One (of the) reason(s) I don’t use marijuana
I’d a couple of incidental encounters with marijuana in high school in the 1960s, but these had been nothing that attracted me to its use. I seem to recall it was mere matter of saying I’d ‘tried it.’ It was in Vietnam my only, serious, sustained use of the plant, had occurred. After Vietnam, I was an ‘on again, off again’ smoker of cannabis, through the 1970s. By the early 80s, I was mostly through the process of weaning myself of this plant altogether, with the rare encounter. By the time of penning this essay, I’ve not ingested this ‘drug’ in over 30 years. Here follows, is one reason why.
I’d recently encountered an anecdote that caused me recalling a story of a time I was staying at Helena, Montana, I think it was the fall season of 1980. There was a bust ongoing (undercover police work) of the local petty weed dealers and one of them panicked, brought a half pound of super-high THC content sinsemilla to an acquaintance who didn’t smoke dope but wasn’t adverse to people who did, for safe keeping. But then, this dope-dealer left town, no doubt due to the ‘noids.’ The guy holding his dope didn’t want it but knew an artist who smoked and went to drop it at his house; the intended recipient wasn’t home but the artists wife accepted the ‘gift’ and then something remarkable happened.
What the guy delivering the dope to his artist buddy didn’t realize was, the wife had had it up to her neck with her husband’s dope smoking, and his dope smoking buddies, because it was her attitude, now that they were married and had small kids, it was time to ‘get serious’ about life and stop with the dope-drain on their budget.
She put the half pound of sinsemilla, together with a couple pounds of butter, into a large wok, simmered it for some hours at very low heat, strained the now green fat through cheese cloth and made up a VERY LARGE batch of VERY STRONG chocolate (to conceal any flavor of cannabis) brownies sans any evidence of dope (included no leafy matter.) She then proceeded to send the brownies off to a large party attended by her husband’s friends, where a local political wag was to announce the formation of Montana’s new “NO-NOTHING” (correct spelling, a deliberate gag on history) political party. The platform of the party was, the Montana legislature meeting every two years for ninety days, should be changed, to meeting every ninety years for two days.
Everyone who attended that event was wrecked, for a week. And I mean wrecked. The party was on a Saturday night and it was Monday morning people showed up to work so dysfunctional, it defies description. One guy spent 40 minutes, panicked, looking for car keys which were clutched in his fist the entire time he was turning his house upside down, while looking for those very keys, in desperate attempt to get off to work.
And, no, nothing, came of the nascent political endeavor, it was as if it had been little more than a passing hallucination. It’s a pity, because, a legislature limited to meeting once in every ninety years, for two days, seemed (and still seems) like a good idea…
Disclaimer: My satire in the present genre is to be honest in the Native American way; in effect, constructing a joke story closely resembling real life, a sort of collage of facts assembled from bits and pieces of diverse experience, combined with anecdotal information to create the culturally intact inherent Native wisdom found in their humor. In other words, parts of the story consist of an autobiographical facts incorporated, multi-faceted rip-off of other peoples life stories and experience. And because unlike the White world, the Native world entertains paradox in daily approach to life, some aspects are simply made up from the imagination’s fund of plausible improbabilities –
Related:
Ronald Thomas West 