46

I've never used any kind of intoxicant.  Never drank or smoked. I mean never, as in not even once.  Same with pills etc.  What.  A.  Bore.  Have I written this before?  I'm even sort of against pain-killers, but I'm just wrong about that.  Give strong drink to the dying.  Needless suffering, well, that says it: needless.  Where there is a lesson to be learned, I'm fine with pain.  I've said this before, right?  Have I?  This feels very familiar.  So even given my very long-term depression, chronic and sometimes acute, well I've used exercise and nutrition to cope.

There is a growing body of reputable research re depression, however, on the, how shall I say, well, frankly, healing potential of, ahem, something I have never ever even considered considering. Psilocybin.  Mushrooms, that is, "magic" mushrooms -- shrooms as you people say.  I am very closed-minded about it.  I feel pretty much contempt for users.  I mean recreational users.  Not so much for alcohol, but I don't want to be around people who've had more than a glass or two.  A glass.  People who are not at their best are boring.  That's a word I don't use much, or ever, bore, boring.  But they would be, if I were around them.  Casual users, like pronoun abusers, gender-vocabulary abusers ... boring.  Stupid, probably, and most certainly immature.

That's my problem.  Immature.  Infantile, the classic puer aeternus. I realized this about myself during the "shut down". Very insulting, this truth.  It wasn't the isolation, because I'm always alone anyway -- it goes back to my life-long response to very early childhood abuse and neglect.  Bless my mom, but she made some mistakes.  I did indeed write about this, what, a year or two ago, re my nightmarish family dynamics.  I was the child sacrifice in that situation.  Old news (git it?  What's new is old again!).

Point is, psilocybin, which my spellchecker accepts as a thing (sometimes I use spellcheck as a reality-check), can, may "cause" neuroplasty -- are you kidding me? spellcheck does not recognize that word. Well, now I think about it that's a sort of operation, like vaginoplasty, which spellcheck recognizes.  But there's just something wrong with a world where a psychotropic is more recognized than neuroplasticity -- which word, spellchecker also does not recognize.  But I am not, NOT I say going to get into an argument with spellcheck, or is it -checker, whether with or without a hyphen.  

All I want, is to heal.  

So last Saturday I ingested one gram of whatever species of mushroom it was.  No noticeable cognitive effect, but that would not be the point.  Neurons.  Rewiring.  There was some otherwise inexplicable yawning.  The next day I used two grams.  I don't like using that word in this context, "used".  But my intention has a very real goal.  Burning or growing healthier synaptic pathways and connections.  Virtually no noticeable effect -- a few hours along it was like when you stand up too fast, and get dizzy.  That, more or less, for a little while.  And yawning.  And today, I used three grams.  About a half-hour in it was that same, not dizziness, that sort of silent buzzing.  I suppose that's why hippies and drunkards call it a buzz. 

So that's it, for the past two hours -- an unwelcome and completely unimpressive physical sensation, known to me by standing up too quickly, but light, and lasting so far for two hours, with occasional yawning.  If this is what people want, they're stupid.  No auditory, or visual, distortions etc.  That would have been, um, like, man, interesting, dude, but it's not the point.  All I want, is to heal.

Tomorrow is my 64th birthday (well, 65th if you count the day I was born, inclusive.  You are born after all on the day of your birth).  The other day I spoonerized it and said, not fixty sore ... I dyslexed it, dyscalculed it, flipped it to 46.  So that will be my new joke.  Hey, do I look 46, or 64.  Five years ago my joke was, I was BORN in '59, and I AM 59!  It worked for 60 too, but I had to change the inflection.  My friends who were born in the 70s and 80s, 90s, well, they've got a while to wait, quite a while, before they can use that joke, if they even live that long.  (Odd.  I don't have any friends who were born in the 60s.)  I know a boy who was born in '12, so his is coming up.  People are going to get very tired of that, coming from him.  

We find our happiness where we may.  Intoxicants for the rabble, or in my case, comic genius.  

You're welcome.

J