“Nonetheless it is clear that pot is… a ‘performance-degrading drug’.”

Unlike many, when I want to reward myself or give myself a treat, I don’t buy a bottle of wine or a new pair of shoes. I buy a subscription to The Economist.

I find myself falling a couple of weeks behind because I devour these weekly publications from cover to cover. I cannot even explain why I devour it this way. It’s not casual. It’s like an overdose, multiple weeks saved up to take in all at once. Does not matter if the current event news is outdated. Maybe it is the sometimes tongue-in-cheek delivery and play-on-word titles and subheadings in articles. Maybe it’s the topics. Sometimes it’s just the slightly annoying way the magazine prescribes “solutions” and offers up its opinions (I don’t always agree with its assessments but appreciate that such a thing is churned out weekly).

I could have taken a digital-only subscription, but I like carrying the magazine copies around with me to read whenever I am stuck waiting or flying or what have you. And I am never disappointed. There’s always something – even in a slow news week.

A few weeks ago it was an entire special report on Turkey and its move toward being a “sultanate” under Erdogan. Then it was an entire briefing on legalization of cannabis. When David Bowie died, which filled me with unreasonable, irrational grief, the magazine dedicated not one but two pages to his obit and titled/subtitled articles throughout the entire magazine with his song titles and lyrics (and even did this a few times weeks after he had died). Small touches here and there, small things that give me a chuckle. It feels like a strange indulgence, but there are worse, more destructive pleasures to indulge.