This Thanksgiving, I’m Thankful for Marijuana

While I support the end of adult marijuana prohibition for all of the big reasons — ending black market violence, helping suffering patients, controlling access from minors, reaping tax revenues, reducing police corruption, protecting civil liberties, providing justice, building an eco-friendly hemp industry, and the fact that it is just wrong to lock people up over a plant — this Thanksgiving as I contemplate what I am thankful for I must honestly say I support ending adult marijuana prohibition for the most selfish of reasons:

I like to smoke pot.  And I really dislike jail.

I am thankful for marijuana, cannabis, pot, grass, ganja, weed, kush, chronic, whatever you want to call it, for making my life possible.

I am thankful that marijuana saved me from alcoholism.

I began drinking alcohol at age 16.  I am the son of an alcoholic speed addict.  By college I was regularly drinking 18-packs of brew on weekdays and chugging five double-shots of Southern Comfort or tequila on the weekends in addition to the beers.  By age 21 I had gone from high school honor student, 31 ACT, advanced placement, gifted-and-talented kid to flunking out of college with a 1.88 GPA.  My drinking even got me a general discharge five months early from my six-year National Guard commitment, where I was a popular sergeant in the Army Band and a former state Soldier of the Year.

Then July 4th, 1990, I discovered Mary Jane.  It’s not that my drinking ceased, but my relationship with alcohol completely changed.  I found pot much more enjoyable and much less debilitating, so my alcohol use dropped off to the occasional beer with a burger, wine at a dinner, or maybe a single shot of tequila for party time.

I am thankful marijuana saved me from meth addiction.

As the Nineties rolled on, I was playing professional music by night and working in information technology by day.  The grueling schedule and the nature of the market for prohibited drugs led me to methamphetamine.  All my life I was told drugs – all drugs – were bad, were deadly, and one toke would make an addict out of you.  But I’d been smoking marijuana for five years and found nothing but good from it.  My dad was a drinker, toker, and speed user, and he became an addict.  But I was a drinker and a toker and was handling life just fine.  Maybe I’m one of those people who don’t get addicted, I thought.  Next thing I know I’m snorting rails the size of a golf tee and staying up days at a time.

The only thing to stop my self-destruction was a 3:00 am trip to the emergency room when I awoke to find my genitals shriveled, cold, and purple, along with an excruciating stabbing pain in my lower gut.  The meth had eaten away at the abdominal linings and my need to haul heavy bass amps led to a inguinal hernia, which was cutting off the flow of blood to my crotch and threatening my life.  I went to the operating room immediately.

During the recovery from the surgery, I was in a great deal of pain.  The doctors prescribed Vicodin.  You can probably guess how that turned out.  First I had a great tolerance to the pills, probably owing to size and genetics, so the doctors made sure I got the extra-strength variety.  Still, they didn’t do much for the pain, so I took more.  What I didn’t do was smoke pot.  No more drugs, I thought to myself as I was popping Vicodin like Flintstones chewables.

Soon the Vicodin had their predictable side effect of stopping up my intestines, which is particularly unpleasant when you’ve just had surgery on your intestines.  My doctors were starting to prescribe for me more pills to deal with the effects of the first pills.  With little money and desire to begin another pill regimen, I gave in and went back to smoking pot.  Imagine my surprise when I found the pot not only worked better than the Vicodin, but it also helped ease those nagging meth cravings I was having for weeks.  I was finally relaxed enough to get a good night’s sleep.

I am thankful marijuana freed my wife from chronic pain.

I continued smoking pot through the Nineties and into the new millennium.  It did place some career barriers in my way and living in Idaho wasn’t helping matters.  In my home state you can have not a speck of marijuana on you and still be arrested for merely being high.  I interviewed a young woman in Idaho Falls who spent Christmas through New Years in jail for merely being in the same apartment where there was an empty bong.

On the first day of the year 2001 I got married.  My wife’s the fifth of fifteen children from a Christian sect that believes only in “faith healing”.  She never saw a doctor or had an immunization until she left home at age eighteen.  She’s had every childhood scary disease you can think of – mumps, whooping cough, measles, etc. – and suffered a severe accident as a child that took $15,000 worth of adult plastic surgery to correct.  On top of that, she is allergic to nearly every antibiotic and opioid-based medicine in existence.

So as she continued to suffer from two excruciating conditions, migraines and endometriosis, her only options during an onset of pain were to ride it out crying in the fetal position in a darkened room for a couple of days or have me drive her to the emergency room for a shot of Demerol, a drug she’s not allergic to, but costs a $600 ER visit and knocks her out of two days of work.

My wife also has brothers who fit the stereotype of “pothead”, and despite my motivation and success, she would not try my favorite herbal remedy for fear of turning out like them.  Finally one night during an blinding migraine, she finally took a hit from my pipe.  It was literally like a movie special effect, watching the calm and relief wash over her face and body in a manner of seconds.  “Oh my God,” she said, “it’s working!”.  A few weeks later, we were making our plans to move west so she could become a legal medical marijuana patient.

I am thankful marijuana brought me amazing new friends.

Upon moving to Oregon, I was without any friends but Cannabis Karri, who came along as our roommate, and no family but Cousin Kenny, who had moved here a couple years earlier.  I had been deeply entrenched in the Boise music scene and had many opportunities, but in Portland I was nobody and had only my computer software teaching job.

After two years in town I kept seeing examples of Portland’s burgeoning cannabis community.  I finally made the effort to get to the Million Marijuana March and there, in 2005, I met Anna Diaz and Madeline Martinez of Oregon NORML.  They welcomed me into their circle and in the fight to end prohibition through volunteer work with NORML, I finally felt like I had found my calling.

Now I’m part of a community of thousands and I have dozens of friends within the movement.

I am thankful marijuana helped me forge a rewarding career.

All my life I’ve had jobs that accentuated one part of my self while hiding others.  I’ve never felt like any job really maximized my abilities and potential.  Playing music brought out my performer, but hid my intellectual pursuits.  Working in IT elicited my intellectual capabilities, but stifled my creativity.  Teaching helped hone my public speaking but lacked a topic I was truly passionate about.  Being a citizen soldier gave me self-discipline and drive but I am way too eccentric for the military.  Being a talk radio host was exciting but I felt too out-of-depth to be waxing eloquently on every political topic under the sun.  Working as a traveling consultant made me an efficient business traveler and helped me see the country, but being on the road so much was terribly lonely.

But thanks to my wonderful new friends I was able to get involved with NORML.  I took on web design, speaking at rallies, organizing people, performing legislative and statistical analyses, and lobbying.  It was all volunteer for the first two years, but the joy I got from helping sick and disabled people get a medical marijuana card and hearing their stories, different but not unlike mine, about how marijuana had saved their life made it possible to push through the drudgery of the workday in anticipation of my next NORML event.

Soon I was donating audio pieces from Oregon NORML events to Chris Goldstein at the NORML Daily Audio Stash podcast.  I had also won a national contest and was hosting my own professional political talk radio show.  When Chris had to depart the podcast, he tapped me to take it over.  I did that as a contractor for a year until a position opened up at NORML, and the rest is history: I have a job I love that uses my IT skills, creativity, analysis, self-discipline, radio voice, teaching ability, public speaking, business travel experience, and history of marijuana and drug use.

I am thankful marijuana has put me in a position to help end cannabis prohibition laws for the betterment of America.

I feel so truly blessed to be doing what I am doing now.  I get emails from readers and listeners, and occasionally I get the opportunity to meet them in person, and when they tell me that I’m the reason they got active in marijuana law reform, or how something I said helped them see through some reefer madness, I am filled with a sense of pride that I was able to contribute and a little bit of embarrassment that anyone would take a college dropout ex-tweeker drunk like me so seriously.  Every time we open a new NORML chapter I’m excited for the next man or woman like myself who will be hooking up with those local activists and beginning their long, strange trip with Mary Warner.  I always hope they find as much to be thankful for with marijuana and NORML as I have.

For my career, health, friendships, enlightenment, enjoyment, passion, and purpose, this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for marijuana.