Weed . . . maybe not so good for you.

“Feller told me one time they got a weed down here and they call it loco weed.  When the horses and cows eat it they get wilder than all get out.” – Bonanza

Like this meow meme meow?

I used to be in favor of marijuana legalization.  The basis for my thoughts went something like this:  it’s your own body, so go ahead and put anything you want in it – it doesn’t ruin my day.  Add to that, if the criminals are running the marijuana business, we’re just funding the criminals with the profits.  If alcohol prohibition funded the Mafia so it’s still giving us problems nearly 90 years after their source of profits ended, we’ve probably funded the Cartels so that they’ll still exist when NASA restarts manned spaceflight for the United States sometime in the year 3224.

Criminals liked marijuana being illegal.

Politicians liked marijuana being illegal.

Anytime criminals and politicians agreed on anything, I figured it would be better to be on the other side of that equation.  And it’s just weed, right?  Stoners are happy folks, and probably actually do drive a lot better than anyone after a six pack and have plumper, pinker livers.

As a non-participant in marijuana culture (except for the occasional Cheech and Chong movie) my exposure had consisted of the two or so times I’d given it a try in the VERY distant past.  Like having hair after 30, marijuana was something that just never had impacted my life.  Weed was just weed, right?

Wrong.

What are Chong’s three favorite things?  Chicken pot pie.

I was listening to the radio around the year 2000, however, and a radio doctor (he specialized in AM and radios transitioning to FM) came on and said, “Guys, you have to realize – the marijuana today isn’t the same thing as marijuana from the 1960’s and 1970’s.  The new strains have been bred so that they are much, much more potent and have much higher levels of THC (the stuff that gets you high) than weed from back in the day.”  As a non-toker, it didn’t really matter to me, but I found the fact fascinating.  I filed it away, mainly to use in dad-related conversations when I talk to The Boy and Pugsley about not doing weed.

In my weird family (as noted before, my brother’s name is John Wilder, as well) one member (it would be too complicated and ultimately pointless to explain the relationship, needless to say we have a lot of the same DNA) of our family was . . . baked.  We’ll call her Jean Wilder, so we can have John, John, and Jean.

I was exceedingly young when Jean, who was thirtysomething at the time, came to live with us.  I might have been four or so.  It was obvious even to me at the tender age of four that Jean’s elevator was stuck somewhere near floor 13 – often she would sit in a chair, smoking cigarettes, staring blankly off into the corner of the room above and to the left of the 15” black and white television before laughing at something that no one else could see or hear.  Sure, this is common behavior today, but since this was before cellphones, this behavior was considered unusual.

More proof that weed is safe.

I asked Great-Grandma McWilder why Jean was so goofy, and Great-Grandma McWilder looked to the left and looked to the right as if to check if invisible elves were monitoring her in the kitchen (this was before Alexa®) and then whispered to me “dope.”

Sure, you guys might think she was talking about me.  And I’ll agree – most four-year-olds are pretty dopey.  But in this case, dope was what Great-Grandma McWilder called any illicit recreational substance.  Having been born in approximately 1732, Great-Grandma McWilder’s knowledge of illicit substances consisted of the illegal gin and untaxed cigars that I think Great-Grandpa McWilder sold at his “pool hall” during prohibition.  Or maybe he just read his bible all day?

Anyway, Great-Grandma McWilder whispered “dope” because at that time families felt a thing called “shame” for the misbehavior of their members.  I think “shame” has since been replaced with ribbons that say “participation” on it.

“What’s dope?” I asked innocently, because at that time in my life I actually was innocent.

She sighed.  It’s difficult when you have to explain to a four-year-old what illegal drugs were.  I don’t remember her exact words, but I got the idea that it was like aspirin, but very bad for you in that they hurt your mind.  She didn’t have to explain much more.  I had seen Jean.

As I grew older, I found out more about Jean.  She had been very smart as a child, but willful.  Her spacey and other-worldly behavior didn’t change as the calendar pages flipped, however.  As my school gave my class more and more details about the drugs we shouldn’t be taking including lots of instructions about how we shouldn’t take them, pre-teen me guessed that Jean had probably taken LSD (not to be confused with LDS) and the experience had changed her.  Forever.

By the time I got to my teens, I asked Jean about her past drug use.  She said that the only drug she’d ever tried had been marijuana.  Back then, I figured she was lying.  Certainly grass didn’t cause the delusions and hallucinations I had observed, right?   Harmless weed wouldn’t have convinced Jean that Madonna® had stolen the songs from her notebook (this was what Jean believed).  Ganja wouldn’t have made Jean phone in a missing person report to the sheriff on ME because a shadowy cabal of evil doctors (I’m not making this up) had kidnapped me, even though I was off in the college dorms safe and sound at the time?  Reefer wouldn’t do that, right?

Well, not so fast, Pat Sajak.

A recent study came out this week and showed that instances of psychosis were three times higher in areas where you could get strong weed.  And psychosis explained every symptom that Jean had.  Jean was very nice, very sweet, and a danger only to herself.  She self-medicated with nicotine – she was never without a smoke – but anti-psychotics seemed to work much better.

But trends are troubling – weed THC content has doubled in the last 10 years.  But Jean toked up long before then.  What happened to her?  Some mutant weed?  A lot of weed?  I have no idea.  I’m not a doctor.  Jean did live a long, happy, though not particularly useful life, and I’m certain wouldn’t be offended by this post.

Okay, I guess this is my final conclusion.

There appears to be some evidence that marijuana and some marijuana derivatives are useful for things like seizures, overcoming chemotherapy side effects, and playing Red Dead Redemption™ and Fallout® in Mom’s basement.  Again, I’m not a doctor, but I will be warning my kids that marijuana is certainly more dangerous than is commonly accepted and should be avoided at all costs for recreation.  It’s just not worth the risk of, well, being psychotic for the rest of your life.  Plus I’m going to make them get tattoos that say “legal doesn’t mean moral” on their foreheads if I ever catch them lighting up a doobie.

If only there was a way to stop drug use while not funneling money to the cartels.

Oh, wait . . . virtue?

Nah, I must be thinking of something else . . . .