Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to another Dirty Briefs.
Speaker: Because I got high.
Speaker: Because I got high.
Speaker: Except, I didn't get high.
Speaker: In fact, I have not gotten high in seven months.
Speaker: This is the longest break I have ever taken since I started smoking weed at 14 years old.
Speaker: And I will never forget that first time.
Speaker: You always remember your first, not your second, not your third,
Speaker: But you're first.
Speaker: I was 14 years old.
Speaker: I went over to my friend Cameron's house after school and his mom wasn't home and he had just gotten some not so sticky icky.
Speaker: In fact, I'm sure this was the most garbage weed I have ever seen in my entire life.
Speaker: Looking back, I'm sure it had sticks in it and little G.I.
Speaker: Joe characters.
Speaker: And basically, if I looked at it now, I'd be like, oh, that's a pile of mulch.
Speaker: That's not something I want to put in my body.
Speaker: But back then, my sensors went off and I was like, ooh.
Speaker: This is a world that I'm ready to explore.
Speaker: Get me deep into the abyss and let me feel what marijuana is.
Speaker: We rolled it up in a detention slip because we were so badass.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: We rolled it up straight into a unused detention slip saying that Cameron still had detention.
Speaker: If we're going to be badasses, let's level up.
Speaker: And then as soon as that smoke hit me, it hurt so bad.
Speaker: It was like the great Chicago fire had entered my mouth and my, it was just shredding my throat.
Speaker: I was coughing.
Speaker: It was a horrible feeling.
Speaker: And I don't think that was the weed.
Speaker: Honestly, I think that was the paper.
Speaker: This is that kind of paper that has the yellow thermal paper in the back of a thick piece of white paper that
Speaker: You're not supposed to be putting that inside your body.
Speaker: You're not even supposed to be doing anything with that, let alone smoking out of it.
Speaker: But we did.
Speaker: And then the next few hours, I just remember being in pure bliss, eating every single thing that was put in front of me without a care in the world, just laughing at everything.
Speaker: And in that moment, I knew two things.
Speaker: One,
Speaker: It's terrible to get to the bottom of a bag of chips.
Speaker: There is never enough chips in a bag.
Speaker: Stop with all the puffed air and give me more puffed crisps.
Speaker: But two, marijuana and I, we were going to be in a relationship for a long time.
Speaker: It's one of the longest relationships I've ever had.
Speaker: 24 years of smoking weed.
Speaker: 24 years.
Speaker: And now last June, I stopped.
Speaker: Cold turkey.
Speaker: Just went for it.
Speaker: Got to do it.
Speaker: Promised my wife I would for a certain arrangement that we have.
Speaker: And let me just tell you a little bit about what it's been like to not smoke weed for seven months.
Speaker: Have you ever macro dosed reality?
Speaker: Have you ever really felt everything?
Speaker: See, for me, weed was my escapism.
Speaker: It's my vice.
Speaker: It's my avoidance tactic.
Speaker: Whenever I got a little anxious or I just needed to zone out and kind of just lose myself in a haze, bam.
Speaker: I'll get high.
Speaker: It became so natural to me.
Speaker: Like even after a show, I want to keep that feeling going where I'm just like all lit up inside my body.
Speaker: Great.
Speaker: I'll smoke a little bit and I'll just feel great as I decompress from the high that I was on, really just shifting myself into another high.
Speaker: But you get it.
Speaker: It became so commonplace.
Speaker: I didn't even think about it.
Speaker: I smoked almost every day.
Speaker: for years, many, many, many years.
Speaker: I took a break here and there because I know it's good.
Speaker: Basically, I need to break my tolerance and get myself back to a point where I could really get high again.
Speaker: And that's something that I am looking forward to because look, I don't have any certain timeline on when I'm going to start smoking weed again.
Speaker: But I know when I do...
Speaker: It will be more purposeful because this experience has changed me in a lot of ways.
Speaker: It made me realize that I was smoking without any thought behind it, which is fine.
Speaker: However, I would just do it
Speaker: Because it was there or because I felt like I should.
Speaker: When I, the first month, every night when I was driving back from a show or just from being out in the world or when I was at a concert, I would just like hanker for it.
Speaker: I'd be like, oh, I just wish I could have some right now.
Speaker: But I knew I couldn't.
Speaker: My dreams came back like crazy.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: I am watching just Warner Herzog documentaries in my dreams every single night.
Speaker: Triple features.
Speaker: They do not stop.
Speaker: I'm not sure I've even slept since June.
Speaker: It is insane what happens when I go to sleep.
Speaker: I am really just like...
Speaker: When you don't smoke, when you smoke a lot, your dreams kind of just drift off too.
Speaker: But when you stop, man, do they come roaring back.
Speaker: And it is in high definition.
Speaker: A few weeks ago, I was dreaming that I was going up these stairs and there kept being a snake in my way and I had to avoid these snakes.
Speaker: And at one point, I just kicked a snake and I felt myself just hit it right in the mouth.
Speaker: And it was such a visceral feeling.
Speaker: I was like, wow, I just kicked that snake.
Speaker: And then my wife woke me up.
Speaker: She's like, you just kicked me.
Speaker: Oh, that wasn't a snake.
Speaker: I didn't realize that I was so sure that I had kicked a snake.
Speaker: And what happens is these dreams are so lucid that I will wake up from a dream, be like, Oh, okay.
Speaker: I'm in my bed.
Speaker: Everything is fine.
Speaker: Then I'll go back to sleep.
Speaker: And it's like a continuation point.
Speaker: It's like I left a bookmark inside my dream and it opened right back up.
Speaker: I was like, oh, did you think you were out of this one?
Speaker: Well, we're not done yet.
Speaker: And maybe I'm supposed to be dreaming like this.
Speaker: Maybe my dreams are trying to tell me things.
Speaker: Now, look, I'm not going to make this some weird, like, listen to what my dreams are, man.
Speaker: Because I know how boring that would get.
Speaker: But it's probably good that I'm dreaming like this.
Speaker: The hard part is...
Speaker: When I do feel anxious and when I'm just like kind of all tense or tingly and like in a negative way, I don't have my vice.
Speaker: We all have something that we do.
Speaker: Sometimes it's positive.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Like when I get on a slack line for an hour, super positive.
Speaker: If you're out there doing yoga, going for a run, or reading a great book, these are very positive vices.
Speaker: But you probably have some negative ones too, right?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: You're probably drinking a little bit more than you want to, or you're
Speaker: doing cocaine or you're getting into fights with random people on the street or you're just throwing rocks off a bridge onto a highway and waiting for the cars to crash into each other.
Speaker: You probably have something.
Speaker: What would happen if you took it away?
Speaker: What would you feel?
Speaker: How would you avoid if the one thing you use to drift off
Speaker: is suddenly put on hold.
Speaker: Sorry, my nose is, I mentioned cocaine and my nose is going crazy.
Speaker: Is that normal?
Speaker: I haven't done cocaine in a very long time.
Speaker: I honestly have no interest in doing cocaine.
Speaker: I don't know, something about post-cancer cocaine just doesn't feel good.
Speaker: You know that when you're in chemo and you just do a couple bumps while the medicine's just flowing through you?
Speaker: Doesn't feel right to do cocaine, nor do I really want to.
Speaker: I miss it.
Speaker: I do.
Speaker: I miss it.
Speaker: Feeling everything is weird.
Speaker: Because...
Speaker: I have to really lean into that feeling.
Speaker: My wife says I'm more ambitious and maybe I am, maybe I'm trying a little harder to figure things out because the one thing is when she asked me to take a break from weed, I was very much in a transitional period and I admit I still am.
Speaker: I was coming out of cancer and the chemo and everything else.
Speaker: And I wasn't sure how I wanted to proceed with my career.
Speaker: And I thought, okay, maybe changing things up is good.
Speaker: It's always good.
Speaker: Yes, not maybe.
Speaker: Change is always good, even when it's uncomfortable and not smoking weed for me is a big discomfort.
Speaker: Therefore, I knew this would be a good thing.
Speaker: And seven months in,
Speaker: I'm still not exactly sure what I'm doing.
Speaker: I have things that I obviously I have big projects in the works, but on my day to day, it's hard to figure out exactly what to do because I have to think about future Alex.
Speaker: I have to think about, hey, how are you bringing money in down the road?
Speaker: Right now, sure, you can chill a little bit.
Speaker: You can lay back and read a great book, get on your slack line, drop rocks off a bridge onto a highway and watch the cars crash.
Speaker: But as I don't bring in a ton of money, that's got to change.
Speaker: So I got to think about future me.
Speaker: And not smoking weed makes me think about it a lot more.
Speaker: And it's going to make me figure it out in the same way.
Speaker: So I challenge you.
Speaker: What is your vice?
Speaker: What if you spent a week away from it?
Speaker: How would you feel?
Speaker: Do you think you're going to be uncomfortable?
Speaker: Is it going to be okay?
Speaker: Are you going to immediately grab onto another vice and latch yourself onto that?
Speaker: I'll tell you what I do.
Speaker: I watch inspiration porn.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Getting high off weed feels great.
Speaker: But you know what feels even better?
Speaker: Watching a three-year-old deaf girl put in a brand new hearing aid and hear her mom say, I love you for the first time ever.
Speaker: Have you ever had that kind of high?
Speaker: Because that's good.
Speaker: Sure, you can eat a 20 milligram edible or you can watch a soldier coming home from war and reuniting with his dogs.
Speaker: Oh, well, bark me up that tree because that sounds pretty.
Speaker: Man.
Speaker: I'm excited.
Speaker: I am.
Speaker: I have to be excited because I can't smoke weed.
Speaker: So I have to get excited about other things like this podcast.
Speaker: So thank you for being here.
Speaker: Thank you for being a part of my life.
Speaker: If you're not part of my email list, by the way, HooperComedy.com, you get a free roasting guide when you sign up.
Speaker: So please sign up.
Speaker: I send about an email a week or so because I'm paying for my email service.
Speaker: So I have to send an email a week.
Speaker: Otherwise, I'm wasting my own money, of which I don't have a lot.
Speaker: So what are you excited about?
Speaker: Are you able to get through it without substances or whatever your vice is?
Speaker: Maybe your vice is cuddling a pug, which is a great vice.
Speaker: That's one of mine too.
Speaker: That's a great replacement for weed, even though I used to love getting high and then cuddling a pug.
Speaker: But now you just cuddle the pug and it's almost as good.
Speaker: Almost.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie to you and say it's just as good because it's almost as good.
Speaker: But with every day that goes on, I'm learning a little bit more about who I am without weed.
Speaker: It doesn't need to be my identity.
Speaker: It never was my identity.
Speaker: I've never been a pothead.
Speaker: I'm a person that smokes pot.
Speaker: I used to say the same thing when I was in high school.
Speaker: And people were like, oh, you're a theater kid.
Speaker: No, I'm a person who does theater.
Speaker: There's a very different mindset behind each of those.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Come see me at a show.
Speaker: I am a free man right now.
Speaker: Since I just taped that special, I'm building an all new joke structure, doing all kinds of fun things.
Speaker: And I want you to come see it.
Speaker: But also I want you to get in touch with you because isn't that why we're here to get in touch with ourselves so we can shine our light onto others.
Speaker: That's beautiful.
Speaker: I think it's time to stop.
Speaker: I love you.
