Fuck it, I’m going to talk about weed here for a second.
Or a minute. It might take a few, you might want to start skinning up now, because even if you’ve never smoked weed before, by the time I’m finished, , you’ll certainly be considering it. Even you middle of the road square daily mail types. People with cardigans and opinions that they have inherited from their grandparents, I have a few bombshells for you on the way, so polish them specs and keep reading, or listening if i am actually reciting this is at some godawful poetry slam or open mic night that I’ve barged my way into.
Cannabis. It’s a pretty amazing plant. I’ve been smoking weed for quite a while now, im sort of a semi professional smoker here. I’ve been hardcore but that’s really not the way to do it any more. I keep it in my life in the same way that most responsible recreational drinkers keep booze in their lives. It’s one of my little vices, because I don’t really drink so I smoke a few joints with friends in the same way that many people share a bottle of wine
I used to smoke a lot I but I was never one of those guys that went around bragging about how much they smoked. The ones who roll massive unsmokeable fifteen sheet half ounce joints. The kind that are far too big to get any decent kind of lug on so they just burn away slowly, with the gigantic torch like ember burning off twenty times more smoke than anyone is getting in their lungs, and then thinking that the whole process was a productive job well done.
I was once asked by an acquaintance, how much do you smoke a day, when I replied,
Well, im not sure. Three, four joints a day maybe.
He replied “not bad…I smoke nine a day”
Like that would impress me. I don’t know where his epic NINE JOINT A DAY frazzled brain was trying to go with that conversation, and I honestly don’t know how he would have liked me to respond. I just nodded and smiled, and he smiled back, somehow using that interaction to become quite smug.
As with any drugs, overdoses are not a good idea. You come to learn the hard way, that everything in moderation is the best way forward. I mean I know nobody ever died from a weed overdose, but it just makes you look dumb.
Especially if it happens in public. turning white as a sheet, vomiting and passing out
Has a way of making one look really, really dumb, and then theres the paranoia factor that’s amped up by the weed. So you think everyone in the world is looking at you and staring and judging anyway, so passing out in your own vomit has a way of making people actually look and stare and judge you.
And the people you are with are no help, because they are all useless stoners. Statistically if you were with five people, two would be off buying sweets and would miss the whole thing, two would be simply too slow to react before joe public gets involved and one would probably just be laughing hysterically.
And you do not want to let a member of the public get involved because to the uninitiated, a person greening out can look really, really sick. They are sort of in and out of consciousness for a while, vomiting, deathly pale, bloodshot eyes.
When faced with this, the nicer members of the public, the better humans amongst us would cradle you in their arms and say “OH MY GOD! You look like you are dying, I had better call an ambulance.”
And then you, with a vomit smeared face would have to hoarsely and breathily croak out, no ambulance
And your laughing friend would stagger around, holding his sides, and laughing like a rudderless, no good drain, and would cackle out, “He’s smoked too much weed! you don’t need an ambulance for him, he’s just smoked to much weed and cant handle it!”
And depending on their tolerance or understanding, they would react.
Some people would understand, and might even go and get you a curly-wurly, and leave you to your overwhelming feelings of doom and nausea.
Others would be less accepting and would glare deep into your drug crazed , bloodshot eyes and drop you from their rescuers embrace, dropping you back into your own stomach juices, before storming off, disgusted and leaving you to your overwhelming feelings of doom and nausea.
Worst of all some would be even less understanding still, and might even be terrified and confused by this whole notion of drug overdoses! And will remember back to when the policeman came to talk to their class about how every controlled substance will kill you violently and horribly. With these people, there is still a very high chance that an ambulance will be involved, or possibly even two calls to ambulance and police.
No amount of convincing can stop some, quite frankly ignorant people.
Your laughing friend will shout “ No trust me, he’s in a bad way now, but 20 minutes ago he was having a whale of a time. He’ll be fine, he just has to sleep it off”.
And the citizen’s mind will go immediately to pulp fiction, and they would think “my god, I wouldn’t trust these idiots with cutting my lawn, let alone injecting adrenaline into a human’s heart, no, I have to get the professionals involved. I have to do the right thing.
And then the ambulance will arrive, by which point you will probably have mostly gotten over it, and will just be really lethargic and embarrassed, but without the energy to really react how an embarrassed person would, by blushing or doing something loud and stupid, or even running the fuck away, so you’ll just have to sit there looking sullen and deflated and get a ticking off by the ambulance people for wasting their time, and if the police come, your friends will leave you there, and then they’ll give you a ticking off for wasting their time and unless your friends had the foresight to go through your pockets before they leave, you’ll get your weed taken off of you and you’ll possibly even get busted, and maybe even arrested taken into a cell for a while, depending on the police officer involved and how sexually frustrated or angry at the world he is at that point – oh yeah, you think they don’t take their aggressions out on minor criminals?
Then you would either have to sleep it all off in a police cell, to be let out the next day groggy and disoriented and humiliated, or it might even turn into a bigger smear on your life and evolved into a court summons or even in some cases, prison sentances. Now, I know you would already have to be on their radar for it to get to that, you don’t get time for a couple of joints unless you are a naughty guy already, but the point is it shouldn’t be illegal at all.
And that lady who called the ambulance, and police,
I don’t know why it’s a lady, its become a lady all of a sudden, but she is, and in my mind she has a lavender sweater and a bowling pin frame and short hair.
She will go on with her life, misguided and thinking she did some massive good that day, that she had cleaned up the streets maybe, or possibly and completely misguidedly thinking that she had even saved a life, rather than just totally waste everyones time.
Her time was wasted by even stopping from her walk, unless she had nothing else to do for the eight hours a day that her family are out working and having lives, in which case I pity her, but still believe she overreacted. She should have just kept walking and that little scenario would have sorted itself out. Someone may well have had to clean up the vomit, but less gross time would have been wasted.
Then there are the police, who’s time was massively wasted, because, instead of going out and catching violent criminals, or destroyers or takers of property, rapists, thugs and general rapscallions and roustabouts, they were on the high street trying to pick up a dizzy groaning sad sack out of his own vomit, and book him, when in ten minutes he would have gotten up of his own accord and shuffled off to bed.
Then there is you, the stoner, who’s time, one could argue was already being wasted by the simple fact that they were using that god-given day to do something so productive as smoke weed and eat crisps. But, one could also argue that even that is a far better way to spend your time than sitting in a police cell for and having to go through a raft of paperwork, only to be turned loose on the streets again half a day later, only to go straight to your friends house, and say “duuuuude, you’ll never guess what happened to me” over a nice big fat relaxing spliff. Nothing learned. Or just nothing agreed with.
Its an endless cycle of stress and then smoking to relieve the stress of not being able to smoke.
