My Potent Experience

About four years ago, I had severe anxieties and insomnia issues. I tried everything to get better sleep, starting with melatonin pills I'd only taken when traveling before, to overcome jet lag, and ending with all sorts of herbal teas, meditation, and deep sleep music.

Little helped and I felt that my bad sleep started to affect my work. I told about this to my friend who suffered from similar issues before. She said that she'd started using CBD-infused gummies and it helped her. So next time when I stayed at their place for the weekend, she gave me about a quarter of a gummy and it helped! I didn't really experience any symptoms that people describe when they use cannabis for the first time, I just went straight to bed after taking it. But I had much better sleep that night and felt much more refreshed and energetic.

In Pennsylvania, where I lived at the time, medicinal marijuana was already legal. My good friend regularly used it for medical reasons and went to the Big Indian reservation where she could buy gummies and CBD oils and creams cheaper. So she shared a small pack of gummies with me (it was a sample size like the one pictured in the cover image, with only about 3-4 gummies). Given my first experience, I was happy that I could fall back onto them if I had sleep issues again.

And soon enough, Madam Insomnia dropped unannounced for a visit again. On a Sunday, when I needed sleep the most before my 9 am Monday class and three total classes to teach. I couldn't fall asleep till about 2 am. Then I remembered about my friend's gummies but I didn't remember what the recommended dosage was. So I took a whole gummy and went back to bed.

It hit me hard about 30 minutes later. And oh boy, did I experience everything that people usually warn the novices about: my heart rate was so high that I felt it would jump out of my chest, I had hallucinations and nightmares when I dosed off, followed by the desire to sing and dance and outbursts of creativity when I felt the urge to write down some of the things I was hallucinating about (none of them were good upon closer reading later).

At some point, I was so scared by my heart's reaction I thought I would die. That sent me into a panic mode. I was horrified that I didn't have the will and was estimating how much time it would take people to discover my body if I died alone in my apartment (anywhere from one day to a couple of years, like in that horridly famed British story). And all the time, I was desert-thirsty and drank so much water that I had to get up often to pee.

I believe I finally dozed off at about 5:30 am because when I woke up at 7:30 I started to panic that I won't have enough time to get to my first class as it usually takes me a couple of hours in the morning for my exercise and meditation routine. The gummy seemed to have worn off by that time, even though my mind was quite foggy. Still, I quickly got ready and drove myself to work, getting to my office at about 8:30 am.

And then the second wave or some kind of delayed effect hit me right when I was teaching my 9 am class. Closer to the end, I felt my knees buckle and my head started to spin. I had to grab onto the teacher's computer desk for balance and started to breathe deeply, trying to calm myself down. I felt the blood rushing to my brain, away from my hands and cheeks that became translucently pale, as my students noted. My cotton mouth was so dry I couldn't even speak. I was just grasping for air.

My students got really scared, one brought me water and asked if I wanted to call the ambulance because I looked like someone who was experiencing a heart attack or a diabetic shock. Because I knew exactly what this was, and it was incredibly embarrassing to admit, I told them that I just needed a minute to sit down and then I'd go to the college medical office. I let my class out 10 minutes earlier and went back to my office. Good thing that my next class was one hour later and I felt back to normal by that time.

And that was my last experience of consuming a gummy. I've never attempted it again.

Some time later, I shared my experience with another colleague who uses prescription marijuana for anxiety and other medical issues. As a more experienced user, he knew exactly what the problem was: the dosage and the substance concentration. I took too much for one time and it could have been unevenly distributed in the gummies, so I may have gotten the one that was much more potent than the others. "Better to use prescription pills," he said confidently and added, "But you probably wouldn't have died anyway. Just got a little scare."

P.S. Pennsylvania now is surrounded by the states that legalized marijuana for recreational purposes. And just this year, the latest initiative to legalize it in the state failed again, but the Democrats are still working on it. Here's a good explainer on where the state currently stands: