I am experimenting with the joys of CBD oil.
Yeah, here I am, unwashed, clad in sweats, underemployed, living in the basement (and upstairs too) as a teenager+ person, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the munchies.
On Monday, I felt like a derelict asking the pharmacist to unlock a small tube of lotion from his case, one that contained CBD oil. I felt I should have also asked for a pack of Marlboros, an extra-large box of ribbed condoms, some lubricant, and a magnum of whiskey.
Yesterday and again this morning, I spread a pea-sized glob of it on my hands, face, and a sore spot on my leg. I wondered what this would do to my New Year’s resolution to stop procrastinating stuff. I wondered if I’d ever strive to do anything useful again.
And all it did was blot out my spiraling thoughts. It was a plain little result, but it was a result. That was all it did. I was a bit disappointed. I didn’t feel high. I didn’t giggle. I didn’t slur my words or say, “Hey dude, chill out.” I didn’t buy a bag of Doritos. And best of all, I did’t puke.
I’ll admit that back in college, I inhaled a few times when a joint was passed around. My excuse is that it was in another millennium and I was always drunk. The problem was that I never once smoked pot without first getting roaring drunk, so, though my brain began to associate pot with puking my guts out, it could simply have been a result of getting a little dizzier with my liver already overloaded with beer.
Here’s the truth: In addition to the puking, I also began to associate weed with those kids who would never finish their degrees or get into their post-graduate schools or get good jobs or use commas properly and I did not want to be one of those people. Somehow, it was okay for me to drink a lot on the weekends, but I didn’t want to smoke pot and drop out and live on Pizza Pockets in my mother’s basement until I was thirty-five.
So, when one friend told me I should try CBD oil for my aching joints and anxiety, I silently put her into a different category of person though she is gainfully employed as a nurse. I told her I’d think about trying it when I knew I was lying to her face. When the second friend recommended it, I put one more high caliber person into my spam folder and worried that if I pressed the delete button, I was going to run out of friends. So instead, I kept them both, but I kept one eye out for Doritos and sweat pants. When the third and fourth friends said they swore by the stuff, I figured if they were all going to live in their mother’s basements and exist on pot, Pizza Pockets, and Doritos, then dammit, I was going to hell in a handbasket with them.
I looked it up on WebMD. I read past all the side-effects, warnings of mislabeling, and lack of credible research and found this:
Did you see that? It has potential uses! That’s good, right? And later in the article, it noted that most people were probably under-dosing because it took more CBD oil than most products contain to have any but a placebo effect on the user.
So then, I’m doing it right! I am using a mostly natural method, the placebo effect, to combat my anxiety and inflammation. That means that I’m not going to have to go live in my mother’s basement and I’m not going to exist on Pizza Pockets and Doritos for the rest of my life. And best of all, my friend’s aren’t either.
Chill out, dude!
Thank you for listening, jules