BUYING MY FIRST BAG AT 36

Editor's Note: This is a guest post from a reader who prefers to remain anonymous at this time. 

I smoked a little weed in high school and college. Not a lot, but some. Over the years since college, I've smoked a joint here or there at parties or BBQs but almost always when I had a boyfriend who smoked weed. As a single woman, I rarely smoked and never sought out marijuana. I don't know why but for some reason I tended to limit my own intoxication preferences to wine. Maybe it was because it's pretty easy and socially acceptable for a woman to walk into a liquor store and purchase a bottle of wine. No one there is looking at you sideways. I had been seeing a man who smoked a lot of weed, he went through it so fast that his closest friends were all his "dealers" and while dating him my taste for the ganja developed. Now, I definitely preferred to smoke rather than drink. When we split up I missed his weed more than I missed him and knew that I had embarked on a whole new love affair. But now, I was separated from my new boo, Mary Jane. 

With weed, it's a little different. First off, if you don't know anyone who grows or sells it where do you even begin to look? It's not like you can wander into a store and ask for an ounce... Oh wait, I guess you can - those places are called Dispensaries are becoming ever more popular. Unfortunately, there isn't a dispensary where I live and even if there were I probably wouldn't have been comfortable strolling in without either a friend who knew what she was doing or a prescription from a doctor - just in case. Not every Canadian dispensary requires a doctor's note but most of the more reputable ones do ask. 

In movies and books, women are shown drinking wine with friends - or alone - after a long day. Wine is the socially acceptable way for women to chill out. The thing is, I'm not always as elegant as the women in the movies and sometimes I drank too much wine and let me tell you, the older I get the worse my hangover gets too! Downing a half (ahem whole) bottle of wine at night is expensive and unhealthy. Yes, I realize I could simply stop drinking but frankly I wanted something to help adjust my mood at the end of the day! 

So I decided that I wanted to buy some weed to have in my home. I decided that smoking a joint to kick back after dinner would be a better idea than alcohol and I decided that I did not need a boyfriend to get it for me. I just needed to go and do it myself. So I called a bunch of trusted friends looking for a hookup. I sounded ridiculous at first, dancing around the subject then tentatively testing the waters; "Hey, do you guys still smoke weed?" 

When I found a friend who agreed to help me out I was so pumped! We agreed to meet at a local coffee shop and I rushed out to the bank to get cash. I wasn't nervous - I was meeting a good friend whom I saw all the time! She wouldn't judge me, after all, she was the one selling it to me!

We enjoyed a leisurely coffee date spent gossiping and catching up then as we readied to leave she suddenly produced a wine bottle shaped gift bag and slide it across the table to me. "Happy anniversary by the way!" She said with a huge smile. 

I grinned because this date was now the anniversary of the first time I bought myself an ounce of weed and I felt so proud of myself. When I got home, I took the shrink wrapped parcel out of the gift bag and carefully cut it open, inhaling the musty, earthy fragrance. I still buy wine from time to time but I also keep marijuana around too. I think it's important that we have choices and never really understood why marijuana was so stigmatized. I don't like that by buying marijuana I am engaging in criminal activity but I know that my liver will thank me for making the switch.