If one can remember anything about cannabis, it’s often the first time—and the last time—one imbibed it.
Everything else is a blur of puff-puff-pass, gurgling bong water or the electric rush of realizing those were pot brownies about half an hour after eating them.
My first time was with my lifelong pal, O., in the early ’80s, during Christmas break our freshman year in high school. Boomer parents in that transitional period between hippie and yuppie-dom were pretty laissez faire about how they stowed their stashes. We found it, we smoked it, then proceeded to eat all the candy in the house while watching a random VHS training tape of a domestically-challenged person learning to use a spatula.
The last time I smoked pot was during the pandemic when a bumper crop of new cannabis businesses were showering the media with free samples delivered to our home offices. I appreciated the descriptions of the products’ potential effects and how much of any particular compound they contained. This legislated development was a far cry from the chemical Russian roulette that casual and infrequent users like myself had long endured (despite the salesmanship of the mulletted 30-somethings dealing weed from their dirt bikes, who circled Petaluma High like mustachioed vultures).
Like most people of a certain age, I prefer my weed Fentanyl-free and also, just generally free. So, when a media care package arrived, I seized the opportunity to momentarily put down my perennial wine glass and shift into some professional pot smoking. Included in the review kit was a pre-rolled joint, which I immediately thought should take the mantle from sliced bread as one of innovation’s greatest conveniences.
I lit it and took a drag. Bueno. I took another. Buennno. Another. Buennnnno. And then … it hit me all at once. I went from bueno to “bueNope” as I suddenly felt like I was inside a falling elevator—a simultaneous sensation of vertigo and claustrophobia, with a liberal smattering of my favorite, dementophobia—the fear of going insane—adding a certain extra elan to the moment. And by moment, I mean the hours it took to finally come down.
My experience may be unusual since my neurochemistry is a high wire act of psychoactive stratagems designed to minimize manic panic. Add any exotic ingredient, and this Mulligan stew boils right over.
And yet, I’m also curious. Not least because I’m susceptible to the word “lounge,” which I recently spied on a billboard looming over Petaluma’s Midtown. My favorite reptile is lounge lizard, and “louche,” my default sensibility, is just a typo away from it. The billboard read: “The Lounge at Mercy—Come Smoke & Chill.”
Thanks to new regulations, local dispensaries like Mercy Wellness can now invite customers to enjoy their purchases on-site, opening a new business lane to our local bud industry. More to the point, as a man with perceptibly “no chill,” I’m in the market to get some.
Do I smoke weed and chance, once again, angering the wine gods upon whose purple seas I’ve long floated this operation? Will I finally be smited into total madness? Or am I less likely to lose my shit in a public setting surrounded by professionals? After all, it’s called The Lounge, not The Panic Room—what could possibly go wrong? But if anyone sees me wielding a spatula, stand back—I’ve seen the video, and I know how to use it.
Mercy Wellness Dispensary lounge is open from 3 to 10pm, Thursday to Saturday and located in the Gravenstein Business Center, 7950 Redwood Dr., Cotati. mercywellness.com/thelounge.
