I wouldn’t want to leave you with the false impression that I sat down for meditation in the morning, entered samadhi in the afternoon, and arose from my cushion two years later to find The Five Elements artwork miraculously appearing on my wall
No. Some day when the myth gets inscribed upon silk tapestries perhaps and hung in the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto
Unfortunately. For yours truly. There was the ten months of chemo waiting for me when I returned from sunny Makaha Beach. Nine to ten months of strategically planned treatments. Once a week, Wednesdays, for six weeks. Followed by a week off. Six weeks on, one week off. Six weeks of chemo, one week without. Six weeks of increasingly debilitating, dreaded Wednesday chemo treatments, followed by one week of almost… almost not nauseous… almost not sick… almost
Well. They say that cancer is like a “terrorist cell” hidden somewhere in the holy citadel of the human body. That body being a large and densely populated major city like Manhattan. The idea is to “carpet bomb” with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” the entire city of New York until the terrorist cancer cell is found and eliminated.
“What doesn’t kill you, makes you strong!” Right? We all know that!
But. Does Señor Cancer know that?
Has anyone contacted him on the top secret line in the shoe phone?
And if, Señor Cancer, the Terrorist Extraordinaire… who has evaded all of modern science for decades and brought down mankind for untold millennia…
If Señor Cancer is Death, El Muerte… or, one of the many disguises that old Death wears… and chemo therapy is poison that will “kill you deader than a doornail”…
Aren’t they both agents of chaos!? Working on the same tap-dancing circuit… with the same intention… to eliminate us from the competition?
Uhhh. “It’s times like these…” that the weary mind reaches for reassuring, familiar, time-worn phrases… prudent cliches… hopeful expressions… “rhubarb pie”?… “signs from the heavens!!”
But there weren’t any. Not any uplifting signs that I could read clearly and hold inside of my limited “chemo-fogged brain”. So instead. I asked the cheery grey-haired, intrepid chemo nurses: Have you any cure for the never-ending nausea? And they supplied me with free samples of all of the available nausea remedies.
Only one problem with their anti-nausea pills… even the one that cost $100+ a pill. They didn’t work. And when I pointed this out to them, what do you think they told me?
Yeah. Very few people actually find these different medications effective for “chemo-induced nausea”. If you are able to get ahold of some cannabis, you will find that it is far more effective than any of these six medications you have tried.
Cannabis!?! Marijuana!?! WEED!?! wtf
Apparently, all I had to do was… ingest some of that “sea of green”… what was already growing in abundance in my garage… and the nausea would be brought under control.
Now, why didn’t I think of that, Professor?!
And just so. My very dear relationship with “medical marijuana” began.
Which doesn’t mean “everything was hunky dory”.
No. Not by a “long shot”.
Would you stop it with the cliches already!?
Chunky, dank and hoary maybe
Definitely hoary!!
I wasted no more time with hundred-dollar pharmaceuticals. I went straight out to my local head shop in Arcata and bought an electric vaporizer for under a hundred dollars. I plugged it in every day at precisely 3 in the afternoon. I inhaled one large, full-chested gulp of vaporous, sweet-tasting fresh green cannabis air. I performed this religious ritual “scientifically” for one month. The purpose of my holy experiment was to determine if lowly weed worked, of course, relieving my chemo-induced nausea… but, also, I wanted to be able to register any sinister side-effects upon my brain, heart, nervous system, etc
I concluded after one month of rigorous testing that it worked. My nausea was brought down to a tolerable level. And. Furthermore. The dark force that I had noticed, which felt like Darth Vader’s heavy armor-plated… black hand… pushing down on the top of my head… the extreme downward force that I had been feeling since the chemo treatments began… a force that could be accurately described as malignant… or, a heavy-handed depression of the life force… a menacing, poisonous black fugue driving downward from above and inside the cranial vault… a virulent scream from the depths of hell… I could actively feel… almost visualize…the sweet green cannabis molecules… the heroic invisible cannabinoids… counter-acting this downward force within moments of ingesting the delicious, enlivening vapor.
It was nothing short of miraculous!! I was able to lift my head up, get out of bed, brush my teeth, bathe, cook a meal, clean the house, go outside and work in the garden.
Organic home-grown cannabis inhaled once a day at a full medicinal dosage… good strong pot… saved my life. That’s what it felt like to me.
The Ganja Mother nurtured me back into the land of the living. She made me able to function at the most basic level. She allowed me to feel human and do what was/is necessary to survive.
It was… a religious conversion from a scientific experiment with me as the guinea pig!!
Hey. When you’re “walking through the valley of the shadow of death…”
MAKE DAMN SURE YOU’RE IN THE KATHMANDU VALLEY AND DON’T FORGET TO SMELL THE KUSH!!
That said. Reducing my chemo-induced nausea… was only one of the “ninety-nine problems” I was facing at the time.
Did I call 2007(-8-9) a “depressing year” somewhere in this enlightening series of confessions?
Hmmm. Compared to 2010(-11-12)… Good old “double-aught-seven” seems “not too pretty bad”, as my beloved ninety-two-year-old dad is fond of saying.
How are you today, Mr. Liles?
“Not too pretty bad for the shape I’m in… and you?”
Hold on. I think I need to back up the rolling (Toyota) coffin on the washboard-dirt-road here a moment. There is something I need to get straight in this confessional. I don’t think I’ve made it quite clear how I ended up with a “sea of green” in my garage on Upper Bay Road in Arcata, California.
It could be helpful at this point, I think… if the dear reader who does not have perfect recall, would reread, or refer… to the Waving Hello section, the first confession in this series?
I did not move from Northfield, New Hampshire to the outbacks… Island Mountain… of northern California. To Humboldt County. To ground zero in the Emerald Triangle. With any knowledge whatsoever of… the illicit-if-not-illegal pot growing industry… Excuse me
THE MASSIVE, MULIT-BILLION-DOLLAR MEDICAL MARIJUANA INDUSTRY GROWING OUT OF CONTROL HERE IN CALIFORNIA IF NOT EVERYWHERE IN THE GOOD OLD USA!!!
Oh no. Let me make it perfectly clear that I came to northern California in 2004 to study Healing With Whole Foods with Paul Pitchford at Heartwood Institute. Because. I was looking for answers. Answers with regards to my children’s health.
My two young children, Hugh and Syrah, had been suffering terribly since shortly after birth from inexplicable rashes and life-threatening infections, from respiratory disorders…. From extreme, entire body-covering infant eczema in my son’s case which led to secondary systemic infections which almost killed him, under the dubious care of multiple naturopathic doctors in Concord, New Hampshire. And in my daughter’s case, from severe asthma and chronic respiratory disorders which led to recurring bouts of pneumonia… among other life-threatening chronic problems.
By studying with the Immortal Paul. The “guru of natural healing” at the time. I had hoped he would bring me closer to understanding how to cure my children’s health issues which appeared to be related to allergies to food, toxins in the environment, stress…? Exactly what. I was not sure. The only thing I was certain of was that neither my wife nor I had a history of any of these so-called allergies at the time. Except that I used to have “hay fever” symptoms back in the day, before I stopped consuming cow dairy.
Sorry for this slight detour. The point is. Actually there are two points. Maybe three. Who knows?
One is: I came to northern California… not to grow weed. But. To heal.
And, “low and behold”!
There on my first day in my tiny dorm room with sagging, single-size mattresses on a double-occupancy, rope-strung wooden bunk bed, a single small wooden desk, and a towel rack of a standing open plywood closet-thing for two folks to hang their clothes and cram all their gear
There on my first day in an austere seven-by-ten-foot sheetrock cell with… one window in and one door out… which I was to share with another unknown person for the next nine months while we studied the esoteric healing arts
There on my first day in the godforsaken wilds of northern California… with turkeys, deer, buzzards, scorpions, black widows, and mountain lions for neighbors… far, far away from my beloved children… utterly alone, there… bewildered, anguished, confused
I suddenly, always suddenly… but, creeping like… sneaky. Yes, slithering up on my sense of smell. Out of the corner of my left nostril as it were
I’LL BE DAMNED!! I SMELL….
Yep. You got it. Pot.
Yep. You got it. Pot.
I smelled pot. Somewhere in my tiny, almost empty… very empty except for the bunkbed and… Ah, of course!
The wooden desk. The blond oak wooden desk! A small one. But. With two large, deep sliding wooden dove-tailed drawers on the right!
Sniff sniff sniff… sniff sniff sniff… sniff sniff sniff
AHA!! I found it! What the… HELL OF A STASH IS THIS!?!
A full-size brown grocery bag full of… Jesus… those are mushrooms?! Yes. Gargantuan mushrooms. And. An entire grocery bag full of
What a smell… why I… hadn’t smelled such a sweet green scent like that since…?
Since. College days at good old UVA!!
And that, my friends. Was my first “esoteric” introduction to the infamous:
MR. GREEN. Brian Green. I mean.
My new Heartwoodie roommate.
Brian… alias
Senor Verde. Whom my father likes to refer to as:
The Mushroom Man
