I was either 18 or 19-years-old the first time I got high in the exterior side staircase of my former elementary school. I remember having my back to the street, crouched over as I took the joint to my lips and corrupted my simple, childhood memories in a purple haze.
I was never a big pot user to begin with, so everytime I crossed the intersection of Cannabis Ave and Mary Jane Way I completely blacked out or felt nothing at all. There was no description or warning, no way for me to know how much or how little I was ingesting. I was Alice in Wonderland: either I was going to get really big, or really small. I never knew.
I had some really bad experiences too. So bad that I thought the world was rushing past me. It scared me so much that my partner took pleasure in making me think I was running through a forest.
Some time last year, one of my closest friends came to me with the news that she struggled with depression and anxiety. She had started going to therapy and was prescribed a series of medications. But the medications weren’t working for her. She still had issues with anxiety.
A friend of hers recommended cannabis to help with her anxiety, so one afternoon we headed out to a gated clinic in downtown San Francisco. It felt like a doctor’s office, with a windowed cubicle for patients to stand at and fifteen or so chairs lined against the walls. There were at least two doors down the hallway past the cubicle that I could see.
My friend went to the front desk and came back with a series of papers that took maybe ten minutes to fill out. She gave the papers to the woman behind the glass then sat down and waited to be called back up. She was instructed to enter one of the doors in the hallway.
In less than ten minutes she was out again. One of the women at the desk snapped her picture and a few minutes later she walked out with a legal medical marijuana card. I was spellbound.
My friend explained that after she went into the room a doctor appeared on a television screen and asked her a couple questions about her and if she suffered from anything that would require the use of medical cannabis.
In the depths of my mind, I had assumed there were hoops to jump. Much like my HMO, or EDD, or EBT, I expected the hoops to be made of fire.
“That… was easy,” I said when we walked out of the building.
Prior to my experience with legal cannabis, I got high courtesy of other people. Socially, it was easier to get high when someone else offered a hit off their joint, or sample a pot brownie. But as I said, my issue with that was that I would be ingesting these drugs without knowing what it was. And the results were varying. I would have terrible highs where I was miserable or thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was ready to give up on marijuana all together.
But then, upon realizing how easy it was to get a cannabis card, I decided to give it one last shot. I signed up online, scheduled an online chat with a doctor and within the span of five minutes, I was approved. My card arrived in the mail within three days of my interview.
I’m a timid person, so going to a dispensary made me nervous. I didn’t know what to expect or what to do. But the staff was helpful and nice. Over time, I felt much more comfortable wandering around the story looking at the different products. But the best thing for me during this process that I learned to figure out what products were best for me. I was no longer eating un-labeled brownies without any indication of how many milligrams were in each piece. I finally had control over what I was putting in my body. It was a freeing moment when I realized I could have this experience without feeling horrible after.
Although marijuana is now legal in California, there is still a stigma. Or so I thought. I have some fairly conservative family members and I would have never dreamed of talking about my personal pot use with them for fear of being judged. However, at a recent family gathering, the topic came up and my surprise, it wasn’t the negative conversation I had imagined it would be. One of my relatives, who happens to be a doctor, talked about how he was curious about cannabis now that it was legal.
Emboldened, I mentioned that I had a cannabis card and that I was an edible user. My uncles asked me questions and I offered them what I knew. I told them I used it for anxiety, helping me focus when it comes to my creative process and occasionally to help me chill out and sleep. It was an interesting, informative conversation. I didn’t feel judged at all. I got the impression they were curious enough to give it a try, but when I offered, they declined.
I know where they’re coming from, though. It took me a while to come around, too.
