Sports & Cannabis — It’s Not A Good Thing, It’s A GREAT Thing

May 21, 2020May 21, 2020 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

America’s sports leagues are walking point on some very important realizations we’re all having about cannabis. The NFL, MLB, the NBA and the NHL no longer punish athletes for using cannabis. As ESPN put it, league attitudes — at the rules & regs level — is now officially “whatever”.

The leagues — all still holding onto bits and pieces of our old way of thinking about cannabis (the Harry Anslinger-inspired Reefer Madness way of seeing it) — told themselves that cannabis was good for pain relief. That’s why it was okay if their players tested positive for THC in their swabs or urine samples. For starters, not having to punish their stars for something they might be using themselves (knowing the effects) was a huge load off their, um, consciences. It also absolved them of having to justify test results that can’t tell anything beyond the presence of THC.

THC tests can’t tell you how much THC is in you. Can’t tell how long said THC has been in you. Can’t tell what exactly said THC did to your brain that makes punishment for it so important.

As I wrote in Blunt Truths, a thirteen-part series I did for WeedmapsNews (back when it existed as a thing), the story of cannabis prohibition is a story of racism and nothing but. At no point in our national conversation about cannabis did those trying to prohibit it ever back up their reasoning with science or data or anything remotely connected to them. Don’t you think they would have if they could have?

Oh, there’s “science” but it’s of the climate denying variety that could be picked apart by a kid working on a science fair project. The data — now that we’re collecting it — tells a very different story about (here’s the problem) a very different product. Different, that is, from alcohol. And other drugs that do things cannabis does not do.

Cannabis simply does not do to our brains what alcohol does. Or opiates for that matter. We need to stop acting — well, legislating and law enforcing — like it was. One of the things I wrote about in Blunt Truths was how marijuana became popularized in America. It more or less entered the country via the southwest. It had been used in Mexico for a long time already when the Mexican Revolution (started in 1910) sent a wave of Mexicans fleeing north to escape the violence.

In 1913, the very white California State Board of Pharmacy had noticed that Mexicans sometimes used marijuana to relax. Marijuana being foreign to them, these white guys decided it could only be bad — since Mexicans were already bad cos not white. They helped write the first anti-cannabis legislation. They claimed science but had none on their side. See how that works?

Anyway — in time marijuana use spread to New Orleans. It was taken up there at first by the mostly black musicians like Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver who were inventing a new kind of music called jazz. Music was everything to these guys. They lived it and, well, breathed it. And they knew from experience that they couldn’t write music — couldn’t really play it — on alcohol. Opiates? Fuhgeddaboutit.

But, marijuana — that was different. Not “I want it to be different” different, DIFFERENT. On marijuana they felt both relaxed and deeply focused. The relaxed feeling — the euphoria — took the weight of the world from their shoulders. While the marijuana was caressing their brains — and smoking it gives you an hour-and-a-half or so of “prime time” and a few hours of much milder effect — they heard better. They articulated better the abstract musical ideas in their heads — reproducing it as notes on a trumpet or piano or glockenspiel even.

Marijuana really and truly makes its users more creative. Hell, I use indicas for sleep (I use sativas & hybrids the rest of the day). I mix & match from my collection (I like to keep a “rotation” of 8 or 9 different indica strains going) — usually doing two bowls of Skywalker or Hollow point or Paris or King Louis XIII or Afghani directly before bedtime. But, even as the indica’s sleepiness begins to envelope me in its delicious embrace, I can still get creative.

Suddenly, I’m sitting down and writing. Spewing an idea in all its glory as if I hadn’t been sleepy a minute before. I’ll sketch the thing out. Put down the pad or close the computer — and marvel at how the sleepiness, in a moment or two, returns. As if I hadn’t just been experiencing a vibrant, creative outburst.

And then I slip between the covers and sleep wonderfully. I started using cannabis a few years ago because of insomnia. Because OTC sleep meds weren’t doing anything for me. I had been using them for years and could count the number of “good” nights’ sleep on one hand. I was experiencing memory loss, too — a side effect of those drugs. Living in California, I figured what the hell. Dope had never been my thing when I was a kid — it put me to sleep. If that was the problem I was trying to solve — why not?

After putting my sleep problem to bed, I began to wonder what was in all those other jars at my local dispensary — that weren’t indicas? I had no concept back then what an indica was versus a sativa or hybrid. Like most people, what I knew about cannabis was mostly bullshit colored by Harry Anslinger, America’s first drug czar (he served as first Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 all the way to 1962 when JFK shitcanned him). I had no idea that sativas had a very different effect from indicas. And what were these “hybrid” strains?

Then I discovered Durban Poison.

DP is a great working strain because the “high” is so focused but also so “smooth”. Other sativas (or sativa-dominant stains) like Crystal Coma or Green Crack deliver the same mental focus but with a little more edge. It’s kind of like feeling “extra curious” about things. Your mind wants to dig deeper still into whatever you’re thinking about. DP doesn’t prohibit one’s mind from going there, but it doesn’t automatically put your mind there.

Again — what sativas deliver to our brains is focus. It slows everything down. Think of our brains as being like digital circuits: our synapses are either open or closed. A zero or a one. THC causes more of our synapses — our digital circuitry — to be open. It’s not making us see more or hear more, but it is allowing our brains to process more. More visual input. More smell and taste input. That’s why people feel paranoid — their brains are receiving more information in real time. Some people perceive that as threatening. They think the information flowing to them means someone is watching them. It’s not a rational thought, it’s a feeling. But we go with it.

That additional flow of information to our brains also is why food tastes incredible when you’re high. It’s why smells are stronger and things just seem… funnier. That’s why people laugh so much on cannabis. You don’t just see the humor in things, you REALLY see it. And then you really, REALLY laugh.

If the fans attending a sporting event smoked cannabis instead of drinking beer, there would never be a fight in the stands because one drunk got pissed off at another. There would never be rioting after a match. People would be too busy hugging each other and saying “good match!” And the players?

Yeah — what of the players — and their experience using cannabis on the pitch or field or tennis court.

I’ve played tennis all my life. I hated it most of the time. Not tennis’ fault, that. Mine. I didn’t realize until a few years ago that I was dealing with a monstrous depression. A few days before Christmas 2016, I came within literal inches of killing myself. In the long, slow march toward oblivion that I was on, I would torture myself weekly with tennis.

My depression was filled with self-destructive loathing. If I played badly, it was because I sucked. I sucked because I always played badly — and I always played badly because I beat myself up instead of coaching myself. Long story short, my depression’s in remission. My mood stabilizer stops me from beating myself up — especially about tennis.

When I stopped beating myself up and started coaching myself instead — I got better at tennis. Well, I started to live up to my tennis-playing potential and that was awesome. It was fun, too. A shitload of fun.

Imagine it being a revelation that the sport you’ve played all your life can actually be enjoyable to play. Cannabis is the icing on that cake.

As it does with my work, cannabis focuses my brain on tennis. It relaxes me. Slows everything down. “See the ball”, I tell myself — and I find it as my tennis partner hits it and follow it all the way to my racket. “Where’s the ball?” I ask also. The ball needs to be in a specific place for me to attack it — and I need to be attacking it (rather than being attacked by it). I need to have a strategy in mind — and the cannabis does that too. I pick a spot. I attack the ball accordingly (racket back ASAP), stepping into the shot, striking the ball in “the zone” and then (most importantly but too often forgotten) following through.

I wish I was more consistent. But I’m waaaaaay better than I was — and I’m always keenly aware of exactly what I do wrong when I do things wrong.

The advantage cannabis gives me on the tennis court isn’t physical. It’s mental. I’m not being pumped up, I’m being focused. I’m being relaxed into a better performance.

And a fun experience becomes exponentially more fun.

Does cannabis give me an unfair advantage? That’s a science question, really. I sometimes think it does. But then I lose focus momentarily — because I’m still me — and I’m not so sure.

I Went To America’s First Ever Licensed Cannabis Café Yesterday – And It Was AWESOME!

October 18, 2019November 11, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

As good as a deep, inky red wine pairs with a steak or champagne with oysters, it’s nothing compared to how well cannabis pairs with EVERYTHING.

Not only does cannabis give you the munchies (there’s a reason it’s a great medicine for people with eating issues or whose appetites have been impacted by chemo), it also makes the food you eat taste amazing. That happens because THC causes your brain to process more information. You’re simply more aware of your surroundings and what you’re experiencing in it because more of your synapses are open and processing information. That is what THC does to our brains. It’s the same reason some people feel paranoia – it’s the flow of all that additional information that your brain regularly “screens out” or misses. Yeah, it can be daunting, intimidating – scary.

But all that additional information can also enhance the flavor of food. Cannabis and eating establishments are as natural and delicious a pairing as chicken and soup.

Lowell Cafe is in West Hollywood. It opened a few weeks ago — America’s first ever fully licensed cannabis restaurant. The restaurant aside, It’s a dispensary where you can smoke your buy on the premises. That’s a first anywhere in the country (as far as I know).

Part of the lingering ooga-booga in our thinking about cannabis is that smoking cannabis causes people to act like they’ve been drinking for hours. It’s not the case – at all.

As cannabis users can attest – smoking cannabis doesn’t fog your mind like alcohol does. It doesn’t make you irrational. It doesn’t make you loud. It doesn’t impact your motor skills. It doesn’t make you want to fight or vomit up everything you drank. It doesn’t make you want to take out your junk and piss wherever you are because all that alcohol filled your bladder.

Cannabis civilizes most people. Fact.

My good bud Johnny invited me to join him – he’d made reservations after hearing Howard Stern do a live broadcast from the café last week. There’s almost always a line outside the place – even with reservations.

The concept is this – when you sit at your table, there are two menus (same as with alcohol). The only difference here is (because of the way cannabis is still regulated), you have to purchase your cannabis separately from your food. Two different bills.

One can bring in one’s own weed – but the “corkage” is $30. Lowell Cafe is a dispensary. They grow all their own weed — organically. The prices aren’t cheap. They’re retail-retail. But that’s to be expected. You’re here also for the experience of smoking marijuana in public – with strangers – like you’d drink in a bar with them.

While you can also get that same experience at a concert, it’s not the same. Everyone doing that illicitly. Here – it’s the whole point of the exercise.

For starters – the room is smoky – but it’s not dense with smoke as it would be if it were filled with tobacco smoke. Tobacco smoke is sharper, heavier, denser, more genuinely toxic. There’s no data yet that says what cannabis second hand smoke is filled with. I can only tell you that whereas a restaurant filled with tobacco smoke makes eating downright unpleasant, that was not the case at Lowell Farms.

The eating experience was not impacted by the smoke whatsoever.

The cannabis menu (you can read it yourself here) includes flower (they provide rolling papers or they’ll rent you a piece – the state regs prevent customers from bringing their own pipes for now), oils and edibles. The food the café serves has not been prepared with cannabis – that’s not allowed yet). If you want to buy and use oils, the restaurant will rent you a rig with which to smoke it. You can rent a simple rig or a very cool “gravity water pipe” that I wish I had photographed because it was incredibly cool.

I was too busy eating, enjoying the buzz and talking. Johnny and I ordered a pre-rolled Space Coyote – a combination sativa flower, kief and oil, with a bubbly, spirited impact (according to the menu). The Space Coyote was indeed heady and social. And it made the food taste awesome. Johnny ordered the Lowell Cobb. Enjoyed it immensely – fresh ingredients not overly slathered in dressing.

Feeling less in the mood for healthy, more in the mood for “stoner cuisine”, I opted for the sticky tamarind wings and the jalapeno mac-and-cheese bites. Did I mention how cannabis makes everything taste great? The tamarind doesn’t bash you over the head. It doesn’t have to. The wings were easily inhaled. The mac-and-cheese bites came with a chipotle-sriracha sauce that cleared the sinuses effectively.

The staff is all young and excited to be there. They know they’re pioneers in a business that will take over the country. Lowell Farms has applied for a liquor license. They don’t need it. They should avoid it.

The tone in the room was cannabis chill. Not alcohol loud. There was a lot less glass being clinked. It was… civilized is the word I keep coming back to. Until you’ve experienced sitting in a room with strangers who are all smoking cannabis – like it was normal – you can’t know how remarkable it is.

We’ve lived in the shadow of Harry Anslinger’s bullshit, racist marijuana mythology for so long, we’ve almost forgotten how incredibly untrue every bit of it is.

Marijuana legalization has not brought about the fall of Western Civilization. It hasn’t harmed the communities in which it thrives. It hasn’t brought about a rise in teen smoking (they’re smoking less, in fact, because every last bit of rebellion has been taken away from smoking marijuana – it’s hard to rebel against something your parents do, too.) It hasn’t brought a rise in traffic accidents.

And that’s the last point I want to make here. Lowell Cafe has a valet parking lot. People hand their keys to the valet then go inside for 90 minutes (that’s your limit for the time being – there’s a line to get in, remember). They smoke copious amounts of cannabis and they eat. Then they get their car from the valet guy – climb in it and go home (or wherever).

I walked down La Brea to where I’d parked my car at a meter. I got into my car. I drove home. And I went back to work.

I wouldn’t have – couldn’t have – had I been drinking all afternoon.

I have seen the future, America – and it was the bomb.

Now, please — quit Bogartin’ that joint and pass it over to me…

Cannabis + Creativity = Productivity

September 1, 2019September 1, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The first time a budtender told me that sativas would give me mental energy, I looked at him like a dog asking a question. Say what? What does that even mean — “mental energy”?

If you’ve never experienced cannabis — or only ever experienced indicas (which make up the overwhelming majority of cannabis strains) — that probably sounds like a contradiction of terms. Isn’t cannabis supposed to make you “dopey”? For an extended reflection & rant on how a mythology based entirely on racism stood in for truth, I refer you to Blunt Truths, the series I wrote for Weedmaps News). None of us steps onto the cannabis playing field aware just how profoundly tilted it is.

It’s practically vertical it’s so damned tilted.

Cannabis has a complex structure. THC and CBD play significant roles in how our brains react to cannabis and perceive its effects but they’re only part of cannabis’ palette. Terpenes play an equally vital role in how any particular strain will work. Thus far, we’ve identified about 120 terpenes in cannabis. We know (or have a rough idea at least) how about 25 of them work.

Throwing a little heat into the mix gets the THC, CBD and other cannabanoids to dance with the alpha-pinene, micrene, linolene and/or caryophyllene (among others) in its terpene structure. The synapses in our brains act like digital circuits. They’re either open or closed. If they’re open, thoughts flow through our heads. If they’re closed, thoughts don’t happen. THC simply makes more of those synapses open. We process more information.

That’s why some people feel paranoid. THC makes us more aware of everything. That sudden inflow of more raw data into our brains can feel oppressive. Suddenly you’re thinking about things like “What if there’s a cop nearby?” Food tastes great with cannabis for the same reason. It’s why things seem funnier. You’re perceiving them “funnier”.

When cannabis eventually found its way from the southwest to New Orleans after WWI, it was taken up by the musicians there working the bars and whorehouses. Players like Louis Armstrong didn’t like drinking much because it inhibited their ability to play and think musically. They were in the middle of inventing jazz and needed their faculties functioning at full blast. Marijuana, rather than dulling their creativity, sparked it. They could hear more, feel more. It wasn’t their imaginations telling them that.

And yet… it was. Their imaginations — their creativity — was telling them that with cannabis in their brains, they could be even better, more creative — more productive.

I wandered into cannabis looking for sleep. After years of taking OTC sleep meds — and getting little sleep but lots of memory loss, I bit the bullet years ago (living in California as I do) and got a prescription. Then I went to my first dispensary and got my first cannister of Skywalker flower.

For the first time in a decade, I slept. I woke up in the morning feeling rested. No druggy lassitude, no lingering weariness. Just top quality brain rest. What a radical concept.

The next time I returned to that dispensary, I wanted to know: what’s in all those other cannisters filled with weed? Do they all produce sleep as wonderful as Skywalker? Some, it turned out did. Others, on the other hand…

My first daytime strain was Durban Poison, a classic sativa. As much as it focused my brain — giving me lots of mental energy, it also opened my eyes. Cannabais isn’t good for just kicking back & relaxing or sleeping. Cannabis is good for working your ass off to earn that relaxation.

With a strain like Durban Poison — or Clementine or Jack The Ripper (the weed is kinder than the name) or hybrids like Dutch Treat and Pineapple Express, I feel the world come into sharp relief. I hear and see nuances and shadings. The responses flow effortlessly. Writing is not a struggle.

There are variations in how different sativas or hybrids feel inside your head. Whereas Jack The Ripper, say, will give you terrific focus, it has a slight “edge” to it. Not a bad edge — an extra bit of focus and energy. Maybe the best daytime/working strain of all is Trainwreck. Trainwreck gets you so focused you feel compelled to clean your house. Completely. With a toothbrush — that’s how focused and thorough you want to be.

Then I discovered (like a lot of athletes have) that cannabis can improve your physical performance — because it focuses your mind. I started smoking Durban Poison before and, sometimes, while I’m playing. It’s wild, the impact: everything “slows down”. I can see the spin on the ball. If I really focus, I can almost see the fuzz on the ball right where I need to hit it.

I can see where the ball needs to be. I can see where I need to be after I hit the ball. And ya know what? As much fun as I had playing tennis before? Now, it’s even more fun.

I cannot think of a single negative impact that cannabis has had on my life. Life, as we all know, is hard and getting harder. No one gets brownie points for bearing it unmedicated.

Here’s a better idea. Put some cannabis in those brownies. You’ll thank me.

Today’s Cannabis Work Cocktail Is…

August 20, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Every now and then I like to share a particularly good cannabis experience. One of the great revelations of my life was that cannabis makes me work more productively. It focuses my very hypomanic mind without dulling it.

My go-to daytime strain is Durban Poison. It delivers a steady, even focus that comes on quickly and last a solid hour-and-a-half before slowly easing off. It platforms very well on top of itself (hits every 30 minutes or so to keep a steady flow of DP’s THC & turpines flooding the brain) but also makes for an excellent companion to hybrids like Trainwreck or Dutch Treat.

I found Strawberry Diesel Durban and paired it with White Widow this morning. The StrawbDD was a great combination of Durban and NYC Diesel — the same focus with a hint of the Diesel’s hum. The White Widow brings a quick hit of euphoria and mental energy. The combination has been lovely and — isn’t this most important for a daytime strain — productive?

Enjoy!

The Hardest Part Of Cannabis Legalization Is Overcoming The Mountain Of Bullshit & Lies

August 19, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Poor cannabis. There’s bad press and then there’s the hatchet job that America’s first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, did to it.

When Anslinger first got hired in 1930, marijuana was hardly on his radar. Few Americans knew what it was. Fewer still smoked it (though many Americans benefited from its presence in various medicines). The Mexican Revolution in 1910 sent a wave of Mexican refugees across the border. They brought cannabis with them. That freaked out the white people. It wasn’t the cannabis that concerned them so much as the fact that Mexicans were smoking it and deriving pleasure from it. That meant (to the white people) that something had to be wrong with it.

Eventually, marijuana found its way to New Orleans where the black musicians assembled there were busy inventing jazz. While they couldn’t play or create on alcohol (it made their minds too fuzzy), marijuana had the opposite effect. It focused their minds and allowed their creativity to flow.

American soldiers in Vietnam encountered the same phenomenon. They were prohibited from drinking (because, as with the musicians, it fogs the mind). But, the American soldiers learned — having found marijuana both cheap and plentiful — that pot both relaxed them and focused them. They could smoke a joint then walk point in the jungle, their senses not diminished but, rather, heightened.

From time to time, New Orleans would shut down its whorehouses and banish all the musicians working at them When that happened in the mid 1920’s, musicians like Louis Armstrong headed up the Mississippi, stopping in places like Memphis and Nashville on their way to Chicago. Had all those black jazz musicians kept cannabis to themselves, that might have been the end of it. But they didn’t. Cannabis use spread to the white community — and that, from Harry Anslinger’s point of view, was a total non-starter.

Not once did Anslinger ask about marijuana’s health consequences. Even if he had, no research existed proving marijuana was good or bad for anyone’s health. But Anslinger had an agenda. He needed marijuana to be bad. And he knew that aside from the Mexicans, black jazz musicians and handful of white people using marijuana, no one knew a thing about it. Whatever Americans were going to know about cannabis would be what Harry Anslinger told them.

Virtually all of our current perceptions about cannabis flow from Harry Anslinger’s fetid imagination where every black man who smoked a joint then went on a mad raping spree (raping white women exclusively). Anslinger was a racist’s racist. But he was also a master bureaucrat who knew how to work the system.

We laugh now at Reefer Madness because it’s way over-the-top and way wrong about everything. But when Reefer Madness was released in the 1930’s, no one had that perspective. America and the world bought in to the Reefer Madness mythology.

Even in states where cannabis is now legal — like here in California — people remain squirrelly about cannabis. The thought of walking into a dispensary feels wrong to them. They worry about cannabis doing things to them, to their minds, that cannabis simply does not do.

If I get stopped by the LAPD — and they swab me — they’ll find THC in my system. The swab can’t tell how much THC is in me, what the accompanying turpene profile is (and how that might be affecting me), they can’t tell how much THC is in me or whether it’s an indica, sativa or hybrid. All the swab can tell is that there’s THC in my saliva.

We assume — because of the mythology’s enduring power that even a hit of cannabis will turn me into a danger on the highways. That’s because we apparently assume that alcohol and cannabis have the exact same effect on our brains and bodies. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Nation Highway Transportation Safety Administration reported the following to Congress in 2017 — “…research has demonstrated the potential of marijuana to impair driving related skills. It does not show a relationship between THC levels and impairment.”

Get that? Research demonstrates “potential” impairment yet doesn’t show a “relationship between THC levels and impairment”. How is that possible? It’s not. It’s a leftover prejudice. In the very next paragraph of the NHTSA’s report, it says this: “… after smoking marijuana, subjects in most of the simulator and instrumented vehicle studies on marijuana and driving typically drive slower, follow other cars at greater distances, and take fewer risks than when sober…”. “In contrast,”, the report continues, “Subjects dosed with alcohol typically drive faster, follow at closer distances, and take greater risks.”

See how differently drivers with THC in them perform vs drivers who’ve been drinking? Why do we act like they have the same effect when they don’t? When even legitimate scientific research says they don’t?

Blame Harry Anslinger. Blame us, too. We know better. We simply refuse to acknowledge what we know. It’s like we prefer the effects that bullshit has on us.

Why Are We All So Addicted To Our Own Bullshit? Easy — We’re Addicted To It BECAUSE It’s “Ours”…

July 17, 2019July 17, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I almost learned the hard way how addicted I was to bullshit. My bullshit nearly killed me. For real.

Long story short, I kept a secret from myself for 45 years — that I was molested (twice) when I was 14. If I think of my hypomanic mind as a black box theater filled with projections (my thoughts), this memory sat in a file drawer in a closet in an office far at the back of the theater, up a long metal staircase. The memory glowed inside its drawer.

I always knew it was there.

That I denied this thing happened to me — that was bullshit. But it’s something that victims of sexual assault do as a survival strategy. We blame ourselves. It seems logical. And since it was our fault, we convince ourselves that we deserve every terrible thing that ever flows from it. I became so convinced this bullshit was true that I came within literal inches of killing myself.

I count myself extremely lucky. Between a magnificent therapist, a mood stabilizer (at a minimal dose) that keeps my depression caged and loads of THC to help get my hypomania focused (I highly recommend Durban Poison during the day — it delivers a smooth, even feeling of clear-headed mental energy), I get through my days with a high degree of happiness now. As I started to get healthy, I saw (to my horror) that not only had my own bullshit tried to kill me, my bullshit was undermining every other facet of my life, too.

From the moment I woke up in the morning, I was seeing the world through the bullshit color lenses I kept by my bedside and put on the instant I woke up. I breathed deeply the bullshit scented fumes rising from the piles of bullshit that I had left by my bed the night before. I thought things based on bullshit, did things based on bullshit, said things based on bullshit.

And I was shocked, shocked, I tell ya, when I got bullshit back in response.

Now, let’s be real. No one’s ever going to live 100% bullshit free. Bullshit is hardwired into our genome. Take bullshit away from us and there’d be no religion (not the worst thing that could happen to us). Take bullshit away from us and a lot of relationships would instantly metastasize and die. Take bullshit away from us and Donald Trump would be serving multiple life terms in a federal penitentiary already — alongside pretty much every single Republican.

Bullshit comes in 4 “flavors” or levels…

Level 1: Incidental Bullshit

Your 5 year old asks if there’s Santa Claus; you say yes.
It’s 6 am. You have to get up. You don’t want to. “Five more minutes,” you tell yourself – you won’t be late. Bullshit – you know damned well you’ll be late. You do it anyway.
“One more spoonful of ice cream won’t matter to my diet/diabetes.”
“Why did you look at me funny when I took one more spoonful of ice cream?”
“Have a nice day” (no matter who says it, no matter why).

Incidental Bullshit is water off a duck’s back. Life’s just too short to get too hung up on this kind of low grade truthiness. It’s petty mostly. Meaningless and forgettable. However: This is the ‘shit’ that ‘happens’. It just does. What are any of us going to do about it? Nothing. Moving on…

Level 2: Tolerable Bullshit

Your 10 year old – who’s starting to figure things out – asks if there’s a Santa Claus; you say yes.
Your bff always brings a bottle of red wine when she comes over – except you drink white wine. What kind of guest is that? You could say something, but you don’t; you’ll keep the peace instead.
You both know damned well whose turn it is to clean the bathroom – but you do it better anyway, so…
“I love you” said under duress.

Tolerable Bullshit will challenge you occasionally – is it actually tolerable? Small doses – no problem. More than that? It could easily start to feel just like bullshit.

Level 3: Red Flag Warning Bullshit

Your 20 year old asks – for real – if there’s a Santa Claus.
“I don’t have a drinking problem.”
“My phone’s battery died. No, really – I swear it!”

You know it in your gut – it ain’t right. It doesn’t add up or it just plain smells. This is the bullshit that leaves a mark – or worse. Deal with it now – you’ll probably be okay. Ignore the warning and this bullshit will likely morph into –

Level 4: Utter Bullshit

“I alone can fix it.”
“No collusion.”
“I don’t deserve to be here”

This is the stuff that kills. It changes lives forever. And it’s bullshit.

Getting rid of our own bullshit is hard. You have to own it in order to get rid of it. Think of it as confession — except there’s no church. YOU are the church. YOU know where all your bodies are buried because YOU’RE the one who buried them.

Does living (or trying to live) bullshit free work? Yeah — it does. I’m so busy dealing with my own bullshit that I never have time to worry (let alone think about) anyone else’s bullshit. That means I don’t judge their bullshit anymore — they’re all as consumed & dominated by their bullshit as I am.

What do you have to lose — trying to live bullshit free — except your bullshit?

Dispatches From The War On Drugs — Is That Marijuana We Smell? Or “Surrender”?

July 1, 2019 ~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I took marijuana to an airport yesterday — out in the open. Here’s what happened…

I never imagined I would become a warrior in the War On Drugs. I definitely never imagined that cannabis would touch my life so profoundly that I’d take up its cause with a Kamakazi’s zeal.

For reference’s sake — I wasn’t into pot when I was in high school. The handful of times I tried it, it put me right to sleep. Same all the way through college. I preferred cocaine. Speed worked better with my hypomania. At least, I thought it did at the time. I preferred ecstasy. Even psybocilin the one time I tried it. And, of course, there was always always ALWAYS alcohol.

Then Life happened. Ups, downs and everything in between. By the time I reached my mid 50’s, I was depressed and getting more so. Sleep was getting hard to come by. I had no interest in taking Ambien — knowing how my mind worked, that pretty much guaranteed I’d snap to from a fugue state in some strange, public place, completely naked. Wasn’t gonna happen.

I’d been taking Simply Sleep knock off’s for years. Occasionally I would get some sleep from it. Mostly it just made me groggy the next morning and screwed with my short term memory. Living in California, (back before full legalization), I had access to medical marijuana. Being at the very end of my tether, I found a doctor nearby who prescribed.

It wasn’t illicit — but it felt illicit. That’s how powerful bullshit is. “What’s your issue?” “Insomnia,” I said. I began to explain but he held up his hand. Not necessary. He wrote the prescription on his computer, printed it and handed it to me. Short $69, I walked out the door.

Next stop — my local dispensary — located almost literally under a freeway overpass. The only thing it needed to be a full on crime scene was the yellow police tape. I filled out their extensive paperwork. Showed them my California picture ID and my RX. I was buzzed through to the “showroom”, a few old display cases with pipes, bongs, papers, the few edibles then on the market (Cheeba Chews mostly) and a dozen large jars filled with cannabis flower.

My first budtender (I didn’t know he was called that then) welcomed me like I was a “customer” or something. The whole experience — that first time especially was surreal (something about it remains surreal). “Insomnia,” I said.

“Skywalker,” said my Budtender. As he went for the Skywalker jar, my immediate thought was “cute name”. I had no idea — zilch — that Skywalker wasn’t just a “name”, it was a genuine cannabis strain — a known quantity with known effects if you smoked it. It wasn’t the product of a bunch of stoners stumbling upon a plant that made the dope they liked, it was a hybridized product of serious work by serious people. Skywalker was a kind of “brand”. In theory, Skywalker was as reproducible a product as a Big Mac.

My Budtender offered me the jar — so I could smell it. Yup. Smelled like dope. I bought two grams. Took them home, intensely curious about what the dried flower in the plastic vile would do to me that night. I’d already bought a small glass pipe and a lighter. I didn’t have a grinder. Didn’t know I needed one.

I was as green as the Skywalker in the vial in my hand. But, that night, I ground up some of the leaves between my fingertips, snuck outside and smoked it. It didn’t take long — a few minutes — before a feeling of calm came over me. My hypomanic mind slowed down. Then sleep beckoned. Usually, I had to go hunting for it. But, with Skywalker’s THC now in my brain, sleep came looking for me. As I slipped into bed beside my wife, the feeling of sleepiness became downright delicious.

All I remember after that is waking up the next morning, feeling RESTED for the first time in… forever. In time (subjects for other blog posts), I’d learn that cannabis wasn’t just for bedtime. I was buying from one jar at the dispensary. What was in all the others?

Turned out cannabis could be genuinely useful first thing in the morning, too. Turned out pretty much EVERYTHING I knew or thought about cannabis was absolutely wrong. And the more I corrected that problem — the more I learned about cannabis — why it was “illegalized” (check out my series Blunt Truths at Weedmaps News) — the more I learned about the differences between indicas, sativas and hybrids — the more I found that cannabis & me were, in myriad ways, soul mates.

I’d even say we’re “buds”.

Back to my airport story… A few days ago, I traveled from LA to visit family on the East Coast.

In California, cannabis is legal. Because I’m over 21, I can walk around with 28.5 grams of cannabis flower in my possession (I can also have 8 grams of marijuana concentrate — I can even possess six living cannabis plants at my private residence. In California, these are my constitutional rights.

I can possess the flower and concentrate at my house, on the street, in my car (so long as I’m not actually using it then and there, mind you) and — still Constitutionally legal — at the airport. Until I board the airplane — where the FAA and the Federal government have jurisdiction — the weed in my possession is 100% legal.

So — I’m at LAX the other day. I know my rights here in California. I intended to travel some of cannabis with me to the east for personal consumption. The place I was going — another state where cannabis is legal. I know for a fact, as I go through the TSA security line that the vials of cannabis flower in clear view in my carry on bags (I now grind my flower and put it into 5 or 10 dram vials that I label with the strain’s name & type — there will be no mistaking what’s in those vials). I also was traveling with clearly marked edibles. I did not repackage my THC gummy worms with store-bought ones (as one normally does).

Quick footnote — on the day cannabis went fully legal in Nevada, an interesting phenomenon happened. The dispensaries all ran out of edibles. This happened principally because Nevada made a deal with the devil (in this case the liquor distributors who, shocking, did not have their shit together on Day One like they promised to); all re-stocking of retail supply had to be handled by the liquor distributors. Dumb, dumb, dumb. BUT – the phenomenon part is this: most of the sales, it’s believed, were made to non-Nevadans — tourists — who were about to get onto airplanes with loads of THC — in their food.

The wide availability of THC in food that looks exactly like non-THC food changes the game with no going back. It’s unpolice-able. Now that semi-legalization has unleashed all that THC-inspired creativity, there aren’t too many formats THC won’t take going forward. I’m not saying I’ve broken the law and traveled with THC-laced food in the past, but, I might know one or two people who have.

Being a “Have a plan B in your pocket” kind of person, I prepared myself in case the TSA agent understood the law “differently”. I drew plan B from my pocket when my computer backpack got flagged and pulled aside for a hand inspection.

I stepped up to the counter — not anxious so much as wary (I already had lots of THC in me). The TSA agent saw — and moved right past the 5 vials clearly containing cannabis — to the (I thought it was empty) water bottle that was there, too. There was an ounce of water left inside it. I needed to either lose the water bottle or leave my bags with my young adult kids, exit the secure area, dump the water and go through security again — water bottle in hand.

I’ve had this water bottle for a while. It’s a good water bottle. It’s my tennis water bottle. I’m not ditching it because I overlooked a few swallows of water. I left my bags with my kids and did the whole security dance again. Then I carried on through the airport to my gate — water bottle & cannabis still in my possession.

I saw the future — where cannabis was normal and, to a degree already, normalized. It was awesome.

Better than awesome. It was sane.