#HighlyOpinionated: The Tricky Relationship Between Weed and Self-isolation

So I believe it’s day 8 of self-isolation, or maybe day 7? At this point, all days are starting to melt together into a nice pot of anxiety, sleepless nights, restless days, and a sudden growth in THC tolerance.

This morning, I actually had no idea that it was Saturday, I haven’t shaved in a while, and I’m starting to look like a mad scientist because, well, barbershops are closed.

I’m running through my weed like I’m participating in some sort of ganja Olympics, and in order for me to win, I need to smoke the most weed, the fastest, and that’s becoming quite a tricky situation.

I’ve always self-medicating during hard times. I feel like weed has always been there for me, although I’m completely aware that self-medicating is actually harmful and usually has the reverse effects of what you were initially looking for. The thing is, sad times don’t usually last too long.

I feel like things happen suddenly, you go through them, and you know that everything will somehow, someway, get back to normal.

This Coronavirus thing is just here, and it has already infected everyone mentally; you literally feel the heavy anxiety in the air as you walk outside. It’s constant, and everybody is starting to accept that this is going to be the new normal for a while.

As a long-time cannabis consumer, I’ve always been the “functional stoner”. I get shit done. Well, I’m also not ALWAYS home, where ALL my weed is, the place where I come to relax after a long day AT WORK.

This Cannabis Sensei thing is a little different; although it’s A LOT of work, it doesn’t actually feel like work because I love doing it, and well as you can probably tell by now, it’s all about weed. I have an actual job that’s in the process of dying now with this COVID-19, and every day is starting to feel like Monday.

I also worked for myself in the past, from home, for 3 YEARS, and it didn’t feel like this AT ALL. I wanted to write this because I felt like writing something, so I apologize for being all over the place, but what I’m really asking here is simple, and I’m sure MANY of you can relate, why the hell am I smoking so much these days?

GRIEF?

It seems like we may all be feeling grief at the same time. The Harvard Business Review published a great interview with David Kessler, who is a known grief expert, which you should actually read in full. Here’s his answer on whether it’s right to call this feeling grief: “Yes, and we’re feeling a number of different grieves.

We feel the world has changed, and it has. We know this is temporary, but it doesn’t feel that way, and we realize things will be different. Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change, and this is the point at which they changed.

The loss of normalcy, the fear of economic toll, and the loss of connection. This is hitting us, and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.”

Well, the number of cases keeps rising, and people keep dying. We have no clue how long this whole thing is going to last based on the measures that countries are actually taking. It’s quite the mind-fuck if you ask me.

And yes, I smoke a whole lot of weed when I grieve, based on past experiences. If so, how long does the grieving last? Is it until everything gets back to normal? Are things ever going to get back to normal? I doubt it.

ANXIETY?

So the anxiety is completely out of control, and I think that the fact that EVERYBODY has it doesn’t make it better at all. It’s like you feel it, you taste it, last time, I felt like I saw it while taking a walk (may have been the weed). I have social anxiety on the regular, and this has pushed it to an all-time high.

I smoke when I have anxiety. Sometimes it helps, other times it doesn’t, but right now, it’s constant; it doesn’t end. It’s draining, actually. So because it’s constant, the smoking becomes constant, the anxiety ends up never actually leaving, and it becomes a whole cycle.

Uncertainty? Empathy? Impatience?

There are a whole lot of different ways to describe how we’re all feeling right now. I mean, things are most definitively uncertain. If we’re partially shut down, then we keep getting partially infected, but what do I know? It just seems like it’s the type of strategy that make this last forever.

I feel bad for people, really bad, worst than I’ve actually ever felt before. I’m not sure if that’s empathy or sympathy, but I’m generally a little bit less empathetic than the average person, or so I thought. You learn a few things spending all this time thinking.

Speaking of overthinking, is it just me, or is this Corona Virus completely draining your brain from constantly being overused with the amount of information consumed?

I’m not sure if impatience even hit yet over here; I think everything else has been there; impatience will hit though. Literally any day, it will come to join the party with the rest of the negative feelings, all having a jolly, good time together.

BOREDOM?

Let’s not forget good old boredom. You cannot tell me you’ve never smoked because you were simply bored. I’m not talking in an “everything’s better when you’re high” type of way.

I’m talking in a “Smokey telling Graig: I know you don’t smoke weed, I know this; but I’m gonna get you high today, ’cause it’s Friday; you ain’t got no job… and you ain’t got shit to do.” type of way.

I guess when I combined all these different feelings together, and they’re all just there, all the time, 24/7, it kinda makes sense that I keep ordering more weed. The THC tolerance, though, you keep wanting more to get more high, but then you just kinda stop getting high, and you feel like a burned-out, information zombie with no more capacity to intake any more news.

At this point, I’m not really sure if weed is actually helping or not. I just don’t feel like adding that whole “taking a tolerance break” stress into my life right now. I tried, but it doesn’t work, not right now; it gives me some sort of weird comfort.

Cannabis sales have been through the roof these last few weeks, with stoners stacking up on their weed as others stacked up on toilet paper (which I still, to this day, don’t fully understand).

Maybe weed makes isolation easier. Maybe as the days go by and this really does become the NEW new normal, I’ll get up from this weed cloud and snap back to reality; until then, this is the new normal, this is reality.

Read more about the relationship between Covid and cannabis.