I have a friend, a friend who is doing her best to not smoke pot again. I asked her if it was possible for her to experience the things she felt when she smoked pot without actually smoking. She told me that when she smoked she felt everything. So I had her pick something, one thing she wanted to feel.
As an aside, my brain in the meantime was reasoning that it doesn’t need alcohol to be free of social inhibitions. It just needed practice. There was not “extra powerful brain”, or “bonus courage” at the bottom of any beer glass I’ve ever seen. Maybe alcohol makes it easier to get at “extra powerful brain” or “bonus courage” but the point is that is has always been there. So who’s to argue that my brain can’t do the things it might do if I were stoned. I wanted to know.
So she picked freedom. I was skeptical, “How can I feel freedom?” So I asked her simple questions, What is it’s color? Shape? Is it bigger than a bread box? Is it hot? Cold? How does it move? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? And when she had answered my barrage of questions, we closed our eyes, stood on a high plateau, and we felt that freedom all around us, ran my hands through it, breathed it in deeply. And when we opened our eyes I found my brain had filled in some gaps, things I hadn’t asked her, things that I learned about this freedom. I gave her the chills, she said it made her feel the way she felt when she smoked.
I had forgotten about my imagination.
