“I’m sorry, but if you do drugs [pot], you’re a degenerate.” — Jazzhands McFeels

It’s so frustrating. I want to be respectable sometimes. I want to be drug free. I want to work a normal job. I want to be financially stable enough to support a wife and family (assuming I can even find a wife who sides with at least the more important views/beliefs I have, who isn’t a bitch who plans to divorce me for the money). I want to remain focused. I don’t want to be lazy. I don’t want to be an asshole. I want to be nice. But wanting that and having that are two very different things, you fucking judgmental pricks.

My first experience with THC was just for shits and giggles, just to try it for the hell of it. And it was miserable. All the coughing, wheezing, spitting, it sucks smoking that shit. But then after that 20 minutes of misery, I found myself able to do something I hadn’t been able to do for a long time (I don’t even know if I had ever been able to do it). I could focus. I could listen to and absorb every word, every sentence that was being said to me. No longer was I struggling to keep interest. No longer was I only able to get every other word and every other sentence (on average). I could follow a conversation with ease. And I could talk back, when I felt I needed to, and be coherent about it. And once I started on edibles, I found I could get a good night’s sleep without tossing and turning and wondering what the fuck I had to do to finally pass out after staying awake for 2 fucking hours at night.

But this isn’t a world for people like me. Someone who wants to do physical labor, but gets rejected from every job opportunity (not even being bothered to be considered for an interview 95% of the time). Because if there was anything that could keep my attention and feel fulfilled by, it was manual labor. Fixing and repairing stuff, doing gardening, cleaning yards, helping with constructing something, anything. I was willing to risk making myself physically crippled to do something like that even if not every bone in my body was properly connected. Because even with that, I could still do some of this shit better than others (I was no master, not by a longshot, but I at least had a decent head on my shoulders to be capable of learning how to do something rather quickly when I had a hands-on approach).

But diversity quotas are a bitch (sometimes literally). And so are drug tests, which I only failed once, for one job, when I stopped taking THC for at least 2 weeks to try and ensure I could pass. But 2 weeks was all I was allowed. It didn’t matter how fucking far I had to drive, how much paperwork I had to fill out, how long I had to stand in line, how long I had to wait for that one phone call while all my bags were packed and I mapped out plans for various apartments to look at when I moved. And it sure as shit didn’t matter how much I improved overall from THC, which I am more than capable of stopping at the drop of a hat (I have gone from days, to weeks, to months, to nearly 2 years at times without taking any; stopping is no problem when I have a good reason). You fail a drug test, you’re out, no second chances (without paying enough money to buy a computer with, or fund another college course). Because the law is the law, unions are unions, corporations are corporations, and all of them can go to hell. Which is probably what happened to some of them when the coof hit (ain’t karma a bitch you bankrupted motherfuckers!?).

Like I said, trying not to be an asshole is hard when you’re born as one. Like trying not to take a non-addictive drug even if it helps you socially and mentally. And this isn’t a full endorsement of drugs either, their effects are completely different depending on the individual taking them. I’m fine with THC, but I’ve known friends who are not, because the side effects were terrible for them. But for me, getting off of drugs is a lot easier than trying not to be an asshole. Because I consider myself an asshole who tries not to be one. Fighting against my own nature. Every time someone says, “Hey, how are you doing?” and if I’m having a bad day, I’ll just answer honestly, “I’m doing terrible, how about yourself?”

…

Even now, I know I was going to add to that paragraph above, but I forgot what else I was going to say. And the fucking frustration of correcting typos from trying to type my thoughts as fast as I can think them before I forget them before my mind wanders onto something else. The frustration of not being able to watch some 10 minute video all the way through (let alone a 2 hour movie that isn’t fucking fantastic). The frustration of not being able to stay focused on reading just one fucking paragraph in a book. The frustration of having every job application I fill out result in nothing coming to fruition and making it all an effort in futility. Making me just think, “What’s the point? Why even bother? Can’t I just go independent and write a fucking book or something?” Well I tried that. First time I made a sincere effort and got 100 pages in, I looked back on what I had wrote, and realized it was garbage. Scrapped it, tried again, but just didn’t have the willpower.

Everything just constantly beating me down. And not even being able to socialize in person anymore. It’s not hard enough to be anti-social and hating small talk, preferring to socialize by sharing in activities rather than carrying a conversation. Give me hiking, board gaming, cooking, gardening, getting involved in a debate (that’s always kept my attention somehow, the competitive nature of it that’s also mentally constructive, assuming the conversation is constructive in the end and not just some dumb dopamine hit half the pre-graduate society is addicted to these days; which I’m thankfully immune to as a silver lining to my condition, which is why coffee and energy drinks make me want to fall asleep rather than wake me up). Anything but just a pure dialogue situation. That’s fucking boring, and can only be of interest when I’m at least a little high.

The best I can do is find a spark of interest, a brief spurt of inspiration and attention that can last for up to 2 weeks on one particular thing, that I can work on relentlessly for that brief period of time. Maybe it’s because I know my attention won’t last is why I work so feverishly on that little something when the spark is there. But once that spark is gone, it’s gone. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t muster up the energy to get it back to work on it again. Oh, but I can work on it, don’t get me wrong. It’s just going to be slow miserable agonizing work. Like having a math problem you know you should be able to comprehend if you put enough thought into it, but you spend over an hour on it, trying different techniques, only to get so frustrated you yell and slam the book as hard as you can on the floor, sometimes causing the binding to rip a bit on the hardcover.

There are times when I just have to wonder, “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” Apply for a job I’m not going to get? Fuck that. Stop taking edibles? What’s the point if there’s no good job opportunities out there that will allow you to work without giving you a drug test? What’s the point if it’s the one thing that actually allows you to watch that movie without losing your attention? That allows you to actually read an entire chapter of a book without having to reread sentences when you lose track of where you are in it because your mind wanders to something else? That allows you to focus when no amount of effort doing so drug free ever succeeds (and believe me, I’ve tried, I really fucking tried, for years, through high school and college)?

It all seems so hopeless and nihilistic, and the plot of a shitty teen movie. But there is one habit I’ve learned that I’ve had in spite of everything. I may have my down moments, I may have my phases where the stress gets to me and puts in a depression spell for a few days. But that’s the thing about someone with ADD. I really fucking hate monotony. I can’t stand doing the same thing and being in the same state. So I eventually get tired of hopelessness just as I eventually get tired of hope. I get tired of depression just as I get tired of elation. I get tired of getting high bi-daily just as I get tired of not being high (maybe I’ll just get drunk instead, ’cause that’s a safer legal alternative those hypocritical fucks allow us to have). I get tired of being angry just as I get tired of being chill. I never stay down. I never completely stop job hunting.

And I sure as shit am not a nihilist. I can’t think of anything more pathetic than someone turning into an emo who has given up on life, especially if they’ve spent a decent portion of their career making fun of them before turning into one (like Spoony). Nihilism is boring. “Everything is fucked and so are we, there’s no point to anything.” Booooooorrrring! Even the universe thinks that’s boring. What choices do you have with that?

The Big Bang happened (theory #1).

Well why did it happen?

Uhhhhhhhhh… I don’t know. Maybe it got bored with itself?

Hah! Exactly! That’s also why there’s life beyond death. You know why? Because fading into nothingness is boring!

“In the beginning there was nothing.”

Oh blow it out your ass! The same fucking book that says that believes in an omnipresent all-powerful being who got so fucking bored that he decided to create shit just for the hell of it (theory #2).

“But there’s stories of people who died and came back to life who reported not seeing any sort of afterlife.”

Oh yeah? Well what if they only remember the blackness? What if blackness is all there is for just 20 minutes before that light finally does come up? What if blackness is all you see until you get bored of it? What if they were just asleep and not dreaming anything? What if our current hospital science tools don’t take into account the difference between mostly dead and all dead?

Anyway, I’m not in the mood to think of a satisfying conclusion to wrap this on-the-fly post I just spontaneously decided to make out of pure frustration, mainly because I don’t have all the answers, and won’t pretend to. So I’ll just say pot should be legal, anyone who thinks otherwise, even if they’re white nationalists, can kiss my ass, suck me off, jerk me off, turn around five times fast and sit on a red hot poker till it slides up their throat and fries that hardass of a brain so that they know it’s possible for brains to get fucked even when not on drugs, and do a belly flop into a tar pit. There’s more than one way to be a degenerate, just as there is always an exception to a rule (as various board gamers and T-RPGers can attest).

Rant over.