April 20th. 4/20. Green day. No, not the band you played cover songs of in junior high, and not even St. Patrick’s Day. The other green day. Weed Day, if you will.

As people across the world find an excuse to celebrate the wonders of cannabis, we wanted to pitch in and do our contributive part. We reached out to some of our pals across Atlantic Canada to collect some entertaining anecdotes about the best and worst experiences on weed. The pros and chrons, the highs and lows, and the good, the bad and the paranoid.

We’ve omitted names because, for some reason, weed isn’t legal yet?

The First Time: “First time I smoked – my lifelong friend and myself bought a gram. We had been smoking leaves from trees in our neighbourhood for years, but had no idea how to smoke weed. I rolled up some loose leaf and put the gram in it. We did not cut the weed up. We did not get high.”

Familial Highs: “The one and only time my dad smoked weed was a couple years ago at a AC/DC concert with me. Probably my favourite time getting high ever.”

The Bucket List: “When my Pop was dying of cancer he slyly asked me one day if I knew where to score any pot. He claimed he’d never done it, but I don’t really believe that because he toked like a professional. In a time where he was mostly in a lot of pain, I got to see Pop smile and laugh like a kid. Yeah, I guess I got ripped with my Pop. I’ve never told Dad.”

The Surreal: “When we were in our early teens, we used to stow away in a parking garage downtown and pool together all the shitty weed that we were getting ripped off on. At this point, we were all afraid of bringing any weed home with us out of the risk of getting caught, so we would smoke what we had in one sitting. One particular night we had more weed than usual. We sat in the parking garage for a few hours attempting to suck it all back using a plastic pop bottle. Looking back on it, inhaling melting plastic was probably a bigger factor to us being blitzed out of our little young minds.

When we eventually emerged from our hazy little shadow, we only managed to stumble a few feet down the road when a yellow school bus full of screaming adults pulled onto the sidewalk between us and the St. John’s court house. The bus doors opened and began to flood the sidewalk with a herd of drunk people in matching t-shirts. They had American and Canadian flags, and if I remember correctly, their shirts said something about Florida.

As we got swept into this giant crowd of bar-crawling tourists, someone emerged wearing a giant chicken suit. Everyone began cheering and huddling around the giant yellow mascot. I do not believe the person in the giant chicken suit was on the bus, as he seemed to have arrived in an opposite direction. Before I could even begin to wrap my high little mind around the situation, we got dragged into a giant group pose on the steps of the court house as someone from the bus snapped pictures.

As quick as we all yelled “cheese”, the crowd dispersed. The person in the giant chicken suit continued down Water Street, and the drunk tourists abruptly boarded the bus and pulled away. We were left standing in front of the court house absolutely baffled.

I sincerely hope this photo exists somewhere. I hope these American tourists reflect on their Newfoundland vacation, and when they find their group picture from the court house steps, they notice the dead center cameo of two beady-eyed, pimply face punk kids, and of course, a giant chicken.

I hope they are as confused and amused as we were in that moment.”

Trading Suds for Buds: “Weed helped me quit drinking. Some people say that it is just another habit, but I puke and fight a lot less now.”

A Messy Lesson: “One time I smoked too much and hung out in a community center eating cold pizza until I noticed a little girl staring at me with a concerned look saying “Momma he looks like a zombie”. I immediately ran to the bathroom to find both doors locked, and a bunch of older people I looked up to in the hallway. With nowhere to go, I blew chunks of cold pizza out my nose and mouth. After cleaning it up with my hands, they kicked me out in a snow storm. It took me 2 hours to get home somehow. That’s the day I realized my limits.

Xmas Trees: “I had a girlfriend in high school who gave me a Christmas tree advent calendar with a bong rip of a different weed strain for every day in December. That was a jolly Christmas. What a thoughtful gift.”

What’s the Deal with Edibles?: “I once consumed a miscalculated amount of edibles and had an out of body experience watching Jerry Seinfeld perform at Mile One Stadium. My face hurt for a day, but I don’t remember a single joke.”

The Paranoid: “I had been stealing about $5-$10 a day from a retail gig when I was a teenager. Sometimes in product, sometimes in cash. At the time, I was really into being high… all the time. One day we had a staff meeting scheduled and so I got super blitzed on my way there. The meeting was held in the upstairs office, a stuffy room with no a/c, on a really hot summer day. As the meeting droned on I started to realize the HR guy who was in town to lead the meeting kept eyeing me suspiciously. I started to pay attention and suddenly realized they were talking about shrinkage/theft and how the business was going to catch anyone guilty and they would lose their jobs and face criminal charges. I immediately thought they had caught on to the bag of chips i pilfered every night and so i started sweating bullets and nervously biting my lip. Eventually my boss asked me if i was feeling ok and I excused myself by saying i wasn’t feeling well.

I stopped stealing from them after that. I left the gig after a few months for a better job. Eventually, someone informed me that my boss had been caught stealing a huge sum of money from the tills. She was pulling a “refund” scam and, worst of all, she had been doing it under cashier ID’s registered to part time workers. She had stolen something like 6k doing this turns out, the business had caught on to this fact by the time they called the meeting. They were working to build a court case against her and were apparently waiting for her to break $5000 bucks so they could charge her with theft over 5k. She was found guilty and it probably really fucked up her life. I felt bad about that but also she was SUPER not a nice person and was also putting all of the part-timers at risk.

I guess at the meeting the HR guy was probably just staring at me because I had eyes as red as the twin suns on tattooine and, through the profuse sweating, definitely stunk like dank weed. Before that experience, I never had anxiety when i smoke. Now I can’t even smoke socially, and I definitely don’t get stoned for work.”

Trial and Error: “When I first started smoking, I was 18 or so. I had a job delivering newspapers from 3:30AM to 7AM six days a week. A good friend of mine had insomnia, and he’d help me out for a few hours, and when we were done we’d get McGriddles from Mcdonalds and get high. I had no clue how to hit a pipe without destroying myself, so for a few days in a row I got waaayyyy too high and threw up all over the place. I lost the ability to communicate verbally and just sat with my eyes closed rocking back and forth waiting for it to wear off. A bad experience that put me off weed for a couple of years. I’ve since learned how to handle myself.

Conclusion: “Best: Rewatching my favourite childhood movies. The brave little toaster is a fuckin’ badass.”

Mom Knows: “The first time my mom asked me if I was high I had came home to make a peanut butter sandwich and when I left the kitchen, I had left a full jar of peanut butter open in the sink with water running into it.”

Sweet Leaf: “I saw Black fucking Sabbath. High as fuck.”

Bonding with Buds: “I find weed helps people become more emotionally in tune with one another, so I have many experiences where weed strengthened a friendship. The most notable was watching the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers with my best bud. And after, we decided to make a band with all the lyrics revolved around the plot of the film. This of course didn’t turn out as planned and we ended up making a surf instrumental band. Cus like we were too stoned to write lyrics. This moment helped us become closer as friends, and getting stoned definitely played a role in us taking that leap together. High and making music! This is probably my favourite stoned moment I can remember.”

Let’s Stay Buds: “I was seeing a guy, and one day we got really high together. We started having the deepest and most meaningful conversation we had ever had. We ended up coming to the conclusion that we shouldn’t be together. We’ve stayed good friends. Best breakup ever.”

Living each day to its Dankest: “My best experience smoking weed was the last time I smoked weed. Like, an hour ago. The next time I smoke weed will probably be even better. I’ll let you know in an hour.”

A Harsh Reality: “My worst experience smoking weed was waking up and realizing I had no weed to smoke. The harshest of buzzes.”