Soon after, I didn’t feel like writing, or laughing, or watching TV. I went to bed and lay awake, grinding my teeth, thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made in my life. It was like I’d taken a hit of crack laced with espresso.

The next day I hauled all the way back to West Hollywood, my little paper bag of Purple Dragon in tow. I breezed through the antechamber. My hunchbacked nemesis was the only guy behind the counter.

“I bought this yesterday, and it didn’t work,” I said. “It totally fucked me up. You said it was sativa, and it’s not. Indica makes me crazy.”

“There’s no such thing as pure sa­tiva,” he said.

“Just give me a refund,” I said.

“I can only give you partial store credit,” he said.

“That’s fine,” I said. “What else do you have?”

He pulled out another varietal.

“This one’s pretty good,” he said.

I went home and tried the new stuff. It made me even crazier than the first batch. After seeing me on the couch clawing at my eyes, my wife said, “You’ve got to get some better weed.”

“I know,” I responded. “This stuff is killing me.”

Two days later I went to a Dodgers game with my friend the Rabbi, who also has a prescription. He had a little tub of something called Orange Willy. I showed him my loony weed.

“Ooh,” he said. “Purple Something or Other! I’ve been looking for that.”

So we swapped. I took one toke of Orange Willy, and my mind felt focused and relaxed. This was the medical marijuana for which I’d been searching.

Altitude Check
I got memberships at 10 different dispensaries, and I had no idea who was in charge of any of them. Activists run some, others are the provenance of entrepreneurs, while others have been accused of ties to organized crime. No matter who’s in charge, the profit margin is enormous. I chose dispensaries in various neighborhoods, in case the need for weed struck me while I was out on errands. Now that I had as much weed as I wanted, whenever I wanted it, I was happily stoned all the time, unless I had to drive somewhere. I was high at movies and weddings, baseball games and dinner parties.

My son’s preschool had a fund-raiser, a silent auction with a sort of Ocean’s Eleven jet-setting theme. There were no children allowed. All the men wore suits or tuxes, and the women broke out their finest. I brought along a couple of pot-laced chocolate-and-peppermint candies for my enjoyment, a great wafting stink coming from under my dinner jacket. By 9 p.m. the tent smelled like Willie Nelson’s barn.

“Someone’s been toking the marijuana in here,” said the event’s emcee.

When he got off the stage, I gave him a quarter of one of the patties.

At the Rabbi’s recommendation, I started going to a place called the Earth Collective, on Sunset Boulevard. To get in I rang a buzzer at a door. Then I walked through a Japanese rock garden with soothing fountains, up a path to a bungalow. Now, this was a dispen­sary that I could get behind. They had an ex­cellent selection, decent prices, and a frequent-buyer’s card.

One day late last summer, I went to the Earth Collective and rang the buzzer. There was no answer. A peer over the fence indicated there was no life inside. On July 6 the DEA had sent letters to the landlords of about 150 collectives, reminding them that they were an accessory to a federal crime and that the government could confiscate their land. Some landlords stood their ground, but the Earth Collective’s doesn’t appear to be one of them.

I needed some weed, and fast, so I drove east down Sunset and stopped at the first dealership I could find. It was a little storefront with brightly painted walls and a chubby, friendly dude at the reception desk. After a brief chat, I went into the back, where another chubby guy awaited. It was like I’d stumbled into a Seth Rogen fan club. I had a long flight to New York coming up, I said, and I needed something I could take before I got on the plane. I was looking for something in a spray, or maybe a breath strip.

And then I saw them: Sativa full melt hash capsules—as portable as drugs get. It was $30 for a packet of five.

“Only take one at first,” the guy said. “That’ll definitely be a nice, mild high. If you take more, you might start to get really strong effects.”

Please, I thought. Don’t insult my stoner-ability.

At the Burbank airport a few days later, before getting on my plane, I gulped down two of the capsules. The most delightful trip in history ensued. Hey, I thought, my seat actually feels pretty roomy! United Airlines serves good food now, too! Surf’s Up is hilarious!

As I flew in more ways than one, I thought about my life as a medical marijuana patient. I couldn’t see the downside. Pot dealers weren’t gunning one another down in the streets, at least not at any greater rate than before. Los Angeles hadn’t seen a massive increase in stoned-driving fatalities. Yes, I’d probably given money to some shady characters, but I’d also given money to some nonshady characters who were dedicated to helping people in need. That’s what this law had initially been about. Right now I’m the definition of a recreational user, but odds are high that I’ll get sick someday. I don’t want to live in a world where, if I’m a patient, I can’t get marijuana if I need it. That wouldn’t be right.

In the meantime, air travel is going to be a lot more fun.