Cubicle ‘Stiff’ Finds ‘Self’ Again With Radical Healing
All Art Courtesy of Rebekah Jenks
At the risk of sounding like a hacky-sacking caricature of a bay area hipster-turned-hippie, I’d like to tell you how cannabis helped me through the dark forest of “Self.” If you’re not already a believer, I hope this testimony will provide more evidence in support of the plant. And if you are, keep it lit!
Like most modern folks, I wasn’t given much time to loaf and lean against ragged fences brooding about art and existence. I was schooled and disciplined and told to focus! I did, and in my early thirties I found myself sitting in a sterilized cubicle on the 3rd floor of an office building in San Francisco.
Photos Courtesy of Rebekah Jenks
An accomplishment to be sure. Neither of my parents attended college. It was partly their unlived lives that compelled me to enter the brand name educational system, but it was entirely my doing that landed me there at that moment, in the hyper-rational, air-conditioned world of “intellect.” What I was doing there doesn’t matter. Be it paying down debt or climbing up the ladder to building a career; burning away whatever sat at the back of ambition, no longer desired. Whatever that was, it was making me fucking miserable.
I’d started taking antidepressants with the hope that they’d flip the switch that seemed stuck in my head. I was advised by the Doctor to stay away from alcohol due to adverse effects. He recommended therapy. “Why would I need therapy if I have pills?” I thought. But I didn’t say anything because I was desperate to show the Doctor that whatever was going on with me was easily curable. Nothing serious. Just a superficial crisis.
Most mornings I awoke exhausted from dreams soaked with anxiety and fear. Not lucid, but extremely vivid. They were bizarre, with strange wavelengths. I had no idea what to do with them, except write down what I could remember. Such as this one where I was sitting in a circle with other men in a large tent. A pair of gardening shears was being passed around from man to man. Each man had to cut off his own thumbs with the shears. This operation was to prevent us from holding beer bottles in our hands.
Going out on the weekends was difficult because everyone drank. Some people smoked and drank. I’d always associated weed with partying, that is, with drinking. As in, it was there to supplement the drunk. Never before had I thought of cannabis as a drug that could stand on its own.
As stupid as it might sound, smoking sober was a whole new experience. First off, stay hydrated when you’re high. Seems like a cheap piece of advice. But for me, it was pure gold.
I started gravitating toward sativas, and was sampling some crazy strains when I came across Blue Dream and holy moly did it tickle my brain in all the right places. It was as though a lightness of being bubbled up from my pipe that actually helped get me off the goddamn couch! No disrespect to the couch-lock lovers out there. I feel you if that’s what you need.
At the same time, I had a bicycle I’d found on craigslist and was using it to commute to work. For some reason I’d never thought of riding it someplace else. Looking back now, it’s incredible to think how a slow roll to a neighborhood park became the catalyst for prolonged descent into “Self.” Lake Temescal is located in the east, by hills above the flatlands of Oakland. Not far, but uphill most of the way when starting from my apartment, so I really smashed at the pedals, grunting and immediately regretted wearing pants.
Not far into that ride I began to feel a feeling I hadn’t felt since high school, when skateboards were the central medium of expression for me. With skateboarding, it wasn’t so much about repetitive motions as it was about getting away from the bullshit. Pushing the pavement with my feet to roll forward and away felt like pushing against the boundaries of the ordinary. Reclaiming a sense of personal autonomy.
What had attracted me to skateboarding proved to be the same thing that attracted me to cycling; there was radical energy attached to the activity. It was mobilizing, like being carried upon a fast moving cloud across vast landscapes or by a roaring current across the vast ocean blue.
I found that the more I smoked, the more time I spent on my bike. And the more time I spent on my bike, the more time I spent with the part of my “Self” that I’d forgotten about. The part that had been starved and severely weakened because I unconsciously considered it reckless and immature. Thus beginning the therapy I thought I didn’t need.
I couldn’t tell you how long it took me to reach Lake Temescal on that first ascent. What I can tell you is that well before I arrived at the darkened parking lot, I was hooked. I began with the basics. Biking to get coffee. Biking to get pizza. When I was on the bike I couldn’t get away from myself. I was stuck. No distractions, except the varied terrain. Sometimes I wouldn’t say anything to myself just to make it awkward. “Oh you again?” I think; “With those same problems?”
Carl Jung said that we never solve our problems, we grow bigger than them. I liked that so much, I would repeat it to myself as an opening line on solo bike therapy sessions. Eventually, I met other more experienced bike weirdos and from them I learned that it was possible to strap a sleeping bag to a bike. “WTF? How did I not know about this before?!”
With this newfound ability come to light, I discovered magical places like Tennessee Valley, located north of San Francisco across the Golden Gate Bridge. Here I purchased a solo tent and began camping at a site called Hawk Hill.
Waking early, making coffee, pissing in the wind, I’d ride into work still stinking of Blue Dream strain and instant mac'n'cheese from the night before. I started keeping a fresh change of clothes in the bottom drawer of my cubicle for weekday camp outs. I soon started questioning previously unquestioned habits like dependence upon antidepressants.
My dreams began to change too. Like this one where I saw a trail extending far into the sunset, looking perfect. Though when I looked closer, I saw there was a tall chain-link fence with threatening signs. As I moved even closer, approaching the trailhead directly, that time when I looked, the fence had disappeared. Wide open for riding.
The realization that I needed sunburns on my face as much as I needed regular paychecks was a critical moment in my life. It may always be difficult finding that sweet spot, between predictability and spontaneity, between being a working stiff and carefree dirtbag, but I have a much better perspective on these roles now. And how to lightly hold onto them, without holding on too tight to where I lose sight, or sense, of myself.
As it’s said in Zen, before satori we chopped wood and carried water. After satori, we chop wood and carry water.
“Now where’s that hacky sack, ya fucking dopesmoker?”
