TL;DR: One of the bad things about growing old is looking back over all the utterly, totally asinine things you used to say and do. And because you are old and people usually at least pretend to respect old age, they'll pretend to listen to you tell them about these things. Then they go off and say and do the exact same things you warned them about. And that's okay, because people have to learn things for themselves. “you must stretch your own imagination, rouse yourself from mental lethargy, and be bold enough to discard old dogmatic comfort blankets.”
― Jane Roberts, The “Unknown” Reality, Volume Two
By Geri Roberts
One of the bad things about growing old is looking back over all the utterly, totally asinine things you used to say and do. And because you are old and people usually at least pretend to respect old age, they'll pretend to listen to you tell them about these things. Then they go off and say and do the exact same things you warned them about. And that's okay, because people have to learn things for themselves. But I've decided to write some of these embarrassing things down so that perhaps they'll stick in some younger person's head somewhere and do some good. What I am writing about belongs on a "influence/conspiracy" website because the word "influence/conspiracy" is, in my opinion, shorthand for finding out that our reality is constructed almost totally of lies and if we believe all these lies we are in for trouble..
I came of age in the 1960s and 1970s and I am sure that I was the only person to go through high school and college in those days without even once using an illicit substance. I wouldn't have known one if I had seen it. Many girls my age explored free love in a hippie commune. I made plans to enter a Trappestine Monastery outside of Boston. For my birthday in 1980 one of my employees gave me a gift-wrapped joint as a joke. I was so convinced that the DEA had me under surveillance that I didn't rest until I could flush it down the toilet. I considered Nancy Reagan's "War on Drugs" a brilliant idea that would restore our society to decency.
By 2010 my life had crashed and burned so many times that I knew I was doing something wrong. My view of the world had been my comfort blanket but it was no longer comfortable. I decided I needed to completely reconstruct my paradigm of reality because something was not working right. So I told my good friend Patrick that I "wanted to do drugs." To his credit he didn't burst out laughing but only asked "Are you sure?" No, I wasn't sure. I was terribly afraid. But I knew that I had to do something about myself or I was going to take a stroll off the roof of a very tall building. My comfort blanket was beginning to suffocate me.
Patrick presented me with something called cannabis butter with instructions for using it, which I ignored. I knew how to cook, after all. I tried some on a cracker. An hour later nothing had happened so I ate some more. Still nothing happened so I took some more and still nothing happened so I took more...I think you know where this is going.
I finally wandered into the living room and put on a Jane Austen movie. Suddenly, something hit me on the side of the face. It was the seat cushions of the sofa which I had toppled over onto. And then I noticed that all the actors and actresses in "Pride and Prejudice" had new faces. Why, of course! Jane Austen had sent the original characters into her future so that they could star in this twenty-first century movie. Wow!
I know all this is funny but I have a serious purpose in telling you about it. Approximately twenty years previously I had undergone reconstructive surgery on my face. My bottom jaw was literally held together by screws and nails and I had no feeling in the bottom half of my face. Eating in public was embarrassing because the food tended to fall out my mouth whilst it was being chewed. I constantly bit my tongue and inner surface of my mouth and had difficulty talking. It felt as if my lower face was perpetually injected with Novocain. Of all the events in my life, I often felt that this was the one that would push me over the edge although it doesn't sound that crippling to someone who never experienced it. A series of doctors had all given the same verdict: The mandibular nerve had been severed and I would be this way for the rest of my life. At times I didn't think I could bear it.
That evening, as I laid there on the sofa watching "Pride and Prejudice" a lattice of bluish light appeared in front of my eyes. I knew that I was looking at a real time diagram of my mandibular nerve and that it was regenerating itself. The tracing of light settled down over my lower face, which began to tingle. For the first time in two decades I had feeling in my mouth. I could eat and talk easily. There were a few small spots of numbness here and there but I didn't hesitate to call it a miracle. And it has been this way ever since.
This was important stuff. Nerves do not regenerative once they are severed. Even if my mandibular nerve had merely been compressed all these years, a sudden recovery like this was incredible. So, against my better judgement, I decided to tell my family doctor about this. She should know that cannabis had great healing potential for nerves. But she did exactly what I feared: She looked at me very sternly and asked why in the world I would do something like this. She began to write busily in my chart and I knew exactly what she was saying because I had worked in doctors' offices for over thirty years years and I know how they think.. She was putting in my medical record words to the effect: DRUG USER. DRUGGIE. DO NOT PRESCRIBE ANYTHING STRONGER THAN TYLENOL EVEN IF PATIENT CLAIMS TO BE IN AGONIZING PAIN.
It was hard to obtain the edibles but I managed to take them once more. I had yet another marvelous experience. The designs on my bedroom wall paper became time machines that allowed me to look back into my childhood bedroom. I saw experiences I had had as a child from a new viewpoint. They became merely stories that I had written and had never really happened to me. I had a feeling of peace and serenity about those memories for a long time afterwards. It was as if the memories themselves had been healed.
I next tried LSD but I think I had a bad trip. I was locked up in a big, dark house with the Bronte sisters. The doors and windows were all locked and the Brontes tried to help me get out but then I realized that they had tricked me and locked everything down themselves so I would stay and read their books, which I had always hated. I decided never to take the stuff again.
Patrick also gave me some psilocybin mushrooms. Nothing happened even though I ate about twenty of the wretched things. Patrick said there was something wrong with that crop and I think the mushroom farmer went out of business.
But there is more to my cannabis experience. When I was in high school a friend asked me to go to a psychic reading with her. I didn't want to go because I was in my religious fanatic stage and I just knew that demons had to be involved somehow. But the psychic lady didn't charge anything and so I was talked into it.
We all sat in a classroom at the local college. There were about ten or twelve of us. The psychic lady sat at the teacher's desk and gave readings on people she said she could "see". Next to me sat a very pretty girl about my age. She was told that many people loved her and a boy was making her a beautiful woodworking object, but she was ungrateful and didn't appreciate anything that was ever done for her. I thought the girl was going to spit nails, she was so angry.
My friend was told that she was psychic herself and she should be sitting up front giving readings with her. I started to smirk then stopped when I saw the psychic was looking at me. For a minute I was terrified that she was going to see what a horrible person I really was and predict that something very bad was going to happen to me.
But the psychic lady's face lit up as she looked at me and she smiled. She told me that I had healing hands and she could see blue sparks pour out from my fingertips. She told me that if I wanted to I could heal people.
Later I laughed this off as I did anything outside my comfort blanket area. But now I believe that the cannabis really didn't heal me--it just helped me to heal myself. And if I had put some investigation and work into what that woman had told me that I was capable of doing, my life might have been much different and I might even have helped other people.
So that's my cautionary tale about comfort blankets. If people want to call me a 'Conspiracy Theorist" because I've discovered that the world and my own body are vastly different from what I once believed, that's fine. I'm not telling anybody to take drugs. Just unwrap that comfort blanket and stick your head or a foot out once in a while. You might be surprised.