Morning admissions

 Well, the positive spin is that this blog has very much become part of what I originally envisioned; it is now symbolically how I solidify experience and make things real, and perhaps take a little agency in what I choose to keep.  Exactly what I wanted to happen... except that also means its subject to avoidance behaviors when I don't want something to be real.  So I've let the next post here burble in the back of my brain, a dozen possible subjects begging to be fleshed out, but none of it feeling like something I'm quite ready to face.  So... fuck it.  It's 3:30 in the morning and I'm wound up tight.  Lets see about letting some of this out.

My impulse is to continue with the positive spin, and talk about the delightful acceptance my daughter has shown toward my transgender identity, and why I felt the need to talk with her about it so early.  I'm seeing a little through my own bullshit this morning, however, and that feels like it's going to be another delaying tactic in avoiding the next subject.  So, again, let's try to make use of the feeling as a highlighter for stuff that needs to be handled.  Point 1 - I have to face the reality that I am addicted to marijuana.  I don't mean this in a chemical sense - part of my justification for allowing it's medical use was the fact that it doesn't create chemical dependancy.  Even so, it's become a habit that I depend on too much, that I can see aggrivates some of my problems.  As has consistently been the theme in recent self discoveries, it's totally fear based.  Migraine or nausea surge and I instinctively reach for the vaporizer to offset the feeling, because it's immediate and effective.  I don't think I can or should give that up entirely - it's too effective a tool.  At the same time, the level of usage that I've been at is significantly detrimental in measurable ways.  Another positive benefit of my recently reduced tolerance has been that a lot of these secondary effects have been overly emphasized in ways that are fairly visible from the inside.

Paranoia and anxiety are decidedly worse; I find myself vibrating without specific focus, literally shaking with the need to do something without any effective outlet.  Interacting, even online, becomes more insurmountable.  The slightest excuse becomes sufficient to invalidate ambitions.  As an example, I've surely turned away from even starting this entry based on the lack of a clever quip to use as a title at least a dozen times so far.  Part of this is the overarching theme of black and white thinking, that makes every level of failure, from inconvenience to catastrophe, feel like the end of the world.  It feels like that thinking is more prominent, as well, though it's hard to separate out all of the stimuli leading to my current turmoil.  Perhaps it's not necessary to allocate each an accurate portion; probably it's not even possible to do so fairly.

It also seems to emphasize my sinus issues on reasonably heavy use.  That one is going to be a pain, as it's all too tempting in the moment to just fix things (i.e. dispose of pain) without regard to the rebound that this may cause in symptoms.  Even if it's not a major contributor to my problems, it's a perceptable one, and one that should be able to abate to a significant degree through reduced usage.  So, I've been experimenting a bit with ways of dealing with myself mentally, both in general, and in trying to limit my use of the vaporizer.  Recording dosages and times is of limited use; the half life of my tolerance is so abysmally short that even abstaining for a good portion of the day causes a very perceptable increase to the intensity of the next dose - initially I tried to guesstimate usage by the degree of fullness of breath I took in.  Since I've been back from the ward, I've had times where a quarter breath has leveled me for a couple of hours, and all the way back up to taking in several full breaths without feeling too impaired after a few minutes.  On the plus side, there have been advances mades successfully, if temporarily.  It's not been a steady depressing decline.  At the same time, it's been an extra crazy week in so very many ways, I'm actually mildly impressed with myself for not having slid further.  Not least of which has been a vicious change in the local weather - we just got a multi-inch drop of snow in mid-April, which is unheard of in the length of local weather recording, according to W2's research.  Being within 10 or so degrees of freezing is pretty much always when I feel the worst; feels like there's a phase change in one of the substances involved somewhere around there, possibly occluding my eustachian tubes further.  So yeah, plenty of valid physical misery; I'm not going to give myself hell for using at all.  Everything else aside, there is some utility in recording usage, just because that same black and white thinking interacts really poorly with addiction, at least in me - I keep on catching myself equating thinking of marijuana with having already used it, which offers the excuse of the battle already having been lost.  My brain has a bad habit of lying, and it's better at it than I am (consciously).

As it's now 4:30 am, and I'm actualy feeling a surge of sleepiness, I think I'm going to leave these thoughts here and maybe continue them later in the day.  Hopefully, having actually started the damn thing should make it easier to come back to.