Adventures in the marijuana trade: Swimming to Atlantis

Like many journalists/ex-comedians I use the encrypted app whatsupdoc. Just in case people who know how to whistle want to blow their revelatory whistles in my direction. Dissatisfied and concerned government workers. Miserable and morally conflicted corporate VPs. Storytellers with an important story to tell. Which is how Francesca de la Doobie reached out. The deal is you hear the story and if, after checking it out, it’s for real, you tell the story and try your very best to protect the storyteller’s identity. So, yes, de la Doobie is not Francesca’s real name.

I don’t have a horse in the controversial pot-shops-everywhere-you-look race, but the truth is Francesca didn’t contact me out of the blue. If I was more a comedian and less of a journalist these days, I’d tell you that, like many working the political beat in the Age of Trump, I’m high on irony. Whistling is more popular than ever, and someone had obviously blown the whistle on me in Francesca’s direction. And she had obviously heard my most recent embarrassing story.

It only took one week covering the White House before unnamed members of the Press Corps decided it was time to initiate me. And so it happened: the requisite after-hours blindfolded trip to what I learned later was the oh-so-exclusive — and underground — Venue de Vape: the gentleman’s/gentlewoman’s private wood-paneled marijuana resort.

I was still blindfolded, everyone exhaling in my direction, when somehow I found the vape between my lips. Before I knew it, quite a few puffs worth of some super-duper stuff was swirling through my lungs and into the bloodstream. Then I found myself munching on what I assumed was an after-dinner dark chocolate mint. Between you and me, I almost immediately found myself inspired to make what I assumed were a few much-needed word changes to the Toby Keith tune.

A few minutes later I was freed from the blindfold. Lucky to find an air guitar under the table, I was up and on my feet, strumming and swaying between tables, feeling blessed having been chosen to serenade the entire establishment. Convinced Toby would be proud, I belted: “Spicer fired up a fat boy and he passed it around/The last words that I spoke before they tucked me in/ I’ll never smoke weed with that Huckabee again.”

This is how Francesca put it when she contacted me on whatsupdoc: “Heard from several reliable members of the DC potvine that, considering your experience last night, you might now better appreciate what I’m up to. The word is that after the pot-mint kicked in and after your song, you became convinced that you had just been appointed United States Ambassador to Atlantis.

“Somehow before your fellow newsfolks could stop you, you bolted from the club. Somehow you made it a couple of blocks. Luckily, my friend Amy Hickenbarker, the White House correspondent for the Miami Press-Examiner who obviously has a measly per diem, had just finished her $7.99 Crispy Chicken Strips special at the International House of Pancakes, where you appeared. All of a sudden, she heard a loud ‘Ahoy!’ and watched you spill a large pitcher of water, then bellyflop onto the floor. All of a sudden, you were trying to breaststroke your way across the floor past her table. She told me that when you lifted your head in her direction to take another breath, you managd to gasp that you were on your way to the underwater American Embassy. Luckily, with the help of a waitress, she got you up off the floor before you drowned, then forced a couple of cups of coffee in you. Then she got you back to your Motel 6.
Read More