While riding my bike, I saw a billboard at the bottom of Greenfield’s Bank Row that made me stop in my tracks. Next to a large image of a silver holiday ornament were two lines of bold text: “You have in-laws. We have cannabis.”
On the one hand, the message is kind of funny — in a cheap humor kind of way. Holidays can be stressful, and when it comes to difficult relationships, it can get to be too much. So just get high (ha ha), and don’t worry about a thing.
But as someone who formerly reached for substances to take the edge off, I find the billboard worrisome. And as the mother of a teen, it brought up in me no small amount of anger.
Look, I’m no prude. If you’re an adult who chooses to use cannabis, that’s your business. But I want to explore how the billboard can send the wrong message to young people who live in a world that’s already trying to sell them all sorts of ways to numb out.
As a teen in the 1980s, I tried smoking pot with my friends. It didn’t do anything for me. Alcohol, however, was another story. I loved the way drinking took the edge off my gnawing anxiety when my dad’s terminal illness or my family’s poverty felt overwhelming. A few drinks made everything seem more doable. But only for a time.
Alcohol became significantly less attractive after one of my best friends was killed by a drunk driver. I recognized that it could have been me: I could have been the driver, or the dead kid. After that, reaching for a bottle no longer seemed like a good solution.
That’s why the billboard troubles me: it says that when things feel overwhelming, there’s an easy way to make those feelings go away.
Cannabis, alcohol, screens, shopping, gambling: Take your pick. Humans love the fantasy that we don’t have to feel discomfort. We love the myth that there are socially acceptable, easy ways out.
Here’s the thing, though, and I hope young folks in particular might listen up: the feelings we try to numb with substances? They don’t disappear. They may recede into the background for a while, but believe me, they patiently wait.
And when we finally turn and face them — as eventually we must — we find that buried emotions didn’t lie there in neutral fashion all those months or years. Nope. They fermented, and not in delicious ways.
But what if someone really does dread the thought of seeing their in-laws over the holidays? Are there ways other than numbing out to survive? What about a stressful work situation, or the challenges brought about by a loved one’s illness? Life serves up hard stuff. What are we supposed to do?
I think the answers are different for different people, but over the years, I’ve learned many ways to manage high levels of anxiety and stress. Chief among them are music and art, gifts of my childhood which my parents blessed me with before things fell apart in our family due to illness and duress.
I’ve also learned how to have good friends. When the going gets tough, the biggest gift is to have someone nearby when we need a good cry. And to have good friends, we need to be a good friend, which is hard to do when we’re numbed out.
I can come up with about a thousand things I’d rather do than get drunk or high, including playing the fiddle or accordion, making envelopes out of old calendars, hiking to a promontory, baking cookies, reading a book, writing a book, calling a friend, drinking hot tea, or staring out the window.
It’s also good to remember — when I’ve been looking at a screen for too long — that there are these tall things out there called “trees” that are great for sitting under or for climbing, no matter my age.
Far be it from me to judge. Each person has to find their own way. I just hope that folks will consider a range of options before falling into the hands of those who wish to profit off of our pain. There are, in my opinion, better ways.
Eveline MacDougall is the author of “Fiery Hope,” and an artist, musician, and mom. She lives in Greenfield and is a freelance writer for the Recorder.