EARLIER THIS YEAR, during a brief and mercifully abandoned period when I was considering doing stand-up as a hobby, I went to a comedy show in downtown Austin. I was legitimately shocked to find, as part of the two-drink minimum bill of fare, the option for several different flavors of $5 THC seltzers. This wasn’t “take a pull off your vape or smoke a roach in the alley before the show” territory.
No, marijuana drinks were on the menu. In the past few years, my only social activities have been poker, competitive trivia, and going to the movies, all activities people do stoned, but not activities where you can literally order drugs from the bar alongside your chicken wings. The comedy club, on the other hand, considered marijuana products as a profit center.
This was one of those lightly attended weeknight shows where the comedians banter with the audience because they haven’t prepared much material. So, during a Q&A, I brought up the fact that there were THC sodas available to order, in laminate. This is where we are now, a full three decades after California legalized medical weed.
As I write this, it’s been eight-and-a-half years since I quit marijuana, a drug that at one point made pretty much anything—listening to music, shopping for groceries, cleaning the house—fun for me. But really, I’ve been sober since I stopped using THC, since I was hardly just smoking there at the end. I was vaping, eating, drinking, dabbing, and otherwise gorging myself on what has become an extremely potent, psychosis-inducing drug.
My breaking point, which I recounted in my 2020 memoir Pothead, came at Game 2 of the 2017 World Series at Dodger Stadium, where I was so wasted on weed that I had a screaming meltdown in front of security when I found out the ticket I’d bought was fraudulent. It was a low point, a bottom so deep and so pathetic that I should have quit right there. But I went on for another three weeks before I finally crawled to a Marijuana Anonymous meeting and asked for help.
Now, nearly a decade later, I’ve emerged from my cocoon to find that THC is everywhere. I live in a state where it’s still technically illegal, but you can find some sort of THC variant in most convenience stores and in most bars and nightclubs. My friend is an attorney who represents the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
