Margit’s Note: Altered States

By Margit Detweiler

As someone who is going through a crazy mixed-up illness, drugs have become my lifeline and a new curiosity. The last time I smoked pot in earnest (am I sure I’m not running for president ever? No? Oh, it doesn’t matter anymore? Ok, continue…) was several lifetimes ago, but with New York now making medicinal marijuana legal, my interest is piqued. Also, because a friend told me her chemo treatment was saved by smoking pot, that the opiates her docs prescribed made her ill. While legal for medicinal reasons, it’s still not easy to access — there’s only one dispensary and there are convoluted protocols and an online course you have to take before your doctor can write that particular prescription. Not easy.

In lieu of that, friends have offered to hook me up. One pal texted me that she’d happily drop off some “special legal chocolate… if I like that sort of thing. I was like, “sure, I looove chocolate. But um, isn’t it always legal?” not getting her gist for the first five minutes of conversation. When she did drop some off, it was in a lovely tin bearing a sticker that said “SFV OG + Afghani” and it smelled like a forest of pine trees in heaven. She told me she’d researched the best kind of grass for cancer, a particular type of Indica. So thoughtful. I’d expected her to buzz my apartment, slide a baggie of sketchy-looking oregano under my door and run away. I’m old.

As Gen Xers, our view on drugs has been shaped by the crack of an egg in a frying pan (your brain, remember?), the explosion of the pharmaceutical industry for better or worse and terrifying and rampant state-wide addictions to meth, heroin or Oxycodone. Oxy was prescribed to me after my last two surgeries and saved me from gut-wrenching pain but also created pink and purple nightmares where I was chased by a rabid bear. I stopped that stuff fast.

Life-saving, deadly and sometimes quite enjoyable, drugs are the subject matter this week as we become smokers, jokers and midnight tokers.

• Annette Earling makes peace with her self-medication
• Vicki Hamlin has the drug talk with her teenager
• For Dionne Ford, addiction does the talking
• Alice Bradley gets a bad trip on a baked good
• Faith Cummings seeks the truth behind the misconceptions
• Judy McGuire chronicles the lives of heroin addicts
• And I offer my next installment in Ovarian Rhapsody…drug-free

Love (and other drugs),

Margit

(Photo credit: Stocksy.com)