Rooster in Review: Sayonara Devil's lettuce
A 20-year career of blazing is at an end.
I retired from alcohol—specifically Tito’s Handmade Vodka—on August 1st, 2022. My alcoholism had finally hit the point where I had to decide if I wanted to die drunk in a gutter or live a normal life.
So far! So good. It’s been over nine months now, and I’ve saved over $10,000 and 350,000 calories, not including the hours I would’ve spent drinking and recovering from drinking.
My crutch in that quest, however, has been marijuana. I started smoking Mexican brick weed at 16 in Marion, Ohio. Most recently, it’s been high-grade marijuana purchased directly through the state’s sham medical marijuana program.
My preferred way to smoke is a blunt. For the non-potheads, that’s when you buy a tobacco cigarillo, dump the tobacco, and then reroll it with marijuana. It’s an incredibly inefficient way to smoke weed, especially by yourself, but I’ve always enjoyed the process of rolling and smoking.
I’m now 36, which means I’ve smoked marijuana almost daily for two decades. I was never one of those, “Marijuana actually cures cancer!” people. I was well aware of the risks to my lungs, at the very least. But I developed a physiological dependence over the years and have deluded myself into thinking that, actually, marijuana made my brain feel normal.
For the last 20 years, I have never been more relaxed than those first hits of the day. Well, maybe when I used to drink vodka at 9 a.m. to “cure” my hangovers, but you know what I mean. There was a lesson in there if I had bothered to look.
The fact is, smoking weed every day for two decades can alter your brain chemistry. The mania, the paranoia—the stuff usually reserved for 1950s propaganda films—can absolutely happen if you smoke enough of it. And lord knows I have.
I attempted to quit, or at least stop buying weed for personal use, before my trip to Ireland earlier this month. I didn’t even smoke in Ireland because it turns out it’s harder to meet unsavory characters when you don’t spend time sitting crooked in dive bars.
However, I broke that promise to someone that I love. I was biking past my old dispensary—it’s right off the Scioto Trail—and I thought, you know what? What will a little weed hurt me? Nothing is bad in moderation, right? I already had the cash on me.
Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that there is no moderation for a stone-cold addict, which I am for better and worse. I broke that trust with someone that I love—somebody that didn’t even have to live with me to sniff out that I was, in fact, using marijuana again. So much for it making my brain “normal.”
That person may be gone from my life forever, and I’ll have nobody to blame but myself. It’s a story that every addict knows well.
Maybe I’ll earn that trust back. Maybe I won’t. But regardless of what happens, I can’t go back to the weed. Not even if a longtime friend offers me a hit at a social gathering.
Because, like alcohol, it will never be just one hit for me. I hit 24 hours sober as of this morning at 6 a.m. Hopefully, the public accountability works for me as well as it has with Tito’s Handmade Vodka.
This week in Ohio Man…
There are some people who dream of dying at their job. And apparently it’s good for your health!
From yahoo.com:
At 100 years old, the world’s oldest practicing doctor knows a thing or two about how to live a long and happy life — but you might not like everything he has to say.
For Dr. Howard Tucker — born on July 10, 1922, in Cleveland, Ohio — a key secret to longevity is meaningful work.
[…]
After his record-breaking career, Tucker’s contrarian view on retirement might not surprise you.
“I look upon retirement as the enemy of longevity,” he told TODAY shortly after his 100th birthday. “I think that to retire, one can face potential shriveling up and ending in a nursing home. It’s fun staying alive and working… Every day I learn something new.”
I guess that’s good news for the Patriots Caucus in that The Rooster has at least another 70 years of posting about Ohio’s depravity as a state and culture. Because retirement isn’t a thing that will exist in this country when I’m that old.
This week in The Rooster:
Only two dispatches as Monday was called off in observance of Easter.
East Palestine ain’t going great! Norfolk Southern is leading the clean-up (lol), and a guy I used to drink with at Main Bar, who works for State Senator Michael Rulli, stands accused of stealing $130,000 from a charity meant for East Palestine residents.
RIP to Frank LaRose’s Senate campaign. Frank LaRose has yet to declare for the Senate, but it’s clear his campaign has no room to operate with Donald Trump poised to endorse Cleveland car dealer and Bitcoin freak Bernie Moreno. (Free for all)
As always, follow The Rooster on Twitter and TikTok for all of Ohio’s depravity, all the time.
THOSE WMDs. 14 things you should never bring on a train… Botanists are disappearing—just when the world needs them most… The entrepreneurs who regret starting their own business… Harlan Crow bought property from Clarence Thomas and the justice didn’t disclose the deal… Why does a turkey sandwich cost $15 at the airport?