For my grandfather, Clifford Perrine (9/21/1915–7/6/2012)
And for Fred, Ginny, and Tina
"I would especially tell you that this accursed hashish is a fiendishly perfidious substance."
"Here, then, is happiness!-it can be contained within an ordinary teaspoon!-happiness with all its rapture, childishness, and folly!"
-Charles Baudelaire, The Poem of Hashish
It's not until noon on Easter Sunday, thirty-three hours into this ill-advised cross-country mission, that it hits me: I must be the lamest-looking outlaw on the planet. The lumbar support attachment I've strapped to my seat is actually too supportive, pushing my belly out into a turgid ball that looks like early-stage pregnancy. My neck-support pillow is a shade of fuchsia that doesn't occur in nature, and so overstuffed that side-mirror checks require a full upper-body twist. Cruise control is set to sixty-six, one mile over the limit. My legs are crossed at the ankles, shorts unzipped, fly fully open, boxer briefs exposed by a shock of window-filtered sun, and I'm using a curious one-handed steering technique that involves holding the lap portion of the seat belt against the bottom half of the steering wheel.
I have devised this innovation to relieve the pressure on my bladder, which begs to be voided almost hourly. Actually, my driving schedule revolves entirely around my peeing schedule. In order to maximize hydration and driving efficiency, I've made a rule of one stop per large water bottle consumed. At the end of each bottle, when I grant myself the luxury of exiting the interstate, it's the most orgasmic old-man-style pee you can imagine, a minutes-long stream of startling velocity that yields audible groans of pleasure.
The point is: What started out as an adrenaline-fueled odyssey has become mundane and repetitive. I drive and I drive and I drive. The first day was tense, despite the calming scenery: northern California's snowy peaks, the pocked red rock formations of Nevada. That night, in a Salt Lake City hotel, I couldn't sleep because I kept compulsively checking on the rental car through the hotel room window. I rose early and got back on the road, snapping pictures of Wyoming's perpetual cow pasture. I made phone calls to people I hadn't talked to in months, always using the Bluetooth earpiece so five-o wouldn't get me on some petty cell phone/driving violation and start asking questions.
But today-my third day of travel-the scenery is all flat farmland. I'm starting to get restless, even a little crazy. I have been inventing inane car add-ons, like U-turn signals, to optimize the driving experience. I only brought two CDs-Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, and The Best of Bill Withers-and have so thoroughly memorized the latter that I shot a self-directed video singing "Use Me" with the camera balanced on the dashboard.
The real threat to my sanity, though, is FM radio. The lack of variety is appalling. There are at best a dozen songs in pop radio rotation. One of them-that Adele song with the chorus, "we could have had it all"-I can't listen to, because I keep picturing my ex-girlfriend singing it at me. I've got "S&M" down so cold I could perform it with Rihanna. The classic hits stations have been playing the same songs for a decade: I can feel it coming in the air tonight and, Why don't you come with me, little girl, on a magic carpet ride? The other stuff, from frothy conservative propaganda to save-the-lord mockumercials, I can only handle for a few minutes before nausea starts to set in.
It is in just this fragile state of profound boredom, driving east through Omaha, that I spot the state trooper. When I see the car skulking there on the left-side shoulder, my back stiffens against the lumbar support. I've seen dozens of cops by now, so the trauma of individual sightings isn't that big a deal. But something about this one feels different. Menacing. It's one of those barely marked all-black sedans that seems designed to look muscular and imposing. Just as the pang takes control of my stomach, the car pulls out of the shoulder and into the flow of traffic behind me.
No big deal. He probably clocked someone speeding. He'll pass me any second now. I flip on my turn signal and veer into the far right lane, as if maybe I can hide there. I turn down the radio, let go of the seat belt, put both hands on the steering wheel, and check the speedometer. What if the speed limit changed to fifty-five, now that I'm in city limits? Jesus! That was the one thing I promised myself: I would never go above the speed limit on this drive. I slow down to fifty-six and reset the cruise control.
He should have passed by now. Should I not have slowed down? I check my rearview, careful not to snap my head or make any darting, suspicious moves. Where is that car? Did it disappear? With a tightly controlled neck-swivel, I check the side mirror. There's the bastard, lurking in the lane to my left, about fifteen yards back, right in my blind spot.
I feel my hands white-knuckling on the steering wheel. Keep cool. You're just driving. But I know I'm not just driving. I did my research before I left, so I know the stakes here. Nebraska's laws are among the scariest of the twelve states I will go through: I'm looking at a $10,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence.
I realize I can't possibly calm down. But it's important to appear calm. I focus on down-shifting my breathing, which pulsates up from my lungs in hurried, shallow blurts. I try to inhale through my nose and exhale out my mouth, like in a yoga class. My shorts are still unzipped for bladder maintenance; no time to deal with that now. Eyes forward, no more mirror checking. This will all be over soon enough, for good or ill.
Am I just being paranoid? Maybe. But that car's vibe is ominous-like it doesn't like me. I know that, since 1-80 is a main thoroughfare for this sort of thing, cops are on the lookout for certain types of drivers. I fit that type to a tee: male, between the ages of twenty and forty, driving a full-size rental car with a big trunk. And there's the most incriminating detail of all: the California license plate, flaunting the fact that my journey started in America's marijuana mecca.
Such a fucking rookie move! Why didn't I take the advice that Buddha Cheese gave me before I set off? Go straight to the Salt Lake City airport, drop off this conspicuous black car, then transfer the goods to a similar-sized car, preferably white, and with the more innocent-seeming Utah license plate. Then drive from Salt Lake to Chicago and do another transfer. "Keep your plate consistent to the region you're traveling in," I'd been told-advice that now seems devastatingly on-point.
But I thought my objection seemed reasonable. Transferring the goods in an airport rental car lot seemed more risky than driving straight through, especially since airports are one of five locations-along with sports arenas and international borders-in which authorities don't need probable cause for a search. Had I been able to fit all of the stuff into the massive suitcase and the even more voluminous duffel bag, a transfer might not have seemed so dicey. But it was a tight squeeze; I finally resorted to stuffing individual bags into every unoccupied nook. Transferring all of that to a different car in a public space just seemed reckless. But sadly, the real coffin nail was the advice of Roland, an admittedly unreliable weed grower. "Just come up with a story that originates in Cali," he said, "and stick to your guns."
My armpits are drenched. The fucker's still back there. I see Exit 419 and am tempted to take it, but exiting would be like an admission of guilt, right? To calm my spinning thoughts, I do a mental dry run for getting pulled over. I will flip on my signal and glide into the shoulder. I will look him in the eye and call him "officer." If he asks why I've driven here from California, I will hit him with my story: I am writing a sequel to my book about competitive eating. I'm traveling across the country, interviewing pro eaters and participating in restaurant challenges. Just did the Burritozilla Challenge out in San Jose, with Joey "Jaws" Chestnut, the hot dog champ. Now I'm on my way to the Fatty Challenge in Des Moines. Oh and hey look, there's a copy of my first book here in the backseat…
The more I rehearse, the more ridiculous I feel for having staked my freedom on such an absurd alibi. Plus, showing him the book feels like too hard of a sell. Especially since gesturing to it would draw attention to my real Achilles' heel here: all my luggage, sitting in the backseat. Two massive bags and assorted rubbish. There just isn't enough room in the trunk. The only plausible explanation I've got is that I am taking videos of each eating episode, so the trunk is filled with cameras and audiovisual equipment. Pretty weak, I know, but it's all I've got.
I see motion in the side mirror. Trooper's on the move. I see a hood, then a windshield, and I try to telepathically persuade him to pass. Come on come on come on. Instead he goes with a highly original driving move: He speeds up and then hovers beside me, window-to-window. I keep my eyes forward. Whatever this ball game is, I'll pretend it's not happening. I try to mask inward panic with the outward bearing of an earnest and focused driver, but there's a chance I just look fucking crazy. My peripheral vision picks up the glare off his tinted window and my mind's eye sees a mustachioed cop looking over, trying to crumple my composure with his evil Ray-Ban eye beams.
It's gonna be fine. I'm not breaking any traffic laws. They can't pull you over just for coming from California. I checked my turn signals in the hotel parking lot this morning. I showered and shaved. I'm wearing a collared shirt. I'm a normal guy. It's gonna be fine.
And you know what? I know my rights. I'll invoke the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, confess to nothing, and answer no incriminating questions. This trooper doesn't possess reasonable, articulable facts that I am involved in the commission of a crime. And if the cocksucker asks to look in the trunk, I'll refuse. He doesn't have a pinprick of a probable cause for a search. And if he threatens to bring out the sniffing dogs, I'll just say I don't have time for all that BS. I have a book assignment to eat a sandwich the size of an infant in just a few hours. If he insists, well, I know most courts will uphold that if a sniffing dog alerts to a suspicious scent, that's enough for probable cause. But I covered my tracks on the smell-abatement front. It's all triple vacuum-packed and rubbed in alcohol, and I've got air fresheners back there. So bring out the fucking dogs.
Just as I'm brimming with this bullshit bravado, the cop shoots past. My scrunched shoulders slacken. I take a hand off the steering wheel and exhale so hard I realize I must have been holding my breath. I can't shake the feeling that The Man is on to me, that he knows. But all he had to do was flip on the lights and falsely accuse me of speeding. It would have made his day and ruined my life. So why didn't he?
I am preparing to exit, even considering getting a hotel room for the day, when the cop reappears. Really? He's in the left shoulder just ahead of me, creeping along at fifteen miles per hour like it's his own personal prowling lane. I pass him, and he pulls out again. Within seconds he is right back on my tail, this time directly behind me. Game over. Part of me is petrified; another part is pissed. I mentally note the license plate number of a nearby SUV, in case I eventually need a witness to corroborate that I'm not speeding.
I decide on a new tactic: playing up the relaxed-driver vibe. For the first time I notice the radio is playing. It's one of a half-dozen half-tolerable songs on pop rotation, Cee-Lo's "Fuck You." I smile at the shared sentiment, then turn it up and start singing, careful to use the radio-friendly "Forget You" lyrics. I force my fingertips to tap against the wheel and try to convince myself of my own innocence. I'm just a writer living his material.
The cop pulls up beside me and goes with his now-patented window-to-window stalk. I can't take this anymore. I need to get out of this car. Like, right now. I flip on my turn signal, well in advance of-I swear I'm not making this up-exit 420.[1]
* * *
The cruel irony of this trip is that I have no weed to actually smoke. It's all safely packed, and that is as it should be. But after all that, I would kill for a few puffs of a joint. Instead, I wriggle out a cigarette and suck it down in a crackhead frenzy. It's not enough. I decide to indulge in another vice I promised myself I wouldn't touch, not until I'm done driving at the end of each day: a drink. I see a Texas Roadhouse restaurant-a beer and a steak might take the edge off.
Just as I walk in the door, a cheerful country tune comes on. The entire waitstaff gathers in the central aisle and breaks into a grotesque, meticulously choreographed line dance. As the hostess ushers me down the aisle, they sing right into my face, flashing the kind of demented, saccharine smiles you sometimes see on cult victims. On the back of their T-shirts, it says: "I love my job!" I might normally find this episode amusing-a fun slice of American cultural anthropology. But under the circumstances, it's a special brand of torture that borders on horrific.
I sit down, order a tall Bud, and pull out Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist. The cover shot shows a brooding, paranoid-looking Thompson in the backseat of a car, arms crossed in a self-comforting way, clutching his trademark cigarette filter like it's his last grip on sanity.
I try to read but can't process the words. To my left a family of ten is having Easter lunch. The table's focal point is a radiant, wholesome-looking blonde teenage girl, encircled by a group of well-fed, conservatively dressed midwestern adults. I lean over and press my palms into my forehead. For the first time on this two-and-a-half-day expedition, I get sideswiped by a supremely rational-if downright obvious-question: Why the hell am I doing this?
One of the reasons, of course, is for the story. I wanted to get inside the narrative. I think about what Thompson said about marijuana: "It has been a source of joy and comfort to me for many years. And I think of it as a basic staple of life, along with beer and ice and grapefruits-and millions of Americans agree with me." I am among those millions. But I know millions of other Americans-decent, family-values types like this group sitting next to me-feel genuine fear and loathing… toward a plant.
I know 2010 was the second-biggest year for marijuana arrests in U.S. history. And I know 750,000 of those 853,000 arrests were for simple possession. It's obscene-a waste of time, money, and the lives of relatively innocent, nonviolent citizens. Ever since this project started, I have wanted to defy America's head-in-the-sand marijuana laws in some bold way, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to call this drive a one-man protest march.
But let's not get too self-righteous here. The ugly truth is, my bottom line here is cash. I have $600 in the bank, thanks to my final unemployment check. I am essentially homeless. I have monthly loan payments and four maxed-out credit cards, for which I can no longer pay the minimums. For weeks I have been getting bihourly calls from maniacally persistent automated credit card nags. I decline the calls every time, because I have nothing to offer them. But they clog my voice mail with their creepy-perky robo-voices: "We are sorry we cannot speak to you personally. We appreciate your busy schedule…" And: "Hello, this is Great American Savings Bank, calling about a change in the status of your credit card account. It is important that you contact us…" This shit wears on you after a while. It chips away at your confidence and desiccates your soul.
But it's oddly fitting I've taken on this assignment to alleviate my debt, because I hold marijuana partially responsible for getting me into this fiscal mess. On a personal level, I feel genuine tenderness-even love-toward the plant. But our relationship has been complicated. It started out as a love affair, and we've remained pretty copacetic, but there was a point when pot turned against me.
Until college I was a classic "good kid," a three-sport athlete and a scholar. A firm believer in the American achievement ethos, I worked hard and expected to be rewarded with a lifetime of pats on the back. The world seemed to be pulling for me, and I wasn't going to let it down. In high school I almost never smoked but sometimes hung out socially with the stoner crowd. We seemed to share a delight in the absurdity of things. But I was a committed jock/nerd, and I'd heard pot was bad for your lung capacity and memory, so I steered clear.
Not until my sophomore year in college did I start smoking regularly. Becoming a part-time pothead coincided with a significant-and mostly positive-transformation of character. I quit hockey and pre-med, both of which were making me unhappy. I shaved my hair and started dressing less preppy, more alternative-raiding my dad's closets from the seventies and sporting vintage Salvation Army purchases. Instead of hanging out with the athletes and prep school kids who'd made me feel safe freshman year, I started spending time with a more arty and mischievous crowd. I signed up for classes in philosophy and Jewish mysticism. I fell in love with hip-hop, a realm in which marijuana and success seemed inextricably linked. I found myself hooking up more, with sexier and more intriguing women. And my former harried drive to succeed was supplanted by a Zen-like ability to observe the world with amused detachment. I loved it all and felt indebted to weed as a catalyst to my transition.
After I graduated, joining the Real World did nothing to moderate my habit. Marijuana became my closest confidant. In New York City, we went everywhere together. She was my spark plug, my painkiller, the drums to my saxophone. At 6:00 P.M., I would get released from my job (as an editorial assistant at a children's publishing company), take a few hits from the dugout[2], and launch into an adventure. I'd stalk down Sixth Ave. into Greenwich Village with my Walkman on, meet friends for happy hour, scribble story ideas in smoky dive bars, buy used books near NYU, watch street performers in Washington Square Park, spark fatties with friends on fire escapes. I took her with me to an endless flurry of events: gallery openings, readings, lavish corporate fetes, birthday parties. I'd step outside to smoke with a self-selecting group-friends and others along for the ride-only to find the cackling conversations more memorable than the events themselves. These huddled sidewalk crews looked diverse at first glance but shared certain characteristics-a desire for inner calm, and the shared sentiment that this was all basically a charade.
As twentysomethings, we were all pretty much lost-even the ones on the "right" track, the law school students and investment bankers. Weed was an ideal drug for sidestepping all that confusion. My solution was to stay high and keep moving, a perpetually smiling blur. For almost eight years New York City was a fucking blast, and marijuana was its perfect accompaniment. But in early 2005, I began to feel like I couldn't keep up this pace. Reality was catching up with me. I was sick of hustling random jobs-waiting tables, editing college essays, and conducting exit polls-to support my writing habit. Things weren't getting done, and the fun wasn't as fun as it used to be.
My relationship with weed started to feel dysfunctional. Smoking pot became less social, and more of a solitary prelude to just about everything. I started hiding my habit from my girlfriend, who said she felt distanced from me when I was high. I had developed an occasional high-pitched wheeze. I would smoke before writing, to summon the muse, only to scour my brain in vain for an elusive word, or rewrite a sentence a dozen times. I had gotten arrested for possession in Central Park, after graciously offering my lit pipe to an undercover officer. Back home for Christmas, I snuck away from my family and smoked-from a makeshift Coke can pipe-then covered up the smell with mints and sanitizing gel. Before boarding airplanes, I wrapped up tightly sealed bags of herb and stuffed them inside wide-mouthed shampoo bottles.
I started to wonder whether I was addicted. On the Marijuana Anonymous website, I answered "yes" to all twelve questions. I was no longer getting high to enjoy it, but simply to feel normal-whatever that meant. Weed was my way of coping with the sensory onslaught of urban life, and the chronic disappointment of adult life.
Things began to unravel. My girlfriend of five years, with whom I shared a Brooklyn apartment, moved away to go to med school. I was touring the country, announcing eating competitions and writing a book about it. While I was on the road, there was no pot but plenty of alcohol, and absurd adventures with competitive eaters, in the strip clubs and dive bars of places like Oklahoma City. My girlfriend and I grew distant and started breaking up, agonizingly slowly at first, then with melodramatic suddenness.
Weed amplifies reality. So when you're in a good place psychologically, getting high tends to make you happier. But as William Burroughs once said, "Marijuana is a sensitizer, and the results are not always pleasant. It makes a bad situation worse. Depression becomes despair, anxiety panic."
Looking back I realize I was depressed. All the signs were there. I withdrew socially, gained fifteen pounds, and was smoking weed three to five times a day. Getting high and being depressed fed off each other until they became one and the same, an endless feedback loop. Paranoia set in like a heavy, slow-moving cloud. I remember being sure I had contracted an STD, despite having no symptoms. At one point I called a buddy and apologized for a comment I had made weeks earlier, which I was sure had created an irreconcilable rift between us. When I finally finished my monologue, he confessed that he had no idea what I was talking about.
I also started spending. I bought clothes and books and a few vacations, throwing it all on my credit card. I got takeout sushi so often that the restaurant spontaneously gifted me a bottle of sake. By the standards of many Americans, it wasn't a luxurious lifestyle, but it was beyond my means. I ate and drank and smoked as much as I could, and paid whatever extortionate New York price I was charged. I'm not accusing weed of making me financially irresponsible. But it allowed me to create what they call in Marijuana Anonymous a "privately defined world," which bore little resemblance to reality. Being stoned allowed me to glaze over the tangible fact that more money was going out than coming in. And when the credit card bills arrived, I would just pay the minimum, pull out my $500 Volcano vaporizer, and get high again.
This sort of self-delusion eventually comes around to bite you in the ass. I finally woke up, in the spring of 2007, to the tune of $45,000 in credit card debt. I took the first job that came my way, a nine-to-five public relations gig for the International Federation of Competitive Eating. I cut down on my consumption and got high less frequently. Over a period of two years, I paid off half my debt. And I actually enjoyed having a proper job, grabbing my Starbucks in the morning and filing into a packed subway, then having a day's worth of tasks to keep my mischievousness at bay. But I have always struggled to maintain enthusiastic-employee status for long. So it was probably inevitable that I would get laid off, which happened soon after things went awry at an oyster-eating contest, in April of 2009.
Without thinking about why, I started researching marijuana. I realized I was having an internal battle regarding my favorite drug. I had always thought of myself as a productive stoner, but signs were pointing toward my being out of control. Was I addicted? Was it even possible to be addicted to marijuana? The more I researched, the more I realized my internal battle reflected an external one. America was hypocritical about weed. The pro-marijuana folks-NORML and High Times and all the blunted rappers-weren't willing to admit that the drug had downsides, that it held the real potential to fuck up your lungs, memory, and motivation. The anti-marijuana folks-while sipping wine-insisted that pot fried your brain, was more harmful than cigarettes, and was tarnishing the youth of America. There was no middle ground.
I started writing a book proposal about getting to the bottom of my own-and America's-hypocritical stance on weed. I had lots of questions: Why was America, year after year, among the highest per capita cannabis-consuming nations in the world?[3] Was there something about the superficial buzz and whir of contemporary American life that made marijuana its ideal psychospiritual antidote? Why were so many states following in the footsteps of California and creating medical marijuana laws that openly flouted federal law? Was it a miracle drug, as thousands of patients in the medical marijuana states had claimed? And if it was such an effective medicine and spiritual elixir, why did we continue to outlaw this plant, and what sort of underground culture had the war on weed created? Or were the prohibitionists right? Was weed actually dangerous and addictive, just another street drug turning otherwise productive citizens into jabbering, irresponsible potheads?
What sustained me while writing the proposal was a series of jobs-production on movie sets, writing for NPR-but most of all, unemployment checks. Which, as you might guess, won't sustain anyone in New York City for long. So even though I was a more restrained version of the depressed sybarite I had been a few years earlier, I started sliding into debt again, and… well, here I am, $35,000 in the hole again.
* * *
Back at Texas Roadhouse, I take a sip of my beer and look down at my steak entrée.[4] Turns out a "loaded" mashed potato means it's doused with shredded cheese, bacon bits, a golf-ball-sized dollop of butter, and a reservoir of sour cream. I feel a blast of bitterness at the duplicity of American culture. It's okay to drink alcohol until you're a blithering subhuman, to take Big Pharma–synthesized medications with worse side effects than the malady they claim to treat, to smoke cigarettes until you need a tracheotomy, or to biggie-size your trans-fats-laden fast food until you have arteries clogged like the Holland Tunnel at rush hour. But then we crack down like rabid militants on this peaceful plant? It just seems so juvenile. In the words of former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper: "Any law disobeyed by more than 100 million Americans[5]… is bad public policy."
