The Endocannabinoid Conspiracy
Take the Green Pill
What if I told you… there were no pills, only Pepes.
The Green Pill
Most contemporary conspiracy theorists will nominate 9/11 as their first ‘red pill’ — the event that gave them a glimpse of some unseen, unmistakably malevolent force holding back the wellbeing of humanity. As per Morpheus in the Matrix, it is the Wombat Hole after which reality would never look the same again.
9/11; Jeffery Epstein; Travis Scott and AstroWorld (for the young folk): they are a start, sure. But there is more to the malevolence than that.
As with most things humans do, we tend to make it about ourselves. That is very much what the Conspiracy community is caught up in: an obsession with the nefarious plots and plans against humanity. But limiting the scope of these agendas only to humanity misses the bigger picture.
We are, it goes without saying but is always helpful to be reminded of, but one part of the incredibly diverse natural Creation on Earth — albeit clearly a very important part of it. This is the part of the Wombat Hole that many still miss: this unseen, unmistakably malevolent force is actually acting against Nature itself, and we just happen to be caught up in it.
While this may seem like a slightly confronting proposal at first, can anyone really deny it… especially with the perilous state of the natural world as it is today?
We exist in a world of duality after all, as The Bible and many other ancient traditions make clear: to have light, we must have dark; to have God, we must have its adversary (literally: Satan); to have something that we can objectively call ‘good’, we must have something that we can objectively call ‘bad’. If such bad things are able to be manifested, there must be an underlying source with an animating force to manifest them: a force that runs at constant odds to that which is ‘good’. I would suggest that this satanic force has never been more exposed than in the last two years.
One thing that I have noticed as the ‘Rona narrative has been rolled out to the world is the splitting that has occurred in the conspiracy community. Everyone was convinced that there was nefarious deeds underlying the pandemic, but not everyone understood these forces in the same way. For some, it was economic (I.e. The Great Reset), political (I.e. Communism/Marxism), genetic (I.e. Genocide) or just straight up anti-human (I.e. Depopulation).
For others, including myself, the pandemic morphed into something even more sinister: not just a physical attack on humans, but a metaphysical attack on our very human nature. For those who have been keeping tabs on the Transhumanist agenda, it represents a concerted shift into a AI-inspired, post-Nature conception of humanity. It is (or was, given we are in the final death throes) a final attempt to make us so fearful and afraid of the inherent threat that Nature poses us that we would willingly agree to divorce ourselves from it, for good.
To attempt such a separation between inextricably linked systems is fundamentally, unavoidably anti-Nature. It is also, on the bright side, fundamentally and unavoidably stupid and destined to fail.
That’s why I’m not just interested in dishing out red pills: they can easily turn dark without the proper spiritual context. The best way to avoid the black pill — to not become just another doomer — is to take the green pill instead.
It gives the perspective not only to what the true agenda is at play, but where we need to turn back to as it fails — as it inevitably will, and is.
A Conspiracy Against Cannabis?
So, what was my first Green Pill?
If I was going to identify the start of my conspiracy trajectory — the awakening event that left me to be open to more sensational Wombat Holes like 9/11 — it would have to be Cannabis.
It was not just the biological and psychological effects of experiencing it as a drug in my formative post-High School rebellion stage, although that was obviously part of it. It was also intellectual: catalysed by my subsequent research into this plant and its astounding range of potential human uses, and how this potential had somehow managed to stay so criminally under-utilised for so long.
I automatically assumed it was due to ignorance… and/or fear: a conservative streak in society that reveals itself most prominently when opposing mind-altering substances (Queers might beg to differ here). But then it became too hard to ignore: this was more than about getting high, when even the un-psychoactive and unthreatening CBD remains so restricted.
So then it was about money. We simply live in a crony capitalistic health system, where Big Pharma has completely captured conventional medicine — turning it into a cheap, production line knockoff of Nature with half the benefits and twice the side effects.
While it was, and still is, about money — there is clearly something more than that; there is no shortage of cash to be made from Pot, with all its uses, after all. It is the same something that has resulted in other plant medicines — not just fellow mind-benders like psilocybin and ayahuasca, but also far more benign and humble treatments like homeopathy and Chinese medicine — facing similar mainstream discrimination.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had uncovered my first proper conspiracy, and I was hooked.
The Stoner In All Of Us
There is something quite astonishingly daring about the conspiracy against Cannabis, when you understand how deep it goes. That’s because it goes as deep as being inside us, quite literally everyone of us — within the human body itself.
What are your main memories of human biology, assuming you did it to some degree in High School? Dissecting frogs? Learning about Evolution only after your public school science teacher who was in hindsight almost certainly a closet Christian gave a careful disclaimer that it is only a theory? Putting condoms on bananas? (Sorry, that might have been Health Education).
I dare say that there is one human biological reality that, were it to be included in curriculum, would soon become the hands-down favourite of your standard science-curious teenager: that within them, there was a perfectly designed operating system for the breakdown and integration of the Devil’s Lettuce as it enters the bloodstream.
Because, of course, it isn’t taught (as far as I know). I would certainly have remembered this fact if it was taught to me, and only came across it when I commenced my own personal investigations.
I am talking, of course, about the Endocannabinoid System (ECS): a complex combination of endogenous cannabinoid molecules, receptors and enzymes. Endocannabinoid molecules function in a similar way to phytocannabinoids (those molecules derived from plants, rather than our own bodies), by acting on specific receptors at various key locations around the body. In fact, pretty much all key locations: these receptors, the molecules that bind there and the enzymes that help break them down are found everywhere in the body, where they play a vital (and unique) regulatory role.
The ECS is much like a universal moderator: providing the communication link between different systems working on the same task, while ensuring stability and homeostasis are maintained. At the site of an injury, for example, it can play three different roles at once to reduce pain and damage: inhibit the release of nerve activators, stabilise the nerve cell, and prevent the release of inflammatory substances.
While the system still functions without external assistance, it can be given a healthy helping hand through through the various cannabinoid compounds found in the Cannabis plant. In someone who’s ECS is functioning below optimum (which is likely most of us, given most of us don’t know of its existence), we can start to see the biological explanation for just how profound the benefits of medicinal Cannabis have been to so many people.
The suppression of the Endocannabinoid System — The Stoner in All of Us — is the foundation of the conspiracy against Cannabis: both figuratively in our education and literally in our bodies. It is proof to me that it had to be some unseen malevolent force, not just the hopeless mistakes of a society devastatingly removed from our natural roots, that has allowed this suppression to occur for so long.
You Aren't Allowed To Know That About Yourself
Having said all that, I get it… to an extent. This is knowledge that has to be taught carefully.
One could easily see how our understanding of the ECS could be weaponised by the temptress that is the Green Fairy — to entrance and enslave every unwitting teenage boy into the spiritual blackhole of addiction. To lead them to believe that there may be no other way to activate this system except for the use of external plant sources, when in fact we always have the power within us.
It is knowledge that has to be taught and used responsibly, in other words. And yes: I am very much open to the argument that our current schooling system is not up to the task of taking on this responsibility. But someone has to take it on, because any remaining grounds for keeping it suppressed are increasingly indefensible.
Firstly, for purely academia reasons: how does it make sense to learn about the respiratory system, the cardiovascular system, the nervous system but not the system that links them together and turns them into into a coherent whole? This is fundamental biological knowledge, and leaves out a massive chunk of the bigger picture of how our bodies function.
It is also completely self-defeating for a society still prone to bouts of prohibition and moral pearl-clutching when it comes to personal Cannabis use. If only we spent more time learning about, understanding and supporting our ECS, it would not have degraded to a state where it requires constant external assistance from its still largely-illegal plant cousin.
But there are also some deeper philosophical issues at play here. Who gets to make the decision about when we are allowed to know about fundamental aspects of our bodies and their relationship to the natural world?
Knowing that humans have seemingly evolved in such close correlation with this single plant unveils a whole co-evolutionary reality that has been hidden from us. Who wears the pants in this relationship: humans, or — through plants such as Cannabis — Nature? This is the central premise of what might be my favourite book on the scientific world — The Botany of Desire — which I read in the midst of my intellectual exploration of the Cannabis conspiracy.
Has the cunning Cannabis plant adapted to suit our needs and ensure its propagation across the planet, or has it always been there for us, waiting — evidence that nature will always provide what we need, if only we are willing to seek it out and use it responsibly and with reverence? In fact, if one was to take the perspective of Intelligent Design being at play, it is easy to see why so many people believe the plant to be Sacred — a literal gift to humanity from God.
Because the ECS isn’t just about the relationship between humans and Cannabis: it is a profound revelation into the attention to detail that has been given to us, as Created human beings. Indeed, removing the ECS from our human biology removes one of its most exquisite details: a degree of intelligence and coherence both within us and to the external world of nature.
It also begs the question: what else are we not allowed to know about ourselves? It is often said that the use of psychoactive plant medicines such as Cannabis allows us to know a side of consciousness, a side of ourselves, that we did not previously have access to. Is that part of the conspiracy as well?
What I can say is this: the conspiracy against our Endocannabinoid system is not something to be made light of, or diminished: not simply a modern day manifestation of the reefer madness propaganda that swamped a socially conservative society in the 1930s. It is a conspiracy against our own true biology, our own human nature, and how we fit in to the natural world around us.
But that’s the black pill speaking again. Luckily, the futility of this conspiracy has never been more obvious. Looking past these distractions and instead focusing on the revelation that is the depth and strength of our relationship with Nature — knowing and understanding what it means for our current way of life, our health, our overall individual and social wellbeing — is the real Green Pill.