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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
| From The Guardian, a fairly recent article featured in their "The High Road" section, by that prolific author named Anonymous... Hey, now, I'm less presentable and less productive, and I don't smoke weed. Well, not often, anyway. When the pandemic came, I moved back in with my parents in Los Angeles. It was extremely boring. So are those sentences. One night we had completely run out of things to do so they decided to go to a local dispensary and pick up. I don't understand "completely run out of things to do." There's always something to do. Like, maybe, weed. Smoking with them in the pandemic turned me into a habitual user. That's right, your parents made you do it. Now every morning I wake up, I get a fresh pot of coffee brewing and I finish the joint I was smoking last night before bed, which is sitting on my bedside table. When I’ve finished that, I roll another and continue. Congratulations! You just discovered "Wake and Bake." Literally no one has ever done that before! Last week my therapist asked me what it’s like being this kind of low-level stoned all day... Well, there's an obvious way for the therapist to find out firsthand. Am I addicted to it? Probably, but it works for me and I’m functional. The first step is to admit you have a problem. The second is to lean into it and decide you like the problem. Maybe it makes me less motivated, but I don’t really want to be more motivated. I consider wanting to be more productive very lame, like you’ve been cucked by the patriarchy and capitalism. And that, folks, is a major reason the patriarchy and capitalism have spent the last century or so demonizing cannabis. I smoke behind the wheel, using my car’s coin tray as an ashtray. Fuck me, I'm old enough to remember when we used car ashtrays as coin trays. Personally, I think weed just doesn’t do what alcohol does to you, especially in slow LA traffic. Obviously it is dangerous, but the only road accidents I’ve been in were from before I smoked weed – like driving past an ex-boyfriend’s place and being so in my head that I drove straight into a stationary car. Okay, look, we all know I like to drink booze. And I generally have no problem with cannabis and would like to see it widely legalized. But driving while impaired is a line I don't cross. Now, sure, you can probably argue, though I don't have the data to back it up, that driving stoned isn't as bad as driving drunk or texting while driving. The problem isn't that you could hurt yourself, but that it's dangerous to other people. I hate sounding all mud-sticky about this sort of thing, but that's where the author kinda loses my sympathy. "The only road accidents I've been in were from before I smoked weed" could very well be a matter of luck and survivorship bias, like if I said it's perfectly safe to ride in the bed of a pickup truck because I did that when I was a kid and I'm fine. Last week, my dad called me while I was driving to work and smoking a joint. I made the mistake of picking up and he told me off for driving while I’m high. Yeah, gonna side with Dad here. Obviously this means my car smells powerfully of weed, which is not really a problem until I have to use valet parking, but the valets usually find it funny and ask me if they can hotbox it. Clearly, the author's been lucky enough to never be stopped by cops, either. That's the #1 excuse they give to establish probable cause for a vehicle search, which gives them the opportunity to plant evidence for things that are more clearly illegal, like unregistered guns or meth: "A strong odor of marijuana was noted." (Police reports love to use passive voice.) In the author's defense, though, cops have been known to claim that when they just feel like harassing someone. I once got kicked out of the parking lot at work for smoking weed and listening to fast jazz too loudly... Ugh. Jazz? Pfeh. I guess the old scare tactics were right about the connection between weed and jazz. Me, I'd prefer the traditional musical accompaniment: Pink Floyd. Which, honestly, I prefer to enjoy sober. But to each their own... except, in my opinion, when it comes to driving. |
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