started eating cheap medicine.

Today's photo : So much of a great photo is just being in the right place at the right time. This is certainly one of those. And I'd lobby you to click on the photo a couple times to see the full sized version. I was just scouting locations for a milky way photo and found a random stranger standing at the edge of a cliff. He was only there for a minute before hiking on up the trail. Nice. A minor cloud cover miracle will need to occur for me to time the milky way shot here right. But at least I got this cool photo.

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