How strange and ironic, I thought as I entered a marijuana dispensary for the first time! As a survivor of Berkeley in the 60s, I shouldn’t have needed any guidance from my children on buying pot. I should have known Sativa from Indica and THC from CBD. But I didn’t know CBD from BBD, SPQR or MSG. I can however identify AOC in a crowded political field.

Back in the 60s, when you had a pain or anxiety, you were guided to pills. For pain, MDs wrote prescriptions for Tylenol 3 (Codeine), Percodan and Percocet. For anxiety, Benzos (Benzodiazepine) like Valium, Ativan and Xanax were all the medical rage, replacing the “Happy Pills” of the ‘60s such as Milltown and Librium.

Pot wasn’t an approved option. It was illegal and demonized with propaganda films like “Reefer Madness.” You could also go to prison for smoking it.

Times have changed, and most MDs today are hesitant to prescribe pills, particularly Opioids and Benzos. These old meds for pain and anxiety are discouraged, and doctors are monitored. Pot, however, is often recommended for anxiety, pain, sleep and many diseases. It has gone from the status of a gateway to heroin to a cure-all. In other words, Pot and Pills have done a Do-Si-Do.

I find this confusing. It’s like the state lotteries which replaced the old “numbers racket,” which were serious criminal enterprises. Or compare amateur sports giving out disqualifications and life-long bans to college athletes for accepting a meal, money or rental assistance with today’s NIL (Name Image Likeness), which offers payments, sometimes in the millions of dollars, to “student-athletes.” Strange New World with Pot legal and Red Dye#3 banned.

I think that as an 80-year-old going into a dispensary for the first time, I had a right to be disoriented. You see I didn’t “experiment” with pot during the 60s. And I do love the term, “Experimented.” This implies, “I didn’t really use it. I just kind of put on a white coat, picked up a clipboard and noted my scientific research.” Uh, I don’t think so. My friends were using and enjoying.

Naturally, I tried pot a couple of times, but wasn’t into it. It left me frustrated. I wanted to eat. I wanted to make love. I wanted to sleep. They were each good options if done sequentially, but the urge for simultaneity could never be fulfilled.

So why now? I have trouble sleeping. Some might believe that my difficulty stems from what I do. I write op-eds and teach current events. Restlessness and anxiety-filled nights should not be surprising. However, I’m embarrassed to tell you that my immersion in the news is not what is making me Sleepless in Encino.

I’ve had sleep issues since elementary school. I therapized these issues by listening to the radio at night—classical music and, yes, the news. These sounds were a “white noise” that kept my “Monkey Brain” occupied and let me drift into Alpha state sleep.

Eventually, I started adding sleep aids—first antihistamines and then muscle relaxants. It turned out that many of the muscle relaxants were Benzos.

I got into the muscle relaxants because I have back issues. A friend remarked that I have more back issues than National Geographic. After three spinal surgeries, my back is pretty good, but I do experience mild but chronic pain with occasional muscle spasms. This too is a condition dating back to my misspent youth playing High School Football and breaking my coccyx.

My drugs did a good job of helping me sleep and managing my back pain. However, medical opinion and legal rulings made my continuing use of Benzos problematic.

So, I weaned myself off them over the course of six months. It wasn’t difficult. I just slowly cut down till at the end I didn’t experience any withdrawal. Great! But! I still had trouble sleeping and my back still hurt. What to do?

Well, you know my answer. After hearing all the testimonies to pot, I decided to try it. Naturally, I consulted my sons.
Thus, I began learning about Sativa, Indica, THC and CBD. I started trying various strengths and combinations. I surveyed different brands and all of them claimed to be the very best.

I wasn’t looking for a high, just a release. As I was shopping at a second dispensary, I had an epiphany, “Damn, I actually am experimenting with pot!

So far, it’s going fine, and I’m notating my results by brand and dose. Now if only I could find the notes.
They’re not buried somewhere under empty bags of chips and Cheetos. That’s a Cheech and Chong-inspired cliché. I can’t find them and pot can’t cure this problem, because of my lifelong habit of having a very messy desk.

Read more of Jon Dobrer’s writing on his substack at Jonathandobrer.substack.com