Behind The Curtain 30: When A Good Thing Becomes Too Much – October 5, 2010
Sharon Letts
Eye Correspondent
Caitlin stopped, looked at the bed she had shared with Jake for more than two years, picked up her pillow and put it under her arm. “It took a couple of hours to move in with him,” she said to herself, “and a couple of hours to move out.”
“Truck’s full, you ready?” Jake hollered from the living room.
It was good of him to help her move. Better that he understood their lives together didn’t work any longer. She would miss him, not the lifestyle. In the beginning everything was mysterious – like espionage.
If you asked her today, she’d say the sound of fans in the back room irritated her, kept her up at night, and ended up smoking more because of it. A vicious cycle.
They say make one change and the rest will follow. This was her chance, she thought, looking at Jake, starring at nothing in the middle of the living room.
“You alright?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm.
“I have to be,” he replied, stepping back. “One bong hit before we go?”
“Another defining moment,” she thought to herself.
“Sure, go ahead, I”ll wait outside,” she answered.
The MA meetings helped her see she could no longer live in an indoor grow scene, no longer live with someone, anyone, who smoked morning to night.
Yes, she enjoyed smoking. It calmed her down some, but it also was a distraction to her real life. Two years off-track is enough, she thought.
Beepbeepbeep, her cell phone announced a text.
“You on your way?” Nick wrote.
“Nearly,” she wrote back.
Caitlin met Nick through Jake, of all people. He was his “grow go-to,” Jake had said. If you could get him. Nick was everyone’s favorite house-sitter. Trusted and known to be honest.
Now he had his own grow, in natural sunlight, on an apple orchard. He was smart and thought ahead of the curve. His Humboldt Hard Cider was back-ordered everywhere from Oakland to somewhere in Oregon. Nick was an inspiration, and he didn’t smoke all day.
She would live in his back house and help with the research and development of medicinal food products.
Jake wouldn’t listen to any of it. He liked to smoke, liked the ritual of cutting up the bud, loading the bong, one hit after another. He wouldn’t listen to her ramblings after consulting with Dr. Courtney about too much THC from smoking making him anxious.
One or two hits helped her relax, more than that and she became nervous and, well, just stoned, unable to function – not getting things done.
“Dr. Courtney said 10 gm. of raw bud juiced is medicinal,” she remembered telling him. “He said, when you heat up just 10 mg. of THC it becomes psychotoxic, and you are just severly stoned.”
“I like smoking it,” is all Jake would say. There was no reasoning with him, and no living with an addict.
Jake emerged from the bedroom. “Ready?”
“Ready,” she replied, and got into the truck.
