MY HISTORY with cannabis has made my life immeasurably richer in more ways than I can describe. I have also been keenly aware of its medicinal benefits from an early age. But it wasn’t until I moved to Portland that I was asked to share those benefits with others.
I arrived in 1988. At that time, I was working in the film and television industry, and had no idea where to start to find work. A friend said I needed to meet with someone named Keeston Lowery in the city’s film and video office. It was one of those times when you instantly connect with someone, and we became fast friends. He helped me get my first movie job up here (Dennis Quaid bumps into me in Come See the Paradise).
He also loved to smoke weed. I mean, LOVED it. I would tell stories, but some of them involve folks who are still at city hall, so I won’t.
A few years later, a mutual friend approached me, looking ashen. “Keeston is sick. Really sick,” he said. At the time, that was shorthand for AIDS. This was a solid decade-plus before there were effective treatments for HIV, and my friends from that period who contracted that horrible fucking disease—all of them—have passed.
“He can’t smoke anymore, and he’s in the hospital,” our mutual friend said. “Could you make him some pot brownies?”
