There’s a great line in Seth Rogan’s new book Yearbook:
“I’m not quite cut out for this world. But weed makes it okay.”
He goes on:
“What’s wrong with you Seth? Why do you do so many drugs? And why can’t you stop talking about it? … They give me insights into my own thinking, feeling, and behavior in ways that I haven’t found elsewhere.”
We spend a lot of time saying we want people — especially straight, white, successful dudes like Seth — to be more woke. But when they use a tool like cannabis to facilitate the necessary introspection, we judge them for it. We quibble with them about their tools, rather than engaging with their admirable desire to look within.
How does cannabis facilitate introspection for me? Well how introspective are you when you’re having a fucking panic attack? Your amygdala sucks at introspection. The next time you’re running for your life from an angry dog, go ahead and do some introspection. Let me know how that goes for you.
Cannabis facilitates introspection by helping me live inside my own body again. I believe the ECS receptors are literally required for registering sensations in the body. And feelings are sensations within the body. So I suppose it’s no surprise that cannabis would help me feel my feelings. It’s a lot easier to listen to subtle sensations in my system when there isn’t a siren going off in the background at all times. Life with inadequate Endocannabinoids feels like one big panic attack.
I’m alluding here to my own mental model of my experience with autism:
My autism comes from an internal regulatory system — the Endocannabinoid System — having insufficient molecules to keep me in detailed balance. So my response to change is a knee-jerk resistance, because the system charged with adapting to change is under-resourced. My only recourse was to isolate myself from change as much as possible. And for a human being, isolation brings loneliness, breeds self-loops, and results in fundamental disconnection from their tribe. And being disconnected from your tribe is fucking scary. If your tribe doesn’t have your back, you’re basically screwed.
But do you see the reinforcing cycle? Stress response is inadequate for changes in the environment. Environment continues to pose a threat. Stress increases, climbs over the threshold for fight-or-flight. Environment still a threat. But there’s nowhere to go, and no tribe to help. Stay in fight or flight. With cortisol levels through the roof, there’s even less capacity for adapting to the next challenge. Stress climbs again, and fight or flight is needed again for making quick tactical choices. More cortisol. Rinse and repeat.
Living life with your insides soaked in cortisol? With little reprieve? That’s what war feels like. That’s why I have PTSD symptoms without having a particular memory of any single traumatizing event. My cortisol loops have been death by a thousand cuts.
Now let me tell you about the healing loop:
Stress response is inadequate for changes in the environment. Stress increases. Use medicine that helps me sense the stress and respond proportionally. Cortisol levels remain tolerable. The environment is less of a threat with greater ability to adapt to it. Stress reduces. I feel greater confidence in my ability to manage changes. Stress reduces. The next change I’m faced with is less scary. Stress reduces. Stress response is now a little more effective than before, with greater confidence, and more deliberate action. Rinse and repeat.
Anything that helps me regulate myself, helps me come back to equilibrium in the face of change, is medicine for me. Cannabis has been an indispensable medicine, but it’s only part of the picture. Cannabis helps my adaptive systems run smoothly, but what am I asking this system to adapt to in the first place? What kind of environment am I putting myself in every day?
As a kid, I didn’t have a lot of choice in my environment. But I’m an adult now. I can take deliberate actions that can bring my environment into greater alignment with who I am. Maybe there’s an environment for me that doesn’t require medicine at all, because it’s in sync with my natural adaptive systems.
And this is how I relate to what Seth says about smoking weed. We’ve drifted a long way from our natural environment. That’s the trade we’ve made with more and more sophisticated technologies. And some people like myself are particularly sensitive to our distorted, modern, built environment and the deeply ingrained systems that keep it running. So we need medicine to keep up with it all. But in the process of adding firepower to our adaptive systems, to respond to stress and threats with ever greater agility, we’re also letting go of our capacity to be still. Our sensitivity has to be sacrificed when what we’re sensing is too painful to bear.
Maintaining that sensitivity, keeping those intra-receptors alive, is an act of fucking courage. I applaud Seth for finding his medicine, which helps him make tons of cool shit, and then having the generosity to tell us how he does it.
PS.
If you know Seth Rogan, please send him this article. It’s my dream to have him on this podcast.