Kamala Harris and the False Joy of Marijuana

In this tenth year of being free from marijuana addiction, as of Feb 14th, I was incensed to hear the irresponsible and uninformed comment from Vice President Harris that weed "gives a lot of people joy."

Heroin brings some people joy. Burning crosses brings others joy. Still others beating their wives. Is people's joy the gauge of what we should promote as a society, or is there good more important?

False Joy holds us back from true joy. The pursuit of temporary pleasure holds us back from pursuing what leads to true pleasure—or, I should say, Who leads to true joy. Weed gives us a false sense of joy. Joy found in mindlessness, a false sense of closeness to gods and energies, forgetting our troubles, and numbing ourselves to our pain and difficulty.

We are called to pick up our cross and follow Jesus. Jesus was offered gall to reduce His pain on the Cross. He refused. We are to follow in His ways. Kamala Harris is endorsing a numbing agent, which indicates to me that she is in favor of false peace and joy. She has to be rebuffed by those of us who have known this false joy on a deep level and the misery it eventually leads to. And so I do.

Psalm 35 “...Lord, who is like you who rescue the weak from the strong and the poor from the oppressor?”

Marijuana led me into a life of sloth, gluttony, perversion, and, eventually, deep anger. I guess it would be better to say that weed accompanied me rather than led me. Like many other false joys, it seemed to bring great joy initially. Lots of laughter and gooood food. It aided me in hiding from my problems, numbing the pain that those problems caused me and helping me avoid dealing with the pain. This was wonderful for a time, but life started to fall apart as I increasingly consumed this joyful substance.

The pain that it initially helped me hide from started to increase as I ignored it. Pain unaddressed does not go away on its own. It festers. A wound that was initially only skin deep now rots, and nerves that were still covered at the beginning of the wound are exposed. Had the wound been addressed, it would not have rotted to the deep level it had. But because of the false joy, that weed brought me I ignored what needed to be addressed because the pain that would have driven me to deal with the wound in a healthy way was taken from me.

Eventually, thankfully, the false joy bringer marijuana no longer did the trick, and I chose to stop using it and deal with the pain. The pain that was now intensified by having to go through the mental withdrawal associated with consistent overconsumption of weed use, in addition to having to deal with all the other habits I developed while using weed, including daily use of pornography, gluttonous unhealthy eating habits, isolation, and loss of familial relationships and friends.

Now please do not misunderstand me I am not blaming weed for my problems. What I am doing is acknowledging the truth that marijuana used outside of a medicinal setting can be destructive to our personal well-being as well as the well-being of society in general. People with deep wounds who are using any substance to achieve a numb joy rather than the joy that God intended for us, which includes suffering and pain, by our own sinful design, not His, are being kept from a truly full life. For our Vice President to endorse something that she knows full well is a destructive force in many lives shows, at best, her lack of knowledge and understanding of weed and its impacts and, at worst, that she is an enabler who wants to keep the masses numb and doped up through drugs, alcohol, porn and whatever other vices bring them false joy.

I hope VP Harris will see the error in her ways and retract her support for this drug, but until she does, people like me need to share our stories as a counterbalance to her rosy portrayal of marijuana, and so I do.

Human-written, AI spell-checked 3/26/21 AD

Image from Facebook