4:21

Okay so I always wanted to do this experiment I'm going to lay out before you in a few seconds, right here. I do it all the time in my mind anyway, so it's time to go public. This is a thought I normally get only when I'm high as (what's the highest thing I can think of right now - a satellite? Is that actually within the limits of height? Where does altitude end? Maybe it's where our gravitational field ends?) the atmosphere, yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't really pay it this much importance. I hope you're prepared for a TLTR, because this is going to take some time.

I guess you might have noticed by now that I am a bit high. Only a little bit, though. And that's the whole idea of the experiment - to see where I end up after having reached tonight's limit in terms of bakedness. And I believe that limit will also be the end of this post. I want to find out whether I'll be able to coherently deliver my thoughts on what I think happens with our thinking when we smoke pot. So here we go. Puff, puff and puff again.

To properly kick this off with a side-thought, I noticed that there's not many places where you can hear people talking about the positive effects smoking weed has on your way of thinking. Stumbling upon a good comedian who has a thing or two to say about this is not that rare, but their insights are often kind of eh. There are a couple of great ones though, and most of them belong to one man. Every time I watch Joe Rogan talking (he even has a series of podcasts, check) about how he writes most of his material while high, I chuckle on the inside. Stand-up comedy is definitely one of the best ways to market controversial ideas and Joe Rogan is an expert salesman/dealer. And don't even get me started on the whimsicality Eddie Izzard or the fuzz Mitch Hedberg give out. (By the way, did you know about the Hashashins?) It feels pretty good when a great comedic PR shares your own faltering insights on life as a pothead to the world (sigh, they're not your own after all).

Even if the comedian is talking to a vast audience and to all the viewers who will ever watch that video, you know you are being given preferential treatment. This is targeted banter, my friends, and we react to it like fucking meerkats, ears wide open, standing perfectly still, sometimes signaling the other members of the group with our elbow. Those jokes have been written for you and the likes of you, likes that belong in this case to the other 21 million European weekly users. I know because I read this report. And that's a low number, not to mention it's been steadily decreasing for the last 5 years. The club gets more and more intimate as the very young crowd manifests a clear preference towards alcohol and hard drugs. Oh. Well.

Do we all feel this cerebral closeness to (almost all) fellow pot smokers? I think yes. It starts out when you're a teenager, but it slowly loses its power as an individualistic statement and develops into the permanent nod+grin of approval. Remember when you used to exchange subway glances at 5 A.M. with total strangers who looked as wasted as you did? Or when you listened to songs about pot and sang along to the chorus with your whole honest heart? Yeah. Nod. Grin.

Now, where was I. Is this working? It must be, I'm getting a lot of things I want to talk about and the only words I can think of to express them are stuff, awesome and you know what it's like when. I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M TRYING TO SAY HERE. So you know what it's like when you're finally in a place you always wanted to go to, you're so excited about what's going on there and you try to take in everything at the same time? And it's so good you can't imagine a better place on Earth? That's exactly how I feel all the time when I'm high. I guess this is the great reward behind getting yourself high: having the capacity to notice everything that goes on AND getting to think about it too, because you know, life is longer. If you have an imaginary attention deficit like I do, more power to you, you'll finally be able to stop multitasking. It's true that you'll mostly be thinking about things that wouldn't normally interest you, but who knows, maybe they should. Everything should interest you.

Even if you find yourself in the middle of a boring conversation, you don't give a shit because you have your formidable stream-of-consciousness keeping you real company - the best way ever to keep yourself (and, if you can still talk, others) entertained. And isn't it really great when you find out about someone you've just met (and whom you were having the boring conversation with) that they smoke weed too? It totally changes the way you relate to that person. Suddenly you're all like "hey surely these people must watch the same shows I do", and whaddayaknow, you're right, they do. Pot is such a perfect interesting conversation starter.

And since we're talking about entertainment, that is where the magic manifests itself best. My personal favorite show to watch while baked is "Bored To Death". Or is it "Curb Your Enthusiasm"? Come to think of it, I feel like that about most of the (awesome, Jewish) comedy shows I watch when I smoke, they all bring me something new. And I'm aware that 'something new' is nothing more than extra dopamine and endorphins - you know, the same stuff sex, touching objects in museums and empty beaches provide you with. If these hormones are responsible for the giddiness, what's responsible for the multi-layered, multi-angular perspectives? I'm a complete ignorant and I haven't even been as far as wikipedia to look into this properly, but I think it mostly has to do with how smart we are (and how much smoking experience we have).

According to me, most people only smoke to act all stoned and take in nothing but stimuli; only long-term users who live the high on a regular basis go exploring. I think you have to learn how to smoke right. I'm pretty sure most people don't even realize there's two very separate cognitive processes going on in their happified braincells: one is very contemplative, quite overwhelming and (I suspect) the source of the adjective "stoned" itself; the other one is simply enhanced day-to-day awareness. The difference between our normal, everyday perceptions and their stoned version is like the difference between a VHS rip and a Bluray rip of the same movie.

We are ridiculously aware of the unintended, the open pores, the involuntary gestures, the secondary plot-line - and that's where the funny and the interesting come from. Too bad they're not very useful, these insights, but I like to believe they just kind of hang out together in our subconscious and at some point they join forces and reach a higher purpose, whatever that might be. And maybe the sharp feeling of sudden enlightenment you sometimes get comes from mixing the two processes, swinging from one to the other back and forth, from awe to reason, from wonder to realization until understanding is achieved. No? No?

I can almost bet everyone I consider 'normal people' think they're a bunch of idiots with a curious mind. And we must be at least a little bit smart, all those new angles and witty commentaries are, after all, our own. Of course, that's not the only reason why we're smart. But are we smarter on pot? We must be. Just think about the little comedian you become when you smoke weed, cracking jokes, trying to extract sense from nonsense, unlocking the achievements of the mind... He must be onto something, not only on something. We're an interesting crowd, albeit a socially counterproductive one. Probably because we generally feel like clever ignorants, forever disappointed with humankind, we tend to stick to our own. And if there's many of us, that leads to creativity. If there's one or two of us in isolation, that basically leads to critical thinking, useless insight and a strong lack of motivation.

...

Next morning:

And that lack of motivation got to me and I obviously fell asleep after a session of instant gratification hosted by a delicious fruit salad.

Okay so was this boring or what? No, seriously, it's so stony it barely makes me want to re-read it.

Note to self: don't ever do this again, it's terribly embarrassing.

Conclusion to experiment: some people, even if they think they're smarter when they're stoned, must try not to forget how fucking stoned they are.

Moral of the story: -