On smoking, but not inhaling in Buy a Ticket, Take a Ride

Although I knew DARE was unethical propaganda and the drug war wrong, it still effected me. It was really difficult to get me to try weed. The year is 2007. And my perspective was still my initial perspective, all smoking of anything is pretty much the same. I didn’t want to see anyone persecuted for it, but I considered it a vice better avoided, unless you had a dire medical condition.

My Dad was a huge cigarette smoker. I hated it. The sticky-tar smell was awful, one of the many reasons I was a pariah growing up. He quit five years ago and still sounds ill when he coughs. I haven’t grappled with this yet, but he’s schizophrenic and has lost one of his self-medications when he quit. The consequences will plunge him even further into alcoholism which will injure his mind more than his lungs.

In 2007, teen me is experimenting with some common drugs for the first time. I tried weed a few times after much convincing. It made me a little hungry & that oatmeal cream pie was delicious. But from those few experiences, all I know about being high is the munchies. I really have no clue what potential lies in weed or even drugs, and since people behave like giddy morons over nothing, I assume they are exaggerating. Weed is just an enjoyable food enhancer & sleep aid. It’s not a big deal, I thought. I didn’t remain very interested in it.

I tried hookah for the first time and felt actually buzzed by the nicotine. This is a way bigger deal than cannabis, I thought. I could actually see myself getting addicted to this. (but I did not)

The year is 2008. It’s only a year later, but feels like longer. I’ve gotten married, moved states and have a full time graveyard shift at my job. My coolest manager wants to share a joint when it’s slow at 3am. Everyone thinks I’m so naive and childish because I will not smoke cigarettes with them. I don’t feel pressured, but I know this joint will increase my social clout at work just a little bit, so I accept. It’s a chilly winter night. Maybe the weed was better quality. Maybe the cold air was as if I had loaded a stack of ice into the bong.

As I was smoking, my manager was talking about her acid experience. “Balls to the walls,” she said. I felt like she was saying this over and over. Suddenly I didn’t remember what she had just said or anything other than, “balls to the walls,” on repeat. I realized this joint was hitting different. Now I am also balls to the walls.

We had a great time. My manager improvised an amazing pasta dish & we served it for free to our late-night customers. It started off nothing but fun, but the drug’s effects continued to escalate.

Since then, I have done stacks of rare and powerful psychedelic drugs, but this was the only time I’ve ever been too fucked up to read. My very nice manager took over on drive-through because I could not interpret the buttons.

My anxiety spiked. I panicked. It was so difficult to sweep the floor due to time dilation. She told me to drink a tall glass of water to calm down and it worked. I still had to stay late to finish my chores.

Luckily, I thought, my partner decided to pick me up that morning. A pretty rare event; I mostly walked home. So I got to ask him if I seemed high and according to him, I did not.

I was so scared of getting in trouble for smoking weed on the job, even though I had been told explicitly by many managers that I would not. They would have no workforce if they turned away functional drug users & alcoholics. I knew that almost anyone in food service is probably on multiple substances 24/7.

I know I’m much more likely to get in trouble for taking more time to finish my chores than being on an illegal drug. I often get yelled at for taking too long, so I was lucky I did not get yelled on that day, when I would have been far more vulnerable to panic. But I’m still the most worried about being perceived as of high.¹

I’m not as good at completing chores or cutting corners like the other servers because of my executive dysfunction and poor social skills. Later, I’d learn the only server who completed his side work consistently and with full quality, was a big time violent drug dealer. I found out when he made the news for robbing a rival drug dealer in a pretend bust dressed as a cop, which was busted by actual cops.

The year is now 2021, but I have had this conversation many times. Someone who says cannabis is over-rated and doesn’t work for them. They have a strong personal bias, and tend to post propagandized articles reporting negative side effects based on poor understandings of research. Because this is rightly rejected and panned by most of their friends, they feel like a real underdog. how ironic.

I don’t know this particular person very well, but others I have met with the same vibe, tend to either have felt overly peer pressured by Joe Rogan-y weed bros in their life, or feel FOMO. They don’t like friends & acquaintances they admire as more worldly, artistic or intellectual are all really into this thing that they are afraid of. They are too scared to try it at all, or when they tried it had little-no effect, or they were too neurotic and paranoid to enjoy it.

They sit in a skunk-smelling Wendy’s drive thru and resent that the underpaid and overworked employees and almost all their customers are getting incredible kicks out of something they do not understand. They are probably too conservative in background and well-compensated in professional, non-weed culture professions, to have been normalized outside of the stoner circle in social settings. They feel envious of some stoner clique archetype in their mind and may rationally approve of but still resent every bit of progress made against legit and terrible persecution and prohibition that still ruins people’s lives, especially people of color.

So they sit around saying it doesn’t work, it’s over-rated and eager to focus on the “other side” of the weed story, as if some sensational over-reporting of negative side effects and scary stories isn’t actually the main story that has been the overbearing official government propaganda for better part of a century.

“Sure, it’s just not for everyone,” I say. Which is technically true.

Last updated December 08, 2021