Test Case: I Got High On Pot For The First (And Almost Certainly Last) Time This Past Weekend… In My Parents’ Basement

I don’t do drugs. I was the kid in fifth grade who won the D.A.R.E. essay contest. I took that honor seriously. I mean, I was rewarded with a stuffed bear wearing a D.A.R.E. T-shirt. Drugs are illegal. I don’t do illegal stuff. Plus, alcohol is nice.

So for my entire life, whenever there was marijuana in my presence, I have been the square kid turning down the joint or the bong hit or whatever it is you potheads do. I never saw anything wrong with the marijuana users of the world. I just wasn’t interested in becoming one of them.

But in November 2012, voters in my state approved the use of recreational marijuana. (Sure, it’s still a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law. But that hasn’t stopped state-regulated retailers, producers and processors from raking in more than $1 billion in sales, and Washington from collecting nearly $300 million in cannabis tax revenue, since Initiative 502 passed).

You might think the state legalization of marijuana would have convinced me to put the wine glass down and introduce myself to Mary Jane. Indeed, her cultural influence is legendary. Rappers have dedicated entire albums to singing her praises. B movies have gained cult followings due to her ability to make audiences giggle at their juvenile dialogue. But years passed, and she and I remained strangers.

Then recently I thought about the fact that they sell cookies with marijuana in them. Cookies seemed way less threatening than a marijuana cigarette, since I am a child of the 80s and know that cigarettes kill you and lots of cowboys who used to look cool smoking them. Maybe it was time to shave a corner off my square image with a pot-laced baked good.

I took my best friend, Brenna, with me to Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop in Seattle’s Central District. (Brenna couldn’t participate in the edibles experiment due to drug testing at her work, which prohibits even tobacco use. But I appreciated her support.) Uncle Ike’s is the highest-grossing marijuana retailer in Washington State. The place was lit up and decked out like a candy shop that you needed an I.D. to enter. They had a “menu” for neophytes as long and detailed as the Bible. We had to keep letting people pass us in line to figure out what to buy. Eventually I settled on some candy made by a company called Phat Panda—who could resist with that name?—and some other sweets. I had to pay with cash—federal law technically prohibits banks and credit unions from taking weed money, which makes it difficult or impossible for weed shops to accept cards.

Our “budtender” sensed our rookie giddiness to the extent that he misidentified us as marijuana tourists. He asked us where we were visiting from. The answer: “Oh, from here.” (Specifically, from 3.1 miles away.) As we left the store, I noted that the line had grown to Disneyland-length proportions. Seemed like a lot of waiting without a rollercoaster at the end.

I confess a reluctance to actually consume my purchases. I had three fears: First, that I would fail to get sufficiently high and have nothing to write about; second, that my anxiety-ridden, Type-A soul would finally learn to unwind due to the chilling-out power of marijuana, which I had foolishly denied myself for a lifetime; and third, that I would die of marijuana poisoning and shame from failing Officer Thompson, my D.A.R.E. instructor.

I put off my experiment until the Saturday night before my looming column deadline. The problem: After a day at the beach in Chelan, I was spending the night at my parents’ house in Wenatchee. That’s right: I was going to get high on pot for the first time in my dad and stepmom’s basement. I anointed my sister, an emergency room doctor visiting from Hawaii, to be my “spiritual advisor.” I ate half a snickerdoodle before joining my family in the hot tub, which seemed like an appropriate place to get high. The cookie tasted like something stale and slightly off you would find in the back of your pantry but would still eat due to its intrinsic cookie nature.

But I still felt nothing after going upstairs and eating chips and guacamole with my sister while reading a furniture catalog almost two hours later. Frustrated, I finished the rest of the cookie. (Cue foreboding music.)

Disappointed by my enduring mental and physical acuity, we went back downstairs and hit up my parents’ Amazon Prime TV options. We started watching the pilot for the show “Suits,” which is one of those lawyer shows where everything is really exciting and everyone is smart and says clever or deeply meaningful things. Usually during these shows I like to kindly educate my fellow program-watchers about all the ways the show inaccurately depicts the typically mundane life of an attorney. I knew the pot had kicked in once I lost the energy to state for the record that no interviewing law firm with a waiting room full of Harvard grads would ever hire a kid without a law degree due to his purported “photographic memory.” By that point, gravity had started sucking me into the couch, and the air had been replaced by molasses.

I then decided that this experiment was a big mistake and elected to go to bed. However, that was before I realized how insurmountable the task of turning of the television turned out to be. The remote had both a “Power” and “On/Off” button, neither of which turned off the sound. My sister averted crisis by figuring out that I was using the wrong remote. Then, while getting ready in the bathroom, I looked down at the floor and observed that the veiny patterns in the stone tiles depicted faces. No matter where I shifted my gaze: Another face. I closed my eyes and the faces multiplied, one on top of the other, in black and white. Had I finally, after decades, unlocked my creative potential though magical world of cannabis? Nope: I was just high.

At some point in the night I woke up. I was dizzy, and the webbing between my fingers was curiously sweaty. I was also thirsty as a hungover camel. My walk to the bathroom in the dark for a drink was the most difficult journey of my life. I knew that the guest-room door handle was only a few feet away, but getting there apparently involved crossing an endless black abyss. I woke up my sister to notify her that I not going to survive the night, and she soothed me with a story about how once a bunch of kids came into her emergency room sick as dogs after unknowingly eating their dad’s batch of pot brownies.

The next morning I woke up with a feeling of relief, like I had survived a terrible storm. We got up early to go hiking, and I had a surprising amount of energy for someone who spent the night in bed creating a mental list of everything I had ever worried about and could potentially ever worry about. My mouth also felt really dry and tasted like scorched popcorn.

Several of my “cool” friends informed me after my experiment that consuming edibles is a far harder way to regulate your THC intake than smoking. It is also a risky move to get stoned alone, since, per my marijuana-veteran boyfriend, it means that you are stuck “alone in your head.” (Thanks for the input, Monday-morning quarterbacks.) Even with access to a couch, a TV, and a basement belonging to my parents, I apparently can’t even get high properly.

At this point I am so disturbed that a tiny baked good could make me feel anything other than absolutely wonderful that no amount of assurances could convince me to stop fearing the reefer. So I am going to side with Officer Thompson and continue saying no to drugs. All my future cookie purchases will be coming from the Girl Scouts from here on out.

---

Allison Peryea is a shareholder attorney at Leahy Fjelstad Peryea, a boutique law firm in downtown Seattle that primarily serves community association clients. Her practice focuses on covenant enforcement and dispute resolution. She is a longtime humor writer with a background in journalism and cat ownership. You can reach her by email at [email protected].