Beautiful Disasters

“you can’t get addicted to weed.” wanna bet?

Hi y’all. Alex here. This is prolly the hardest thing I’ve ever written. I’m grateful to y’all for creating a space where I feel like I can share it. Thank you.

I’m awake by 5:30 am. No alarm clock, just me and the sun, both ready to rise.

Lots to do. Let’s go. 

I pee in our tiny bathroom, resisting the urge to clear the phlegm from my throat so that I don’t wake Laur up.  God, that word – phlegm. It sounds exactly like what it means. Respect. 

But how do you spell it? p, definitely, then what? g? pghlem? pleghm? plhgem? Phlegm is the greatest word in the english language. The 8th wonder of the world. I should write that down.

I sneak through the room with the grace of a garbage truck, hoping Lauren isn’t awake, yet knowing she is. It was hard not to be.

A gnawing thrill bubbles in my stomach as I close the front door and, beep-beep, get in the Prius that’s parked perpendicular to our steep-as-shit street, Scott Ave. It isn’t as bad as Baxter, the legendary Echo Park attraction, with its 32 degree incline, the steepest street in the country and probably the world. There’s a moment, right before the top, when it feels like your car is about to drop off the edge of a cliff. They say that’s where you meet God. Right there, on Baxter. 

Sounds dope. 

God isn’t here though, on Scott Ave, not yet at least. Baxter is the 4th steepest street in the country, actually, I learn on google while driving while listening to a podcast while placing my Starbucks mobile order while driving.

That’s wild. What if gravity didn’t work sometimes on Baxter? Or in general. Picky gravity, lol. Pickle gravity - a different gravity for pickles. Na, picky gravity is better, remember picky gravity and… wait, what was the other thing? PHLEM! 

Picky gravity + phlegm, picky gravity + phlegm, picky gravity + phlegm, the 8th wonder of the world. Baxter could be the 8th wonder of the world too, though. Baxter is 9th. What's the application process like to become a wonder of the world? Seems like they were just handing them out and now, it’s impossible to become one. 

Remember all this, remember all this, remember - shit, I gotta focus finishing this Starbucks mobile order: a venti BIG BOY americano WITH AN EXTRA SHOT and JUST A SPLASH of soy milk, plus of course everyone’s favorite: the undisputed champ of breakfast sandwiches that make you feel healthy at Starbucks, yes, the 230 calorie REDUCED FAT turkey-bacon egg WHITE and cheddar sandwich. 

Sure, it tastes like sponge but man, at least it’s healthy sponge. 

Driving home, goods in hand, I am a 16-year-old on his way to the mall. The possibility. The anticipation. The craving! Craving. Raving + C. Not much there, no need to remember that one. 

Anything can happen, I think as I sip that giant-ass iced espresso and pull that cheesy steaming hot yet somehow also cold sandwich out of its paper bag home. I take a bite. 

But let’s be clear, I’m not much aware of any of this. Not the hot/cold sponge sandwich or the rising anticipation in my chest or my heart rate increasing from the espresso. I’ve got a podcast on – Tim Ferriss Explains It All – and also phlegm + gravity phlegm + gravity phlegm + gravity. Plus wait was the other thing oh right the wonders of the world and I’m back home now, in the office, plopping myself into the chair. It’s time. 

I unscrew the dab pen and get everything ready. It’s 5:49 am, and I’m about to get stoned as shit.

Do the dab thing 

My dab pen is sticky. That’s the ‘wax’, which is weedspeak for ‘absurdly strong concentrated weed oil’. 

According to WeedMaps: “Dabbing is hands down one of the most potent methods of dosing cannabis; the cannabinoids in weed wax are highly concentrated, and you can feel its effects within seconds of inhalation. Dabs can contain up to 80-90% of the plant's major psychoactive cannabinoid, THC. Comparatively, raw cannabis flower contains up to about 30% THC at most.”

Lol. 

Unscrewing the top half, which feels like it’s covered in dry, crusty maple syrup, I’m hit by that dank stench – not ‘that dank sticky icky,’ but dank in its original meaning – a musty, thick stench of burnt earth, prehistoric vapors from the land before time. 

I take the tiny shovel the size of a mini screwdriver, aka ‘the loading tool’, and scoop up a small ‘dab’ of the sauce/wax that comes in a shallow tub, the kind you’d use for nice lip balm. As if I’m performing surgery, I pack it on top of the coils as Tim Ferriss explains how to outsource your high-leverage, low-joy tasks and I’m nommin’ on some mostly cold spongewich with turkey bacon, and the wax is on the coils, but the coils smell bad, like burnt toast, so I say, out loud, ‘yuck,’ and then screw the top half back on, push the blueish purple button and wait as the coils begin to heat up, hotter and hotter and finally, it is time.

I bring the pen to my mouth and I inhale as the sweet mother’s vapor fills my nostrils, fills my throat and especially that place where phlegm usually gets stuck (there it is again! a sign). I can taste it, weed-like but not, an ounce of weed  made super compact, purified down to its basic atomic element, a genie returned to his lamp, and then, once in your throat, kablam, it explodes, and I exhale. 

My body unclenches,

My brain loosens,

the darkness lifts

finally, the sun also rises.