Can we sleuth together? I’m not sure I’ll ever solve the mystery, but I’ve never tried.
I grew up in the Bay Area (California) in the '70s and '80s. We bought weed in sandwich bags for about $35/eighth in the early '80s. I’m guessing that most of the weed I smoked was either Mexican brick weed (perhaps it’d evolved a bit past bricks at that point) or Humboldt County grown, which is of course easy to get to the Bay Area.
October 23, 1985. Smoking a J and writing late at night. Suddenly, I become aware of massively loud audio: it sounds like someone is crashing two metal garbage can lids together.
I begin to freak almost immediately. I didn’t know it then, but it was a panic attack. Heart rate went to 160. Called my buddy to pick me up and drive around with me, just to chill. Two days later, I went to the ER. It was pretty much a three day panic attack.
Could’ve been anything, right?
My weed dealer was good. I don’t suspect any spikes, but there COULD have been.
It was a pretty stressful time. It could’ve just been that.
But October. That was when you’d see the earliest weed coming down from Humboldt. But that’s REALLY early for fully cured weed. . .
Was it the early harvest? (I think there WAS a lot of competition amongst growers, because everybody was racing to get their stuff to the Bay Area, of course).
I dunno. But THAT is the shit that made me quit weed for a long time. I joined the Navy a year later, and I didn’t smoke then at all. Went to school, had kids, etc. Didn’t even smoke again til 2013, AFTER I’d sobered up from alcohol.
I was very carefully in 2013. Avoided most sativas. Was literally afraid of Jack Herer and Durban Poison. (Now they’re among my favorites.) I am a “sativa guy” who likes that end of the spectrum – but I’ll never forget Oct. 23.
That noise, though, was in my head. I couldn’t believe it at the time.
