Okay, peeps. Real talk. First? Any employer who may or may not be reading this should regard this post as a work of fiction or satire or something. I have never smoked pot*. I hate the smell of it, it causes migraines**. These are theoreticals and opinions and satire. As far as I care to say.

I know I’ve mentioned marijuana before, but I can’t seem to find it to link to, so I’m just going to pretend I’ve never said anything and start from the beginning. So here’s the beginning:

I have hated pot ever since I was a wee thing. (seriously, as a kid I once cried so hard I threw up and was angry at my mother for WEEKS because she smoked a joint with our neighbor) The smell of it is one of the small handful of things that will nearly ALWAYS trigger a migraine, which doesn’t help at all, but I mostly have always had an intense dislike for it because of the people I know who smoke. Who…’partake’. And they’ve ruined that word for me. I hate that the people most upfront about habitually using it are usually complete idiots. That stoner laugh, the drawn out “….whut?” Most of the people I knew while growing up who smoked pot were complete idiots, and it was not until much later in life that I learned the difference between “person who smokes pot” and “pothead”. My sole experience with the drug was a second hand high I got at a Depeche Mode concert, and that may VERY well have been endorphin and adrenaline that come naturally with a rock concert. I came home hyper and hungry. I came to know some people who could keep their act together but still smoked, but I always thought a little less of them, if I’m being perfectly honest. OK sure you can hold down a job, but how much more could you accomplish if you DIDN’T light up every night when you got home?

I’m saying, I have some prejudices.

How could I not, really? My direct experience has always been pot = migraine. Stoners = idiots.*** Oh sure, people swore up and down that pot cured cancer and AIDS and ADD and whatever other letters you wanted to throw at it. You can make hemp everything! The hemp people always struck me as trying to find a loophole to legitimize their habits, NO SERIOUSLY IT’S NOT FOR GETTING HIGH MAN IT’S FOR PAPER AND CLOTHES AND SHIT and okay also getting high because you don’t see us making the same arguments for using bamboo which ALSO does all these things plus FOOD, and collecting signatures for THAT, but hey, whatever man. I could never take any of it seriously because all information about the medicinal benefits were nothing more than anecdotal. ..Because hey, it’s pretty hard to do a legit medical study on an illegal substance, turns out.

…Okay side rant, people, because I HONESTLY, SERIOUSLY believe that a major reason why no one ever took marijuana seriously as medicine? IS BECAUSE YOU NAME YOUR STRAINS DUMB ASS THINGS LIKE CAT PISS AND PEPDAWG AND ALASKAN THUNDERFUCK. There was no medical journal out there willing to take seriously a chemical composition and therapeutic benefit breakdown comparison between Purple Urkel and Ninja Turtle. If you want to be seen as a legitimate, scientific cure, KNOCK IT OFF WITH THE SATURDAY MORNING CARTOON NAMES. No doctor is going to prescribe “2 tablets of Purple Monkey Balls”. There is probably a way to scientifically, accurately track the medicinal benefits of each strain, but you stoners made it REALLY REALLY HARD for us to see it as science with names like Romulan Cotton Candy and Skyhigh. OKAY? Ok. Also, I only made up ONE of those names****.

Anyway.

I’ve a lifelong dislike for pot, is what I’m saying. It was recently legalized for recreational use here in Oregon, and I actually think that’s marvelous for a lot of reasons. I strongly feel, that no matter what my own opinion on smoking pot might be, anyone should have a chance to use a medicine if they thought it might help. There’s been awesome articles about the benefits people have found through its use; epileptic little girls finding seizure relief, and cancer patients using it for pain management, and ADHD people using it for focus, and PTSD victims using it to quell anxiety attacks, and I think that’s awesome. I am ALL ABOUT letting people do what they feel is doing them some good, so long as it hurts no one else. People have been telling me for years and years that pot would help with my headaches, and while I declined to take up their advice, I encouraged others to do so if they thought it helped. Just don’t smoke it around me, please. I agree that it’s practically harmless, it fixes a lot of things either for real or through the placebo effect, legalizing it recovers a lot of police time pursuing people who are not actually a threat, and brings in some tax money. I don’t believe it’s truly harmless, because while doing nothing but smoking pot may not be dangerous to your health overall, it’s harmful like overindulging in ANY addictive pastime, like video games. You’re not hurting anyone, but how long has it been since you checked in on your friends? They miss you. And you are REALLY BORING to people who don’t do #hobby because that’s all you ever talk about, be it pot or Fallout 4. But I freely admit I’d MUCH rather be on the road with someone driving stoned than drunk. You don’t get stoned and go on a bender that ends with seven dead. You don’t clonk a granny over the head and steal her purse to get money for a joint, no matter what Reefer Madness told you. You don’t get stoned out of your mind and then call your ex sobbing that you two should get back together, because, like..the phone is way over there, and you’d have to get up to get it, and then press all those buttons.

So I was honestly kind of irritated when I read a lot of studies about medical marijuana doing great things for people with ALS.

I asked Dr. Goslin about it, if it would help with anxiety and the twitches and the cramping and everything, and she said, yes, it probably would, would I like a medical marijuana card? I told her I’d go do my own research and pursue it if I felt it would do me good. I did a LOT of research. I talked to a few people who used it, and tried to open my mind to the idea. While I fail to see how something known to trigger migraines could possibly help my headaches, I was at least passingly interested in the possibilities. A year passed, the data I found was inconclusive, so I let it lie.

Then I had a Really Bad Stretch. So bad I can’t even tell you about all of it; but my heart was broken by a lot of awful events conspiring to happen at once, so much drama and heartache and confusion and I really, really just wanted it to go away and let me think straight. I was back in the same dark headspace I used to get in when I self harmed; not a desire to die or disappear, just desperately needing an outlet and a calm space to sort things out. Some time to think without panicking. A friend strongly advocated for marijuana as a stress relief, and gave me strong enough testimonials that I caved and applied for the card. Because I strongly feel, that no matter what my own opinion on smoking pot might be, anyone should have a chance to use a medicine if they thought it might help.

Including me.

The card took FOREVER to get to me and cost $200. An initiative passed to legalize recreational pot here in Oregon, and it was actually in place and active only a week or so after I finally got the thing. It’s still necessary, though, because ‘recreational’ only includes the flower and seeds. No oils, tinctures, edibles, or anything, and like I said, the smell gives me migraines so I’m not smoking it ever. But I was interested in the alternatives and dipped my toe in. The first thing I bought were chocolates, I bought them from a legal dispensary in Washington that was INCREDIBLY crowded so I didn’t get a lot of time to ask the questions I had. A lot of questions. Dosage, strains, methods, I mean I knew that different strains did different things and that ‘medibles’ (seriously, stoners. “medical edibles LOL U GUIZE SO CLEVAR”) reacted differently in your body than smoking, but I needed details. I didn’t get them that day, just bought the very expensive white chocolates, and slunk away.

I made sure I had a babysitter when I tried a chocolate with 10mg in it. It tasted bad and did nothing, which wasn’t terribly surprising since I was later told that 10mg of THC is NOTHING. Another day, I tried a vaporizer with a friend who smokes but had never used a vaporizer before, and it did nothing for either of us. I tried two chocolates, another day. Felt nothing but calm, but I’d also slept all day and then soaked forever in a hot bath with a Lush bath bomb so I was pretty freakin’ relaxed already. I saved the last two and tried them another time, when work had sent me into a rage, so I knew it would be a good test. I felt nothing but calm, which could have been the chocolates, but could have also just been the time that passed once I was home from work. I was still angry as hell, but just not as energetic about it – which tends to happen with the passage of time on its own. I dwell, but I don’t tend to stew when I’m angry. So that wasn’t a particularly good test, either.

The same friend that originally testified so strongly (later jokingly called my Pusher) brought me a small assortment of ‘medibles’ (ffs) to try. These gummy robots, hard candies, a pink lemonade, and some CBD caps. CBD is the more medically useful compound in pot. I don’t want to get high, just want the medical benefits, so low THC and high CBD is what I was after. The gummy robots were super cute and there was a little diagram on the back showing which part of the robot had what kind of dosage. I tried a small piece of one of the gummy robots (his head) one night and…yeah, I got high, I guess. I was decidedly altered. I wasn’t giggly or paranoid or anything, but aware that my perceptions were altered. I opened a wordpad document and started typing something in it but stopped bothering after awhile, but the gist of it was basically “now I know why stoners talk like they do, because there’s literally no way to describe these sensations without sounding like you’re on drugs.” Even later, sober, while trying to explain the sensation to a friend, it was TOTALLY STONER SPEAK. “There was something like a core of energy in my gut, and it pulsed out in waves, and I could feel the tingling of the waves as they radiated out and off of my body like electricity.” (Um. Yeah. Shut up, stoner.) I was cognizant enough to know that social contact would probably be a bad idea, especially writing the emails I was working on to introduce myself to clinical trial coordinators, so I banned myself from social media and instead just watched television for the rest of the night, knowing that it was NOT in 3D even though it sort of looked like it. “This is probably WAY more surreal right now than the actual show is. I’ll have to rewatch this tomorrow and compare.” (it was still weird, for the record, but not nearly as bizarre as I remembered, predictably.) My body was tingly and heavy and I did not enjoy the feeling. I had to walk to the kitchen to get something and had to concentrate really hard on not falling, which might be fun for some people, but I already have real life troubles with such things so I did not need a chemical to enhance that. I wound up sort of falling at one point, very gently, and it was really hard to get back up; and even chemically altered, I had the presence of mind to realize that this would be really, horribly upsetting if I let it be, and turn into a Terrible Time, so I concentrated really hard on not thinking about it at all and just pet the cats until I felt like I could stand up again. I went straight to bed and was glad to wake up and have it gone.

I tried a hard candy, another night, and it didn’t feel like it did anything except test my powers of endurance by forcing myself to suck on an awful hard candy for 20 minutes. I tried the other part of the robot another, different night, and got REALLY altered, and my twitches got so much worse it was like having a seizure. I found I could calm the jerking by thinking about it, practically mentally commanding myself to do so, but then they’d start right back up and there wasn’t anything for it but to sleep it off. Except I couldn’t sleep because I was spasming so hard I was kicking the cats off of me and reenacting the part of Ash from the Evil Dead. GIVE ME BACK MY HAAAAAAND. It wasn’t painful at all, just completely surreal to watch my limbs thrashing about of their own accord, and a little scary. I wound up taking a video of my hand twitching, mostly to see if that was really what was happening or I was maybe just imagining things. Turns out I wasn’t. I can’t move my hand that fast if I wanted to, anymore. Maybe not even before they started losing their strength; it was seriously bizarre. But, I had another bad day and another piece of robot, so I tried it one more time and got REALLY altered and REALLY REALLY sick. I wound up in bed, in the dark, trying to be quiet and calm. I wasn’t freaking out or anything at all, I was just seriously overstimulated, and every sharp noise was a weird synaesthetic flash of light in my brain, and eventually I just barfed it all up and felt a lot better and went to sleep.

So, fuck those little robots.

Also? Fuck the taste of pot. SO GROSS. There is no way to make anything with pot in it that doesn’t taste like pot, and pot tastes AWFUL. Bleah. The pink lemonade tastes like acid and death and pot. The hard candies taste like artificial raspberry and sweet and pot and death. -15/10 DID NOT ENJOY. WILL NEVER ENJOY. Shelf that with beer and wine as Things I Do Not Like and Don’t Understand Why People Do This To Themselves On Purpose.

Bad days continued, and while I was pretty sure I hated pot forever still, I hadn’t tried any concentrates and had no idea what strains I’d actually tried so far. I knew there were LOTS of options. I finally went to a recommended dispensary with a name that was ..tolerable.

…Okay side rant number two. Dispensaries: STOP WITH THE PUN NAMES. “CannaBliss”. “Grin Reefer.” “ReLeaf”. “Urban Farmacy”. OK YES WE GET IT YOU SELL POT. IT IS LEGAL. You’re NOT CLEVER. You are making it HARDER TO TAKE THIS SHIT SERIOUSLY. I feel dumber just walking in. Again, like with the strain names, if you want to be taken seriously as medicine, maybe calling your dispensary “Fifty Shades of Green” is not the road to credibility. It drives me NUTS because only stoners think this is funny – HURR HURR “420 Collective” IS REALLY CLEVER GUISE. Only SLIGHTLY less irritating are the ones that take some aspect of pot, open a thesaurus and choose a name. “Above”. “Ascend.” “Elevated”. “Lift”. GET IT CAUSE IT’S ANOTHER WORD FOR HIGH. LIKE HOW YOU GET HIGH WHEN YOU SMOKE POT. (I can’t stand it when beauty salons do it either, for the record. “Curl up and Dye” was funny the first time I saw it, but how many “A Cut Above”s do we need, or “Hairway to Heaven”. GET OUT.) Fine, name your store something that clues people in to the nature of your business. “Holistic Remedies”. “Green Gardens”. So far “Flora” and “Bloom” are the ones I’ve found the least irritating. But really, as long as you put “Dispensary” in there, people will get it. You don’t see proper doctor clinics with names like “A Cut Above Surgery” or “Meds4U”. There is a reason for this. You are the reason no one is taking marijuana seriously as medicine. Stop it.

okay.

So I got to this recommended place, was soothed by the totally actually clinical interior, like a doctor’s waiting room, and approached the reception counter. I explained what I was after and why. Something for anxiety, maybe, but primarily an anti-seizure/relaxant, I wasn’t looking to get high. He was extremely knowledgeable, and suggested several particular strains. I told him what I’d tried, and what they did, and that I couldn’t smoke and why. He said it was no problem, they have several vaporizers possible, but the higher heat, the better the effect, but the more smell. He explained how oils work and what the naming convention was for some of the things. The oils come in a syringe, “Which sounds scary,” he told me, “but the oils are so sticky it’s really the best delivery method.”

And the whole time he’s talking and writing things down for me on this post-it note, I’m thinking, “Great! Are you gonna maybe SELL me anything?”

I told him about my experiences with medibles (guhhhhhhh), explained I wasn’t looking to get high but I wasn’t adverse to feeling some effects if the thing did good. He used the word ‘intoxicated’ instead of ‘high’ which I liked. He explained, continuing to write on the Post-It, that I would want higher CBD and low THC to avoid the intoxicating effect. I asked questions about what the oils’ availability and such was, hint hint, do you have this in stock right now? And he was oblivious to the subtlety until I finally asked, “Do you have any of this that I can actually LOOK at?”

“..Oh! Do you have a card?”

…That maybe should have been a first question, boyo. Yes, I did! He took my patient ID number, matched my card with my ID, and buzzed me into the back. The back was actually just a storefront, and not little offices at all. I have no idea why there are three doors. He pointed out the syringes, and suggested that I pipe out little dots on a piece of parchment and freeze them, and when I need a dose, just peel one off and take it like a pill. But he put the syringe back in the case. He walked over to the tinctures and pulled one out, a bottle of a strain called Harlequin. It is a glycerin base, so it will be sweet, he said, and I said, “OK I will try that” before he could put it back. And then I kind of looked around, saw the display for the “sour bhotz” and said, “Them robots, man.” He nodded and showed that the display was almost empty. “Obviously they’re very popular,” confirming that people actually do enjoy that feeling. Mystifying. They had all kinds of other medibles (whhhhhyyy) that I wouldn’t have minded looking over, but he didn’t seem inclined to show or sell. So in the end all I bought was the tincture, which was super gross and did nothing. Pot tastes like barf, so let’s make that barf SUPER SWEET and then have you hold it under your tongue for a few seconds before swallowing it okay? To make sure it’s completely warmed up and the oil spreads alllll over your mouth and makes everything taste gross for the next ten minutes and assure that you hate your life if you burp.

I wound up going back and buying a vaporizer (it is a vaporizer. It is not a vape. OH MY GOD YOU SOUND SO STUPID WHEN YOU SAY THAT. ‘Vapin!’ ‘I’m VAPIN! LOOKIT ME WITH MY VAPE’ HURR DE DURR) pen and a small assortment of different strain concentrates from a MUCH more helpful and sales-savvy assistant. No less knowledgeable and willing to educate, but much more willing to actually, you know, let me BUY something. I explained up front that I was looking to get an assortment of things to try and would come back for more of the thing that worked. I got one for anxiety, one for focus, and one that was the highest CBD concentration. I tried them all, and they stink both figuratively and literally (“It’s harmless, it’s just water vapor.” “If it were just water vapor it would be odorless. It is not. IT STINKS LIKE POT AND THAT IS HARMING ME.”). They don’t alter me or affect me in the same way as the stupid robots, which is good. But they don’t actually do much at all. They just taste bad and make me cough and then dry out my mouth really bad.

And to top it off? It doesn’t help anything. I don’t get calm, I get incapable of thought, which is frustrating. I’d actually rather be sad than frustrated, any day, and I’ll take crying because I feel powerless over getting angry because I literally can not remember the thing I was just trying to do. I don’t enjoy getting ‘high’ and I don’t see any benefit for the physical effects I’m trying to combat, so there really isn’t a point to it for me. I gave it several good tries, but pot is definitely Not For Me. I don’t see the appeal in how it makes you feel. I like not thinking about stressful things, but I don’t like being unable to think about anything at all. I don’t like having a 5 second attention span. It didn’t calm, it didn’t quiet, it just made it really hard to concentrate and impossible to do more than one thing at a time, like walk, which I already have enough problems with. I don’t enjoy feeling like my reactions are on a time delay and my density has increased a hundredfold. The muscle twitching either stays the same or strangely got so much worse. The cramping and sleeplessness and headaches are all still there.

So medical marijuana gets a big ol’ F. More power to you if it works out for you and your symptoms, I completely support you. Even if you just want to get high and watch cartoons, I support that, too, and I’m really trying hard to work on that whole ‘pot smokers are losers’ mindset from my childhood, I promise. Just don’t smoke it around me, please, because it stinks.

*This is actually technically absolutely true and did not need a qualifying statement.

***Skyhigh, the LEAST RIDICULOUS ONE. Think about that, stoners. A MADE UP NAME WAS LESS SILLY.