Feeling better than I’ve felt for a long time I climb up onto the houseboat’s roof, flop down in one of the pair of deckchairs I have up here, and roll a joint, my fingers revelling in the familiar, delicate movement. Once done I hold it up to the street light and am pleased to see it’s a perfect cone. Next up, flame. It dances into life – those ancients really were on to something – and I guide them together until the little twisted curl of paper at the very end takes light.

I blow smoke at the cloud-smudged moon, imagining it might move a little. After the harshness of the first few pulls I find the world softening, but at the same time becoming more real, more solid, more full of meaning. The events of the evening start to seem distant, unimportant somehow. It was my old life, reaching out to me, a hand from the past trying to pull me back. But as the cannabis starts to work I feel a kind of strength, one which will allow me to resist the pull.

A few minutes later, how many I’m not sure because time seems less important now, I find myself wondering about the air: where it came from, where it’s been. How far round the world has it travelled to get to me? What mountaintops has it brushed against, what swirling eddies has it been part of, what people has it caressed, blown a full gale at, what lungs has it already seen the inside of? What death and life has it touched? Where will it go next? Have I ever breathed it in before, will I again? Or is this it, our one contact, a single moment never to be repeated?

Water laps the hull, and I spiral off into what might be.

There’s an old story about the mind. They say it’s formed of a white wolf and a black wolf. The white is love, joy, the best of what makes us us. The black wolf is anger, jealousy, hate, the worst things a human mind can imagine. They’re locked in battle; neither has an advantage.

Unless you feed them.

And whichever one you feed is the one that will grow strong and win.

I’ve lived for years dealing with the results of others’ black wolves, the death and pain and suffering they caused. And in doing so, unknown to me, my own black wolf quietly feasted in the shadows, growing stronger and stronger, waiting for the moment to pounce.

And when it did, it nearly won.

But I survived, am surviving, now that cannabis feeds my white wolf.

Feeds it so it can be strong and flexible.

So it can overcome.