Exploring American Hometowns: NYC Fog

Growing up is a funny thing—you begin to feel your frontal lobe developing, raising your fear factor, and improving your logical decision-making abilities. Looking back, some of the things I did during my freshman year of high school in the Big Apple are honestly shocking. 

Coming of age in New York City allowed for an early independence unique to the big city. 

It was the fall of my freshman year of high school. I had just transferred from my tiny, traditional all-girls middle school and had met my now best friend of five years—we’ll call her “Lily”—who came from a very different middle school environment. She would regale me with the tales of her peers doing drugs in the park after school, along with her own recreational weed use. Naturally, I had to be looped in on what cannabis was all about.

8:00 p.m.

Lily and I are on “Sarah’s” roof. The sun is setting over her view of the skyline; the Empire State Building and Hudson Yards skyscrapers are glowing in the dusk light. Lily pulls out a punch bar—weed-infused chocolate—and breaks it up into small pieces. “Start with this—you’ll barely feel anything.”

8:30 p.m.

Our half-hour timer goes off: “I’m not feeling anything, I want to take another square,” I say—ROOKIE MISTAKE. But Lily doesn’t know any better either, so we take more.

10:16 p.m.

Having accepted that this experiment was a dud, we resigned ourselves to wandering Madison Square Park in search of entertainment. All of a sudden, I look at my phone. What time is it? 10:16 p.m. Seems about right—until I look up and feel a little strange. 

10:17 p.m.

We continue walking, and all of a sudden, I am hit with a surge of panic. WHAT TIME IS IT?? It feels like hours have gone by—10:17 p.m. Then, I am going to pee myself. My friends look at me strangely as my 14-year-old brain is hit by probably 15mg of a punch bar like a ton of bricks. Now in the center of Madison Square Park, I look around and realize that the world is a vinyl disc, and I am at its center. The next (and last) thing I remember is violently slurping a Shake Shack malt milkshake on the dirt ground.

This began a two-year course of intermittent (and irresponsible) marijuana consumption. As a strict non-consumer now, looking back, I can’t help but wonder: a) how I had so much access; b) whether I actually enjoyed the feeling, considering that now it fosters nothing but terror; and c) how I never got caught.

Recreational marijuana use was legalized in New York City in March of 2021. My endeavors had begun the previous fall, so who knows who 14-year-old Lily’s plug was for that treacherous punch bar. I vividly recall, post-legalization, the emergence of weed stores on every corner of my neighborhood. It was at this point that I finally realized the “skunk” I was always smelling as my dad and I drove up Riverside was, in fact, the scent of a fresh joint. Most of these shops were unlicensed, and it was not uncommon for these smoke shops to be raided by the police, and often, they would only serve you a preroll if you were a regular. In those days, though, unlicensed selling was so rampant that they wouldn’t even bother to card their obviously baby-faced customers. 

We were experiencing the city’s streets through red eyes and a green haze.

What was first Lily’s punch bar and then flower stolen from a sibling to smoke out of an apple bong became the regular purchase of pre-rolls, sticky with kief, or Cali-Honey edibles that would send me into multi-day hazes. As we got older and weed became more common amongst classmates, things started to get a little weird. I would tag along with my true stoner friends to dealers in Union Square or walk the streets of Brooklyn straight to the plug’s abode. In 10th grade, a classmate of mine got expelled for dealing on the admissions floor of my Upper East Side Ivy-prep—a bit out of hand, to say the least.

My paranoia increased with my consumption habits. I remember many failed attempts to quell my spiraling mind and what felt like a physically spinning body. I would count the minutes, close my eyes, or turn on an episode of the comforting “Great British Baking Show,” only to be confronted by a cross-dressed, American-West version of Paul Hollywood. These “fixes” would tend to exacerbate what can only be compared to hallucinatory experiences. I was spooked by a leaf blowing on the street—mistaken for a rat—or a shoe left out on my cousin’s floor—mistaken for a dog (neither of us had a dog). 

Now, given this tendency, I wonder how it took me all of five years to realize that I truly hate the feeling of being high (except for on the rare occasion when one hit of a penjamin before bed still makes food taste like rainbows before sending me into a deep, floating slumber). The last time was my first time getting high again at college after a hiatus. Sprawled on the floor of the Weld common bathroom in a ball gown at four in the morning, I realized it was probably time to wave the white flag.

While the smoke shops remain on most street corners, if you see me stopping in, it’s probably to pick up a Crave 5% and call it a day.

Mara Juana asks that you keep your edibles far out of her reach.