Day By Day Nothing Changes, But When You Look Back, Everything Is Different.
In yesterday’s Dispatch, I mentioned that I was recording Days 1–38 to backfill the gap in the podcast episodes. When I started this project, I had no intention of starting a podcast or a YouTube channel come to that, but here we are; if nothing else, it keeps me entertained.
What I wanted to say was that it was so bizarre going over those early days again. The C.S. Lewis quote above sums it up perfectly. From where I am right now, it feels like nothing has changed, but looking back, everything is indeed different. To hear myself struggling with sleep, time dilation, and CNS excitability is, quite frankly, odd - not least of all because it feels like such a long time ago.
Current Repair Progress
[Gold-Note: The Builders Analogy]
Day 67 (8 hours deep sleep, multiple vivid dreams, groggy morning, extreme hunger): The finishing touches. The builders are still there, but they’re painting, not demolishing. Tidying up. Checking the wiring. Making sure it’s right before they hand over the keys.
This “extreme hunger” is the body’s way of saying the crew needs more materials. The brain is the most energy-demanding organ in the body, and during this final “retrofit,” it’s burning through resources to finalise the new connections.
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory
If my hypothesis is correct, I am now under a week away from feeling my first natural dopamine reward in 35 years. 35 years. My mind has been returning to those pre-substance days with increasing frequency. I wonder if my brain is desperately trying to bridge the gap using the mere fragments I have of those years. I have memories, of course, but are they my memories, or are they memories created from a life I crafted around those chemicals? Who knows, but I’m not going to dwell on the “ifs” and “buts” of it all.
“O, that way madness lies; let me shun that; No more of that.”
Me, Myself, I
Another thing that’s been crossing my mind is the amount of “I” and “Me” in these Dispatches. I suppose there has to be. Otherwise, it looks like I am speaking from a place of authority - which I am most definitely not.
I am fully aware that nobody gives a shiny shite about “me” or what I am doing in my life; it’s the road I am on that matters. I’m just putting markers down. I want someone on Day 14 of their own cessation, wondering why they still feel like crap, to type into a search engine “Day 14 after stopping cannabis” and find not just edited highlights, but actual lights they can follow at their own pace.
Every journey will take a slightly different route, but the countryside largely remains the same.
The march through the wall continues unabated; (Still nothing. Oh wait…nope, its gone).
#cannabiswithdrawaltimeline #anhedonia #PAWS #eightweekwall #neuroplasticity #recoveryjourney