RECREATIONAL CANNABIS EDIBLES are legal in Oregon starting June 2, which is great news. To be honest, I've actually been crafting them for recreational and medical use for more than 20 years. I often get asked, "Have you ever gotten too high on edibles?" And the answer is: Of course—regular readers will recognize impulse control isn't one of my strong points.
The real question, though, is: "What's the worst experience someone's ever had from eating too many of your special cookies?" That's a long list from which to choose.
• There was the wedding in Athens, Georgia, that resulted in more than 150 guests stumbling and falling in the gravel parking lot, as the sickening sound of bodies hitting the ground mixed with peals of laughter.
• Another wedding in Memphis, Tennessee, in which guests painted the elevator walls of the legendary Peabody hotel with vomit after ignoring warnings not to mix booze and cookies. (I'm rarely asked to attend Southern weddings anymore.)
• Sending one of the world's greatest drummers on a daylong excursion through the hallways of a gigantic Seattle hotel, trying his keycard in every single door—as he was unable to remember his room number and too high to be able to form words to seek assistance from the front desk (RIP, buddy).
But for an experience that may as well have been a rejected script from American Horror Story: Southern Rock, nothing compares to this "Tour Bus from Hell" episode.
We were on a particularly long and brutal tour of the South and Southwest. A great deal of cannabis was being consumed on the daily, starting with fat, hash-laced joints before 7 am, and often ending with particularly strong cups of opium tea post-show. (Don't you judge.) The night prior to our first day off, I busted out the Tupperware with three dozen extra-strong cookies. How strong? A quarter of one of these cookies was enough to put a 200-pound man into a drooling, six-hour stupor.
I was in the back lounge of the tour bus sitting with the bass player. Upon seeing me unpack the goods, she squealed with delight and ate an entire cookie. Having eaten handfuls of mushrooms with her before, I knew she could handle it. But as we sat chatting, she reached into the tub and ate a second one. "I'm really hungry," she said through a mouthful of a third, something she repeated while eating two more. I went to my bunk with her calling out, "One more, and I'm going to bed."
I awoke the next morning to find nine of the cookies gone. One by one, the band and crew stumbled from their bunks, eager to enjoy our first day off in 12 days. But the bass player was nowhere to be seen. Her husband, one of the band's guitarists, didn't seem concerned, citing her ability to sleep through earthquakes when home. We went about our day.
When 8 pm rolled around, she finally emerged, looking as though she was an extra from The Walking Dead. Although the tour bus was parked, she stumbled to the front lounge holding on to the walls for dear life. She sat down next to me staring at nothing. "Rough night?" I asked. She didn't speak for five minutes. When she was finally able to form words, this is the story she told.
"I couldn't stop eating cookies. I went to bed feeling pleasantly high, and was asleep as soon as I crawled into my bunk. I woke up at some point needing to pee. I tried to move my legs to swing out of the bunk, but they were frozen solid. Figuring they had fallen asleep, I tried to lift my arms to pull myself out. Nope. I was completely paralyzed. I figure I would ask [her husband] to help me, and that's when I realized I couldn't turn my head or make any sounds. I was paralyzed head to toe and completely mute. And then I started hallucinating that my bunk was a coffin. I tried to scream a few times, but couldn't manage to open my mouth. I laid there in the pitch black of the bunk, wondering if I had died and this was how I would spend all of eternity."
We all sat silent, horrified. Except for one of the other guitarists, who grinned pure evil while holding out the Tupperware. "Cookie, darlin'?"