The Lessons Maureen Dowd's Weed Sherpa Wants Everyone To Take From Her Bad Trip

The Lessons Maureen Dowd's Weed Sherpa Wants Everyone To Take From Her Bad Trip


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TPM: You told The Cannabist that Dowd called you right before this column ran, correct?

MATT BROWN: Yeah, she called me two days ago, Tuesday afternoon. And it's the first I'd heard that she'd had an extreme reaction. And we talked about it ... we talked a lot about, you know, there's not a simple proofing system, like with alcohol. The line -- I've done dozens of these in person, I've done 200 media tours in the last year so there's certain lines that I know just roll off my tongue without thinking -- one of them is, I have Crohn's disease. I do not absorb food normally. And when I'm talking to somebody, I'm very clear that I'm not the person to ask about dosing because that entire candy bar that sent her into her room for the night probably wouldn't do anything to me. And it's not because the candy bar is inconsistent or the industry doesn't know what it's doing. It's that if you don't have any tolerance and you don't process food a certain way, you could have a very extreme reaction off of a couple milligrams. And if you do have a pretty high tolerance, it might be a completely different experience. So that's why everybody kind of coaches certain newbies: start slow. Wait. This is not like alcohol. It's not heroin, but it's not simple, it's not water either.

I think after 24 hours or so of seeing everything that came out (after Dowd's column was published), and putting it all together, synthesizing, I think this is an example of why we need to follow directions. Sometimes in life there are warnings that you hear and ignore, and there are other warnings that you need to listen to, pay attention. I think the thing to be careful of when we talk about harm, or what happens if something like [Dowd's reaction] happens -- there's not a risk of her dying in her hotel room. There's not a medical danger in that same way as extreme drugs. But it's also incredibly uncomfortable. It's not a comforting position to be in, which is sort of the opposite point of using marijuana. It does bring up that if you don't listen, or if you think you know what you're doing, or you start nibbling on the candy bar, it does take a person to remember that this is not just chocolate. This is medicine, this is a recreation, this is a relaxation, this is a whatever you want it to be. It's not water. And you can't just drink it all and then hope nothing happens.

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