Cannabis in Quarantine
The first time I smoked weed was with my friend Lucas. We were underclassman in high school in 2009, and one foggy weekend we hiked through the hills, got stoned, and made up some stupid songs together.
Now it’s 2022 and I’m taking a bong rip on my day off, after my morning cup of coffee. The new Cool Kids album thuds on my kitchen speakers, and I enjoy my buzz as I wash dishes from the night before.
Before COVID, I smoked weed three to four times a week, usually on the same joint. It didn’t take a lot of weed to get me high, and it helped me sleep on particularly stressful workdays. Sometimes I would share a joint with friends at a dinner party, and one Lyft ride home I swear I experienced several lifetimes in the span of 15 minutes.
Recycling a joint throughout the week was awful (it tasted shittier and shittier each time I lit up) so I finally bought my first bit off glassware, a small “one-hitter” pipe that looks like a crystalline cigarette. Pulls were harsh on the throat, but the dosing was perfect and the pipe preserved the taste of the different strains.
I stopped drinking alcohol in 2018 (personal reasons) but continued smoking cannabis because it improved my quality of life. It enhanced my moments of relaxation, my mood, and my night’s sleep. My friends call it “Cali-sober” when you quit booze but not weed, and I latched on to this label. Cali-sobriety felt like a sustainable practice as I cleaned up the messes from my alcohol use.
I broke my sobriety from alcohol in 2021, mostly out of boredom. I couldn’t go to any of my cafe haunts because of COVID, which in time morphed into general agoraphobia. I found I couldn’t relax at all in a restaurant or cafe where someone was sitting anywhere close to me. Antsy, and facing ongoing cabin fever, I turned to alcohol to restore some novelty to my day to day life.
One of my favorite ways to spend a quiet evening is to get a little cross-faded, sit at my computer, and watch travel videos with the sound off. I’ll play hip-hop on my stereo, turn on my desktop RGB lights and my cheap little disco ball, and idly click through the internet. Say what you will, but the vibe is clandestine and I treasure these moments dearly.
In an addition to my one-hitter, I now own a pipe, a bubbler, and a small bong. I smoke weed a couple times a day (usually in the afternoon). 2022 brought with it coronavirus apathy, so I began drinking whiskey and going to bars as a form of exposure therapy. “If I surround myself with people,” I reason to myself, “maybe I’ll get over my fear of being around them.”
A therapist would likely be critical of how I am handling the weight of the world. But I suspect I am not alone. Relapses in quarantine are up. Deaths by alcohol are up. My close friends are grappling from spiritual crises of all kinds, asking themselves “What the fuck am I supposed to be doing with my life with all of this bullshit happening around me?”
“Coffee is the drink of the renaissance, grog is the drink of the dark ages,” a friend once told me. I don’t expect to find answers at the bottom of a glass, nor at the bottom of a bowl. I’m doing yoga and taking my meds. I’m growing numb to the news. It is very clear to me that something needs to change, but I’m not sure what. If anything, my vices help me dream up my own version of utopia, even if that ends up being soundless travelogues and color-shifting lights.
