When I was in my teens and early twenties, I didn't much enjoy pot. It always made me completely incompetent at social interactions (as opposed to mostly incompetent at social interactions) and I'd often wind up, literally, drooling on myself. I preferred drinking, and I could count the number of times I smoked pot on both hands. And then I quit smoking, and that made me even less inclined to smoke pot—the harshness of pot smoke practically makes a drag from a Camel Light seem like a soothing velvet lung-cloak in comparison.
In the last few years, though, I've learned to love pot. The thing that won me over was a watermelon-flavored pot lollipop, which I consumed while all alone in the comfort of my own home, accompanied by nothing but a huge stack of DVDs. (I wound up watching Jason X for the first time, and I loved it.) Every few months, I'd enjoy an edible—mostly in lollipop or fake Jolly Rancher-form, although brownies and cookies are okay every now and again, too—like that. When it comes to getting high, I most identified with this quote from Avengers director Joss Whedon:
"I think weed's a fine thing, for the enjoyment of and, occasionally, for thinking about movies," Whedon says. "I don't use it socially because it does not improve my socializing. And I never, ever smoke unless it's the last thing I do that day because there's a long period of stupid that comes after it that's pretty useless. You don't need it, but every now and then it takes you to a different place."
And that's been okay for me—a way to slow down and stop the internal chatter and relax into a puddle every month or so. The craziest thrill I've gotten from pot comes from brushing my teeth while high, which feels so fucking good that it ought to be illegal. And that's about as adventurous as I've been. I love taking long walks, but I can't imagine taking a long walk while very high. Pot doesn't make me hungry, so I've luckily never had to live through the indignity of trying to buy food at a store or a restaurant while out of my face. I can't even imagine going to a movie theater after consuming an edible, because I think the other people in the theater would freak me out.
But lately, I've been enjoying the hell out of JuJu Joints. The website for JuJu Joints describe them as "sleek, discreet, cannabis vaporizing e-joint[s]," and that's about right. They're single-use e-cigarettes, and they each contain about 150 hits. The thing I prefer about JuJu Joints as compared to edibles is that the high kicks in after a couple minutes (as opposed to a couple hours) and you can regulate the high more efficiently—if you're looking to feel a little more relaxed than usual, you can drag on the Joint once or twice. If you're looking to LOSE YOUR MIND, you hit it four or five times. (I still consume edibles, but only when I want to shut myself in for the night with some bad horror movies.) There's little to no odor with JuJu Joints, the mist is a totally different sensation from cigarette smoke and so it doesn't stir up any uncomfortable memories of smoking, and for an occasional user like me, one Joint lasts forever.
Living in Seattle in 2014 means encountering a whole lot of pot smoke while walking down the street. Every time I wander into thick cloud of the stuff, I practically want to chase the smokers down, grab them by their lapels, and shake them until they realize they could be enjoying other, more civilized options. Why the hell would you jam a plant into a piece of glass and light it on fire, I want to ask them, when there are so many superior ways to get high?
