marijuana adopted as anesthetic against a dream
I myself, having taken certain vows early on concerning fathers and differences, didn’t even get downwind of my first bit of Bob Hope until fifteen, more like nearly sixteen, when Bridget Boone, in whose room a lot of the 16 and Unders used to congregate before lights-out, invited me to consider a couple of late-night bongs, as a kind of psychodysleptic Sominex, to help me sleep, perhaps, finally, all the way through a really unpleasant dream that had been recurring nightly and waking me up in medias for weeks
Context
The exact etiology, and it is self-medication of the inner life from the very first hit: the habit begins not as recreation but as a sleep aid aimed at a recurring dream, a "psychodysleptic Sominex" to get him through the night. "Worked like a charm" is the hook — the drug delivered precisely what it promised, which is what makes the vow "concerning fathers and differences" already half-broken in the telling.