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Everyone remembers their first time.
For some it provided a spiritual awakening, some passed out with half a sandwich in their hand and, for others, it had no effect. But nearly every consummate cannabis consumer recalls their introduction to weed, and the tapestry of Oregon’s cannabis culture is woven from a diverse collection of these threads.
Before recreational legalization made cannabis intros as easy as prancing into a dispensary and ordering a O.pen Lemon Cake cart, an O.pen vape battery and handful of edibles, pothead debuts were somewhat more surreptitious. Back in the day, users had a strictly limited array of available cannabis products to play with, but that doesn’t make the first-timer tales any less awesome.
In the spirit of commiseration, we asked our readers to share their first-time cannabis experiences so we could all light up, lean back, and giggle over how far we’ve come, how well we’re doing, and how much more we have to look forward to.
Kate recalls turning 13 and taking a road trip to Las Vegas with her family.
Stopped at a hotel in Bend, Oregon, “my sister asked if I wanted to take a hit from her bong before bed. It was a small bong: probably ten inches long, clear, with a little green pot leaf decal above the stem. Not knowing what to do, she lit the bowl and told me to inhale, so I took as deep of a breath as I could. For the first 30 seconds I was skeptical that it had ‘worked,’ but after that, I was high as a kite.
“I managed to make my way to my bed and get my metallic blue disc player (with anti-skip technology) and start listening to The Places That You’ve Come to Fear the Most, the Dashboard Confessional CD I’d just gotten as a birthday present. I was drifting off to a high-as-hell sleep when I realized I couldn’t hear anything. In a sudden, pot-induced panic, I genuinely thought I’d gotten so high that I’d gone deaf. Then I realized my headphones had slipped off of my head.”
WW reader Elise reminds us of the low-tech methods for inhalation associated with most of our first times. “In 2000, I was 15 years old and at some dude’s basement house party. Someone made a homemade bong with a 1 liter pop bottle, a hose, and the filter from the sink faucet. We passed the ‘bong’ around a circle of six people. [Later] the dude’s mom found the bong and came stomping downstairs holding it above her head yelling, ‘What the hell is this?!’”
Imagine that scene re-created now with the form and function of an O.pen vape pen and it’s notable to think how far we’ve come, and how different that basement scene would be now.
Dana remembers: “I was at a party and was offered a ‘special’ brownie. I ate a big piece of it and nothing really happened that night. It wasn’t until the next day around 11 am when I felt like I was underwater. It dawned on me that I was starting to feel the effects of the cannabis. I thought eating or drinking water might help to pass the feeling, but instead it seemed to intensify the effects significantly. I was slower than my usual self, and my kids remarked about how tired I looked, but my husband was the productive parent for the first time ever, while I just sat around giggling and looking dazed. I didn’t feel like my normal sober self for three days after that.”
Thankfully, consuming cannabis now has a much more controlled outcome. With determined dosing, strain identification, vaporization and extraction have made weed adventures significantly more manageable, plannable, and customizable to the user. Gummies like Lunchbox Alchemy’s Squibs and Tangos are all designed to deliver the user the purest, most authentic expressions of cannabis.
But, among the many “I got too high” stories, many of our readers’ first times indicate the positive power of cannabis.
Molli remembers her first time at a pre-college orientation camping trip: “I felt more on top of my thoughts and aware of my surroundings than ever. I was at ease talking to all these strangers, wittier, my body more relaxed.”
Taylor says: “I was 22 and my roommate gave me a hit from her bong (publicly called a ‘water pipe for tobacco’) and I got giggly and went into my room and drew my own hand with pastels for about an hour or two. After beginning to smoke, I spent my first year depression-free since I was about 12 or 13 years old. It was truly miraculous.”
And Jim found relief with weed while serving in Vietnam in 1968.
“We ran into Viet Cong and had some casualties – my first exposure – and then stood down at a base camp called Lai Khe. I wandered in the dark around some run-down bunkers, encountered a fellow radioman who’d just joined our unit. ‘What’s that smell?’ I asked him – although I guessed it was ganja. He readily offered me a hit, and my eyes were opened.
“For the rest of my 14 months, having marijuana available was a godsend. It took the edge off the residual anxiety that was always with you, allowing pleasant thoughts and memories to be your focus for a while.”
Sure, first-time experiences with cannabis differ from person to person, but in today’s recreational landscape weed adventures are SO much more intentional and consumer friendly.
Products like discreet, strain-specific, terpene-rich cartridges fitted to exclusive, artist-edition O.pen batteries (wasn’t everybody’s first vape pen an O.pen?) or gummies like Lunchbox Alchemy’s full spectrum THC gummy line are trustworthy go-to’s. O.pen also offers a wide variety of THC cartridges to fit every consumer’s style and preference. Whether you’re a first-time cannabis user or a lifetime enthusiast, O.pen and Lunchbox Alchemy are two Oregon brands all cannathusiasts should be familiar with. These two of the oldest, most trusted brands in the Oregon cannabis industry have been at the forefront of cannabis normalization for eight to 10 years. And if it’s your first time, it’ll be more than just an event to remember, it will be distinctly suited just for you.
This article was paid for by Slang Worldwide.
