I thought I was the only one here who never tried pot. It just never was around in high school college, except ditch weed (from the literal road-side ditch).
This actually seems like the unusual issue where phoning your members of Congress might be helpful. I think there's probably a solid majority who believe that pot might as well be legal and probably will be soon, the question is just whether it's on their agenda as something to get done timely, so constituent pressure seems as if it might move things along.
2: I'm waiting until I can get catatonic in a hotel room in Colorado at the expense of a major media entity.
I am quite curious about legal edibles. I have smoked pot very occasionally, but was never all that excited about it -- smoking makes me cough horribly, and I'm law-abiding out of caution and hassle. But as I grow more and more middle-aged, it takes less and less alcohol to give me a headache the next morning, so a pleasant way to get mildly fucked up socially without headaches would be nice.
Yes on the edibles. I spent way too much of my life trying to stop smoking tobacco. I'm not smoking anything.
Honestly, brownies sound like the best idea. That way, even if I don't like pot, I still had a brownie.
The failure mode of accidentally eating the whole pan seems like a risk there -- I can do that with ordinary brownies. Leaving me in Maureen Dowd's shoes.
Really, I'd want edibles to be flavored like anchovies or something. Not unpleasant, but not tempting to keep snacking on.
8.1 is why I want brownies and not chocolate cake.
When I was a sophomore in college, my roommate made pot brownies and I'd never had edibles before. So I ate one, because I had two or three hours before an evening class. It didn't kick in, and that was that.
During class, it kicked in, and I was so stoned that I started wondering how come we all stay in our chairs and balance so easily. The professor called on me - it was some sort of seminar - and I mumbled something and feigned sickness and confusion. Then I started wondering how people leave class. Like, do they just get up and walk out? What if they don't take their backpacks? People just sometimes stand up and walk out - with their backpacks - sometimes, right? Maybe they have a doctor's appointment? Finally I made my move, grabbed my backpack, and left.
Fortunately, I had some muscle memory for this. I used to get kicked out of class in high school a decent amount, because I just straight up could not stop talking. I was engaged and talking about the material (on some occasions at least) but just would not restrain myself and let other students (besides the most verbally aggressive) get a word in. Sometimes with confrontation, sometimes without, but I was used to being ejected.
Getting kicked out of class in high school is a weird thing, because you're in kind of a purgatory where you're not allowed to be in the halls, but you have no where else to be. So you have to sort of look intentional and purposeful, or find a place to hide.
The point being: I learned that if you get kicked out of class, you must take your backpack, because it absolutely sucks to have to slink back in when the bell rings and retrieve your stuff. Just grab it on your way out.
Anyway, that's why I was primed to ruminate on the taking of one's backpack, years later, in college, stoned out of my goddamned gourd.
I bet I've told that story here before. Did you hear the one about young Peep crying over the soundtrack to Rawhide, though?
You were stoned in high school classes?
Legalization here seems to have been a bit anti-climatic. There were some issues with availability at the beginning which made people cranky. It was both a pure amount issue (more demand than expected) and an inability to get it through a gov't sanctioned source. There are a limited number of provincial stores here so you can be quite far away (currently I'm 3 hours from the nearest one). Other provinces had even fewer stores per capita (my province ranks 1st or 2nd in consumption and I wouldn't even be surprised if that was before being corrected for population).
Now we're seeing a bunch of growers going bankrupt. I think demand has leveled off (not a lot of people taking it up, just people switching from illegal to legal (and then back to dealers again often)) and it was a hot investment market just because the investors personally smoked/were Americans who wanted to invest in something cool.
Yeah, legalize it but more importantly, let out all the folks who had been charged under draconian laws.
It's going to turn into a Big Business so try to support businesses that aren't run by white men (or probably even those run by white women).
Recreationally legal here, and the spouse and I were both interested in trying something while we have a chance (they work at a place with drug tests, silly as that is for desk jobs, so full-time WFH is an unusual opportunity). So far we've pretty much struck out - I bought edibles, a tincture, and a vape pen, and we have failed to have any effects so far besides slight dizziness (and vaping, at least, is miserably unpleasant and tastes bad). I am tempted to try again with different formulations (most of what I have now is 1:1 THC:CBD, which might just be too mild), but also tempted to just give up.
Alternate theory: Being stoned has a lot of being socially constructed and we're not in a position to construct it ourselves from zero.
There is some equity effort in the local licensing process - various fees waived and red tape bypassed for people formerly convicted of marijuana offenses and a few other things - which is probably better than nothing but I don't know how to judge if it's good enough.
The vape stuff still scares me, even the legal stuff, because of all the troubles in 2019.
Alternate theory: Being stoned has a lot of being socially constructed and we're not in a position to construct it ourselves from zero.
Also no.
I will say that I smoked pot for a year and didn't feel anything, because I was in high school and it seemed like a good way to handle the situations where it arose. I didn't seek it out or initiate, but I liked being someone who was game for such things.
Eventually it started kicking in.
16: what happened in 2019?
Wait. Did vaping cause Covid bats?!?
A bunch of people gave themselves horrible lung disease vaping cannabis -- I can't remember if it was contaminated or what.
Probably too much vitamin E acetate, but maybe there were other issues.
10: Did you us the requisite "I'm less visible this way!" half-crouch? (Not required after having been thrown out of class in high school, however.)
Just came across this great bit from George Saunder's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain*:
... in that crouching posture people adopt when sneaking out of a literary event, as if crouching like that will make them invisible to the author which believe me, it doesn't.
*Recommended, especially for aspiring writers and readers interested in the mechanics of stories.
To the OP I have two words:
John Boehner.
My local dispensaries sell flavorless capsules that you swallow. It's like the "would you get all your nutrition in the form of a pill and never have to worry about cooking or finding food" hypothetical but for weed.
I think this was my first un-high 4/20 in a decade. Oncall at work + cutting back generally in preparation for stopping when I have kids. Speaking of which, I'm curious
if/how the habitual users here changed their habits during child-rearing.
Making it legal has had a big effect on the people I know. I know more than a few who abstained before 'cause it was illegal and now enjoy edibles.
I am sortof in that category, except not quite. I got the microdoses so I could enjoy playing with my kid, then we didn't end up going to the mountains after all. So now I take them at bedtime. That way if I wake up, I don't start thinking and I just go back to sleep. Works great. So I still don't know what it is like to be stoned while I'm awake.
14: I have had repeated very disappointing results with edibles, to the extent that I assume my body just doesn't metabolize THC well via that route. fwiw, I regularly eat food cranked to 11 with peppers and spice and have never had either heartburn or indigestion and, while I am not a doctor, that seems consistent with the interpretation.
Edibles vary a lot by what you eat with it (eat with some fat). And some people just need more. I usually take 40mg and my wife takes 7.5
I've been thinking of getting one of those nice flower vaporizers though. Edibles take a long time to clear so I'll wake up kind of foggy sometimes which isn't great for working.
Also edibles just aren't fun as an experience. Eating a couple little chocolates with a slight cannabis flavour is just less fun than the flavour from flower.
Speaking of which, I'm curious
if/how the habitual users here changed their habits during child-rearing.
I have plenty of friends who are stoned basically any time they're parenting at home. They tend to parent in a good-natured, low structured way, and it seems to work for everyone all around.
We prefer a lot of shouting and rigidity, and pot gives me the munchies and puts me to sleep, so MMMV.
"Plenty" of friends is probably over-stating it. But a few.
28 is more or less our house (not the shouting and rigidity part).
You were stoned in high school classes?
I guess that sort of thing is surprising nowadays. The '70s were a different country.
I have only ever tried it once, when we were living abroad and I was back on my own for a couple weeks and someone renting our house had left behind a gummy bear edible from a dispensary. I was bored one weekend so tried half and felt nothing, probably because that was like 5mg and I'm relatively big.
We haven't tried any because we don't want to do it while kids are around. I've considered trying CBD because I've slept like crap all pandemic but I'm not sure where to get a reliable supply. I've heard the QC on CBD is so variable you have no idea of what you're buying actually has any.
I moved out of the house when I was 18, and shortly afterward, my brother -- not quite 15 years old at the time -- got caught getting stoned in school and was suspended. My parents were upset and concerned.
I wanted to reassure them. My thinking at the time was that sometimes getting caught smoking pot is a function of pot-induced carelessness, and evidence that you're losing it. But my brother had made a simple rookie mistake. He and his friends were getting high in a secluded spot where an administrator could just walk around the corner -- and that's what happened.
You want to have good sight-lines so that you can see trouble coming. The place to get high was in the smoking area. (This was the '70s. We had student smoking areas in high school.)
My father told me about a guy who got high on marijuana and was dancing with a broom. When someone tried to take away the broom, the pot-smoker killed him. The old man was freaking out, and I tried to talk him down as gently as possible.
"Did you get high in school?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"How many times?"
"Well, there are a lot of ways I could answer that question."
"How about the truth?"
"The truth is, it's none of your business."
Somehow, my parents got more pissed at me than they did at my brother, who was grounded for a week or two but otherwise got off scot free.
"How about the truth?"
"I really liked that broom and cutting in is rude. "
When my mother was in her eighties she decided that she wanted to try some, so we organised it, well my then student son did. But she couldn't get on with smoking it at all. I think she had a tiny buzz. But the coughing was terrible. I had to consume the leftovers, as any dutiful son would do.
I hardly smoke at all any more. It's been decades since I actually bought pot -- and somehow I've never done any kind of edible. My brother still smokes every day, and he's been a productive adult and good father -- and somehow managed to keep his habit from his kids until they were adults.
I don't know if my brother smokes pot or not. I could ask.
I smoke enough such that edibles have no effect on me. Its a shame, really. I would prefer not to smell like an ash tray.
So, everyone is talking about their personal pot usage. Is anybody doing anything to redress the societal wrong if all those people in prison or with records for muddling marijuana offenses.
I tried pot several times in HS and college, but finally gave up. It's not that it didn't affect me, it's that the affect was the opposite of what people talk about. Instead of feeling mellow or relaxed, it made my high strung and anxious.
On the other hand, the one time I tried mushrooms, it was quite nice, and I would consider trying it again under the right circumstances. I should check to see if D.C. made them legal last year.
Can we redress societal wrongs if we just smoke a little harder?
I'd like to be a better advocate for legalization, but as a practicing stoner with a long history of maintaining an illegal habit, its not actually something I feel safe raising my voice publicly about. Maybe the weed makes me paranoid, but it would be very easy for me to get arrested and that is.... not something I want to happen.
I don't have ideas for public action on legalization that seem more effective than calling legislators, but as I said above, this seems like an issue where that might be effective. The problem isn't at this point I don't think as much changing their minds -- I bet legalization would win an up or down vote in Congress right now -- as moving it forward on the agenda.
In California we officially got expungement of old marijuana convictions as part of legalization, but by default, people had to apply for it, and most didn't know about it. DAs have the authority to go through the convictions and expunge them proactively, but most don't. So advocacy to the DA on this is one thing I've done, if highly irregularly. (I actually brought it up to her in person in 2018 when she was running for re-election, and she blew smoke that it wasn't an issue.)
48 is more what I was thinking about. Trying to do something for the people whose lives have been ruined.
To tie this in to the other thread: My friend the teacher was able to separate tens of thousands of dollars worth of hydroponic grow equipment from the MPD evidence warehouse simply by having his principal call them up and ask for a donation for the urban farming project at his HS. My friend's intent all along was to give the kids experience in hydroponics so that, with the wave of legalization, they would have some job/business skills in that area and not be further shut out of the economy while white people were cashing in on legal weed. I dunno how well it worked, they would have had to move out of state if they wanted to work in that industry up through now, so it might have been a little bit of a stretch in terms of actual outcomes, but it's a fun story at least.
Glad to hear I'm not the only one who has rarely gotten a buzz from edibles. I've had the store-bought kind of gummys, plus homemade fruit leather, brownies, cookies and probably some other type of confection. Only the homemade stuff ever got me high, and often with that super-long delay effect, which can be really inconvenient.
Allegedly, M1ke Fr33man is not going to be prosecuting simple possession cases anymore, as of sometime last year or 2019. I'm not sure if he held to that or not. But Jesus, just be discreet and nobody cares.
Oh, has anyone ever done that crazy deal with the kinda peanut butter weed s'mores that the Broad City women make? I'm intrigued by their description of the effects.
49: Much better! My friends laughed when I told them about that question. We couldn't even guess at the answer, it was so frequent.
I don't recall hearing stories about pot users murdering people. It was all about the PCP-baby eating.
I am also often struck by how so many of my upper middle class white friends blithely take advantage of their class and race and state privilege to enjoy marijuana but don't seem to put much effort or interest into the wider problem.
So another brother -- a widower who is a genuinely awful person to whom I no longer speak -- went overseas for a year after his wife died because he could make good money. (He didn't need the money. He made considerably more than I did, and I didn't need money.) He asked me to keep an eye on his kids -- ages 15 and 18, and a 21-year-old who was on his own -- which involved all kinds of different errands and disputes involving a high school, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and whatnot. (There were, for instance, conversations with a therapist who resented being put in loco parentis and blamed me.) The younger kids refused to come live with my family, though the youngest did live with a neighbor's family for awhile.
At one point, the 15-year-old and I went to my brother's house, where his 18-year-old sister was staying. She was getting high with some friends. I did the polite thing by pretending not to notice; they did the polite thing by hurriedly hiding the evidence. It was fine.
But the 15-year-old ratted out his sister to my brother, who insisted that I give an anti-pot lecture to my niece. My brother, mind you, was fully aware of my history and my ongoing lack of shame regarding my history.
And I did it! Trying to keep faith with all sides, I leaned heavily on the legal aspects. She responded: "That won't be a problem for me. It's not like I'm Black or anything."
I don't remember my response, but I can guarantee it was lame and inadequate by any possible standard.
Sounds like someone's been watching Death Drug
Never tried edibles myself. I meant to smoke up last night but I didn't get around to it. Sad, I know. but yesterday in particular was rough (a usual amount of work, an unusual amount of parenting, and jet lag) and alcohol is easier to make time for than weed.
42: I give money regularly to the ACLU, and this is an issue they've worked on. It's not much, it's not like they're only or even mainly a marijuana advocacy group, but it's as much as I've done for any cause since the elections.
43: I'd want to double-check before actually trying some, but I think they did.
All my pot smoking has been in social situations, so there having been little to no socializing for the last year-plus, I haven't used it. I haven't had much alcohol either.
There is an effort underway here in MA to expunge old convictions and to take another look at people still serving time for pot. I don't know what progress this effort has made, though.
56: Wait. Three teenagers lose their mom, and the dad leaves for a year to make a boatload of money? That kid was self-medicating.
In another family of actions, here's a thread of gofundmes for people of color incarcerated for marijuana.
61: I hadn't thought about this in awhile -- and subsequent awfulness from them has pushed it out of my mind -- but these were four amazingly fucked up people. The pot-smoking daughter was the only one of them that ever had a chance of turning out okay, and she was a mess too. During this period, she attempted suicide by taking a few puffs on a cigarette. She wasn't allergic or anything, and she suffered no ill effects, but her brothers and father regarded this as a serious suicide attempt -- because she said it was -- and the brothers called an ambulance. When I met her at the hospital, she was in a place with no cell phone reception and she wrote a text message to her freshly ex boyfriend about the fact that she was hospitalized with a suicide attempt.
She asked me to take the phone outside to deliver the message and may God forgive me, I did it!
My brother later explained that the ex-boyfriend and his mother had the same therapist, and the mother and the therapist were insistent that the ex-boyfriend had an unhealthy relationship with my niece. I told my brother that I was involved in this situation solely to offer support for his kids, but that he and I nonetheless should acknowledge that the therapist had a point.
It was years later -- when he accused me of trying to kill our father and he cut off contact -- that I was finally rid of him, except when he hired a lawyer to make false claims against my father's estate (of which I was the executor).
Fortunately, I can share my interactions with these people on Unfogged, as I did here and have therefore I have not required additional therapy.
On the OP, there's an amazing group in Heebieville that lobbied hard for city council to pass a "cite and release" ordinance for small amounts of pot, compelling the police not to haul people down to the station and arrest them. (I can't say that I played much of a part, though.) Anyway, I just got a thing in my inbox noting the anniversary, and saying that it was the first of its kind in Texas, and Houston and Dallas have since followed suit.
So, progress.
suicide by taking a few puffs on a cigarette
The bonkers ballerina I dated between my marriages got a call one night from a hospital where someone who had been admitted for a suicide attempt had given her as the primary contact. She was baffled, as the woman (late 20s/early 30s) was just a casual acquaintance. Anyhow, her attempt was eating a tube of toothpaste, which would certainly have a better chance of causing acute problems than a cigarette, but still seems like any medicine cabinet should have several more obvious choices.
You're supposed to use a pea-sized amount, not the big streamer they have on the toothpaste commercial.
I don't have any marijuana, but I do have Ben & Jerry's Phish Food, which is pretty good.
I suppose I could just get a tub of fluff and some ice cream to recreate the recipe.
... but that he and I nonetheless should acknowledge that the therapist had a point.
You should probably have told the therapist. They live for being right.
At least that's the only reason I can see for listening to other people.
You are my sister the therapist and I claim my £5.00
63: That just sounds like some kind of therapist conflict of interest. There may be no such thing, but it sounds unwise to serve as an individual therapist to 2 people in the same family like that.
72: This was my brother's point! The only other thing I know about the therapist (and the mother) is this one piece of advice, and I promise you, it was sound. The young man himself was a good kid, and I was happy for him that he escaped being part of my family.
||
I don't know if he ever commented here but Lance Mannion, one of the most thoughtful of the old school bloggers, has passed.
https://twitter.com/LanceMannion/status/1385239400418787328
|>
Is it too late to discuss strain names? Directions different from sweets seem most interesting to me, Gorilla glue and diesel *
74: Indeed he did. http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_3038.html#013510
I had no idea Annie Parisse was on L&O. She played a memorable psychopathic CIA agent on "Person of Interest".
Lance Mannion, one of the most thoughtful of the old school bloggers, has passed
Aw, hell.
Sorry I ghosted my own post. Your various lot consumption stories are anthropologically fascinating to me, but obviously I have nothing to share in return. I have always suspected if I was going to have a problem it was going to be brownies.
3: Do you think people with the hope of one one day getting a clearance who, like Spike, illegally partake should avoid doing so?
22: Should we get behind him and not mock him as much as we might want to? I am inclined to be nicer to him than a lot of other people because I thought he had a genuine change of heart, but does he need to repent and acknowledg more fully? Or should we take the strategic road and build the alliance?
( 24 is probably the most tempting description of usage I have ever come across.)
48: I did a bit of oback office volunteering to support pushes to help people apply for expungement at Ella Baker a few years ago and am thinking of focusing my personal efforts here. I loathe that DA but like my own so thanks for that too!
I would like it if volunteering to help expungement drives was kind of as expected an activity as phone banking was last fall.
Political football, do you have more than one brother?
79
3: Do you think people with the hope of one one day getting a clearance who, like Spike, illegally partake should avoid doing so?
IANLB, but are you asking whether they should avoid partaking or whether they should avoid legalization advocacy?
I can't imagine the second thing would be a problem, unless the advocacy in question involves sitting next to famous potheads at donor dinners or something. Standard emailing/calling your Congressman through the usual constituent channels probably wouldn't even show up on background checks and almost definitely wouldn't set off alarms.
As for the first thing, in theory, yes. In practice, it would depend on how discreet they are and how much they partake. I can't find it right now but I've mentioned before how it made a background check of mine complicated. At the time I could honestly say I hadn't smoked pot in years and didn't plan to smoke it at any time in the future (the best laid plans...), but I didn't want to say I'd never do it again because never is a long time...
22: Should we get behind him and not mock him as much as we might want to? I am inclined to be nicer to him than a lot of other people because I thought he had a genuine change of heart, but does he need to repent and acknowledg more fully? Or should we take the strategic road and build the alliance?
On marijuana specifically, sure, why not, take the strategic road. I wouldn't start treating him as a "reasonable conservative" or whatever just because of his book or his new position on pot, though. He's still the same asshole he always was even though he's currently whining about his successors. For example, "Boehner said he had no regrets about his past position on the issue -- in particular, what it meant for the criminal justice system... "I don't have any regrets at all," Boehner said. "... The whole criminal justice part of this, frankly, it never crossed my mind."
79.last: My parents had eight kids; five boys. In this thread I'm talking about two different brothers.
Boehner said. "... The whole criminal justice part of this, frankly, it never crossed my mind."
You don't do a whole of thinking, do you, John?
82.2: You don't do a whole lot of proofreading, do you, peep?
And I mean your whole thoughts, not just your thoughthole.
I just remembered that Boehner first became famous as the Republican that cried a lot.
Woody Hayes just punched students to show emotion.
86: It occurs to me that many of the younger commenters, especially those from outside the US may not know about this great moment in the history of sports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEVJyf0ft3I
In my mind, he was beating up a Michigan player.
80: yeah, I was thinking of letters to cmCingress triggering background checks being deepened or urine tests being more frequent.
90: I can only speak from my own experience, what I've been told by someone else who went through it before me, and by reviewing the questionnaire form I filled out. They don't ask about legal domestic political activity. I did just ask Cassandane about correspondence with Congresspeople - she used to work for one. She said that different offices use several different databases to track correspondence and wasn't aware of looping the FBI in routinely, only if there are threats. I can't be sure they wouldn't find out about advocacy some other way, and wouldn't treat that as a bad thing, but overall it seems unlikely.
I'm sure that past pot use isn't a deal-breaker. I was honest about mine, albeit with a little spin, and got the job. I'm less sure about present pot use. I think advocacy about pot shouldn't be as worrisome as lying about it, or at least getting caught in a lie. If you can't tell the truth, then make sure that your story is straight with anyone you've used as a reference.
Late as always, but I just ran across this. Advocacy for release and record expungement for cannabis convictions.
https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/