The truth is indeed stranger than fiction. I'm not a liar. I'm not good at it. Some of the things I do are odd, and friends of mine say I'm just being me, like doing bike riding at 3 in the morning. I'm a 12-year Navy veteran who suffers from depression and insomnia.
I've had a garden since the year after my divorce. Watching it grow became therapeutic. It wasn't a good form of therapy but, they gave me something to look forward to every day when there wasn't much to look forward to.
I was and am severely depressed. I know that now. It was a fact I hid from even myself, that I was fine and didn't need help.
The beauty of gardening is watching something grow, but more than that. It was something that I did right. I built it from the ground, not knowing anything about gardening, with very little research. I knew that bugs would be a problem, so I purchased praying mantis egg cases
Every year I would add some new item to the garden, cucumbers one year, eggplant the next, spaghetti squash after that. I didn't really know what I was doing, about watching something grow especially not knowing what I was doing was pretty cool. It was a mini success in what I felt inside was a life of failure.
What I didn't realize was taking on a new plant every year was proof this sort of therapy wasn't working.
I wasn't growing marijuana until just last year as an experiment. Like Jack In the beanstalk, I had some seeds. All they needed was water and sunlight. I didn't smoke weed because
1) it was expensive
2) I'm not going to unsavory neighborhoods to purchase it
So I had the unwise idea that I could do it myself. It would be cheaper.
With 12 seeds, last year I got a lot of joy coming home and watching their progression. It really made me feel better to see something I did actually work, because in every other aspect of my life I felt like such a failure.
I couldn't tell anyone this, but that's how I felt. I had tried to start my own business, a transportation company, Transporting Peeples. I had hoped to provide transportation for handicapped people to get to their doctor's appointments. Unfortunately, I had been unable to secure a loan, which delayed that plan. There was also the divorce, and anyone who's been through that knows that the eternal feeling of failure is palpable. It's like a funk that's hard to explain. However, watching the seeds grow and not knowing anything about them it made me feel really good. As I felt in a long time.
My lack of knowledge about growing these seeds was a hindrance. Four of them were male seeds, and they pollinated female plants. When this happens it's a failure. The female plants will grow full of seeds, and thus ruining the project.
Two more plants were ruined when inexplicably, the plants flooded. At season's end, I had 6 plants. It was a little bit of work, but as I said it gave me something to look forward to everyday more so than any other plant in my garden. Other than the pollination, they didn't turn out bad.
I tried smoking the the marijuana, but because I'm a singer, it hurt my throat and I gave up on that. However, serendipitously, I discovered something else.
- Antony van Leeuwenhoek invented microscopes in part because he was curious what made peppercorns hot
- Wilhelm Roentgen accidentally discovered x-rays
- Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin after observing its effects when penicillin contaminated cultures of staphylococcus
- And I discovered that the leaves of marijuana plants had an extraordinary effect on relieving my insomnia when used as tea
Though, I couldn't smoke it because of the effects it would have on my singing voice, we drinking as tea help me sleep comfortably and didn't have the lasting effect. The problem was, there is no market for it, and once the leaves from last year were gone, my insomnia returned along with my depression.
Because of the mortality rate of the plants, the high likelihood that at least half would be male, and because the joy of looking forward to their growth I planted more. What I didn't realize was how fickle the plants were and how difficult they were to maintain with so many plants.
Utilizing a technique I learned from Will Smith in the movie Seven Pounds, I added the ground up banana peels to the soil and the results were healthier plants than the previous year
After a while, what started as Joy looking forward to their growth, it began monopolizing my time. The added banana peels caused the soil to dry out more quickly than the previous year, and two to three times a day I had to water them. This was far more work then I'd bargained for, and the excessive care had a negative effect on my depression.
The joy I once had had evaporated, but I didn't have the heart to kill my creation. The leaves did not have the effect on my insomnia until later on in the season, so I had to wait. I looked forward to being able to sleep, but actually couldn't wait for this experiment to be over.
When the task force came, I was relieved. I no longer had to take care of these plants that had taken over my life. I was glad they were gone. I didn't get the leaves, but I no longer had to water the plants two, three or four times a day.
I thought this was a victimless crime. I wasn't hurting anyone, and I discovered something that helped me sleep when nothing else seemed to work, not even melatonin.
Because I was conducting this experiment, I didn't think to hide it. I wasn't hurting anyone. When the task force came, they found bags of leaves in my refrigerator, because using them for tea was the purpose.
I purchased the guns, not to keep someone from stealing the marijuana plants, but because a sister of a friend of mine who works at the VA hospital in Cleveland was the victim of a home invasion, and I had no way to protect myself.
If someone wanted to steal the marijuana plants, they could have done it when I was at work. They have 10 full hours when I'm away from my home at work to take what they wanted.
I'm not a criminal, and I have no criminal record. I work 40 hours a week, I pay my taxes. I got solar panels on my roof in efforts to go green to help the environment. I didn't harm anyone in this experiment and I didn't profit from it in any way. I merely sought a way to escape my depression and insomnia.
Since that day, I've sought therapy, as well as medication for depression. I only want to go back to my life the way it was.