I'M YEARNING FOR THE HIGH LIFE

Sometimes, I wonder if I've gone down the wrong path in life. Sure,
I'm happily married, my family is in good health, I have a career that
both fulfills and challenges me and, despite the strike by the Writers
Guild of America, I've discovered an entire season of a complex and
sexy, new HBO drama series on Comcast's On Demand service. Yet,
notwithstanding the richness of my life, I still have moments when I
kind of wish I were into drugs.

I don't mean drugs like Claritin or Zyrtec-D. (I was on the former for
about 15 years and couldn't have lived without the latter for the past
two, unless I was willing to invest a significant portion of my income
in the Kimberly-Clark Corporation.) I'm also not referring to drugs
like crack or crystal meth (because even I'm not that pathetic). I'm
talking about the basics. Like pot (or, as my Grandma Nettie used to
call it, "the marijuana.")

Often times I hear people - normal ones who, like me, lead productive
and wholesome lives - talk about how getting baked completes them in a
Jerry Maguire/Renee Zellweger sort of way. But when I allegedly
dabbled in smoking pot (allegedly), it just was never that fabulous.
Sure, there were nights when I allegedly giggled for hours while
swinging in a hammock, allegedly studying the texture on the bark of a
tree. Or, allegedly made ghetto nachos using any and all ingredients
that were available without having to move more than five feet from
the alleged microwave. Allegedly. But mostly, all I really felt after
allegedly smoking pot was tired, paranoid, guilty and hungry. Which
ultimately meant that the amount of time I've allegedly spent in my
life getting allegedly high was allegedly very short.

At the same time, though, the negative side effects of drugs also are
partly what attract me to the idea of using them. It seems like taking
drugs would open up a whole new world of excuse-making.

"You'll have to pardon me for not paying my mortgage for the past five
months, Wells Fargo. But a shipment of kind bud recently landed in the
area, and it would have been completely irresponsible of me to not
spend everything I have on the best weed available since the great
chronic of 2006."

"Thanks for everything you did for me while I was growing up, even
though I can't truly appreciate any of it because I don't actually
remember any of it, Mom. If only I hadn't been so stoned!"

Still, the benefits of a drug-free existence are admittedly plentiful.
I can change jobs as often as I like without worrying about how my
urine will fare in a laboratory screening. I don't have to fret about
contaminating my shampoo with a pot-filled Ziploc bag that could leak
in the bottle on a cross-country flight (although I'm confident a
pro-cannabis organization exists that will readily testify about how
hemp does wonders for split ends). My liver might be shot (thank you,
red wine), but my brain cells are the gifts that keep on giving.

Then there are times when I think maybe it's not so much that my
calling is to do drugs as it is to sell them. Like Denzel Washington
in "American Gangster." He portrays a nearly flawless businessman
(nearly, because who doesn't predict that hiring, like, 25 of your
relatives will end in disaster?) who skillfully procures, markets and
distributes his Blue Magic heroin to the tune of something like $1
million a day. Find me anyone who's seen the movie and wants to argue
that his life - what, with the five choice Manhattan apartments, the
stunning Miss Puerto Rico wife and the Tara-like estate in North
Carolina - wasn't head and shoulders better than that of the
teetotaler cop played by Russell Crowe? Even if Denzel only reigned
supreme for a short time before being shipped off to prison for 15
years, at least he had a taste of the good life.

Another upside of being a dealer: Beepers. Drug lords were the first
to really embrace beeper technology in the '80s. You know, besides
doctors. Either way, if you carried around a beeper, you were somebody
important and everyone knew it.

Alas, if only drugs worked on me the way they're meant to. Take
sleeping pills, for example. When ingesting the occasional Sonata
tablet, it seems like I have more issues with insomnia than on nights
when I take nothing. I've also taken Vicodin (only when prescribed,
natch), yet I never quite feel any pain relief as a result - and I
even do everything it says not to (e.g. double the dose, consume with
alcohol, operate heavy machinery).

At least I have my allergy medicine, which, according to the warning
label on the bottle, could cause dizziness or drowsiness. And of
course, I'll always have red wine. Although that doesn't really count
as a drug because Jesus drank it and whoever heard stories of him
checking into Hazelden, Betty Ford or Promises? Oh well.