Hi, I’m an existential imbecile named Max Murphy. Here on The Murphy Memos we explore the absurdity of existence.
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I use Substack notes too much.
Last month, in a stoned stupor, I posted this
This, in addition to a very boomer rant about weed going viral on Substack…
I knew what I had to do.
I awoke from my kush coma, sat down at my desk, and ordered the children in my newsletter sweatshop to start writing.
How do you use weed to enhance, rather than numb your life?
Tragically, I had to learn everything myself the hard way, and don’t want you, my friend, to have to suffer the same fate.
This essay will be helpful for the weed curious as well as experienced stoners (I’m basically the Buddha of the devil’s lettuce).
But before we get into the juicy stuff, let’s cover the basics:
Only use weed legally, or you risk paranoia or it being laced with something dangerous.
Research & buy from reputable companies that use third party testing.1
I strongly recommend not smoking weed since it causes lung damage, and you can get the same effect with edibles or tinctures.
If you’re under 25, you should consider waiting until your brain is fully developed, or you risk decreased neurocognitive development.2
For edibles: always wait at least 2 hours before taking another one.
Okay, that being said, let’s get into the fun stuff.
intention is everything—
In popular culture, weed is often depicted as a Woodstock hippie drug.
Something you use to tune out, melt into the couch and eat a whole bag of popcorn.
And if you come looking for cheap relaxation, that’s what weed will give you (not that there’s anything wrong with that. Life is hard and it’s okay to chill sometimes).
But weed can be so much more than that.
Your intention sets the stage for your experience, maybe even dictates the outcome.
As Aldous Huxley put it:
“To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and the inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large.”
With a slightly different mindset — a tender-hearted lover, a hungry artist, a vulnerable pilgrim — weed becomes a legitimate tool of personal transformation. One that may be difficult, if not impossible to achieve otherwise.
It opens doors of perception you didn’t even know were locked.
Weed isn’t magic per se.
But… it comes pretty
damn close,
boi.
ancient roots of ganja—
Weed has a looong, historical precedent.
Usage dates back to traditional Hindu beliefs — so far back it shows up in the Atharvaveda, texts compiled between 1200–900 BCE.
Cannabis was counted as one of the “five sacred plants,” watched over by a guardian spirit.
The god Shiva himself is bound up with the plant. According to legend, after a heated quarrel, he collapsed in a field, exhausted by the sun. He awoke under the shadow of cannabis leaves, sampled them, and felt instantly restored.
From then on, Shiva became the “Lord of Bhang.”
Colonial officials in the 19th century were so struck by cannabis’ popularity in India that they commissioned the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, one of the most ambitious drug studies ever conducted.
After thousands of interviews, the commission concluded that suppressing bhang would be “totally unjustifiable.”
It was too ancient, too spiritual, and—when taken in moderation—harmless.
Alcohol, they found, did far more damage.
Fast forward to whatever tf timeline we’re in today, and modern research echoes what ancient Hindu thinkers intuited thousands of years ago.
Cannabis, when used with intention, often yields spiritual experiences: empathy, connection, forgiveness, compassion, insight.
In a 2022 thematic study, 66.1% of respondents reported spiritual benefit from their use of cannabis.
One participant put it simply:
“When I use cannabis, it helps give a larger feeling of understanding, empathy, and forgiveness for things or people that have upset or frustrated me.”
Another went deeper:
“I feel there is a spiritual connection between nature, the planet, cannabis, and ourselves. In my experience, everyone is trying to ‘fill a hole’. Some do it with gambling, drinking, sex, cannabis, eating, etc. But I think that above all, cannabis has the capacity to send people unto a spiritual experience in finding harmony with themselves and the world.”
In other words: this meme is literally true
The ancients had Shiva.
The researchers have their peer-reviewed studies.
I had… very big feelings,
a cocktail of undiagnosed mental illnesses,
and a weed vape I bought at the gas station.
how i found jesus at the bottom of a dorito bag—
At the risk of offending… well, everyone, weed helped me find Jesus.
I don’t mean it turned me into a model Christian. If anything, it stripped away the caricatures of Christianity I had come to despise: the judgmental smugness, the tribal hypocrisy, the ouroboros of empty rituals.
Instead, it gave me Jesus unfiltered. The Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount. The voice of love that cuts through resentment. The impossible invitation to forgive.3
Weed gave me just enough distance from my own pain and cynicism to glimpse something different. As Terence McKenna said, psychedelics dissolve opinion structures.
That night, weed dissolved mine. I was left staring at the absence I’d carried for years: a barren sky, a God-shaped hole echoing the heavy emptiness I’d dragged around for decades.
And in that emptiness, something tender returned.
Not Joel fucking Osteen.
Not certainty.
Not dogma.
But Love.
Love, damn it!
A sense that maybe faith is less about knowing
and more about being willing to be broken open.
Which is why, perhaps, there’s such a suspiciously common drug addict → devout Christian pipeline. Get blitzed enough times, stare into the abyss, and sooner or later you’re going to mistake those Cool Ranch Doritos for communion wafers.
Okay.
Now, before I start a new cult where everyone wears white robes and the women are contractually obligated to join my harem, let’s talk about the shadow weed casts.
Because as beautiful as it can be, weed can also really fuck you up if you’re not careful.
legitimate risks—
Weed should not be used to cope with stress. Full stop.
It starts out as just this once.
Once becomes twice.
Twice becomes
every day.
Yes, weed can be addictive. Not in the same chemical, clawing way as nicotine or fentanyl, but in the soft, emotional way where you wake up one day and realize every difficult feeling in your life has been wrapped in smoke and stuffed into a grinder.
Weed boosts what I like to call the feel-good brain chemicals. And if you’re a fellow resident of the collapsing shithole known as “society,” you probably don’t have a lot of those coming in naturally.
So here’s what happens:
You smoke every day.
You turn it into an unhealthy coping mechanism for stress, conflict, or drama.
Instead of being a spiritual sacrament or creative spark, it becomes another way to avoid your own life.
The ancient Vedas didn’t sing hymns to avoidance. Shiva didn’t become the Lord of Bhang because he wanted to scroll TikTok in peace.
Cannabis as crutch is not cannabis as sacrament.
That does not make it evil.
It just means it’s a tool.
And like all tools, it
can either build
you up or dig
you into
a ditch.
unleashing dionysian creativity—
Weed is proof God loves you—or, at least he doesn’t hate you… That much.
Let’s talk about the Dionysian orgasm of creative sensation.
Or, as I like to call it, “the fun stuff.”
Weed can unlock creativity in ways that are hard to access sober. Think of it as a little push into the realm of dream logic, where the rules loosen and your brain is free to make strange, beautiful connections.
Strain matters:
Indica pulls you into your body, good for feeling, chilling, becoming one with the couch.
Sativa makes you feel energized, like you’ve swallowed a lightning bolt of ideas. It bursts open surprising connections you’d never make otherwise.
When I’m high, I make things I might never otherwise create—drawings, poems, profoundly sad journal entries that really force me to consider getting a therapist.
But here’s the secret: the real magic is in returning to that art later, sober, and realizing there are deeper hidden meanings you didn’t know were in you.
For example, the cover image for this essay was something I drew while high, and later used to psychoanalyze myself (yes, really).
That’s why you must capture your stoned thoughts.
Grab them in whatever way is easiest:
Voice-to-text in a writing app.
Raw voice memos you can transcribe later.
Even scribbles on a napkin if that’s what’s handy.
Because in the moment, every idea feels like the key to the universe.
But only later do you discover which ones are true portals past prevailing perceptions, and which are just “bro what if clouds are God’s vape smoke??”
For me, Max Murphy—the whole persona, brand, identity—was conceived while high.
And it has turned out to be the most enjoyable creative project of my life.
None of it would exist without the surreal nudge of weed whispering,
hey let’s take all this big hurt and turn it into something beautiful.
Weed cannot replace discipline or practice.
But it can act as a catalyst.
A Dionysian helper.
Weed cracks open the door to everything you locked up bc society’s opinion structures forced you into a conformity you never agreed to.
final thoughts—
In conclusion, I’d like to share a comprehensive list of the terrible things weed has done:
1.
2.
3.
4.
20.
That’s right, motherfucker.
Nothing.
Because the truth is: weed didn’t ruin my life. It didn’t save it either. What it did was show me that my mind, like the world, has more doors than I thought.
Some of them lead to scary places.
Some of them lead to grace.
Others lead to Doritos.
Use it with intention.
Use it with respect.
And if you’re going to light up—light one up for me, friend. The Bible-thumping dipshits who outlawed it in my state, so I will be begrudgingly trying fentanyl.
I use 3Chi—not sponsored btw.
fun fact: at 10 years old, I vowed to wait until I was 25, and actually stuck to it. You should too.
so, I teared up writing this line and that scares me.
I think music therapy just means listening to dub reggae while you’re stoned.
Wonderfully written my friend. To quote Half Baked, “did you weed college?”