I am a 46-year-old housewife and mother, and I use weed every night.
Queue the judgment.
I don’t care what anyone thinks. My husband doesn’t care. When my son is old enough, he won’t care, because it saved our family. When I’m feeling dramatic, as I often am, I may even say it saved my life. At minimum it has improved the quality of it.
I am a Highly Sensitive Person with anxiety, alcoholism and a touch of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Or maybe misaligned chakras, a need for a rebirthing experience, and/or equine therapy, depending upon which of the multitude of therapists I’ve gone to over the years you talk to.
The sensitivity and anxiety are just the way I’m wired; the alcoholism used to be binge eating and self harm and the PTSD came from, well, life. I won’t bore you with the details. No, I’m lying. It wouldn’t bore you.
Being a Highly Sensitive Person does not mean I am easily offended or upset. It means that my senses are acute and my reactions to the things I take in through them are very strong. Basically, the same information you are gathering through your eyes, ears, nose, skin and mouth, I am as well, but a lot of those things make me want to scream and break things. Tree bark, the sound of someone else’s bass vibrating, dogs, olives, the underside of a starfish, patchouli, pilling fabric; the reaction I have to these things is visceral, filling my whole body with an unpleasantness ranging from discomfort to rage and panic.
There are words that make me gag and shudder. Rivulets. It just sounds gross.
I don’t like my food to touch but when I go to a restaurant, I don’t want to ask that they not stack it because I know presentation is very important and I’m afraid the chef will be mad at me. So I order and just hope that’s not how it comes.
It takes a lot of energy to fight this constant assault to my senses and an equal, if not greater, amount to hide it.
Queue the anxiety.
I spent an inordinate amount of time up through my thirties or so caring about what other people think. My opinion of myself hinged on their opinion of me, which requires a lot of spin control. I learned to smile a lot. Joke. Please people. Do for them. Be good at everything and make sure everything I am not good at happens behind closed doors.
You need to copy my homework? Sure! Can you maybe not make fun of me in gym class though? No? Well…okay.
You need me to write procedures for our department, even though it isn’t in my job description and I won’t be compensated for it? Okay.
No! Don’t touch that laundry, I’ll do it. And the shopping and the cleaning and the bills and the cooking and the dishes and the phone calls to the insurance company and, oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to make your doctor’s appointment but I will as soon as they open tomorrow.
There’s a lot of work involved in earning kindness and respect that you don’t feel entitled to and even more to make it appear effortless.
There are the everyday worries too. When I’m going somewhere unfamiliar, I read and reread the route multiple times and battle the shakes as I approach because is there parking?
There are things that need to be filed. Alphabetically and by category.
Social gatherings require me to wake early, make sure the house is spotless and prepare food that can be taken out and served in shifts, because if everyone comes there will be the right amount but if a few people don’t show up it will look sad and pathetic having all that extra food.
It’s not a mere zit, it’s leprosy.
What is the root cause of all of this dog paddling? Nature or nurture? I don’t know. At my first birthday party I reportedly got frosting on myself while clapping, freaked out and had a panic attack because I had something on my hand and I’m pretty sure even my family can’t have screwed me up that badly in that short amount of time.
I grew up surrounded by bad relationships, divorces, mental illness and addiction. I don’t usually bring that up in conversation as I am afraid people will assume the same of me but it seems silly to be coy at this point.
I was bullied a lot as a kid. I got sad. Then I got fat. Epically fat. Along came the requisite abandonment and self loathing issues. I met abusive men. When I lost some weight and met and married a genuinely wonderful guy, I tried so hard to prove myself that I wouldn’t let him be a husband and I screwed it up. The eating and the self hatred and anxiety attacks escalated to the point that I decided if I couldn’t put the fork down of my own volition, someone was going to have to take it from me, and I had gastric bypass surgery. I hated myself for it.
On the upside, I was permanently thinner and at liberty to pursue more bad relationships.
Queue the alcoholism and PTSD.
I started drinking and doing drugs heavily. Very heavily. I didn’t have food anymore to binge on–I physically couldn’t–and I refused to get fat again. Drunk, high and fucking around was cool with me though, and I partied a lot. A whole lot. That woman who was pulled up on stage to sing with the band? That was me. The one who got everyone in the place up dancing on the bar? Me. The one who kicked out the windshield of that BMW with the heel of her boot while her boyfriend-for-the-night struggled to pull her off the hood? Also me.
As a wife and mother, I am supposed to say I regret all of that, but I don’t.
“Would you do it all over again?” is not a fair question. To ask that is to say that everything bad occurs because of our own actions and that’s not always true. The good times and the bad are not inexorably linked. So, would I do it all over again? Well, if you went to an incredible party on a private jet with amazing people and the plane crashed, that doesn’t mean the party wasn’t awesome. So, yes, I’d do it again. But with fewer casualties.
Sorry, I digress. I sometimes wax philosophical when I’m stoned.
Anyway, I had some great times I still smile about and some other times that were rather damaging.
Then I met my husband and all of that stopped, except the drinking.
We got married. We had a beautiful baby, now a beautiful little boy, and I stopped drinking too. I was a stay-at-home mom with a nice house and a good, kind man. I made dinners and lunches and forts and pumpkin bread and kept the house as clean and organized as humanly possible and took my son to Mommy and Me classes as everyone I knew gushed.
You’re so lucky!
I knew I was lucky, and I love my son passionately. What I wasn’t was okay. I was white knuckling it for him. As it turned out, without some kind of boost, that cigarette, that next bite of food, that dirty marathon fuck, pill, snort, drink or any of the other things I could no longer have, without something to kick start the feel good part of my brain, I couldn’t feel right, adding crushing guilt to of all the worries of life and raising a child, because how dare I feel this way when I have a house with a pool?
And what a failure I was! No more office politics, no one to answer to, my only job now was keeping the house and raising my child. How easy was that? Yet, I was bored and lonely and the days were cyclical and I was stressed out because when I wasn’t playing with my son, there was laundry to do and a full dishwasher to empty, and while I was taking care of that, I should have been playing with my son.
I was as relentless about getting everything done perfectly as ever with no outlet, my only respite being escapist masturbatory sessions with Chief Jim Hopper. Daddy is only angry because he needs to keep me safe!
Almost all of this stress and anxiety was self imposed, and I knew it. My son wants only for me to laugh and love on him. While my husband appreciates what I do, he doesn’t expect a perfect house or a home-made moussaka on a Tuesday night or for me to make his lunches, and if he did, I’d tell him to go to hell. He just wants to be with me and see me happy, not knocking myself out. But I had to.
By evening, I was spent. Whatever kind of day I had, I did it wrong. I let something in the house slide, or I didn’t play with my son enough, or I lost my temper with him, or dinner was a mess, or my cake fell even though I did exactly what Mary Berry said to, and all of it was because of me.
Once my son was about two-and-a-half years old, I started drinking again. I hadn’t very much since he was born, other than a few times that hadn’t gone particularly well, but I told myself it was just a couple of glasses of wine. Hell, there’s a Facebook page called “Mommy Needs Wine”, it’s a thing. We relax. We unwind.
Little by little the drinking increased to the point where as soon as my husband got home, he was on duty, and I was getting loaded while making dinner and then not eating any. I blacked out quite a bit, and during one of those black outs, I went on an epic rage I can’t remember at all.
My son saw that.
It wasn’t bad enough that he clearly shared some of my sensitivities, covering his ears in the bathroom before flushing, making sure his cars are lined up exactly right, taking swings at me whenever he gets upset because he needs me to make it stop–I’d messed him up before he was even born–and now my behavior was damaging him too.
I had to stop. But a night without a drink was a night locked in a blacked-out room, circled by a Demogorgon with a thousand tiny mouths, every one whispering to me. Monster voices sliding through my ears and into my body, slithering through me, taking me places I didn’t want to go.
I am back in the halls of high school, hoping I can make it through one day without anyone calling me a fat-ass. I am on the wrong end of my first fiancé’s fist. I am coming to in a hospital bed, the residents laughing because they "probably should've thought to turn my head" while I puke up the charcoal they used to pump my stomach all over my face. I am in the kitchen, another fiancé slamming his keys and his wallet on the counter because I have wasted his money again by choosing a stripper who wouldn’t do anything more than make out with me. I am in a big bed in a small, pink room, my father laying hands, yelling for Jesus to save me while my mother tries to keep the fear from her voice, “You’re scaring her, please! Stop it! Leave her alone!”
I am everywhere I’ve ever been at once and everyone in my everywheres belongs somewhere, is more together, more successful, better looking, saner, and more important than me, and they all know it. I am a joke and a fraud. An actor who doesn’t act, a writer who doesn’t write and a failure who can’t even manage to be a decent housewife.
No amount of mindfulness or deep breathing or self affirmations could keep me safe and Chief Hopper was nowhere to be found. The monster was in my head and to kill him off was to take myself out along with him. I’d tried that once or four times at various points in my life too, but it was no longer an option. I have people. So I’d sit in the dark, eyes wide open, breathing heavily, trying to clear my head before my son woke up because I owed it to him.
In desperation, I went to yet another therapist. My attitude toward it was cynical to say the least. I told her I was not there to dump my guts and get some pats on the back because I’d done all that before, and when it came time to talk about fixing the problems the only thing anyone really had to say was, “Well, stop it.”
I explained my situation and, as promised, she did not try to rebirth me or get me to pet a smelly horse or even, initially, talk about my childhood.
She asked, “Has it always been like this?”
“Well, no. Stranger Things has only been on for two seasons. Before that it was Sherlock. And/or Watson. But other than that—yes. “
Taking a “let’s stop the bleeding before we treat the wound” approach she later asked, “How do you do with marijuana?”
To which I replied, “Outstanding.”
Queue the weed.
As a previous recreational pot smoker, transactions were simple. I would say “I want some weed” and someone would get me some weed.
As a medical marijuana card holder, I came to learn about the multiple types of weed; the varying strengths, depending upon the ratio of CBD (Cannabidoil - non psychoactive) to THC (Tetrahydolcannabidoil - psychoactive) and the different terpenes in each plant that cause different reactions for different people. I came to learn this after my first purchase, having bought a vape that was one part CBD to twenty-four parts THC that had me curled up in a ball in bed at night, my husband holding me tightly because if he didn’t I was sure the weed was going to trick me into forgetting how to breathe.
That was not the experience we were after.
I have since found the right type and the right dosing for me. At the end of the day, with everyone safely at home, I take a sublingual liquid with a one to four ratio of CBD to THC. It kicks in slowly over the next hour and a half. I can function perfectly well; I make dinner, kiss my husband and enjoy my son. It is nothing short of a goddamned miracle. Unlike alcohol or any other drug I’ve ever taken, I can control weed. I can stop at that low dose. The four or five conversations I usually have going on in my head slow and I can be present in the moment and relax. I can sleep at night, and I wake, fully sober with no hangover, still relaxed.
I’m still uptight about the house. Dinner is still on the table between six and seven p.m., lunches are still made, laundry is still done, but I move about it at a different pace.
When I’m with my son, I’m fully with him. When he gets upset, I don’t panic. When he is spinning out of control because something hasn’t gone to plan, instead of beating myself up for making him this way, I just help him through and feel great about it. We giggle together more.
I’ve been asked what I will tell my son about all of this. I will tell him the truth. The whole truth. He’s entitled to that. I can’t prevent him from having problems but I can make sure he knows I’ll always try not to be the source of them, and that he can talk to me. He’ll know I will be there to make sure he doesn’t fall or beat himself up and that he isn’t alone. If he turns out to be just like me, he will know he can still be happy.
I don’t forgive myself for some of the things I’ve done but I don’t let myself suffer for it either. With my mind more centered, that Demogorgon has stopped coming at me and the flashbacks and negative self talk are lessened.
I’m better at accepting who I am. Maybe the little holes in a honeycomb make me wretch but gazing at yellow tulips on my glossy black table in front of the teal blue wall is to feel the embrace of all that is simple and beautiful in the world. The sound of an airplane flying overhead lightens me. The smell of oranges and cloves, with slow sips of steamy cinnamon Mexican hot chocolate, fills me with peaceful ecstasy. My son’s tiny, delicate, fingers pressing gently into my arm are the bliss of purest, overwhelming love. I’ve seen Billy Joel sing She’s Always a Woman live twice. It is the only version of heaven I can truly believe in. I now realize that most people don’t get to have all of that and, for the first time, I wouldn’t trade it.
I can unequivocally attribute all of these changes in me to weed.
When your sixty-eight-year-old mother says, “Go ahead, honey, take a hit. At least you’re not a bitch,” you must be doing something right.
I don’t want to misrepresent myself here. I’m an addict and I have weed. There are plenty of nights that I stay up a little later, hit a stronger vape and get downright high and I won’t apologize for that. There are going to be lots of people who criticize the fact that I’m not living sober. I’m not. I’m willing to go so far as to say I can’t, not entirely. If I don’t hit the kill switch, sometimes my brain is going to go places I don’t want it to. It just is.
When I’m high on weed, interesting thoughts come along unfiltered, fun things happen—I feel like a vital member of society!
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is hilarious; I’ve watched it on Netflix at least ten times and I keep catching new stuff. Someone must be making a buck off of that.
There should be a one-on-one interview style talk show where the person being interviewed is stoned and Jeff Goldblum should be the host.
Stop making all these hippie deodorants that don’t work!
Why does everyone in classic literature have gout?
I have a thing for Tina Fey!
Even with the munchies I’ve lost fifteen pounds since I don’t drink or stress eat all day, and whether from my surgery or my age, I’ve become a stoner food snob. A nice piece of Wensleydale cheese with blueberries on a water cracker does the trick.
Chief Hopper becomes wildly creative and urgently necessary. And Sherlock and Watson. And Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor on Throwback Thursdays. Although I cheat on them with my husband with greater frequency.
Instead of hiding out like a misfit and a failure, I give myself permission to go for it. Exploit yourself! What the hell? There's a goldmine of crazy shit in that head of yours! Write! It makes you happy!
I’ve had my first glimpses of life right-side up. The light is fucking blinding and my heart beats faster but breathing feels so good. My voice is a whole lot stronger than it’s been for a very long time and it calls to the upside down, “Hold on. Everyone, just keep holding on. I think they might be right. I think maybe everything will work out somehow.”
I am monumentally grateful for that.
I am a 46-year-old housewife and mother, and I use weed every night.
I don’t care what anyone thinks. And that may be the best part.
Danielle Privitera is a 46-year-old housewife and mother. She attended Northwestern University as a theater and writing student, dropping out in her sophomore year for personal reasons. She has not written since, until now. This is her first published work. She is currently at writing a manuscript, Kate On Crutches, exploring the dichotomy between a self that has been shaped by circumstances versus the true nature of a human being. She can be reached on Twitter @PriviteraWrites and on Facebook danielle.privitera.writes
Photo provided by Danielle Privitera. Taken by Rachelle Lynn Photography.