Lead image by Sara Wass
I’m a firm believer that you can’t trust anyone who doesn’t smoke weed, but despite being a 420-friendly girl, I can attest that potheads can be the worst. We’ve all met people who unintentionally embody every stereotype in the Cheech & Chong canon. Sometimes it’s just a phase, but certain people are simply capital-S “Stoners.” At one point, I was guilty myself.
Years ago, I spent a lovely, stoned Sunday in the park with a lover. Across the grass, we could see a group of hippies doing a stoner dance, of sorts. You know what I’m talking about: white people wearing sarongs and moving their arms like snakes while attempting to gyrate their hips to the sounds of some god-forsaken jam band. My people, I thought. Look at that celebration of existence. (Note: I was younger then, and had eaten a couple pot cookies earlier in the day). I brazenly started walking across the park to join them in dance because that obviously was the correct decision. I needed to grab life by the horns and get my groove on with my new friends.
“Sophie!” my date said, as he grabbed me by my arm with a stunned expression on his face. “You can’t just go join their picnic; we have somewhere to be. They’re playing the fucking Grateful Dead.”
What! They’re going to be my new best friends, I thought. I bet they would share their weed and flower crowns! And fine, yes, I enjoy the Grateful Dead. Sue me. “You’re being a buzzkill!” I wanted to say to my date.
Looking back, I was acting like a total white chick stoner cliche and feel bad to this day that I almost dragged my date into a drum circle. Yes, dating a stoner can be a hazy, crazy mess. It’s almost like a 20-something right of passage: at some point you date a skater, a wannabe artist, and a dealer who supplements his pot income by hitting up his grandmother for rent cash — you know, a general burnout who takes bong rips before making coffee in the morning (just kidding, these people don’t have any groceries). Not that these exes were all bad; they just made pot their priority over anything else. It can be no fun to date someone who unironically wants to dance in public to a jam band, or whose bed sheets are covered in resin. Turns out, I wasn’t the worst stoner to date in the world. After reaching out to a bunch of friends and colleagues, I learned that all potheads can be total assholes.
*Names have been changed to protect identity, thanks to the federal government…
Harris, 31-Years-Old
After she smoked, my ex would get super lazy and just throw trash into the crack between our bed and the wall. I would find all sorts of crazy stuff in that awful chasm. There would be tons of ash and little scraps of paper that she used to scrape her bowl. And yes, lots of trash from snacking. The absolute worst was finding dirty spoons that were covered in crusty ash and two-week old ice cream. Which brings me to my next topic: She would eat ice cream late at night very slowly and methodically, and make sucking noises on the spoon. Chunky ice cream is her favorite, generally Rocky Road-type ice creams. Anyways, as someone with misophonia [a condition in which negative emotions are triggered by specific sounds], it's my worst nightmare is trying to watch Netflix next to someone methodically suckling something. Also, she would take huge hits and exhale them into her cat's ear. And then he would get super stoned. But the old ashy nugget crusted ice cream spoons were the worst.
Nicole, 28-Years-Old
We went out for pizza, and he fell asleep, face first, into his slice. I left him there in the middle of the pizza shop. I don't have any problem with stoners at all, but we were towards the end of the relationship, and I was so pissed — I had expressed that I didn't want him to meet me out in the world if he was that stoned. It was pretty much the nail in his coffin.
Jack, 33-Years-Old
I am pro-marijuana (I have used it successfully to quit drinking) and pro-legalization, but living with a daily pot smoker can be fucking agony. Once, I dated someone who was in a high-stress corporate career track, so I understood her need to light up. But the very things that made her successful at her job became cartoonishly exaggerated when she was high.
Once, I walked in on her alphabetizing her nail polish (by color) only to return two fucking hours later to find her doing the same thing (this time by brand). Then there's the fucking eating. She does yoga every day and is in extraordinary shape, but she will eat four fucking sleeves of saltines in a sitting. Who the fuck eats that many saltines?
The next day she would be wracked with guilt and bemoan her lack of impulse control. I had to listen and nod sympathetically, or I was accused of being insensitive and unattracted to her. Not to mention I haven't had salt and vinegar chips in the fucking house for years. Any snack items I brought home had to be hidden from her, or she'd eat everything in sight. I'm an alcoholic and had no problem having booze in the house, what gives? She listened to the Grateful Dead un-ironically too, which is fucking unforgivable.
Autumn, 25-Years-Old
I was seeing this guy last year. We got along well and had a lot of fun together, but he drank a lot and smoked a lot of weed, which was a turnoff for me. One night he invited me over. We're chilling at his place, and he tells me that he's going sober for a while. I commended him and thought to myself, "This will be such a nice sober night together."
The night goes on and suddenly he pulls out his weed pen and starts vaping. I say, "I thought you were sober?" to which he replied, "Oh no, just sober from alcohol. If I'm gonna be sober, I'm gonna need something else fun to replace it." So, once stoned, he calls up his shroom dealer (because I guess weed isn't a good enough replacement?) and leaves to get the shrooms. Now I'm sitting in his room alone, baffled at the situation. He comes back about 30 minutes later with the shrooms and takes them immediately. He offers me some, and I decline. I already felt pretty uncomfortable, and I didn't want to make it worse. So, I think to myself, "Ok, this is not really a big deal. He'll just trip and feel good, and we can still have a good night." About an hour later he claims that he doesn't feel anything and takes some more.
Then we start to hook up. One thing that turned me on about this guy is that he talked dirty in bed. So, he's fingering me and talking dirty, but I start to notice that he's going slower and slower. And not in a sexy, "I'm gonna tease you" way. He was barely moving his fingers at all. At this point, I noticed that he was falling asleep, but the weird thing was that he was still talking dirty (through a sleepy slur). So, he was like, "Yeah, yeah you like that?", and I'm thinking, "Uh, like what?" So, I shake him a little and say, "Do you still want to have sex?" He mumbles that he still does but that we should take a nap first. It was then that I knew I wasn't getting laid. That was the last time I saw him.
Doug Mann, 25-Years Old
You know what? I’m a stoner and I can be a piece of work in a romantic context. I realize it can suck dating someone who constantly rips spliffs, blasts Kyuss or dub music, and stays awake all night reading esoteric shit. I literally always smell like smoke and flower. That said, I try and be really upfront with new partners and I usually make it clear from the get-go that smoking a lot of pot is part of who I am right now. These days, I’m in a happy, healthy relationship, and my partner and I have figured out how to be symbiotic stoners. Previously, however, things could get messy.
I remember weed (and my pothead proclivities) absolutely butchering a first date I went on years ago. I had met this Parisian girl who was visiting New York for a few weeks. We barely knew each other, and she came over to drink some wine on a Saturday. At the time, I was living with two guys who consumed at least a quarter of weed a week, respectively. We had an “ash anywhere” rule in the apartment and an ongoing tab that tallied how many bongs each roommate had accidentally broken.
The girl comes over, and immediately my roommates start egging her on to take a bong hit. She’s got a thick accent, and tells us she’s tried hash in Europe before, but never smoked US-grown marijuana (or used a bong for that matter). Of course, that only encouraged them to peer pressure her further. I was already stoned and didn’t really say anything, which was arguably as bad. The poor girl! Within 20 minutes of entering our apartment, she was the highest she’d ever been in her life.
Unsurprisingly, things got worse from there. We decide it’d be fun to see a midnight movie (“we” meaning my two pothead roommates and me — my date was not comprehending any English at this point) and within an hour we’re at Landmark Sunshine at a 12:00 AM showing of The Room. Not only has the girl never heard of the cult movie, but she was so overwhelmed by the weed that it was useless trying to explain to her that people would be shouting out the dialogue and throwing spoons at the screen. And sure enough, someone screams “Lisaaaaa!” or whatever Wiseau quote the moment we sit down in the theater, causing my date to panic. I tried to explain again, but I got a look like, “You really fucked this one up.” She ended up staying for the whole movie, though. To this day, I don’t know if she liked it or not. I never heard from her again.
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