Post-Christmas Blues

27 Dec 2004

Christmas 2004 is in the can, and as I pen these words, I am again at 33,000 ft on an Embrar Regional Jet between Houston and Asheville, NC. This was a bittersweet Christmas. Because of the copious travel running up to the Holidays, Christmas rather “snuck up on me.”

First the good part. My health is still reasonably good, and I have a game plan for improving it. My company is set to launch into the stratosphere. And I have a wife and family that love me, and are the central objects of my affection. In fact, my life, until Christmas eve, while not devoid of problems, is filled mostly the kinds of problems everyone dreams of having. Problems of affluence and success. Nice problems.

Until Christmas eve. My daughter called, distressed and sobbing. The last time she called me in this state, her husband disappeared on a gambling binge, lost all his available cash, and came home professing remorse for a gambling addiction. Bad enough. This time it’s a chemical dependence on marijuana. Lost his job. Pawned his tools. Credit is shot. Now my baby girl has a hole to dig out of. She’s five months pregnant with a son, is working at Clemson plus finishing her Masters Degree there. Her boat was loaded before she found out about this.

My mind reels: “Gotta get her out of there – ditch the bum and get her and my future grandson back to Houston where I can control events.” The more she tells me the worse it gets.

Then I began to remember my own challenges with drugs.

Christmas 1968 – my hippy cousin Jimmy was in from California. We were both staying with Granny. I was a senior in High School, he was travelin’ the country, working odd jobs and then movin’ on. In my late adolescent mind Jimmy, and his lifestyle was very cool.

One night, I walked in his room, Jimmy Hendrix was in the middle of playing the now famous “Purple Haze”, a stick if sandalwood incense was burning on a low table, and a window was open allowing a cool December Houston breeze into the room. I watched Jimmy, who had been holding his breath in a peculiar fashion, exhale a cloud of odd smelling smoke out the window. He offered me a feathered roach clip holding a burning joint, and I took it. Jimmy died in a motorcycle accident in California about two years later. I know wonder to what extent drugs may have played in the accident.

For the next thirteen years, I was a drug user. While I never felt “addicted” – that is to say compelled by forces greater that my own willpower to seek drugs, I was certainly seduced by the lifestyle. Marijuana was illegal, yet was a natural “harmless” non-addicting plant. Because I believed the law to be wrong about this drug, I therefore extrapolated that the law must be wrong about ALL drugs. So I tried them all, whenever they were available. LSD, Mescaline, Psilocybin, Cocaine, Hashish – pretty well anything that came around through my pot contacts. And I sold drugs as well – not necessarily as a dealer, but it seemed smart to buy pot or hash in larger quantities and sell off ounces or grams to friends in need.

I would like to say the lifestyle never got in the way, but I feel certain that my lackluster finish in High School, and the failing genesis to my college career was directly attributable to this new priority. What I believe to my core, is that pot and hash robbed me of my driving wheel – the mechanism that made me strive to improve my lot in life.

One of my life’s most regrettable moments is “turning on” my fifteen year old brother. I am nine years his senior, and as such, he really looked up to me. I was his primary role model. We smoked a joint together and then went and had a pizza. He later became seriously addicted to marijuana, barely graduated high school, and struggled with the addiction until the age of 40. Now, it is like a hood has been lifted from his eyes – so dramatic is the change in his life since he quit.

The “epiphany” to quit came on the occasion of my thirtieth birthday, July 1981, although I had been tapering off for a couple of years. An “old friends” party was held at my house, where all my rowdy friends came for the evening. Now married and the father of two wonderful children, a son, almost 4 and a daughter age 2, I should have known better. When the kids got packed off to bed, the baggies came out and a full blown 60s styled pot party was underway. Somehow the proceedings got a little loud and my son was awakened, came wandering out of his bedroom, and caught a glimpse of me drawing on a joint. Busted. I was horrified.

The next day, my parents came to town to wish me a happy 30th birthday. While sitting in the living room chatting, my son looked at my mother and said, “When I grow up I’m going to smoke, just like my daddy.” Busted again. Mom knew I’ve never smoked tobacco in my life.

That did it. Nowadays, I’m fond of chiding my grown children with the quip, “The apple never falls far from the tree.” At that moment I became keenly aware of the fact that I did not want my children to be like the man I looked at in the mirror every morning. I completed my college degree in mechanical engineering with a 3.4 GPA. I had a great career in corporate America. and now have a business that has fulfilled my every fantasy. I changed my life, with God’s help, but he made me do the heavy lifting.

I asked my daughter if she sill loved him. She said "Yes, and I'm sure he loves me." This too can be fixed.