Events like Snowdown are great because they bring a wider range of people to join the party. It’s not just the party professionals – the PLUR affiliates, the tailgaters and the habitually-up-all-nighters – attendees will include soccer moms trying to recapture a bit of that good ol’ undergraduate spirit, Jerry from accounting who overheard you talking about how your seven best girlfriends have been waiting all year for January to roll back around, 13-year-olds who will look straight through you with little more than an “Ugh” to acknowledge your existence, the mayor, a couple of your aunts and uncles, and probably, your boss.
Smiles will be shared freely and the catalog of Lionel Richie will ring through the land. It will be a good opportunity for the folks who aren’t regular cannabis users to begin or rekindle a relationship with that lovely lady, Mary Jane.
With one note of caution: Do not, I repeat, do not get “tourist high.”
Tourist high (`tur-ist hi) n.
A state of being characterized by an extremely uncomfortable level of intoxication under the influence of cannabis, usually but not exclusively experienced by travelers to Colorado or another state in which marijuana is legal for recreational purposes.
What a shame. Dude flew in all the way from Dallas just to end up tourist high in a pile of Doritos and empty water bottles.
Tourist high is, by my astute analysis (I fart in the general direction of Nebraska and Kansas), the only problem with legalization. It’s not a widespread social issue, but, if you happen to get yourself tourist high, widespread social issues dim and fade to nothing as you break out in an uncontrollable sweat, your heart races, your head swirls and turns into a saboteur, convincing you of the certainty of awful outcomes to the situation, and all the other symptoms of an anxiety attack conspire to overwhelm you. It’s like a flu bug – you know that it’s not going to kill you, but, in the moment, you aren’t sure that you’re not dying. And, unlike influenza, nobody has ever died of cannabis toxicity.
Even if you manage to end up tourist high, you’ll be fine in about five hours – that’s 300 minutes or 18,000 seconds – and you might count down each of those seconds. Let’s skip that whole mess and talk about how to avoid tourist high.
The theme of Snowdown 2016 is the 1980s. If you were a weed smoker while “Thriller” was tearing up the airwaves, most of what you had access to was well below 10 percent THC content. Unless you’re buying or growing a specific CDB strain (for medical reasons), you’ll be hard pressed to find anything below 18 percent nowadays. The solution for the jump in potency is pretty simple: If you’re planning on smoking as your method of consumption, consider all the newfangled strains as “One Hit Wonders,” take a single, smallish hit, exhale and wait for half an hour to see how you feel. But smoking isn’t usually the source of tourist high, edibles are.
Edibles hit you differently than smoking and may take a couple hours to start working. The typical tourist high timeline goes something like, “Ate edible … didn’t feel anything, 30 minutes later … ate twice as much … an hour later, completely merked, brought to emergency room.” Don’t do this to yourself, friends. Store-bought edibles are marked in 10 mg portions. Eat real food first, take one 10 mg portion, wait two hours, see how you feel, consider taking one more. And when it comes to homemade edibles, start with no more than a quarter of a cookie or brownie, repeat above steps.
Now that you have my best advice for avoiding tourist high, call your friends, make plans and enjoy Snowdown.
An addendum regarding concentrates – wax, shatter, oil or anything else that needs to be dabbed: You’re grown folks, but if it’s going to be your maiden voyage in those waters, consider saving it for sometime later this winter when you’re snowed in instead of in public at Snowdown.
Christopher Gallagher lives with his wife and their four dogs and two horses. Life is pretty darn good. Contact him at [email protected]
