Another month, another death

Joan and I had been casual friends for twenty years. Her funeral today was at Wesley where she served as lay minister. We never talked about religion, so she didn’t know of my antipathy for it (I’m truthful with anyone who asks, but I rarely initiate such conversations). Joan and I shared a bond because she had been in chronic pain since being hit by a school bus in 1964. We also shared a dark and wacky sense of humor and a better than average knowledge of literature. She had a smile that could make me glad I got out of bed even on a bad day, and if she ever met a person who didn’t like her, I can but assume that there was something wrong with that person.

The last time I visited Joan, her doctors had given up on treating the cancer that had spread from someplace unknown and settled in her bones and lungs. I had never seen her despondent, and I was curious about whether she would be now. I was surprised to find her in good spirits and seemingly full of energy. She told me almost casually that, thanks to the prayers of people from around the world, God had cured her of her cancer, and she was feeling better than she had felt in years. I glanced at her husband, expecting to see him looking at the floor and shaking his head, but he simply nodded matter of factly as if the cure was a done deal and hardly worth discussing. A few weeks later, Joan appeared on the local TV news, and told people for a hundred miles around about about her healing. Two weeks after that, she was dead.

“The prayer of faith shall heal the sick…” James 5:15

So, what happened—despite giving his word, God said no to her prayers, yet remained silent as she trusted in his promise and praised his mercy to thousands?

The TV news didn’t report the death of their ”faith-healed” cancer victim, and the newspaper obituary made no mention of her misplaced trust. Nor did Pastor Anne allude to it during the funeral, although if Joan had really gone into remission and died ten years from now of unrelated causes, Anne might have considered her “miraculous healing” of 2012 worthy of mention.

I can think of three reasons for going to a funeral: to show respect for the dead, to comfort the family, and to be comforted oneself. I do what I can with the first two, but since I believe that everything I’m hearing about God is a fabulous fiction, I’m not only un-comforted, I’m downright annoyed that every non-Christian in the audience is being excluded from the community of mourners with every sentence spoken. Does one funeral really need five hymns, five prayers, three lengthy Bible readings, and one sermon about God’s comforting presence, plus a eulogy? It’s not the presence of religious references that’s hard for me—after all, Joan was a committed Christian—but the fact that that’s all there is, and everyone is expected to participate. Imagine that you’re sitting in an audience for a good ninety minutes, and nearly everything you hear—and are told to do (“Let us now stand as we join in prayer,” “Let us now recite from the Word of God,” etc.)—represents to you a belief system that, in the name of The Prince of Peace, has inspired two millennia of violence, oppression, and genocide.

Okay, so none of the scores—if not hundreds—of religious funerals I’ve attended were held in my honor, so I’m understandably stuck with other people’s choices unless I prefer to stay home. I accept that at the level of action (that is, I still attend religious funerals), but atheists are like everyone else in that they want to feel a sense of belonging when they’re grieving instead of being reminded that they live in a society that holds them in the same contempt that it holds child molesters.

I must admit though that my regard for religious faith—though not every religious person—isn’t much better, because as I sat in that audience today with those hundreds of other people, most of them from Joan’s church, I felt like I was in an asylum. I knew that most of the people I was among were probably quite reasonable in other areas of their lives, but as for what they were participating in right then, I considered it dishonest for some, delusional for others, and downright monomaniacal for a few. Despite the fact that I spent a great deal of my life in just such a setting, I was as overwhelmed by the irrationality of it all—especially in light of Joan’s misplaced faith—as if I was witnessing some barbaric ritual for the first time.

For many years after I left the church, I would feel nostalgic for those same hymns we sang today (I probably hadn’t heard “Wonderful Words of Life” since I was a teenager) along with all kinds of other things such as dinners-on-the-ground, being asked to preach short sermons, helping to serve “The Lord’s Supper,” and the smell of a new red-letter Bible with finger tabs and linen pages edged with gold. Maybe I’m done with that now because all I felt today was repugnance. Yet, I can truly say that it’s not religious people I’m against (there are too many good ones, and I absolutely adore those among them who continue to read this blog); it’s the mean things that their belief in that which is rationally indefensible causes millions of them to do. Once proof and logic is deemed inferior to faith, anything can happen.

My experience with marijuana versus narcotics for chronic pain

Oxycodone is at least a little useful for relieving my pain, plus it makes me very, very happy. Some people say that narcotic happiness isn’t real happiness, but the only difference I can see in how drug happiness feels versus how natural happiness feels is that drug happiness is usually deeper, mellower, and disconnected from the events of one’s life. The problem with oxycodone—and all narcotics—is that if five milligrams will take you to heaven today, you’ll need 25 the day after tomorrow if you keep taking it. I think of the drug as like a Siren that—thanks to my genetics—has been unable to pull me beneath the waves. As an example of people who weren’t so blessed, I’ll mention two addicts who held up local pharmacies at gunpoint but didn’t take money, just oxycodone, Percocet and Oxycontin (the last two being products that contain oxycodone).

Marijuana interests me more than narcotics and works as well for pain, but I never become accustomed to losing what little control I have over my thoughts as they are cycled rapidly from happy absorption in almost anything, to befuddlement, to extreme anxiety, and back again. Despite such feelings—if not because of them—I enjoy the drug (god help you if you're ever in chronic pain and sincerely despise psychoactive drugs), and I’ve enjoyed learning to carry on a normal life while using it. I do handyman projects; go to doctors’ appointments; conduct business on the phone and the Internet; cook, shop, do housework, and take care of the yard. If marijuana took away my considerable desire to be active, I wouldn’t like it nearly so well. Oxycodone does make it all but impossible to carry on a normal life plus it leaves me feeling groggy, which is why I only take it at night, and never more than twice a week. The rest of the time, I either take marijuana alone or I mix it with Neurontin, Dalmane, Ambien, Requip, or sometimes Dilaudid, which is a bit stronger than oxycodone. Ironically, I’m able to live more like a normal person when I’m drugged than when I’m straight because drugs are less distracting than pain and sleeplessness.

Many users believe that marijuana has made them better people. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I doubt that there’s anything to it. I get along more harmoniously with others—including Peggy—when I’m high because I’m more patient, tolerant, and sociable, but I have no confidence that this would continue if I stopped the marijuana. On the downside, the longer I use marijuana, the harder it becomes to express myself through my writing. I discard post after post, and when I do put something online after days of editing, I continue the editing even after most of the responses have come in. Other downsides are temporary memory loss, a feeling of floating out of reality, and the impossibility of accurately judging time and speed. As with many useful drugs, medical marijuana is a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

During my adult years in Mississippi—in the seventies and eighties—I only had two friends who weren’t pot smokers, them being alcoholics only, but I never saw anyone too stoned to stand. Now, it happens to a lot of people, not because they want it but because sophisticated growers have succeeded in making marijuana so strong (just ¼ of one of my little marijuana cookies packs quite a punch) that you can get in over your head before you know it, especially if you’ve been away from the drug for years. Marijuana’s strength combined with its inability to kill me (well over 100,000 Americans die from legal narcotics each year) are two of its most attractive attributes. I have every confidence that, however bad marijuana’s long-term effects might prove to be, I won’t die from it, and when you take as many drugs as I do, that’s a significant recommendation. With this as with many things, our national policy is the opposite of what makes sense to anyone who is looking at the issue from the inside.

...I hate smoking anything, so I cook my marijuana. First, I run the dried leaves though a blender until they look like green flour. I put two ounces of this flour (twice the suggested amount) into a crock-pot with a pound of butter, and cook it on low for about eight hours. I then double the amount of butter in a Betty Crocker sugar cookie recipe, being careful to weigh the dough so that each unbaked cookie contains exactly one ounce. The main challenge to eating marijuana is simply getting the amount right, which is why I only use the one recipe. I wrote about the results of eating too much in my entry of August 8, 2011.

As for cost, I get my marijuana free from a generous and idealistic grower, but if I had to pay for it, it would run $5 to $8 a gram on the legal market (to be legal, you have to register with the state, and you can’t make a profit). One ounce contains 28 grams, so this comes to $140 to $224 per ounce. Again, this is on the legal market, so it should be relatively cheap. I have no idea what the black market would charge. Critics of the Oregon law argue that every Oregon drug addict and his cat are trying to get a medical marijuana card just so they can buy pot cheap—or grow it themselves—and not worry about getting busted. In this scenario, a druggie would learn what he needed to say to a marijuana doctor (a doctor who spends her days recommending patients to the state of Oregon for billfold-size marijuana permits) to qualify for a card, pay the doctor a few hundred dollars for the consultation, mail another $100 to the state of Oregon, and, voilà, get a permit. I’m sure this happens, but it doesn't justify scrapping a program that is vital to the welfare of thousands of people. When you hear the government claim that marijuana is a dangerous drug with no medical uses that can’t be better served by a prescription drug, you can rest assured that it's lying.

He’d better be glad he’s good-looking

What is it with a cat that he would run up behind his adopted mother night after night, bite her gently on the calf, hold his teeth there for a moment, and then run away as if he had achieved a notable triumph?

I’m a dog person. I’ve spent decades telling generations of dogs how to behave, and having them say, Yes, sir, right away, sir!” so I make a real effort to cut Brewsky a lot of slack due to his unfortunate catliness, but honor requires that I uphold a few reasonable standards. For instance, “Unless thou art home alone, thou shalt not miaow nonstop for thine supper starting two hours ahead of time. Disobedience to this standard will result in one squirt of water upon the offender’s person per offense.”

Brewsky gets squirted A LOT, but being a passive-aggressive little bastard, he knows how to get back at me. His eyes fixed upon mine, he will suddenly stand silent for a long moment while water drips from his fur, and I hold my weapon a foot from his nose. He will then walk right up to the nozzle, look me straight in the eye, and move his mouth as if he is miaowing but without making a sound. When he does this, I’m just screwed. All that’s left is for one of us to tire of the standoff and walk away so the game can start again.

Each night, the disharmony of the day is forgotten, and he jumps into bed for his massage. Some nights, I might talk to him a little, but the only word he reacts to is his name, it being the word that precedes meals and treats.

The effect of marijuana on my writing

It stimulates thoughts and feelings that I wouldn’t otherwise have, and takes me deeper into myself than I could otherwise go. It makes the commonplace profound, and the profound intense. It also takes me to the edge of panic. Sometimes, it makes my hands shake and my fingers tremble across the keyboard. I sweat and shiver at once; sometimes, I cry. My monitor recedes into another dimension. I have left the outside world for an encounter with my essence.

Marijuana is changing me. It’s too strong, and I use it too much for this to be otherwise. My belief is that I’m becoming more at peace and that I’m going deeper with my writing, but drugs are notorious for their deceptiveness, and their effects are rarely permanent. It’s also true that I’ve known few, if any, people who became wiser or more insightful for using marijuana. However, the same can be said about the influence of art, music, nature, literature, heroism, and other laudatory influences. No good thing can propel a person beyond his potential.