hi!

Of course, I smoked a lot of dope as an undergrad.   I was so eager to join the stoned crowd in Ann Arbor, I took up smoking (Pall Malls) my last summer in Vicksburg – where weed was still scarce-just to get my lungs in shape.  I put away those smokes when I arrived in Ann Arbor where there was plenty of the real thing.  I know the male brain is not fully developed till age 25, but I can’t see as I did any harm.  My academic career speaks for itself.  Into grad school and beyond, I cooled it except for the occasional toke at a party.  Jump ahead to the early 90s on a visit to my little brother-in-law in California – 10 years my junior but a true tied-dyed neo-hippie-and had one of his joints.  He warned me that the THC content of dope these days is way higher than back in mine.  Indeed, I was one toke over pretty quickly but of course finished the joint.  They couldn’t get me off the couch and I missed joining them for their little beach walk that night.  An experience, for sure, but not one I cared to repeat.

That was it until the next century.  I trashed my brachial plexus (tangle of nerves up by the shoulder that makes the arm go) in a bike accident December ’14.  My arm was pretty useless for about 6 months but I adapted and didn’t miss a day of work.  The nerve pain was constant, dampened some by an anti-seizure medication I had to take in such large quantities it made me move like I had Parkinson’s. 

The doors of the several local pot shops were open to me now.  Kid in a candy store?  Well, the choices were overwhelming.  The buzz was pleasant and familiar, but didn’t do much for the pain, other than make me care less about it.  I learned I didn’t really care for smoking, even if buzz onset was much quicker than with edibles.  I eventually took all my leaf and turned it into a caramel edible in my Magical Butter machine (1).  My damaged brachial plexus stopped sending out bad messages by the end of 2015, leaving me with quite a stash.  My card became obsolete in November 2018 when Michigan voters passed the Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act, allowing anyone age 21 or older to possess up to 2.5 ounces of weed (2).

Frankly, I gave little thought to my stash until April 2019 when I learned I’d be retiring the coming June.   What would I do with all that idle time?   I do declare, there were times I was so lonesome I took some comfort there.  Zoning out with some of my favorite music from back in the day was pretty nice.  But a funny thing happened with my retirement.  With my big brain no longer tied to the job, plenty of uncommitted time, and a host of things I never had time to tend to or even think about begged for attention.  So much fun stuff was going down I didn’t want to zone out and miss anything.  So my stash stayed on the shelf.

All that stimulation tickled my bipolar gene a bit.  Ben Franklin – ”There’ll be sleeping enough in the grave” – took over.  I got by o.k. on my 4 hours, and Kathy liked how nice the house looked.  But the past several months, too many 3 AM awakenings got me searching for help.  One thing that kept me away from that stash was that back when I was doing it more regularly, it often interfered with my sleep.  Surprisingly, that didn’t happen when I began to take a nibble here and there.  Sleep came, blessedly, and zoning out was just a matter of dosing.  I paid attention to my labels, and indeed “indica” was most sedating with ”sativa” most stimulating and “hybrid” in between.  I finally used up my entire stash, so off to the pot shop I went.  They’re on every corner here in Tree Town.  “Cloud Cannabis” (3) is right next to our favorite party store, 3 blocks away.  How convenient!  It’s all very clean and clinical.  I laid in some edibles, and they’ve worked fine.  But I was expecting sticker shock, and got the opposite.  Now I don’t think they beat the early 70s going rate of $15/lid, but, people, DOPE IS CHEAP!  I bought 8 bags of 10 gummies each for a total of $20 plus tax.  Each gummie has 10 mg THC and for me 50 mg gets a roaring buzz going.  Now do the math on that.  That’s $2.50/bag, or $1.25 for that 50 mg dose.  A buck and a quarter!  A 6 pack of a nice IPA runs about $15, and it takes about 4 of those to get me a nice buzz going.  That’s 10 bucks!  Some of you out there with a history will snigger that I’ve neglected to account for all the snacks that THC is going to have me craving.  Somehow, that’s not one of the effects I get.  My wife is just the opposite.  The munchies she gets are so overwhelming she stays far away from the magical herb.  But my favorite intoxicant has the calories built in.  A 12 oz can of a typical 7% IPA has 200-300 calories.  So my friendly beer buzz comes with close to 1,000 calories.  We all carry some COVID souvenirs, and my main one is this gut, helped along by a knee that wouldn’t let me walk for exercise for a year.  While that gut’s shrinking slowly, there’s still 40 pounds there I don’t need.  At 3500 calories/pound of fat, that’s 140,000 calories to be burned.  Turn off 140 beer nights, and you see how this works.  If I start the program now, I’ll be slim by my birthday (September 4).  Maybe Sly will come along and take me higher (4). Boom lacka lacka lacka.

References

1. Magical.  https://magicalbutter.com

2. Cloud.  Ann Arbor Recreational Cannabis Dispensary. https://cloudcannabis.com/dispensaries/mi/ann-arbor/

3. Michigan Marijuana Regulatory Agency.  Marijuana in Micihgan: What You Need to Know.  https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/cra/consumer-connection/2021-lara-child-marijuana-brochure-APPROVED.pdf?rev=8a7de5aa78394b5d932b0bed20b4e20a

4. Sly & The Family Stone – I Want to Take You Higher (Official Audio).  YouTube https://youtu.be/BqWQzOzK3kw?si=jAS-uaSEkKxrlV5v