Smoked dry

Pub date August 17, 2010

DRUGS Personally, I’ll smoke any dried-up old horseshit you hand me. I don’t care. Brown buds, flat buds, wet seedy buds, leaves, stems, branches, even stuff that’s already been smoked. You got it, let’s roll it.

But I’m also not stupid: pricey gorgeous buds are the best. The tight-purple supernugs have the best smell and the best taste; they are the ultimate gateway to the total marijuana experience. On the other hand, top-shelf Prada buds will fuck you up, financially and otherwise. A dab will definitely do you.

Except at my house. If there’s weed anywhere near me, I’ll smoke it right up. I don’t care how sacred the bud is, or even if I had to scalp a hippie just to pay for it. I am a high-energy, compulsive, scatterbrained cat-lady freak-out type who isn’t a major boozer, thank God. So I’m basically the perfect candidate for chain-spliffing. And I don’t have a problem with that, in case the church people were wondering. I need my weed and I need it to be abundant and cheap. That’s why being a legal stoner smoked me dry.

It took me about three months in the fully legit scene to finally realize that my zero cash flow was entirely the weed’s fault. Oh, of course, of course: weed doesn’t smoke people; people do. I know all that. But I’m telling you, sister––you need to get a load of this dispensary weed. It will blow your mind and bring you to your knees (and don’t bother getting up, honey, because you’ll have to blow a lot of stoners to make your rent at these rates). The buds at the pot clubs are so purple, so crystal-y and seductive that it’s not offensive in the least to admit they were asking for it — for me to smoke every last one of them, that is. Like Jeffrey Dahmer, I couldn’t help myself.

No, the pressure of constant availability was simply too much. I couldn’t deal with all that convenience. Three blocks away was just too close. Realistically, the pot club would need a moat filled with cannibals and a legion of snipers with perfect aim to keep a person like me away. And imagine — I am just one Roberta Seawhore among many. I was there every other day, talking weed sass with the staff, sampling this, sampling that, always walking out with at least two to three kinds of Cannabis Cup–level bud products and paraphernalia. Long gone were the silly days of yore when I’d have to go through lazy stoner drug mules, who would maybe show up six days later, if ever, with a few scraps of pot-related plant parts that crawled directly out of a witch’s humid crotch. Ga. How plebeian.

So who did I think I was with my fancy-ass buds, anyway — the pope? I’m the kind of broad who shops flip-flops on the Payless sale rack––and now I’m some ganja quality-control expert? Please. “But it’s medicine,” I reminded myself daily. “You legally need to smoke an enormous amount of papal-quality weed, Roberta. That’s why the nice pot-doctor lady prescribed you the EZ Vape2––because you are sick. You have insomnia, dude. Because of your very critical medical-marijuana-necessitating crazy-head condition, you not only deserve the city’s sweetest buds, you simply must have them, 24/7, even if it makes you homeless. Relax, marijuana is good for you.”

Here’s what I learned: Pot clubs are perfect for yuppies who posses a freakish sense of self-control. Everyone else is too low budge.

Which is exactly why, one foggy new-moon morning, I looked deep into my dark Persephone soul and mustered the courage to do the unthinkable: I set fire to my pot card. A few bittersweet tears of relief (mixed with intense pangs of regret and panic) elbowed their way out my left eye as I watched that pretty little pot card burn in the cat dish. Sigh. Heavy is my heart under the weight of the world. Then I rolled a fat one.

From that day forward, however, I resolved to only buy buds, or whatever you call those shriveled, turd-like things, from the renegade marijuana underground — from those brave women and men who boldly said “Never mind!” to the law and scammed PG&E for the noble purpose of getting us all hella stoned. In other words: “Hey, criminals — the bitch is back. Who do I have to blow for some free shake?”

But I’d be lying if I said the financial and self-control fallouts of having unlimited access to superbuds were the only reasons I destroyed my card: In all honesty, I was getting too fucked up, thanks to the edibles.

Indeed, one of the first things I noticed when I became legit is that smoking weed is so last year. Only losers and totally boring Deadheads still smoke it. Everybody else eats it, drinks it, or swallows it, which is where, if you are not careful, you may cross the line from harmless stoner dingbat to depressing drug addict nodding off. Just ask me.

At $15 bucks a pop, the Showstopper hash cookie had better be the shit. It turns out that it is, big time. Although nothing special to look at it, this buttery, chocolate-chip morsel is similar to a ‘ludey combination of MDMA, mushrooms, and weed — a pretty sublime experience for a pot cookie. At first, half a cookie did the trick. But soon I was eating a whole one and contemplating taking two in one afternoon.

Clearly, the point of edibles is to get you majorly fucked up, and I initially had no problem with that concept because, as you will remember, I am sick! But did I really need the $50 container of hash oil, too? You bet I did. As soon as the cute hipster stonerrista at the dispensary finished explaining the proper way to spread the dark, golden oil on my spliff papers, I was thinking, “Three blocks is too far away, man. I need to be lighting this shit up RIGHT NOW.”

I ate my $15 cookie on the way home, where I smeared the hash oil on a Zig Zag with a safety pin, sparked it up, and soon started nodding off on the couch. So early ’90s, right? And it was just noon on a Saturday, and all I had to do was laundry, which prompted me to wonder, “Why am I getting this high? What am I after here? Maybe I should just start using heroin or morphine. Or maybe heroin and morphine together. What the fuck is going on, Seawhore?”

Suddenly, those lightweight days of just huffing whatever crap landed my way seemed so sweet and innocent in contrast to my new life as a hardened doper. And didn’t I feel bad for abandoning my grower peeps? Yes, I did feel bad. And stupid, too. After all, Roberta Seawhore isn’t in this habitual pot-smoking biz to get completely out of her head. I like to think of marijuana as Roberta’s little helper––not as the k-hole heroin-bomb of the plant world.

Don’t get me wrong here, people. I am thankful the dispensaries exist, and the legalization of marijuana is a huge step forward for mankind. But if you are a Payless flip-flop shopper with no self-control like me, I suggest you think twice before getting legal. Can you handle the ease? Or are you better off chasing an unreliable drug mule throughout the Mish just to get an oregano fix? Only you know the answer to that. I wish you the best.