My kiddo jumped on a trampoline at our neighbor’s house. My wife took her mother to a couple of stores in town. The foliage in my region may have hit its peak. The calendar read Friday. The clock read 4:20 in the afternoon.
Despite having had tachycardia the past four times I smoked cannabis, I wondered, would one hit actually hurt? I tucked the leaf of my hybrid strain of Banana Punch with 20% THC into the blown-glass bowl, stepped onto our back porch, sparked the lighter, put my lips to the hole, and inhaled the smoke.
Would one hit actually hurt?
~~
The day before, I spent roughly four hours with my butt in a chair reading and writing about how close the Russian Federation and the United States are to starting a nuclear war. Ever seen the movie Thirteen Days, the one where Kevin Costner works in the Kennedy White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Remember how intensely scared they all were?
Later that night, President Biden compared this moment to that moment.
Would one nuclear missile actually hurt?
~~
Earlier that week, the longtime town manager of my hometown died suddenly from a heart attack while mowing his lawn. He was seventy years old with a short, rotund body. I did not know him well enough to call him a friend, but I knew him enough to have laughed with him several times, and I respected him greatly. I am so grateful for his skills and dedication, him being the person who managed the town where I chose to start a family.
He retired a few years ago but stayed involved, volunteering, fundraising, and offering his skills and advice wherever it was needed. He made an impact, and he will be missed.
Today, I ate two slices of supreme pizza from the local gas station for lunch. With our school having gone remote this week due to too many teachers testing positive for COVID-19, retrieving the pizza was only the third time I stood up between 10 am and 3 pm, and it was the most prolonged period I stood until the end of the workday when I took my dog for a mile long walk.
Would mowing the lawn actually hurt?
~~
My brother tells me I need to chill out.
He says learning about nuclear war, the devastating effects of climate change, the rise of fascism, the increase in school and police shootings, the local impacts of the opioid epidemic, the worrying trends in children’s mental health, the greed of the capitalists, the exploitation of laborers, the rising costs of food, the horrific nearness of sex offenders and human traffickers, the villainy of the military-industrial complex, etc. is contributing to my anxiety.
He also says reading dystopian science fiction makes me overthink the problems of our current time and the future. He believes thinking too much is bad for me.
Would one more article actually hurt?
~~
I took the hit, got the dough started for tonight’s dinner (homemade pizza), opened a Conehead IPA, retrieved my Kindle (Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power), opened my front door, and with my dog at my side, sat in a gliding chair (the one we used when rocking our kiddo to sleep ten years ago) and started to read.
The tingle started immediately, a message from my body to my brain that something had changed and my brain better take notice.
~~
I’m teaching a high-school class this quarter on evolution. I possess just enough knowledge to lead a high-school classroom but not enough to be genuinely confident. Darwin and I shared the same lack of knowledge: Darwin knew nothing of chromosomes and DNA, and outside of the Punnett square, neither did I.
I began a layman’s shallow dive into the current state of genetic knowledge using Khan Academy’s AP-level lessons on heredity to learn the basics, then pursued the questions that remained in academic journals.
I listened to the popular-science book, The Gene: An Intimate History, in half-hour segments as I drove to and from my students’ homes.
As a result, I now have a dilettante’s understanding of DNA, RNA, and proteins.
Because human evolution involves the development of our brain, I continued my investigation by reading a book by a neuroscientist from Northeastern titled Seven and a Half Lessons about the Brain, which eradicated some of my misunderstandings (for example, that whole “lizard brain” thing? Totally not true).
When my body created a tingling sensation, I understood that the cannabinoids within the flowers of the cannabis plant (which we think evolved to protect the plant from insect predation and UV light) bind to CB1 receptors in my central nervous system.
The structure of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is similar to a chemical naturally produced by the body that sends messages between nerve cells, particularly messages related to “pleasure, memory, concentration, movement, coordination, and sensory and time perception.” The similar structure allows THC to co-opt those messages, causing strange effects on all of the above.
Sitting in the glider, feeling the tingling come on, I knew exactly what it was and why it was happening.
But I didn’t understand why my heart rate soared from a typical 68 bpm to 130 bpm in less than two minutes.
~~
“Okay,” I thought. “You’re fine. Tachycardia happened before, and you’ve survived. Try taking a shower and see how it goes.”
I stood from the glider, walked inside the house, and climbed the stairs to my bathroom. By the time I reached the top, my heart rate was 149 bpm, and I felt lightheaded.
“Okay,” I thought. “Maybe instead of standing in a shower, you might want to sit down.”
I moved to my bedroom, sat on the edge, pulled my iPhone out of my pocket, and said, “Hey Siri, play the Grateful Dead.” I put the phone directly behind me so the sound waves would hit both of my ears simultaneously, placed my hands on my thighs, and took control of my breathing.
In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth. In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth.
The sweats and hot flash started just as the first notes of Jerry and the boys came through the speakers. Siri decided what I really needed to hear right then was “Fire on the Mountain.”
I chuckled and kept breathing.
~~
In low doses, cannabis increases the chemicals in the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). The SNS affects several organs in the body. It dilates our eyes, tightens our digestive systems, and causes us to sweat, among other things.
It also tells our heart to beat faster.
In short, the sympathetic nervous system regulates our “fight or flight” function.
Simultaneously, cannabis decreases the chemicals in our parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). One doctor characterizes the PNS’s targets as our “rest and digest” function. It contracts our pupils, relaxes our sphincters and urethras, and…surprise, surprise…lowers our heart rate.
At high doses, cannabis has the reverse effect, increasing the chemicals in our PNS and decreasing the ones in our SNS, making us feel highly relaxed; hence, the stereotype of a stoner sitting gonged out on his couch.
I took one hit: a low dose.
~~
In through the nose. Hold for five seconds. Out through the mouth.
My heart rate came back down to about 110 bpm. “Okay,” I thought. “That’s doable. Let’s take a shower.”
I stood up. Bad idea.
Immediately, my vision contracted to a point, and my sense of legs felt weak. Deep, slow breath. Deep, slow breath.
Downstairs, the back door opened, and my 10-year-old kiddo and their friend entered the house.
Uh-oh.
They went right into the living room and turned on the Nintendo Switch. Like any good ten year old, they couldn’t care less where their dad was.
Siri decided to follow “Fire on the Mountain” with “Help on the Way.”
Good call, Siri. I lay on the bed, retrieved the phone, and called my wife.
“Um, honey. I’m having a really bad panic attack. You have to come home.”
This is not the first time we’ve been through this. She was in line with my mother-in-law at the grocery store around the corner. “I’m just putting stuff on the conveyor,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
I told her I felt like I was going to faint, and our child had just come home. I teared up as I told her I really didn’t want our kiddo to come up the stairs and find me unresponsive on the bed. The sadness of that vision overwhelmed me, and I had difficulty talking. “Can you leave your mom there and maybe go back after…” I trailed off. This wasn’t an option; who knew how long the effects would last? I pictured my mother-in-law standing outside the grocery store, wondering if everything was all right.
“Just keep talking,” I begged. And my wife did. All through putting the groceries on the conveyor, getting them checked out, putting them in the bag, carrying them to the car, and coming home. Just her voice.
Like a child she is pure; she is not to blame.
~~
My wife came home, and we got through it together. I cried about failing as a father, husband, and provider, being unable to save all of my students from the traumas in their lives, and my lack of self-discipline with exercise, diet, and addiction.
“How many warnings are enough?”
Later that evening, I threw all of my cannabis in the trash.