A Late Bloomer Discovers Gummy Joy

By Gayle Kirschenbaum

I came to marijuana late, the way some people come to Pilates. I always knew it existed. I just didn’t think it was for me.

This is funny if you know my history.

As a teenager, I spent a summer in Europe with slightly older art students whose first mission in London was to score hash. They passed me the pipe and coached me to inhale. I tried. I coughed like a lawnmower with a peanut in the carburetor.

Tears streamed down my face. I waved off round two and decided I was not built for drugs. Back home, many of my friends were growers, rollers, makers, connoisseurs. I became the designated watcher. I loved the conversations, the music, the sudden insights about the shape of a spoon, but I stayed sober and hydrated, clutching my ginger ale.

Fast-forward several decades.

I’m a card-carrying senior on Social Security with a very busy brain that likes to hold committee meetings at 3 a.m. I visit an old college friend who still looks like a better-looking Bob Dylan and still loves his guitar and his weed. He offers me a joint.

“Thanks, no,” I say. “I’ll cough until next Tuesday—my throat treats smoke like a fire alarm.”

He grins, lifts an eyebrow, and says, “How about an edible?”

Now he has my attention. He takes out a flat backing sheet, the apple-flavored octagons stuck to the paper like little tiles. “Half,” he says. I agree. He snips a piece; I peel it off, chew, and swallow.

We go to a small restaurant with live music, the kind of place where the singer knows everyone’s name and the bartender knows their stories. We take two barstools. An hour passes. The guitar player hits a sweet chord, my shoulders let go, and suddenly I am at sea in the best possible way. The bar becomes a boat, the lights are small moons, and I’m swaying the way you do in the water with small waves. I start to giggle. I cannot stop smiling.

I ask my friend, “Are we floating?”

He pats my hand, delighted. “You’re fine,” he says, and I am. Gently, warmly, easily fine.

This is not my first experiment.

At 18, in an act of romantic pique, I once accepted a tab of something that turned out to be mescaline with speed. There were hallucinations. There was jaw clenching. I prayed for an off switch that did not exist. That was my last serious try for a very long time, which is why this little gummy felt like both revelation and homecoming. No panic. No racing heart. No sense that the wallpaper was plotting against me. Just a soft landing into my own body and the kind of calm that makes music sound rounder.

Back in real life, sleep and I have been estranged.

I used to keep half an Ambien in the nightstand for emergencies; my doctor nixed that plan, and the occasional anti-anxiety pill doesn’t do much for the committee in my head. A half-gummy, however, is a ticket to the kind of sleep that used to show up uninvited when I was 25 and never gave sleep a thought. I don’t use it every night. In fact, I barely use it.

Before I left town, I asked my friend to take me to a dispensary to get my stock for home.

Becoming a late-in-life cannabis person feels a little like learning to use reading glasses. There is a moment when you admit you’ve been squinting at the world and that a small adjustment might make everything clearer and kinder. I’m still the same person who could not inhale in London, who coughed herself into a vow of abstinence, who had one very bad psychedelic date with a boyfriend, and swore off that whole game. With my overactive mind, I discovered that a carefully measured apple-flavored octagon can tuck me in and turn down the volume.

I don’t evangelize. I’m not building a shrine out of gummy packaging. But I am grateful for this modest tool that arrived when I was ready for it. It has given me better sleep and a few excellent giggles, and it has reminded me that it is never too late to try something new in a safe, informed, tiny dose. If there is a miracle in aging, it might be this: we learn what helps, we let go of what hurts, and we finally give ourselves permission to float.

Gayle Kirschenbaum's debut memoir BULLIED TO BESTIES: A DAUGHTER'S JOURNEY TO FORGIVENESS explores her transformative journey from pain to healing. An Emmy-winning filmmaker, photographer, writer, coach, and speaker, Gayle's film LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER! premiered on Netflix and has been credited with transforming lives. Her TED talk is "No More Drama with Mama." Gayle co-authored MILDRED'S MINDSET: WISDOM FROM A WOMAN CENTENARIAN with her mother, centenarian influencer Mildred Kirschenbaum. For more, visit GayleKirschenbaum.com.