The pursuit of low-key happiness

Merry Crackmas!

🎄 The First High

Christmas was my first drug.
Buzzed on cookies and carols, I’d scamper downstairs in Star Wars pajamas and kneel before the heap of presents under the tree.
“Now? Can I open them now?”
“Wait until your sister comes down,” my dad growled.

When she finally dragged herself out of bed, I could get high.

Funny thing — my dad always got the presents wrong. My very reasonable list of demands included video games, comics, and action figures. He’d get me globes, calculators, and snow pants. Still, I’d check the backyard in case something fell off Santa’s sleigh. Sometimes, I swear I saw reindeer tracks on the roof. Not that I cared. I’ll never forgive those bitches for what they did to Rudolph.

In any event, Christmas got me pretty high.

🥊 The Long Hangover

Boxing Day was the hangover that lasted 364 days.

Christmas, though — that was when my dad seemed almost happy. But only on that day.

Like everyone else, he suffered through the retail death march that preceded Christmas, and the hangover left him in a mood most foul. As a result, I grew up wishing it was Christmas every day.

Then I realized drugs could make that a reality. Crack smokers don’t do Boxing Day. For whatever reason — some trauma or tear in the fabric of our being — we insist on making every day a merry Crackmas.

💎 The Fool’s Gold

But the white rock is fool’s gold. There isn’t enough in this world to sustain lifelong euphoria. You can’t cheat the system.

In pursuit of maximum pleasure, addicts find themselves uninsured against the soul-crushing misery this world can serve up. We’re talking about the darkest shades of poverty and hunger. There’s no deeper despair than what addicts experience between their fix — a funny word for something that breaks things with every hit.

It’s not just drugs, but every addiction — chocolate muffins, Mormon wives, bungee jumping. There’s no escaping the in-betweens. Boxing Day comes for us all.

🌤️ The Middle Path

And still, addicts seek a firehose of feel-goodery — when they really should be micro-dosing on life’s run-of-the-mill highs.

It’s never too late to negotiate a life of not-too-highs and not-too-lows. Pay a mortgage. Join the savage garden of work culture. Worry about climate change. Watch your favorite team lose the World Series.

Feel sad. Then earn your allowance of glad. Not perma-glad, mind you. Not an unmitigated, near heart-stopping blast of joy. Just a random dollop here and there to keep you in the game.

If you get good at this kind of existence, you might occasionally get away with a joint at the cottage or a drunken turn at karaoke.

🎁 The Gift

When I finally stopped smoking my euphoria, I had to relearn how to appreciate low-key happiness.

And I came to understand that every moment really is a gift — even if that gift is sometimes just a stupid globe.

Ps. If you agree that getting me a globe when I asked for an action figure was a great injustice, let’s make it right together! Find me on Elfster. Thanks. Bye.