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Welcome to Season Two of Cannabis Koan.

I start this new season by looking at the fascinating parallel between two literary classics on addiction: Thomas De Quincey’s 1821 memoir Confessions of an Opium Eater and William S. Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical 1953 novel Junkie.

Both books conclude with the authors asserting triumph over their drug dependencies. De Quincey claims to have “untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me,” while Burroughs states he “awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane.” However, their lived experiences reveal a stark divergence from these tidy narratives of recovery. Opium and heroin remained lifelong crutches for De Quincey and Burroughs, despite their written disavowals.

This glaring gap between memoir and reality is something I’d also like to explore in my own relationship with cannabis which, since the conclusion of Season One, has slipped and slid its way into a resumption of my previous usage.

As much as I’d hoped the once-a-week Cannabis Sabbath was going to work for me, it hasn’t, and for the last few months have been back to vaping every evening, without fail.

Has the time finally come for myself and my "green girlfriend" to part ways for good? Certainly it's time for some change in direction, alongside further unraveling of this riddle of addiction which I call Cannabis Koan. Music used in this episode: -Intro: Paul Simon's demo version of the song -Carmel Ekman & Gal Nisman's cover version -The Persuasions cover version -Rita Wilson & Willie Nelson's cover version -Paul Simon's demo version of the song Books referred to in this episode: -Confessions of an Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey (1821) -Junkie by William S. Burroughs (1953) -Chasing the Scream by Johann Hari (2015) -Acts of Meaning by Jerome Bruner (1990) -The Stories We Live By by Dan P. McAdams (1993) -The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life by Erving Goffman (1959) -The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa (1982) -Falling Upward: A Spirituality For The Two Halves Of Life (2011) -Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places (Studies in Jungian psychology by Jungian analysts)

If you had told me a few years ago when I was struggling with a cannabis dependency that the route out of my suffering at the time would involve an Israeli-American metaphysician and researcher called Erez Batat, I would’ve thought that perhaps you were talking about a psychologist, or a psychiatrist. 

Indeed, Erez is an incredibly skilful psychologist and a psychiatrist (as far as I'm concerned), but it’s all the other dimensions of his being that make him and his Consciously High Self-Help  Programme so special.

Here are just a few core elements  to Erez Batat: kabbalah student and teacher, translator, writer, Consciousness Research Institute founder and Independent Researcher. But also someone with a background in business, having worked as a Development and Strategy director at Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto, California - a former colleague describing him as “able to parachute into any situation, assess it and take action, as appropriate”.

If you had told me that Erez would be the answer to my cannabis koan (how to continue using the substance in a non-dependent way) I would have thought you were tripping on something, but this has certainly been the case.

In the interview you’re about to hear, we’ll be focusing mainly on his development and creation of the Consciously High Programme which I and many others have benefited from since its inception.  We will also explore his own journey and relationship with cannabis and how it has fed into his spiritual and personal development.

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4:50 Erez's initially skeptical and mistrustful attitude towards cannabis culture
8:00 How cannabis has expanded Erez’s consciousness
16:00 Breaking one’s word - the beginning of dependency
20:00 The Inner child and Inner adult with regard to cannabis: Desire vs. Will
26:00 How personality styles affect our cannabis use
29:00 Contracting between the Inner Child & Adult: strengthening our Word
33:00 The Four Phases of Dependency: 1) unconsciously dysfunctional, 2) consciously, dysfunctional, 3) consciously functional, 4) unconsciously functional
36:00 The importance of spirituality and connecting with our deep (value-driven) desires, expressed via Will, when establishing a good relationship with cannabis
40:00 The best tools and strategies for fighting craving
42:00 Erez’s love-hate relationship with meditation
44:00 The power of ping-pong & The Law of One
48:00 Getting the best out of meditation and other practices by paying heed to our personality's “Operating Systems” (the Enneagram)
50:00 Harnessing the active and passive elements of Fire and Water for personal growth
52:00 Some words of reassurance and hope for those currently struggling with cannabis

I love it when a plan comes together, don't you?

This is the final episode of my personal Cannabis Koan, giving thanks to three people who were instrumental in helping me redefine and recalibrate my relationship with The Green One.

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Marijuana, Cognition, Psychosis, Addiction: Mind & Matter podcast episode

Decoding Cannabis: Aerez Batat's podcast

Consciously High: Aerez's online program designed to help people change  their relationship with cannabis.

Sabbath and the Art of Rest: Ezra Klein's discussion with Judith Shulevitz about what it means to rest and revitalize each week.

Three dumb clichés about addiction. All personally verified by yours truly. 

Do you want to hear the happiest bass-line ever recorded? Here you go!

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KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

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Enneagram Four & Nine in relationship: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/relationship-type-4-with-type-9

Vienna, 1884. A young man, highly intelligent, profoundly ambitious, but also nervy and anxious in character is stressing out about his life and prospects. He is something of a fearful over-thinker, which is to say an Enneagram Six in personality style, prone to panic attacks, depression, phobias, and various forms of paranoia. In this period of his existence, he is experiencing something that modern millennials often call their “quarter-life crisis”.

Little does he know at the time, that his quarter-life-crisis will provide him (as well as us) with a revolutionary new idea about consciousness and the mind. This idea will shape not only the rest of his momentous life, but also ours, especially when it comes to how we understand and perceive our selves.

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A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

-Stephen Crane

"Hey Siri, other than buying weed from scallywags in my local park, what other avenues might you suggest I try in order to purchase this psychoactive dried plant matter?"

Enter stage left: Harrow School of Weed.

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ROOKIE

You thought you could ride a bicycle
but, turns out, those weren’t bikes
they were extremely bony horses. And that wasn’t
a meal you cooked, that was a microwaved
hockey puck. And that wasn’t a book that was
a taco stuffed with daisies. What if
you thought you could tie your laces?
But all this time you were just wrapping
a whole roll of sellotape round your shoe and
hoping for the best? And that piece of paper
you thought was your tax return?
A crayon drawing of a cat. And your best friend
is actually a scarecrow you stole from a field
and carted away in a wheelbarrow.
Your mobile phone is a strip of bark
with numbers scratched into it.
Thousands of people have had to replace
their doors, at much expense, after you
battered theirs to bits with a hammer
believing that was the correct way
to enter a room. You’ve been pouring pints
over your head. Playing card games with a pack
of stones. Everyone’s been so confused
by you: opening a bottle of wine with a cutlass,
lying on the floor of buses, talking to
babies in a terrifyingly loud voice.
All the while nodding to yourself like
‘Yeah, this is how it’s done.’
Planting daffodils in a bucket of milk.

-Caroline Bird

So let’s say you’re a middle-aged man seeking to “get into” cannabis, but not living in a country where it’s available to buy legally, and no friends or acquaintance who use the substance anymore, what strategies for acquiring the drug might you wish to follow?

THE STAIRWAY

The architect wanted to build a stairway
and suspend it with silver, almost invisible
guy wires in a high-ceilinged room,
a stairway you couldn't ascend or descend
except in your dreams. But first--
because wild things are not easily seen
if what's around them is wild--
he'd make sure the house that housed it
was practical, built two-by-four by
two-by-four, slat by slat, without ornament.
The stairway would be an invitation
to anyone who felt invited by it,
and depending on your reaction he'd know
if friendship were possible.
The house he'd claim as his, but the stairway
would be designed to be ownerless,
tilted against any suggestion of a theology,
disappointing to those looking for politics.
Of course the architect knew
that over the years he'd have to build
other things the way others desired,
knew that to live in this world was to trade
a few industrious hours for one beautiful one.
Yet every night when he got home
he could imagine, as he walked in the door,
his stairway going nowhere, not for sale,
and maybe some you to whom nothing
about it need be explained, waiting,
the wine decanted, the night about to unfold.

-Stephen Dunn

Why do we habitually use mind-altering substances and strategies in ways that are not always healthy? Here's a very simple explanation which holds in some way (I believe) for all of us.   

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THE DOOR

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there’s
a tree, or a wood,
a garden,
or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog’s rummaging.
Maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye,
or the picture
of a picture.

Go and open the door.
If there’s a fog
it will clear.

Go and open the door.
Even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there’ll be
a draught.

-Miroslav Holub

The highs and lows of teenage dirtbag Arthur Rimbaud.

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SENSATIONS

Through blue summer nights I will pass along paths,
Pricked by wheat, trampling short grass:
Dreaming, I will feel coolness underfoot,
Will let breezes bathe my bare head.

Not a word, not a thought:
Boundless love surging through my soul,
And I will wander far away, a vagabond
In Nature—as happily as with a woman.

-Arthur Rimbaud (1870)