I have been smoking weed since I was 14 years old.
My best friend and I found my mom’s stash under her bed. Said best friend had already previously indulged, but I had never done it, and I was scared—curious, but scared.
My best friend, with all her experience, haphazardly rolled us a joint. We went to my back porch and lit it, blowing the smoke out into the afternoon breeze. I had only casually dabbled in cigarettes prior to that, and I didn’t yet know how to inhale. She taught me to do the “French” inhale, and I did, and it worked, and in a short amount of time we were both high as kites, soaring above my neighborhood full of giggles, unquenchable thirst, and a strange craving for a giant dill pickle with grape Kool-Aid sprinkled on it.
The liquor store was around the corner from my house, just a short three block walk. It took us nearly an hour to walk to the store and back, because we got distracted by everything on the way. A beautiful butterfly, a bunch of dandelions on a neighbor’s yard, that one cloud that really looked like Lucy and Ethel in the candy factory if you thought about it, and the way the street got so silent and quiet when no cars were coming.
We lay on the living room floor playing records, singing to each other, and laughing a whole lot.
I was in love from that moment on, and I haven’t stopped using it since.
Here in California, recreational cannabis (call it cannabis, not its criminalized name, marijuana) is legal, so you can walk into a dispensary and literally be a kid in a candy store picking out which edible or flower, or wax or resin or cannabis drops you want. It’s that cool.
Cannabis helps keep me calm. It opens my mind. It makes me feel creative and ready to conquer the world.
I like to smoke a joint with my morning coffee, also known as the coffee wake and bake. It’s so simple yet it does so much to get your day started on the right note.
As Smokey in Friday told us, weed is from the Earth. “God put this here for me and you. Take advantage!”
Cannabis is a friendly drug. It brings people together and fosters community. When you are with another person and discover that you both indulge, there is the exchange of that knowing glance and grin as you both acknowledge the power of this plant.
It has healing capabilities and medicinal qualities that makes Big Pharma want to squash it down, but the pungent plant has persisted and maintained its status as the goto favorite when it’s time to get high.
And everyone is doing it.
So much like Black culture, cannabis is popular with everyone.
As it should be.