My Husband And I Went Looking For Pot. It Quickly Turned Into A Nightmare.

At every social gathering of middle-aged people I’ve been to recently, almost everyone has an “I tried a THC gummy bear because I couldn’t sleep and found myself in the emergency room or about to call 911” episode to share.

The weed from when my friends and I were younger pales in potency to the variants available today. And taking a hit, a slice or a pill can feel like dropping acid during the ’70s did. (At least from my limited experience, this seems to be a fair assessment.)

A friend told me that she ate a gummy on vacation to relax and avoid getting seasick on a boat. But instead her teeth felt thick, she couldn’t keep up with the conversation around her, and she thought she was having a stroke.

“I had a two-minute delayed response to everything, so I just went to bed and slept for 10 hours,” she said.

One man I met told me he was having dinner at a country club with friends during Dry January. When he declined a drink, his waiter insisted that he try the club’s new seltzer, an artisan extract with the tag line “THC for the people” and the quote “Caution is the path to mediocrity” by author Frank Herbert on its website. He was unaware of how high he was — or that he shouldn’t be operating a motor vehicle — until, on the way home, his wife turned to him when he stopped at a green light and asked what he was doing.

“I have no idea,” he said.

More middle-aged people are using marijuana than in previous years. Meanwhile, poison control centers are receiving more calls and states are seeing increasing numbers of ER visits due to people passing out, hallucinating or experiencing other issues a s cannabis (legal or not) becomes more readily available in many parts of the U.S.

I had my own misadventure with the drug