Is There Such a Thing as Being Too Sober?

My Autistic son’s struggles with mental health and medication brought me perspective on my cannabis use

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I can easily obsess over self-help and health. I rid my diet of added sugars and processed foods years ago, and I never looked back. When my knee demanded that I stop running, I switched to power walking the dogs and upped my daily yoga. I journal for mental clarity. I let Jack turn me into a morning person.

But it nagged at me that I still smoked weed, and eventually I even felt guilty about my weekend evening dose of edibles. I felt guilty about quite a lot of things after my son attempted to take his own life this past January. Guilty, angry, frustrated, desperate, down.

In fact, I shut down. I had to, in order to carry on. In order to hospitalize him, then bring him home, then work with his partial-hospital program, then return him to school, only to realize that the entire cycle of his depression and/or autistic burnout was starting up all over again.

I needed to be numb.

But not my regular numb. Numb to my emotions, yes, but not to facts and phone calls and logistics. For all that, I needed some clarity of mind. I needed to be able to keep documentation, a planner, a purpose. The…