I quit smoking pot two days ago after a quarter century of indulging pretty much daily. Feels kind of strange but not nearly as bad as I feared. This is my first time ever actually trying to quit. It’s not like the tobacco which I smoked for 20 years and every year I tried to quit a couple times. I must have tried to quit tobacco 40 some times before finally succeeding after reading The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allen Carr.
But marijuana is different. I never felt bad about being a pot head. Marijuana, at least on the surface, feels like it has had nothing but benefits for me. Like, it’s never caused any serious problems in my life. Marijuana changed my life in such magical positive ways back in the day in the late nineties and early 2000’s.
But it became an addiction, it became such a part of me that it was just background.
I was worried that I’d feel like shit, but that’s not happening. I do feel different but I can’t put my finger on how exactly.
Weed was pivotal in helping me deal with trauma and depression. I have no idea where I’d be without it. If I’d never started smoking weed I just don’t think I ever would have found joy in life. I think I would have been trapped in my trauma and fear for the rest of my life.
But now, and for like the last 20 years, it just hasn’t actually had a positive impact. It never had a negative impact but never really a positive one either. It was just background, just this thing I did.
But I’ve actually been pretty happy since I quit, in a weird way. I wasn’t expecting that. I figured I’d have a week or two of crankiness and frustration, and to be fair, there was a few minutes last night when I was hanging with friends and I suddenly started getting really irritated with the conversation, like I was mad that we weren’t talking about the things that I wanted to talk about. That was a weird feeling but I was conscious of it and recognized that it was due to the changing chemicals in my brain and so I was able to think my way through it.
So I’m committed to not being a pot head anymore. I’m still going to smoke on occasion. I could never give it up completely. But now it’s going to be special to me instead of this daily habit that’s comforting like your favorite stuffie, but otherwise just steals my time and money.
I’m gonna be able to get high again. It’s going to make the occasional time that I do smoke so much more special.
Today I listened to The Pioneers, a novella I wrote back around 2014 and I just recently put it on Audible using their AI speech.
I’d forgotten how passionate I was about that story and its message. So many emotions came rushing back. It’s all about the point of being human, about building a better world for the future generations and the battle with the vast majority of people who just don’t care or are actively hostile toward the people who are trying to build a better future. “We should focus on the problems here on Earth” they say, which is one of the most offensive phrases I’ve ever heard. To me, that sounds like they’re saying “I don’t care about future generations. I only care about issues I can see in front of me and I don’t care about long-term solutions.” I always imagine those people who oppose spending money on space flight as getting a leak in their roof, water pouring in through their attic, so the roofers show up and get out a ladder and climb up on top of the roof but they get screamed at “You idiots! The leak is on the inside! Quit having parties up on the roof and come fix the leak in my attic!”
It’s so frustrating sometimes. That’s a big part of why I wrote The Pioneers, to kind of show from an emotional perspective why space travel is so deeply important and why we are so passionate, but perhaps I’d better serve this purpose by talking about what space travel has already done for us, the incredible technologies that have come out of it. I wish NASA throughout the years had done a better job of actually explaining why it is that this is so important, and demonstrate all the ways that they have benefited us, from medical research, new medications, improved farming, weather predictions.
I mean, at the last Red Cross meeting I attended, someone spoke up and was all worried about connectivity and was like “Why have we all forgotten about connectivity in the field? We need to make sure that we have CB radios distributed and call trees and why does nobody seem to care about this anymore when this has always been one of our biggest problems during hurricane operations?”
And our manager was like “Because that’s no longer an issue. SpaceX has guaranteed us all the free Starlink terminals we could ever need, and unlimited priority free service. Connectivity in the field is just not an issue for any rescue operation practically anywhere in the world now because of SpaceX.”
Plus the environmental harm from Starlink is significantly less than traditional cell tower strategies where they need to clear cut huge pieces of forest to build roads just to install these towers. And it’s like, there’s just benefit after benefit to our society from space travel, and it’s only going to get more significant and more beneficial the more the price comes down.
So it’s like, this has always been one of my biggest missions in life: promoting space travel, because without a sustainable space industry, humanity will just fall backward into war and poverty.
Space is our destiny. It’s why God put us here.
And it’s like, people just aren’t informed. They haven’t had the benefits of space travel explained, so it’s like, people assume that it’s all about billionaires having fun, which is just insane because only Jeff Bezos has actually gone to space, but only for a minute and Elon has no interest in ever going to space. Sure, it’s an adventure for them, and they’re having fun at it, but it’s fun because they can see the very notable benefits that have already happened and the truly insane, mind blowing benefits that are yet to come.
As a society, we are putting probably 100 times more effort into building weapons than we are at building a better future for our children through space travel. We’re putting probably 1000 times more time and energy into coffee consumption than we are into space, and yet it’s always space travel that gets shit on, particularly by liberals, as somehow being wasteful and selfish. It’s just mind boggling the twisted priorities that we have as a society.
I’m ranting. I wonder if my writing style feels different now that the THC is draining out of my system. Like I’m coming across as frustrated. And yeah, but I’ve always been frustrated by this… or maybe “horrified” might be a better word.
I don’t want the entire human race to suffocate and die on this planet, and I want long-term viable solutions to our problems, and the only way to do that is to build the technology to take care of our planet from the outside. Just like a leaking roof, you need to get up there and fix it from the outside.
And correction: I think also that Jared billionaire guy also went to space, but they spent the whole time doing legit research that NASA wanted and that really can benefit humanity in many ways.
I just wonder, where does this hatred come from? Why are people so opposed to the idea of going to space, the idea of moving hazardous manufacturing and energy production off the planet so it stops hurting people? Opposed to the idea of manufacturing new and improved things in space that we just can’t create on Earth, like those fiber optic cables that are like 1000 times more efficient than what we currently have? Why would they be opposed to growing artificial hearts and lungs and kidneys in space? We just can’t grow those things on Earth. Decreased cost of space means we could eliminate the need for organ donation and eliminate waiting lists for organ transplants. But the people who look down on space travel never mention these things. They often deliberately hide from these ideas, trying to trick people into thinking these goals and ideas don’t exist, and just keep repeating over and over that it’s just billionaires having a joy ride. They relentlessly imply that space travel is somehow taking resources away from all the good things in the world, while ignoring all the harmful things that we spend far, far more money on like war or soda pop. The long-term harm they’re doing to our species and our planet is unconscionable.
Anyway, oh wow, I am really being Ranty McRanterson today. But to be fair, I have a smile on my face right now. I’m still happy. I’m getting out these emotions and frustrations in a way that I actually enjoy, channeling them into something that can hopefully make a positive difference… somehow… someday.
But I guess I need to stop ranting — okay one more thing I guess specifically about Elon Musk, and yes, i know why people hate him. I’m not in any way defending the disgusting attitudes he portrays on Twitter. Yes, he’s a sociopath who’s done a lot of morally repugnant things. I get that. But at the same time, he built a company that has already prevented World War 3, or at least significantly delayed it. If he had not created SpaceX, The United States would be completely dependent on Russia for reaching space, at least for humans. Vladimir Putin would basically own all of space right now. All our satellites, communications, some of our most important medical research, national security, our weather and disaster monitoring, all of that would be in the hands of Russia and Putin right now. I get that Elon is awful, but we have an obligation toward honesty and truth so we need to recognize the massive positive effects that his company has had on us.
Anyway, geeze, I’m going off the rails here.
My life is just so amazing, so many new emotions, and this not smoking weed thing, it feels like this new adventure in new emotions and mental patterns, new ways of talking and interacting. I had no idea when I was a kid how my feelings and perspectives could shift and change constantly into new and wondrous things–like I used to hear from adults that life gets monotonous as you get older, you get jaded and bored, but that has definitely not been the case for me. Quite the opposite. I started out jaded and bored as a child and it’s like every year that goes by, my brain gets more complex, my emotions more deep and profound but at the same time, more manageable.
Okay, let’s just stop there and call this entry complete.