I'm back!

On birth, smoking weed again, ridiculous prices, and more

I’m back! Writing is definitely a muscle, and mine has been sorely underused over the last several months. This is me tiptoeing back in after the birth of my first child.

Right off the bat, let me get this out of the way: I know I had *some nerve* going on a big break right during a subscription renewal period (ha ha ha), so I really appreciate the fact that almost all of you renewed, giving me much-needed income during a sensitive time for me and my family. Thank you for hanging with me!

I gave birth to a baby boy on Mother’s Day, May 14, at 6:45 PM! It was an incredibly traumatic birth with some crazy surprises and emergencies along the way, but Julian (Jules) and I emerged happy and healthy in the end. Since this is a weed newsletter that is only a little about me and not the other way around, I’ll spare everyone the details, but suffice it to say that I am a very different person now than I was before. It is genuinely incredible to me that women walk around having done all of that—meaning gestation, childbirth, and early infanthood (in most cases, many times over!)—and we just accept it as a fact of life that happens behind closed doors, the ugly parts of which we shant speak much about. Hug the moms in your life, and help them often.

That being said, parenthood rocks! Our son has been a dream to get to know; he is so easygoing and happy. He sleeps well, eats well, doesn’t fuss much. Sometimes, I find myself moseying through the house just to be near him. It feels weird in my body when I’m too far away from him for too long. I am so glad I decided to try and become a parent, and I can’t believe I almost didn’t do it. I’m at peace in a way that is hard to describe, and truthfully, I don’t really want to. I want to keep a lot of it for myself.

Something I am itching to talk about is the fact I’m smoking weed again! And it is awesome. Seriously! Weed fucking rules. I breastfed for three weeks. Then, we switched to a Swiss formula for a variety of reasons, which ended up being the best decision for everyone involved. A couple of weeks after that, I decided I’d dip back into my stash.

The only problem was that my stash totally sucks now. I wrote about anticipating this problem back when I quit weed in all forms after finding out I was pregnant. I had some outdoor flower jarred and given to me in January by Scott Vasterling of Humboldt Family Farms, and that honestly held up quite nicely. All the indoor flower I collected during my pregnancy did not hold up well versus the outdoor despite being stored in a dark, cool closet in a home with HVAC and in unopened, sealed jars. All flowers, regardless of how grown, had trichomes that turned orange, which was expected. Some retained smells and tastes, others just tasted like hay. The weed that fared worse had less intense of a high and mostly just put me to sleep.

These aging discrepancies did not deter me from smoking all of it, however, with varying levels of satisfaction. I felt like calling in favors to refill my stash was inappropriate, and at the beginning of my maternity leave, I just did not feel like venturing into the outside world, not even to meet a delivery person. Eventually, I knew I had to go to a dispensary to re-up.

Here’s what I learned during my re-entry to weed:

1. Legal weed is expensive. Prohibitively so.

   Yeah, I know. Revelation of the century, right? In all seriousness, though, trying to buy legally (in San Diego, CA) is a depressing experience where consumers are forced to cough up way too much money relative to what they’re getting from both a weight and quality perspective. I have been seriously underwhelmed by the legal half-ounces I dared buy in the last few months, to say the least. Lots of stems and even seeds.

   I gave up the other day when trying to buy a zip—the $140 magically turned into $193 by the time I reached the checkout screen, thanks to various taxes, and I just couldn’t go through with it. I sent a few texts, and within a couple of hours, I had an ounce of decent-quality buds for $140 flat. All of which is to say, I understand why people stick to the unlicensed market.

2. Weed is an incredible tool for parenting

   At 37 years old, I still haven’t fully shaken the feelings of prohibition. It’s cool knowing I can share that publicly and it won’t result in a CPS case. I know the “cannamom” gang has been shouting this from the rooftops for a long time, and the truth is that they are right: the crushing rigor and relentlessness of parenting a newborn is made infinitely easier by just taking a few tokes or a low-dose edible. Colors are brighter, singing silly songs suddenly becomes fun, “Look, there’s a butterfly!” captivates both adult and child, patience is more easily stretched, and nerves are quelled. If you are a functional toker and know your limits well, I recommend it. I genuinely believe cannabis has helped me stay present (and, therefore, happy!) for the first months of my son’s life.
   

3. Wow! Bongs are bad for your lungs

   It’s just something one notices after several months of not hitting the bong. It remains one of my favorite methods, but increasingly, I feel guilty about it and am considering phasing it out with dry herb vaporizers.
   

4. I still mostly hate drinking

   One thing I did not reach for right away was any kind of alcohol. I had my first post-pregnancy drink about a month after I got back into weed. That’s not for any other reason than I never had the urge. At this point, drinking feels like injecting formaldehyde into my body. I just have this image that it’s pooling in and around my organs, slowly rotting them away. It’s dramatic! Anyway, yeah. It’s been three and a half years since I stopped regularly drinking, and I have not missed it at all.

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• In other birth news, our backyard cannabis plants have come and gone; we just harvested last week and are now in the drying and curing process. Something, something, something about the cycle of life. Caterpillars and grasshoppers were a bitch this year, but I think we got away with a nice little yield for three plants and a weird, humid, and cloudy summer. I will update with pictures after the cure!

• Upcoming Cannabitch issues already in production include a love letter to hashmakers and an accessories digest, both of which are collabs with other writers.

• While I was out on maternity leave, The Plant Lady, my cannabis podcast at San Diego Magazine, continued releasing episodes. Guests include TerrAscend’s Jason Wild, Viola’s Al Harrington, the aforementioned Mr. Vasterling with Humboldt Family Farms, and more. Season two will start sometime this fall (and is accepting sponsors!).

• I am a finalist in this year’s Benzinga Cannabis Awards for “Best Cannabis Lifestyle Reporter”

• I was named to Leaf Magazines’ 2023 Impact List “highlighting the people and companies changing the Cannabis landscape”

• Months ago I wrote the intro to a Cannabis Now feature, now in print, about women and weed

• Here’s an unhinged little story about the best pool in the world

• I was asked to blurb comic artist Brian “Box” Brown’s forthcoming printing of Legalization Nation, for which he’s broken ranks with traditional publishers to go indie. Check out his Kickstarter.

What I’m reading

• Rather than report on it myself, I’m going to take the out here as a lifestyle reporter who used to more closely report on and follow the business of cannabis and defer to others’ work concerning the ever-changing Schedule III and SAFE Banking news. I’ve been following, but I’m not really in a position to professionally opine on or analyze anything at the moment. Jeremy Berke’s

  Cultivated
  is a good place to read about both, as well as the increasingly sad-to-behold New York market (he’s based there).

• Why do Americans consume the highest amount of “recreational” drugs in the world? Benjamin Y. Fong wonders aloud in Quick Fixes.

• This piece examines cannabis stigma from the perspective of a harm reduction psychotherapist.

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It’s good to be back!