It was Labor Day weekend, the final blow out of the summer, the time of year when even the most responsible citizen has a tendency to lose their mind for days on end. This is especially true for that tireless legion of boating enthusiast across the nation, those wild-eyed sailors who live on the lake during this momentous occasion, putting down beer after beer, along with an assortment of bizarre cocktails and possibly even some toilet hooch depending where they are floating in the world.
For us, my friend Toby and I, there was no need to stock the pontoon with backwoods liquor, mostly because our respective coolers were already so full of booze that our fellow boaters would have just thought we were showing off had we tossed another bottle into the mix. And, if I’m being completely honest, we didn’t need to go full-blown stepdad during our 48-hour journey into inebriation and excess, as we had plenty of marijuana to keep us high until Halloween. There is no better way to bid farewell to the Gods of heat stroke and half-naked bodies than getting stoned on the water, watching the sun slowly sink into the horizon while dreading the work week creeping in from the other side.
But that is not the story.
This is.
It was day two of our drunken-stoner stupor and we started to consider that it might be time to pull the boat out of the water and head back to the cabin. We had a vicious case of the munchies – a cruel side effect of getting stoned out on the lake all day -- and the only restaurant in the area closed its kitchen promptly at 10pm. Welcome to bumf*ck. Yeeehaaawww!
The previous night, we had been reduced to the despicable flavors of microwavable Charbroils with cheese and some pseudo burrito type thing that we bought at a nearby convenience store. This was a culinary undertaking that our tired, old guts could have possibly handled, and maybe even appreciated back in our early twenties. But for a couple of guys in their mid-forties, a raunchy diet of gas station fare came with harsh repercussions that I couldn’t even begin to explain in the space allotted in this column. Let’s just say we would not make the same mistake twice. The devil lives there.
We loaded the boat on the trailer and made a beeline for the cabin. And we were making good time. The only thing that could have possibly prevented us from enjoying a halfway decent meal in the next hour is if we suffered another blowout on the trailer like we did the night before. But that’s another story for another time.
It is more important at this juncture of the tale to explain that our accommodations -- a two bedroom luxury cabin smack dab in the middle of a petting zoo just outside of French Lick, Indiana -- were procured under somewhat fraudulent circumstances. Let me explain. Because the trip was one of those last minute deals, an expedition concocted on a whim the night before through a series of text messages and about 15 beers, Toby and I didn’t exactly have a reservation at the time we rolled into town. But we were trying. On the drive up, we contacted every cabin community, every Airbnb and just about every sleazy hotel within a 20-mile radius of the lake trying to track down a room. But all of the lodging, as you might imagine considering it was a holiday weekend, was booked up solid.
Just a few miles from our exit, however, we endured a stroke of luck. We just so happened to call a resort -- one of the last listings in the directory -- where the owner of the establishment told us that he did, in fact, have a vacant cabin due to a last-minute cancellation. He said he would be willing to put the keys in our hands within the next hour as long as we had a major credit card and were not traveling with any pets.
“No we don’t have any pets,” Toby told the guy, even though there was a seven-pound Aussie doodle named “Romeo” resting peacefully in a carrier in the back seat.
“Perfect,” the man replied. “I’ll see you guys shortly.”
Sure, we had a place to stay. But because of this little scam of ours, we had to do some clever finagling when it came to storing the boat every night and then transporting the dog to the cabin without getting caught. The owner of the place, a real eccentric guy, spent the majority of his days and nights out on the front deck of the main office sipping cocktails and helping tenants out with questions like “where can we buy more beer?” and “is there an ice machine anywhere on the premises?” Incidentally, smack dab in front of the office was where the boats were required to park. The slightest peep from that dog would set off a series of unpleasant events that would ultimately lead to our eviction.
So when we finally rolled up to the lane leading up to our cabin, we had to make damn sure the owner didn’t catch on that we had a dog riding shotgun. Otherwise, we’d be thrown out of the place in our inebriated state -- forfeiting our deposit -- and run the risk of getting busted in a high enforcement area for DUI. And the cops would undoubtedly find the marijuana we had in our possession. The state of Indiana would execute us right there on Interstate 64. This was not something that either of us was willing to risk. For that reason, I had to jump out of the truck a quarter mile down the road and carry the dog up to the cabin through the woods, doing everything in my power to keep him from barking at so much as a squirrel, while Toby dealt with unhitching the boat.
From the time we parted ways, we had had about an hour to make it to the restaurant before closing time.
(The part of this story where Mike almost has a heart attack while carrying a dog up a hill in a darkened patch of wildness with only a flashlight to protect him from the elements of the night has been omitted.)
As soon as I got to the cabin, I grabbed a quick shower, put on a change of clothes and sat down on the chair in the living room with a cold beer and patiently waited for Toby’s return. It was taking him longer than it should have, and our window for getting anything to eat that we didn’t have to nuke was getting narrower by the minute. I thought that maybe he got locked into an unsuspected conversation with the owner of the place and was searching for a lull to make his escape. So, I sent him a few texts in hopes of getting him back to track.
“Hey man, did you get mauled by a bear or something?” No reply.
“Yo! Have you been Deliveranced?” Still nothing.
“Man, if I have to eat another Charbroil with cheese tonight, I’m going to beat you unconscious with that dog of yours.” Not even a "LOL."
I began to consider the possibility that Toby may have been devoured by a pack of coyotes or maybe even kidnapped by a cartel of backwoods meth makers for reasons unknown. In that part of the country, anything was possible. I wasn’t even ruling out an alien abduction.
About thirty minutes or so went by, and I finally heard Toby’s truck pull up to the cabin. “It’s about time,” I thought to myself. I walked outside, shouting something like, “What in the hell took you so long,” while watching in absolute disbelief as he stumbled out of the truck with a twisted grimace that looked as though he had been possessed by a freckle-faced cartoon character.
“Man, grab your tape recorder, Mike,” he said, laughing so hard he almost fell to the ground. “You’re going to need to take this story down for my memoirs."
“Your memoirs,” I quickly snapped back, noticing that he was slightly more stoned than when we parted ways down the road. “Listen, the only memoir I’m interested in right now is if it comes with a side of fries. Where in the hell have you been?”
Toby proceeded to tell me that as he was backing the boat into its parking spot, three young guys, presumably in their twenties, approached him and asked whether he had any jumper cables. He told them he did and that he would follow them back to their cabin and help out with whatever problem they had. As a sign of appreciation, the men asked Toby how the could repay him: with a beer, a joint or a couple hits off a dab machine.
Okay, here’s the thing about Toby. Although he is a resident of Indiana, he has been getting his hands on medical marijuana from Illinois for the past year or more. This connection to the legal scene has sort of spoiled him and, at times, it turns him into a bit of a snob when faced with smoking out of bowls and bongs. And it has been a long time since I’ve seen him take a hit off a joint. Toby has since graduated to the new marijuana movement, the group that enjoys the luxury of a variety of cannabis products, such as disposable vaporizers, which are relatively odor-free and inconspicuous when it comes to dealing with police. And it that necks of the woods you never know when you might have to deal with the cops. So it didn’t surprise me when part of his story included telling the kids, “Man, I ain’t smoking no grass. Let’s take a look at those dabs.”
This is where the situation went downhill. Only Toby didn’t realize it… not yet.
Now, if you clicked the link to this story, chances are you are already well versed in the horrors of dabs. So, bear with me. But for those readers who are not yet privy to the power of this modern day pot, let me try to sum up these little devils as quickly and easily as possible.
Dabs are a concentrated form of cannabis. Smoking them feels sort of like being kicked in the head by a well-endowed mule, only without the permanent brain damage and lifelong paralysis. I’ve heard other cannabis enthusiasts describe it as being comparable to smoking an entire joint in a single hit. Yet taking a beating from a large, four-legged farm animal is how I choose to shed light on the subject.
Here's the truth. Dabs should be considered evil and perhaps even branded with the sign that Dante sees before passing through the gates of Hell: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” If ever there was a warning label that should be affixed to the packages containing these tiny crusts of madness, that’s it.
With that being said, Toby, who had never done dabs in his life, told me at one point that the guys let him do two of them from a glass rig. Yikes! Although he had no idea how much trouble he was in, I was convinced that this was the end of my good friend. There was a part of me that wanted to smack him upside the head, as his dimwitted stoner escapade was surely going to prevent us from making it to the restaurant in time for dinner. Still, there was another part of me, perhaps the more sadistic side, eager to enjoy the show.
“Man, there is no way you are going to be anywhere close to sane enough to get us to the restaurant tonight,” I said.
“I think I’m fine to drive,” he replied.
“No way,” I said. “We are in for the night.”
That was the best call I made all day. Because it wasn’t long before I noticed Toby strutting around the cabin like a Mississippi pimp. His legs looked as flimsy as a newborn calf and there was a certain curvature to his spine that led me to believe he was about to morph into whatever vile monster had infected his lungs.
If I hadn’t known any better, I would have sworn he suffered a mild stroke somewhere along the way, and if the lighting in the cabin would have been a little better I’m almost certain I could have watched him drool all over the floor. It was a scene, man.
“Yep, those dabs are going to win this fight, my friend,” I told him. “You’re not looking so good.”
Toby shook his finger at me from across the room and mumbled something incomprehensible. I couldn’t tell if my doomsday outlook on his journey into hell was aggravating him, or whether he was begging me to call 911. A man that stoned needs a lot of things and a translator is one of them. Unfortunately, that was not a resource available to us at the time.
But what Toby needed even more than someone to help him communicate his horror was stable ground. I noticed him gripping a dining room chair like the yoke of a plane seconds from going down. “Why don’t you move over the couch,” I advised. He complied...but very slowly. For the next 20 minutes or so, I watched in disbelief while he sat there bobbing his head with his eyes closed. It was the first time in all my years of smoking weed that I had ever witnessed someone doing the junkie nod from, well, smoking weed. I started to suspect that those kids might have given him something stronger.
“Sweet Jesus, man,” I shouted. “Are you sure you didn’t smoke opium?”
“I-dooon’t-thiiink-sooooo,” he replied, speaking slowly, as a means of preventing himself from swallowing his tongue. He didn’t tell me that was the reason for his careful navigation through such a simple sentence, but I had been high enough over the years to know that his tongue was starting to give him trouble.
“Look, we’re all out of beer,” I said. “I’m going to run down to the boat and grab a few more. Do you need anything before I leave.”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “I don’t feel right.”
“No kidding,” I snapped back. “I don’t feel right either. I haven’t eaten since this morning. Come to think of it, that might be why those dabs got you so sideways. The THC has disabled your brain.”
“How long can it possibly last?” Toby asked me.
“I’m betting you won’t be right for the rest of the evening,” I replied. “You should get comfortable. It’s going to be a long night.”
“The rest of the night,” he repeated, his face shifting from a man who got too stoned to one with no hope.
“If you can do it without hurting yourself, it might be beneficial to get up and walk around,” I said. “You’re letting the smoke crawl all over you when you should be finding a way to enjoy it.”
“I don’t know if I can,” he replied.
Toby eventually got up from the couch and sort of just let gravity pull him into the kitchen, which thankfully was located directly in front of him. But the situation was still volatile. He was hanging on to the counter for dear life, but his head was a little more stable and it seemed like he was starting to come around -- or at least I thought so. “Sheeeeeeew,” he said. “I’ve never felt anything like this before in my life.”
“Well, the good news is you’re not going to die,” I said. “As long as you don’t fall down and crack your skull open, I think you’ll make it out of this just fine. Worst case scenario, you’ve crippled enough brain cells to go ahead and start collecting social security come Tuesday. I’m heading down to the boat to get more beer. You going to be okay for a minute?”
“I think so,” he said.
Throughout the entire rotten affair, I must admit that the dog looked somewhat confused. He was starting to hang by my side a little more than Toby's, most likely because he was scared of getting stomped on. It was also possible that his puppy senses were telling him that his human had gone off the deep end and might not ever return. So in a fight for survival, the pooch latched on to only other beast in the room with opposable thumbs that could pick up a bag of kibble in the morning and put some food in his bowl.
The last I saw of Toby before walking down to the boat for supplies, he was crawling on his hands and knees toward the bathroom, babbling some nonsense about being “possessed.” The sounds that soon emerged from the crapper told me the demons that had apparently tried to claim his eternal soul were being dispelled through a series of dry heaves and “Oh my Gods.” But Toby would live to tell the tale of his most miserable experience and even laugh about it some five or six days later. And while he still doesn’t know how to properly articulate his battle with the bud, he refuses to compare it to getting high. “I wouldn’t call that stoned,” he told me the next day on the boat. But I can tell you this. My dear friend, the one guy I know who smokes more pot than anybody else in my immediate circle, is now suffering from a condition that we are choosing to call PTDD -- Post Traumatic Dab Disorder.
The moral of the story: Be careful with those dabs, kids. Don't be a Toby!
Mike Adams is a contributing writer for Forbes, Cannabis Now and BroBible. His work has also appeared in High Times. Follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
