Face-down on the carpet of my bedroom floor, unable to move, I make feeble pleas to the heavens: “Please let me live. I’ll never complain again. It’s Christmas Day. I just want my old life back.”
I hadn’t suffered a severe medical episode. I was just … a bit too high.
This is a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating softening the sharp edges of a family Christmas with edible cannabis products. You may instead slice them clean off landing face-first on your bedroom floor.
It wasn’t my aim in accepting the gift of a large python lolly to physically remove myself from Christmas lunch. I love Christmas, and I really love roast potatoes, gravy and pudding, but the family gathered round the table can be tricky. My partner’s parents would sooner crawl inside the rear end of an unstuffed turkey than talk about money. Their sociopolitical views are closely aligned with those of the current US administration. By contrast, my dad is an unnervingly unfiltered, foul-mouthed refugee – a hyper-polyglot peasant-savant. His favourite thing to talk about is money.
Adding to this mix is my mum, who cannot bear confrontation of any sort; my 12-year-old daughter, whose favourite topic is politics and favourite pastime is arguing and my 17-year-old daughter, whose interest in the family is as strong at Christmas as it is the rest of the year.
That edible was not a want – it was a need. I don’t drink and, while sobriety has some upsides, it offers no good answer to the question, “how can I withstand a sermon on the healing benefits of a parasite cleanse, while next to me there is a vigorous conversation regarding the perils of wokeism?”
I cooked up my edible plan in mid-November, cheerfully informing anyone who inquired after my festive plans that this Christmas I would not be succumbing to rage or despair. I would be “just a little bit” high. On hearing the plan, my neighbour offered me an edible lolly from her stash. The ones I had were a bit “blah”, I’d explained, perhaps not quite up to the task. She reassured me hers would be just the ticket. “They’re nice and mellow,” she said. Her mum was around for a visit and she concurred: “Very nice and gentle.”
It’s worth noting that, while I’m no stranger to edibles, I’m not a regular consumer. The side-effects I’d previously experienced amounted to nothing more than an increased appreciation for barbecue sausages and cushioned sun loungers – I had no reason to expect Christmas Day would be any different.
On Christmas Eve I stayed up late wrapping presents before being prematurely awoken the next morning by children old enough to know better. My exhaustion was compounded by having spent December working in a bookshop, where customers descended in vast numbers and formed thick knotted lines that never seemed to thin. As I sat on the sofa waiting for the lunch guests to arrive, heavy-lidded and almost drunk with fatigue, a thought passed through my head: “You are too fragile for substances. This will not go well.”
And I kept that thought in my head, right up to the moment family began to arrive. I stuffed half a python into my mouth, checked on the potatoes and waited for the mellow feeling to kick in. Then – because I’m rubbish at waiting – I gobbled the remaining half of it, recalling as I swallowed the tail that I’d been advised to stick to a quarter.
At lunch, with barely a parsnip in my belly, my plate began to warp. The outlines of my chicken breast blurred. Soon I could no longer hold my knife and fork.
Seated next to my in-laws, their voices alternately sharpening and fading, my heart began to pound. I made a beeline for the stairs, grabbing a daughter . “Tell your dad that he needs to come upstairs right away,” I hissed. I made it as far as my youngest’s room before collapsing. My partner, on learning what I’d done, dragged me into my bedroom where I arranged myself face-down on the floor. It was here I would remain for the next five hours, while the rest of the family politely chewed their wings and thighs and tried to ignore the spectre of the hallucinating matriarch upstairs.
I had occasional visitors. My sister-in-law, an earthy Floridian who once lived in the Peruvian jungle with a shaman, sat on the floor and held my hand as I insisted I needed to go to hospital. Carefully – the way you would tell a toddler that putting a fork in a power point is dangerous – she explained that this was not a good idea The bright lights would make things worse.
My daughters came upstairs to see if my “migraine” was getting better. I said: “I need to be very quiet and still.” This was all the encouragement they needed to begin furiously arguing. If there’s anything worse than children yelling in your ear as you wonder if you’ll ever regain the capacity to distinguish a door from a window, I haven’t experienced it.
Then, suddenly, at the precise moment the guests began to leave, I dropped back into reality. The euphoria of being able to see again almost made the horror of the preceding hours worth it. Maybe, I thought, I had to endure this terrifying thing to avoid a more terrifying thing downstairs.
This year’s Christmas will be – to use the medical term – raw-dogged.
No edibles, no alcohol, just me, a packet of Gravox and a couple of sets of elderly parents wondering aloud why it’s no longer OK to pat a stranger on the bum. Hallelujah!
Bunny Banyai is a freelance writer and author. Her latest book is Around the Word in 80 Meatballs
