Recently, I was hit with a family emergency, and as the circumstances of my life began to fall away from my normal routines, I was faced with something else I did not plan for: an unexpected tolerance break.
This all happened at the end of April. My cousin was getting married and the whole family was invited to his wedding in the Sacramento, California, area. I had packed up a few outfits for before and after the wedding, along with a Mason jar full of Blueberry Biscotti to enjoy during my time away from home. But at the wedding, right after the ceremony was over, it became clear that something was wrong with my mom. My aunt called an ambulance and my brother jumped in the front with the EMTs. That first night, while my mom was still in the emergency room, I wasn’t really thinking about weed at all. The funny thing is that my mom was.
She grew up as a hippie in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s and has more recently returned to experimenting with Cannabis. When I first saw her in the ER, she told me to ask the guy in the next room if he had any weed.
“Mom, we’re in the emergency room,” I said.
She responded, “I know, I thought it would be a funny joke.”
“It is a funny joke, Mom, and I’m going to tell people,” I said, and reader, here I am telling it to you.
The next day, it became clear that I needed to stay with my mom, and I had my husband bring my bag of belongings into the intensive care unit. “I think it’s best to remove the big jar of weed,” I texted him before he brought my bag into the hospital.
I ended up spending two nights in the hospital, sleeping in a recliner in my mom’s room. I hardly got any sleep. My irritable bowel syndrome went into a flare-up and my face began to flush with anxiety.
Diners and Decisions
In the days that followed, I had to make some important decisions for my family. Once the acute crisis had passed, my goals were getting my mom set up with the home health visits she had been instructed to receive after the hospital stay and arranging an appointment with her primary care provider.
I’ve had friends who have been hit with emergency situations before, and I felt like I didn’t know what I could do to help. Typically, people bring food, and I’ve done that for friends and family in the past, but it wasn’t until I was in the moment of navigating and setting up a million other things that I realized how important that gesture can be.
My brother brought us sandwiches from Cregor’s, the local liquor store and deli. My sister-in-law brought over home-cooked chicken piccata and an easy bagged salad. I took trips to the Thai food spot and Mexican market, where I picked up a family-style meal of al pastor, rice, beans and salsa for everyone to make their own tacos.
In addition to making sure everyone got fed, I started doing things around my parents’ house in Paso Robles, California, to ensure that they would be more comfortable. Part of that meant borrowing my mom’s car (my husband had taken our car back to our home in Oakland) to make a shopping run to the Walmart across town. On the way there, I put on the 90s station, and as I blasted Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” while driving over the Niblick Road Bridge, memories of my youth in Paso Robles wine country came flooding back.
At this point, it had been about a week since my cousin’s wedding, and while I did have a glass of Justin rosé, I had still not smoked any weed. I wasn’t intending on taking a tolerance break, but then again, none of this was planned.
A Cannabis Desert
While Cannabis is legal for adults in California, the law left it up to individual cities to determine whether or not to allow retail shops. In many places, retail shops are not allowed, and Cannabis delivery services fill in the gaps. Paso Robles is located in California’s Central Coast and has always been a pretty conservative community. When I worked as a reporter at a newspaper in neighboring Atascadero in the early 2000s, a dispensary that opened there — the first in San Luis Obispo County — was chased out of town. The owner of that dispensary, Charles Lynch, ended up opening another shop within San Luis Obispo County in Morro Bay and was greeted with a warm welcome and a ribbon-cutting ceremony by the town’s chamber of commerce.
Nearly a year later, the Drug Enforcement Administration served a search warrant on Lynch’s home and the dispensary, and then months later, in July 2007, authorities arrested Lynch and indicted him on several counts: conspiracy to manufacture, possess and distribute marijuana; providing marijuana to people under the age of 21; marijuana possession with intent to distribute; and maintaining a drug premises. This began a nearly 17-year-long legal battle for Lynch.
After I moved away from San Luis Obispo County, a few Cannabis dispensaries appeared in the city of San Luis Obispo. Today, there is one Cannabis shop in Paso Robles that operates under the loophole of coordinating with a delivery service to get weed delivered there. There are, however, plenty of wineries with tasting rooms.
So here I was in Paso Robles without any weed, and I was stressed out! But luckily for me, my brother works at Urbn Leaf, a dispensary in Grover Beach, and brought me over some prerolls, an eighth and a THC-infused beverage. I was so grateful. When I went on a walk to smoke the prerolls he had given me, I felt the Cannabis go into my system and instantly felt calmer. The trees and plants along my walk looked beautiful, the sunshine and movement felt great. The next day, I requested an upgrade, and my brother bought a jar of half-gram Zodashi prerolls from one of my favorite cultivators, Fig Farms.
Never Quit
The experience of not having Cannabis during this recent family health crisis helped me to understand how important the plant is to my own wellness. Although there are times when I cut back on it, I know I will never quit it. Cannabis helps me feel more grounded and calm, and quells the symptoms of my IBS, which get worse in stressful situations.
Caregiving is hard, but it’s something that most of us will be faced with as our parents get to an age where they need more help. Make sure that when you’re helping them, you continue to care for yourself. Don’t forget to eat, get exercise, stay as well rested as possible and, in down times, enjoy some Cannabis to take the edge off. The road ahead is long, and we need strength for the journey. Take care.
