I HAD A GUMMIE AND I DON’T KNOW IF I’M TOO HIGH OR IF I AM DEAD. (Spoiler: you’re too high.)

So. This is a post that will probably get me mocked and possibly should be titled, “Idiot woman fucked around and found out” because that’s probably what a lot of responses will be but I’m writing it anyway because you can learn from mistakes…because recently I had a psychotic episode triggered by a perfectly legal, over-the-counter edible gummie and it was so awful that I want you to know about it in case it ever happens to you, or you accidentally eat something you shouldn’t and then fall into a terrible abyss.

Let me start by saying that I did lots of weed and acid in my youth and I currently take IV ketamine for treatment-resistant depression so I am not new to bad trips, but this was something else entirely.

I’ve taken thc/cbd gummies in the past to help me sleep and they basically felt like a margarita without the brain-freeze. I hadn’t had one in a year or so and so when my husband took me to a vape shop next to the curry place we were going to eat I looked for the brand I usually used and they didn’t have it so I asked the cashier what I should take to just relax and help sleep (because all of the packages are confusing as hell) and he handed me a package with a recommendation of one gummie. I told Victor that maybe he should try them and he rolled his eyes at me because Victor has never even had a contact high before. I looked up the reviews for the brand and saw a woman saying they helped with her anxiety and arthritis and I was like, “Anxious arthritic women unite! Clearly this will be fine.”

I took one and about an hour later I started to feel incredibly tense and sick and (very weirdly) my dog Dorothy Barker started growling at me and backing away like I’d grown horns and I told Victor that something seemed very wrong and that’s when he told me that he’d also taken a gummie.

And then I told him that one of us needed to be sober and he said we could always call an uber and I didn’t respond because who calls an uber driver to ask them to babysit them while they’re high…how would they even charge for that? (Later he told me he meant in case we needed to go somewhere. I don’t know, y’all.)

Then things quickly went from weird to worse as we both started projectile vomiting everything we’d ever eaten in our lives and then the walls started closing in like we were in that trash-compactor in Star Wars. To make things more interesting, I threw up so hard that I peed myself.

GOOD TIMES.

Our hearts felt like they were beating out of our chests and I was shaking so much I felt like I was having a convulsion and then time stopped completely.

This has happened to me before (time stopping) but never to such a crazy extent because the clock would not change and we were trapped in hell. Victor worried that we’d been poisoned and I felt that we were probably just too high but also I couldn’t stop thinking about the Tylenol murders and that maybe an anti-gummie extremist had infiltrated a gummie factory to poison everyone. I agreed that I did feel like I’d been poisoned but that also, time had stopped and that was definitely something that people say when they are too high, but then Victor was like, “Except maybe time also stops when you’re poisoned but we don’t know because none of those people survived and everything we know is just confirmation bias?” and that also sounded like something someone high would say, but he was kind of making a really good point and wasn’t sure if I was breathing properly.

So I decided to rely on science to see if time really was stopped and so I stared at my phone while counting out loud and it made time move again but only when I was looking at it and so I was pretty sure we were just too high, but then we started vomiting again and I felt like I was suffocating and so I texted a friend (renamed Katie to protect her privacy) : HELP US KATIE. WE’RE TOO HIGH

And 87 hours later she showed up (or 30 minutes her time) and assured us we were probably fine but then she looked at us again and I couldn’t stop shaking and she was like, “But maybe I should call 911?”

Reader. We called 911.

EMS was very cool in a “Jesus, this again?” sort of way and they took our vitals by looking at us and said we were just too high and needed to relax and watch some cartoons. I’m pretty sure it’s not possible to take someone’s vitals by just looking at them and so I suspected that Katie just texted a friend and told them to pretend they were 911 and then Katie was like, “It’ll be okay. I took a gas station gummie and it was awful and I couldn’t open my mouth for hours” and then I knew I was hallucinating because Katie has never done drugs in her life. Victor was pacing and I was curled up in the fetal position and in between retchings I had several funny thoughts that I thought might make for an enjoyable anecdote but I couldn’t write them down because my hands stopped working so who the fuck knows what they were.

I apologized to Victor that I couldn’t help him and he was like, “I am never doing this again. Nancy Reagan was right about drugs” and I nodded but I also pointed out that we’d recently said we needed to try new experiences and this was the first time we’d ever tandem vomited in the same toilet and then I fell asleep on the couch.

The next morning we still felt horrible (nauseous, incredibly tense, shaky, mentally off) and asked each other if last night was real because it seemed like a literal nightmare and so we called Katie and she was like, “Hey, Cheech and Chong” and I crawled into my own body in mortification. BUT she did confirm that she really had called 911 and that she was also confused about how they did the vitals over the phone and that she really did have a bad reaction to a gas station gummie in the past and didn’t mention to me before because it was embarrassing and this is exactly why I am writing this. Because I think this sort of thing actually happens more than we know and people are too afraid to talk about it, but I’m sharing because LEARN FROM MY DUMB MISTAKE, WORLD.

So why did we have this reaction? Well, I looked up the gummies I’d taken in the past that helped me sleep and it had one milligram of THC. Guess how much THC the new gummie had?

150 MILLIGRAMS.

So then I called my actual doctor because it had been 24 hours and we still felt terrible and the nurse was like, “Yeah, we actually get this kind of call a lot. What was the dose?” and I said “150 milligrams” and she made a choking sound that I think was holding back laughter and was like, “OMG. Yeah. That’s a crazy amount.” Turns out that acute cannabinoid intoxication causes intense physical reactions and even temporary psychosis, and while it’s near impossible to die from ODing on pot, the things you might do during a panicky psychosis can be incredibly harmful and it’s much easier to OD on edibles, especially the ones that are around now because they’re not really regulated and people like me don’t do their research and just take whatever a random vape shop cashier gave me (possibly in retaliation for Victor yelling “WE’RE NOT COPS” when we first walked into the store.)

All this to say that if you are reading this and time has stopped you are probably too high and need to watch some cartoons and…

1. Just because it’s legal does not mean it’s safe. Do your research first. It’s the wild west out there regarding regulations.
2. THC can affect different people in different ways. For example, it can worsen bipolar symptoms. WHO KNEW.
3. Let your kids/friends know that they can call you if this happens to them and that you won’t judge them. It is terrifying and horrible and it can be very easy to make a dangerous decision if you don’t have someone who can talk you down and assure you that you’re not already dead. In fact, send this post to your kids. They may already know all of this, but maybe not.
4. If you ever feel like time has stopped, etc. you may have accidentally ingested an edible and you will be okay but here is what can help if you’re greening out: A warm blanket, a tv show to distract you, water, chewing on black peppercorns (no clue why this helps), having someone on the phone or in person who can monitor you and remind you it’s okay, a bowl to vomit in, and time.
5. Pay attention to dosage and ingredients. One margarita is fine. 150 margaritas is not going to be fine. Also many of the ingredient may make no sense. For example, my gummie also had something called “diamond sauce”. I don’t know what that is so I looked it up. “Diamond sauce combines THCA crystals with a terpene-rich sauce with a higher purity than live resin.” Awesome. I still don’t know what diamond sauce is.

This is honestly a little mortifying to write about but it’s very common and if I can save one person from a traumatizing night like this it’s worth it. Be safe out there, friends.