Eskimo babies don't grow on trees.

Sidebar “It’s August 18, 2020, and I’ve been in the house since March 13, 2020. Today it was 108° outside. If someone complained that the sun was not doing its job by making us miserable with heat, the sun made up for it today. The sun was out to prove that it could show up when it needed to. I have an A/C unit on one side of my apartment and a fan on the other. They’re both playing a cruel game of keep away with the heat in my apartment. I have the pleasure of being in the middle of that game. I’m so hot that I hate things for no reason at all. Anything! Not being able to cool myself off when I want to makes me feel poor. I know somebody out there would try to be uplifting by saying that being poor is a state of mind if they heard me say that. I call bullshit on that piece of philosophy. When you’re incapable of stopping heat from physically assaulting you due to your financial situation, it’s no longer a state of mind. It’s your reality. Enough about the heat and how it’s trying to end my life, let’s EAT.”

Cancel culture really makes me think twice, even four or five times, before I share my feelings openly. If I do share something, I trick myself into believing I can control the narrative of what it is I’m sharing. The truth is, I don’t have control over any of this shit once I release it.

I shared that I tried edibles for the first time on my 38 th birthday, and I’m hoping that it won’t come back to bite me in the ass. I started with edibles because smoke bothers me. When I was younger, I had bronchial asthma but grew out of it. I do my best to not do anything that will awaken it in me if it’s lying dormant. I avoided doing drugs in general for several reasons. One reason is because I don’t like the idea of not being in control. Another reason I avoided drugs is because it made my mother proud of me that I didn’t indulge in them. Especially after my uncle died from a drug overdose when I was in the sixth grade. 

I tried edibles because I wanted to do something different. Take myself out of my comfort zone. I wanted to go somewhere, but I didn't have any money, so I thought getting high would knock out two birds with one stone. I also decided to give edibles a try to see if it would help me with my depression. I had heard some people mention that it may help. I was more afraid of going to a doctor to some medication that could possibly turn me into a zombie than I was worried about the side effects of weed.

Sidebar

“I want things to get better, but I don’t know what better is anymore. I don’t know how to tell people that I’m not sure what is right or wrong, but that I only wish things didn’t feel so uncertain anymore. I’m tired of getting upset over footage the media shows us of people doing things that keep us from getting our lives back. I’m tired of watching people try to make the old things work in this new world. I’m tired of giving racial history lessons. Most importantly, I’m tired of pretending that I believe things will change when that’s not how I truly feel. I love how we're trying to act as though this shit show called life isn't falling the fuck apart. I'm cringing with laughter watching us try to distract ourselves into believing everything is ok. Things could be ok if we really loved one another. We're undeserving selfish fucks. Back to the blog.”

Weed was not fully legal in California yet when I turned 38, and asking how to get it was still kind of taboo. It made me feel uncomfortable asking people where I could get my hands on some edibles. It had to come off weird when I would pull someone to the side and whisper, “Do you know where I can get an edible from?” If I were on the receiving end of that question, I would probably look around to see who’s watching, because the person asking me this question is obviously an informant.

I learned that the girl who worked at my favorite comic book store could get me an edible. I was shocked at this news, but I later realized that she should have been my obvious choice. Apparently people that work at comic book stores are known for being potheads. She bought me a brownie that cost around fifteen, maybe twenty, dollars. I was willing to sacrifice purchasing a few books to pay for the brownie, but she gave it to me as a birthday gift. She then recommended that I didn’t get high alone for my first time. 

She told me not to get high alone! “What was I getting myself into that I needed someone with me?” I thought to myself. I didn’t know how to go about recruiting somebody to shepherd me through my first experience with weed. I needed to ask someone that I knew I could trust with my secret of getting high for the first time. I wanted somebody that I knew wouldn’t say anything if anyone ever asked if I got high.

I reached out to my ex-girlfriend, whom I’ll refer to as “Twin” for legal reasons. Twin and I had a good relationship despite me having slept with her twin sister. Disclaimer: we were being terrible people to each other at the time, and I was not to be outdone. Still, I knew I could trust her, and I also knew that she had probably done the drug that I was about to do. When I called to tell her what I wanted her help with, she playfully doubled checked to make sure it was me that she was talking to. When she realized I was serious, she became excited. So many of my close friends have always wanted to know what I would be like high. I had always refused to give them the answers they were in search of, but I was about to find out for myself.

When my ex arrived, I was sitting on my couch, waiting anxiously as I stared at the edible on my ottoman, as if it would attack me if I mishandled it. She laughed hysterically as I was bouncing off the walls with nervous energy. For me, nervous energy comes in the form of a lot of questions and a lot of jokes. She couldn’t stop laughing. She finally gained her composure long enough to explain to me that she wouldn’t allow me to hurt myself if I were to have a bad reaction. My main concern was making sure I didn’t take my clothes off and run into the street. Going to jail naked has to be in my top ten greatest fears of all the time. If I’m ever thrown in jail naked, someone should just ring the dinner bell and scream, “Come and get it!”

Twin instructed me to take a small bite of the edible first and to wait at least twenty to thirty minutes before I decided if I would like to take more. The dangerous part of having a creative imagination is that I tend to create the world before I experience it. I begged her to give me more when I didn’t get as high as I thought I should have been or when I didn’t react the way I thought I should, based upon movies I had seen and things I’ve heard people say. It’s no secret that I can be impatient. Twin was extremely against giving me more but eventually gave in to me. When I look back and think to myself how easily she gave in, I have to ask myself if she was the right person for the job.

Right as I was taking in some more, what I had ingested earlier decided to show up to the party. Everything began to slow down. My mind felt like it was running in quicksand, and gravity increased, which made the ability to lift myself up on my own impossible. I felt the need to narrate what I was going through. I thought I was talking normally, but apparently what I thought I was saying and what I was actually saying didn’t line up. I could tell that I was probably talking out of my ass based upon how much Twin was laughing. Laughing is contagious. I began laughing at how hard she was laughing at me, to the point where I was unable to breathe, from laughing so much.

After laughing for what seemed like three hours, but really was only about ten minutes, my stomach acted as though I had never fed it before and started to attack me from within. With my eyes filled with tears, and while speaking in fragments, I told Twin that I had to eat something immediately because I felt like I was going to die if I didn’t. She then explained to me that I had the munchies, which I had already suspected but was too high to remember what the name of the feeling was.

I told her that she would have to drive, which was already a given, but I felt the need to say it anyway. I lived on the second floor of my apartment complex. I’m sure that was the longest anyone had ever taken to get down some steps in the history of people walking down steps. 

It’s hard to find street parking anywhere in Los Angeles, but Twin managed to find a spot on my street. It was just a few blocks down from my apartment, in the same direction we needed to go in order to get food, so it worked out for us. As we were walking to the car, I stopped walking dead in my tracks because I knew I saw a baby in a tree. You couldn’t tell me there wasn’t an Eskimo-looking baby with a pink onesie on, looking at me as I walked down the street. And for whatever reason, the thought of a baby being in a tree was more hysterical than concerning to me. I was so upset Twin couldn’t see the baby in the tree. I kept screaming, “You don’t see that fucking baby?”

Once again it took me about five or six minutes before I was able to explain why I couldn’t stop laughing. When we got in the car, she had to remind me to put my seatbelt on, which was a little bit of a challenge since I refused any help with the buckle, due to not believing I was as high as I truly was. Once tears of laughter cleared away and I was able to click myself in the seatbelt, I nodded at her with a convinced look that said, “I told you I could do it.”

Trying her best not to laugh, Twin turned to me and asked what I would like to eat, and without hesitation I said Fatburger. I don’t know why, but in my head, Fatburger sounded like the perfect place to go to satisfy my hunger. I knew I would get full from the cheeseburger, fries, and soda combo. I was able to taste the food as I was thinking about it. I do not remember ordering food at all, but I do remember eating the cheeseburger so fast that we didn’t make it out of the parking lot before I was asking Twin if she would go back inside and get me another one.

Against my wishes and kicking and screaming, she didn’t get me another cheeseburger. She did take me home, and I went to sleep. I must tell you, that was some of the best sleep I had ever had in my entire life. When I woke up the next morning, I felt like I had slept off all the depression that was on my body. I felt lighter.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m self-diagnosing, but I’ ve seen people who battle with depression and take medication for it. I don’t want to look like some of what I’ve seen. I don’ t have anything against anyone who does what they need to do to make it through life. Life is fucking hard. 

I went into the entire eating edibles and trying marijuana thing with negative opinions about it. When you’re younger, you’re taught that drugs are bad for you. You’re taught that if you do drugs, you’re a bad person. I don’t feel that these statements are fair. I’ve walked around for most of my life judging people who did drugs and telling myself that they were terrible people, because that’s what I was taught. I was also hesitant about entertaining marijuana because I didn’t want people to think that my humor superpower came from being high. I proved that I was funny long before I added weed to my lifestyle.

The weed doesn’t cure my depression, but eating edibles helps help me live so I can figure it out. It allows my mind and my world to slow down long enough so I can address everything without becoming overwhelmed by how fast things come at me. I can do things like reach out to a therapist and get the help I need in unraveling the issues that torment me so that I can lessen my depression. I hope this doesn’t sound crazy, but I’m thankful that I stepped out of my comfort zone enough to try edibles on my 38th birthday. I don’t have health insurance, and even if I did, I wouldn’t ask my doctor to prescribe me pills that will allow me to function in society. That’s not how I want to live. I honestly believe if I had not discovered edibles, I probably would have killed myself from depression.   

With a few exceptions, I normally take an edible before I go out into the world. It enables me to tolerate human interaction. I hate when conversation is forced on me, and faking a conversation is even more exhausting. I will sabotage a conversation in a heartbeat if I don’t like it by saying something awkward or doing something uncomfortable. However, if I have an edible in my system, it will grant me the tolerance to allow someone to talk to me without me wanting to set myself on fire. I like people when I can deal with them on my own terms. It’s better for both of us.

I want to apologize to anyone whom I have said something terrible about because they smoked weed or took edibles. I judged them wrongfully, but I now hold them all in high regards. Because if all I have to do to avoid being depressed is take an edible, and my biggest issue is finding an Eskimo baby stuck in a tree, I’ll live with that. It’s not my baby, nor is it a real baby. Eskimo babies don’t grow on trees.

-EAT

I write as a form of healing for myself and others. If you enjoyed what you read, “tip the writer” by donating to Venmo or zelle @maronziovance or Cashapp $Gift2MaronzioVance