Wisdom, dispensed

Thoughts from on high.

It was Friday evening after work and the place was hopping: a new business on Avenue of the Cities, where multiple people stood in line looking up at a digital menu, or queued up to collect their online orders. As I stood nervously in the entryway, unsure what to do, I immediately thought, oh, if my teenage self could see me now: a middle-aged woman making her first foray into a dispensary to legally purchase pot — sorry, cannabis — in search not of a good time, but help with getting up out of a chair without wincing.

dispensary stock photo, not the real deal in Moline

Once I took my place in line, it was hard not to stare in shock when I noticed at least two, if not three, middle aged women who, based upon their attire, hair, and general demeanor looked like they could’ve been school teachers just getting done with work for the week. (So… er… looked like me.) What a trip it was, walking into a place like that, after the years of deep shame involved in being even the most casual level of stoner. (Or even “giggly goofball in a dorm room,” who only ever puffed on friends’ supply, never actually buying.)

During the notorious “Just Say No” era of my childhood, it sometimes seemed like my classmates and I spent more time in the school gym for anti-drug assemblies than we did in the classroom on actual curriculum. I may not be able to name more than a handful of U.S. presidents, remember how to convert a fraction, or tell you where Sri Lanka is located, but damn if I didn’t get the message that marijuana is a gateway drug.

And we received constant warnings even in our forms of entertainment. Instead of being on Instagram or Minecraft or Roblox, we watched melodramatic After School Specials. Our favorite sitcoms had “Very Special Episodes” that were supposed to be watched with a parent. One puff on a joint, we learned, is your first step on a slippery slope to becoming a cokehead in no time flat (or jumping out a window high on PCP).

As I took in my surroundings, I chatted with a young couple in front of me, who appeared to be in their early 20s.

“My grandparents moved to Colorado a long time ago just because of the fact that weed was legal there,” the young woman told me. “Now they grow it, and everything.”

“Wow!” I said. “Hippies?

“Major hippies.”

My parents are Baby Boomers, but were decidedly not hippies. I told her that in the time and place where I grew up, if you ever smoked weed, you had to hide the fact and lie about it, which, if you were a good girl like me, made you feel really bad.

As we chatted, the young man informed me that in addition to the recently opened dispensary we were standing in, there’s another newer one nearby, located next to the QC Family Entertainment Center. (Like, a place where you take your kids!)

Even though pot has been legal in my area since 2020, (meaning in Illinois, just over the river from my apartment in Iowa), I’d never considered buying any. I’d chatted with a few friends who live in weed-legal states, friends who, like me, are respectable law abiding citizens — but who, during their high school or college days, sometimes did inhale — about their experience with taking gummies. I learned they use them every now and then to chill, on a weekend, when they’re watching a movie.

It couldn’t have sounded more harmless, but I was a little leery about giving it a try because, as I finally realized in my older teens or early twenties, I am among the .000001 percent of human beings who weed does not relax.

“So like… does your mind ever race?” I asked one of these friends a few years ago.

“No, because the thing is, now you can control exactly what you’re getting, so you can pick the exact strain for the type you want. For how you want to feel.”

In other words: this is not your 1990s ditch weed.

As she further educated me, I began to feel hopeful that maybe instead of taking a pill promoted by a pharmaceutical company, there could be something derived from nature that could help me.

Still, I stayed away, because I worried about starting a habit. Several years ago, due to a number of factors, I decided to embark on the self-improvement project of trying to drink a lot less. I ended up being really successful detaching from alcohol, so why allow myself to possibly let another dependency creep in?

But it wasn’t the need for an emotional crutch that sent me in search of a numbing agent…I take care of that with binging salty carbs, thank you very much! What finally led me to a dispensary was the desire to relieve a different kind of ache, one that stems from a problem documented by an MRI. Again, I flash back to my teens, and how scandalous it was (in my environment) for anyone to admit they listened to (or championed) Pink Floyd or Snoop Dogg or Cypress Hill. I wish I could come up with a Weird Al take on one of their songs, with lyrics about wanting to get high not to “free your mind,” but for “age-related deterioration of the L4-L5.”

I’ve tried anything and everything over the last several years to try to relieve lower back pain, from ice packs and heating pads, massage, yoga stretches, and chiropractor visits, to sitting directly in front of the jets in the hot tub at the Y, to lying in a float tank, to acupuncture. I’ve finally resigned myself to the fact that this pain is probably here to stay. But recently, since I started a desk job, (sitting all day rather than hyperactively pacing and zooming around a classroom, as I had been), the pain has become torturous.

When it was finally my turn to get up to the counter to talk to a “budtender,” I recalled the things my friends have shared, and explained that I’d like to try something that could just give me a nice “body buzz” but not get me high. And that I’m also open to something that could potentially calm (not worsen) anxiety. I didn’t tell him about how, late in my occasional-pot-consuming career, I’d somehow transitioned from a person who could experience a hysterically fun high to a why is everyone staring at me? high.

The guy, who had a partially shaved head and a strip of long hair in the middle, listened carefully. The whole time we spoke, he appeared to be researching something in his computer that got more and more specific to my needs, as if helping me book a seat on a flight. After explaining in detail why he was choosing his recommendations, he disappeared behind a door. He returned a few minutes later with two small packages: a zippered purple pouch that looked like it might contain cough drops (the sugar free and organic kind, of course), and a small pastel box, which, if I weren’t paying attention, I might assume contained something like pressed powder or bronzer. (Thankfully, though, it wasn’t pink and glittery and labeled “Skinny Girl Weed.”)

“Bits” of “elderberry wellness” (left). Gummies from pastel box (right), still un-tried.

A display on your grandma’s table —NOT! Photo by Plants for Persephone

He explained the difference between the contents of the two packages (which had to do with the ratio of THC to CBD), and if I was understanding him correctly, I’d have to be more careful with the stuff in the pastel box. He gave me some careful instructions about cutting the gummies into smaller pieces and “microdosing.”

“Just remember,” he said as he handed me my little brown shopping bag, “two hours. If you take it and it’s not what you’re wanting to experience, you’ll just have to wait it out.”

This sent a small shiver down my spine as I remembered the last few times I smoked, more than 20 years ago: the horribly uncomfortable mind-racing and wishing for it to wear off.

But nah! I reminded myself. I’m an adult now! I’m getting this from a legal weed dispensary, not by hanging out with boys smoking skunk weed! It’s only 5 freakin’ milligrams!

I walked out feeling proud of myself for trying this wild, brave, adventurous experience. And then, like I do on 99 percent of all Friday nights, I promptly went home and put on my pajamas.

I decided to start with the purple package, the one that purports to contain elderberry for “wellness.” I read the back of the package carefully, and noted the mention, again, of two hours: it could take that long to kick in. Since my plans involved eating dinner and watching Hulu, that would be quite alright with me.

I pulled out one of the gummies, an amber triangle that had the consistency of the squishy sugar-coated gumdrops your grandma kept in a glass bowl in her living room. I chewed it up, then kicked back to read for a little bit, ate dinner, checked Facebook. I texted my friend to tell her I was finally giving gummies a go.

Then, around 6:30 or 7, I settled in to watch the finale of Season 5 of Fargo, something I’d been looking forward to, and had in fact used self-discipline to hold off on watching, so I could “make it a special Friday-night thing.” (And no, in case you’re wondering, I don’t have a cat. And I’m 46, not 86. But this is my life.)

I was nearing the end of the episode when, suddenly, I couldn’t follow the conversation between Dorothy, Wayne and Oola Monk. I ran it back a few seconds. But as I watched the scene again, their conversation seemed to be taking forever, even though I logically knew it was only a few lines of dialogue.

There was no slow softening or creep-up.

There was no moment of sighing, putting my feet up and going, “ahh, this is a pleasant arrival of change.” It was just: boom. “Holy crap, I’m high.”

I was definitely not imagining it. The suddenness of it, and the realization of how hard it was hitting me, made me laugh out loud.

But I could also, already, feel a small panic starting to set in. I noticed a too-warm, claustrophobic feeling in my mouth, throat, and upper chest that was instantly familiar, (but weird, considering that there were no joints or one-hitters involved this time). It made me nervous to not be able to follow the dialogue. I decided to turn it off, so I could fully enjoy the finale later.

I took a few deep breaths, telling myself, “This is supposed to be enjoyable. You’re okay. You’re not going to get all crazy and anxious, because you know now that you can control your own brain with deep breaths. It’s gonna be okay.” And that seemed to help.

But, my God, I thought to myself: some people go around like this outside of the house? Functioning and talking to people? They enjoy this feeling?

I decided that there was nothing I could really do that I would enjoy while in this state. So I decided to go lay down and try to relax into the doing-nothing-ness, and maybe even fall asleep. I picked up my phone and noticed it was barely past 8 p.m.

I had a text from my friend: “How’s it going so far?”

“OMG I’m high!” I tried to type, but it came out as “And ing in high!” (although I just as easily could’ve fumbled-fingered that while sober). “On 5 mg!” I wrote. “Should’ve bit it in half!”

I used a laughing emoji, but in truth it made me uncomfortable that I had to concentrate hard to understand her text and send my reply, which again seemed to take for eh ver.

“Full report tomorrow!” she wrote back.

In the sober light of the next day as I write this, I see that I should’ve realized 5 mg — even of the supposedly less potent kind in the purple package—would be too much for me.

I mean, I’m a “highly sensitive person.” Before I took the quiz and read books about what that means, I used to think it was just a nice euphemism for “hyperemotional bawl baby,” (which…. I definitely am). But it really refers to the entire nervous system. It means that when I suffer the experience of a muffler-less car passing by, or a motorcycle revving, it rattles the living hell out of me, to the point that I’ll shake my fist at the driver, my brow furrowed a la Mr. Burns, and yell “Curses!” Recently I decided to experiment with cutting my one daily cup of coffee with half decaf, and I’ve noticed that on the rare day I allow myself a fully caffeinated cup, it affects my heartbeat.

Keep in mind, I’m a solid, midwestern, “corn fed” (what a horrible phrase) woman, not some waifish delicate flower.

But man. One gummy was enough to send me floating up to the roof.

About that, though: the floating. As I lay there in bed, I began to realize that, despite the discomfort with being mentally high, my body felt amazing. Or, more to the point, I could not feel my body at all. Back pain? What is this back that you speak of?

As I tried to enjoy the floaty feeling in my body, I don’t know if what came next was actually dozing off into sleep, or being bodily relaxed in a way that felt like sleep — but my mind was still going the whole time.

Eventually I did go to sleep, and when I woke up this morning, I felt just fine, minus the return of pain in my achin’ back.

Later that day, when I updated my friend, she laughed and said her husband had decreed 5 mg as “a lot” for someone who hadn’t partook in 20 years. I told her that if I try a selection from the pastel box, I’ll cut it into fourths. Or hell: eighths? (Not what “an eighth” used to mean in the old days!)

Also, we agreed that in our 90s adolescence, neither one of us had ever experienced a bodily sensation with the (potential) ditch weed. So this whole experience of getting high on pot — excuse me, ingesting a cannabis edible— is new in more ways than one.

Unfortunately, if I end up deciding I don’t like the “head” high that comes with the wonderfully floaty body, I now have a rather expensive stash in the cabinet¹ that I don’t know what to do with. (Can you post pot on Facebook Marketplace? “Legal cannabis in gummy form. Minor flaws, see photo. NO HOLDS.”)

I guess I could hang on to this stash and give it to my far-less-sensitive friend — who, by the way, can not only tolerate the entire five em-gees, but sometimes even has a glass of wine with her gummy. Damn!

1. Oh sorry, officer, did I say that I currently possess gummies in my kitchen cabinet, in my apartment where I live in Iowa? haha Silly me — what I meant to say was that after I visited the dispensary across the bridge in Illinois, I immediately ingested the entire contents of both packages! So yep, nothing to see here, all gone!