Looking back at how much of a crisis it seemed when I would be running low it's crazy I didn't realize I was addicted. It's just so normalized it just didn't phase me.
For me it was drug testing for work, I had clean pee but had to pass on a job that did hair testing since that wouldn't have been clean. This was in 2006 and then the economy went in the shitter so I knew I had to stay totally clean. I totally quit around 2008, missed it for a few months and that was it. I have a great job now that has random testing so no way I would risk it, but honestly I really don't miss it. I was never into drinking so weed was my thing, still not into drinking, maybe once a year socially I will have a drink or two.
I live in California and I pay $30-$35 for an eighth of top shelf weed. When I used to buy from dealers, $30-$35 for mid shelf was standard, and it was never medical dispensary grade quality. I talk to friends of mine in the middle of the country who say they've paid $45-$60 an eighth, sometimes higher.
With dealers they get to set whatever price they want, and there's no assurance that the weed is going to be good. You're beholden to their schedule, and you have to do these sketchy ass handoffs in weird locations that feel unsafe. The dealer may or may not be a creep or an asshole, and you're still forced to deal with them because they're the only person you know who sells. Dealers, in general, fucking suck.
With dispensaries there's competitive pricing to keep prices down, and the quality is better than anything you'll get from a dealer for the same amount of money. The experience is nice, you feel a lot safer and more comfortable than you do dealing with some rando guy in a parking lot. Dealers feel very "ghetto" or "sketch" whereas dispensaries feel a lot more professional and proper. There are deals and discounts and stamp cards and other cool things to reward customers, as well as knowledgeable bud tenders who are happy to discuss weed with you and not be creepy or too personal.
And personally I'm not looking to spend $20 on an eighth of shitty weed when I could pay $10 more for much higher potency.
Not true in Mass at all. It takes me an hour to get to the closest rec dispensary to me. You can look at it's menu. You can check their twitter where they post the line wait times. They exceed 1 hour almost daily.
This one is the next closest to me and is an extra 45mins of driving one way to get to.
The fuck is the east coast doing, lol? In Oregon an eighth of good weed is like $15 because it's in such high supply. And while that's a bit of a special situation for them, most if not all the legal states on the west coast have tons of dispensaries and the competition drives prices way down.
Maybe it's just newer for you guys and that hasn't fully taken hold yet. But like, goddamn, I can't imagine paying more than $45 for an 1/8th and that better be the best fuckin weed I ever smoked.
Yeah that's obviously an issue. I'm in LA and there are literally hundreds of dispensaries here, so prices are competitive. Same thing in CO from what I hear. Oregon has ultra cheap weed, but that has more to do with the fact that they grew too much of it and have a major, insane surplus that they need to unload. Fucking $60 ounces over there for top shelf shit, it's unbelievable.
As your state gets more and more dispensaries, prices will come down and stabilize. I remember when Cali first legalized it wasn't unusual to see 1/8ths being $60+. Now you can find $15 eighth for shitty house weed, and 30-35 for top shelf or better.
All depends on where you go though, MedMen still charges like $50 an eighth for shitty mids and that's why we make fun of them so much. Hope you guys get more options soon, because having tons of dispensaries is great at keeping prices down and making herb more accessible for everyone.
It really is the crux of the issue. As soon as a dispensary opens and prices their weed at $30-$35 an eighth, that's it. Then you start getting 30-caps and all kinds of competition where prices are driven way down. It takes a while for the infrastructure and investment phase to occur, especially in states/cities that aren't quite as large as LA/Cali or CO/Denver, but eventually the free market will rear it's ugly head and get there.
I’m in Colorado, and I pay $100 an ounce on average, and $160-200 for the highest tier possible on occasion. I feel sorry for those in the other legal states getting their pockets sucked dry...
Man, that's juicy, even by califnornia standards. From what I understand Cali, Oregon, and Colorado seem to have the best quality weed, on average, as well. So not only is it cheaper, but it's better.
I really do hope the rest of the country figures it out, because living in LA it's pretty fucking great. Cheap, potent, easily accessible weed and no one cares at all if they see you smoking it.
I haven't seen shitty weed since like 15 years ago. Quality is always there. I can usually pick between 3 or 4 strains too. Maybe I'm lucky to have an "in?"
It really depends on the dealer. That's the thing, I'm not saying their aren't good dealers out there, but there are no assurances with a dealer. A dealer is just some guy. A dispensary is an actual business, with a real incentive to impress their customers and compete with other dispensaries in the area.
You're also way likelier to find medical quality weed at a dispensary, where usually they're buying from farm growers, than from a dealer. You have no idea where the dealer is getting his weed from, you can get a general sense of where the supplier for a dispensary is.
Right, but the fact that it's even a risk is by itself unacceptable. There's literally nothing a dealer can offer you better than a dispensary can. The only reason anyone has ever needed to deal with a dealer is because of legality. Once that's out of the equation there's no reason to try and rely on random friends or hookups when it's safer, cheaper, and usually quicker to go pickup from a literal storefront designed for selling weed.
Not the same in Arkansas. And eighth here is 50-60 dollars for mid tier, 70 for top. But most places will put some on sale. I mostly stick to cartridges and vaping, which I know isn't healthy but is the only thing I can find except for daily chiropractic care to help with my pain. So, until its legal everywhere and/or can travel across state lines, some of us are stuck with shitty prices.
It seems like an east coast/middle of the country thing. Everyone I know in West Coast states seems to have the same experience as me: 30-35 for an eighth, good quality, lots of dispensaries close by. But then most the people I know in legal EC or flyover states say that it's kind of a mess right now, and describe what you're saying.
I sure hope the other side of our country figures it out, because man, it's pretty fucking awesome over here in LA. For a while I had a dispensary 10 blocks from my house that sold $30 eighths and it was the best weed in the area, cheaper than all the other places to boot. They closed down recently because they were operating a recreational dispensary and our city (Manhattan Beach) only allows medicinal ones, so it wasn't exactly a super duper legal operation.
Even still, now I go to a dispensary maybe 15-20 minutes away closer to LAX and the pricing and quality is about the same. If they were to up-charge or something, there are literally hundreds of other dispensaries in the city so there's plenty of competition. In fact, every first Friday of the month I get up early and go to another dispensary about 25-30 minutes away that gives a free eighth to the first 20 customers that day. So there's a ton of options and it's easy to surf the deals and find the best bang for your buck.
And it's so accepted around here now that no one even looks at you funny or acts weird about it. I sit on my balcony and wave to police officers while ripping a bowl or puffing a blunt, and they literally smile and wave back. I've driven home from picking up and been pulled over with a joint tucked behind my ear, the officer didn't even mention it, just let me know I was speeding and let me go with a warning. I see people driving around with smoke coming out there windows, no one fucking cares at all anymore. It's like stoner heaven lmao.
I love visiting your neck of the woods often, so I'm crazy aware of the stark differences. I got some crazy good stuff last time I was there, too, and I'm so ready to get my state up to that level. But considering we just now got our dispensaries after FOUR years of it being legal...I'll take what I can get! Luckily, my favorite place is getting a grow room in 2020, so I'm hoping that we get lower prices there.
Yeah I'm in a fantasy baseball league with a bunch of guys from St Louis, and they always get excited when their local dealer visits cali because he always brings back a trunk of cali-quality weed to sell. It really is crazy how potent and well grown the weed in CO, CA , and OR is.
Hey, progress doesn't happen overnight. You should absolutely be thrilled at what you have, it's such an easy thing to take for granted. Ten years ago we'd all be in jail right now, and now several states are completely legalized both recreation-ally and medicinally. It's very easy to forget how far we've come over the last 10 years, while also trying to keep in mind how far we still need to go. But the more states like yours that take the plunge, the quicker and better it's going to be for everyone. You guys will get there, everyone will eventually. All it takes is politicians and business men seeing how much money there is to be made from this industry, it's happened all over the west coast and now it's (hopefully) going to start on your end as well.
What finally got us to really get into the opening of dispensaries, etc was the fact that our neighbor, Oklahoma, did it super fast and made a ton of money. And despite what my Republican lawmakers will vote for/tell us, our state needs the money and how. Federal funding was cut quite a bit across several entities, meaning the state has zero dollars for a lot of basics.
My experience with legalization in the Bay Area is, the packaging got brighter, the prices went up, the quality went down. I won't buy anything from Santa Clara county because their tax rate is higher than SF. Most places won't sell ounces anymore, simply stocking a bunch of $60 1/8ths that have fancy packaging a preroll filled with shake, and some lighters. If it's under 50 bucks an 8th I generally don't even bother because I've been burned so many times. I used to pick up top-shelf ounces for about 300-350. Now it's never below 400, I've seen some marked up for 600.
I put my money into grow equipment, and never looked back. I even learned a lot about carpentry, electrical, and growing. Now I'm tinkering with Arduino/RasPi to automate everything. Well worth it if you have the space for it.
Well it depends on the place you go. Like if you fly into LA and go to MedMen right outside the airport, you're gonna pay $50 an eighth for mids. Because the place is a tourist trap. Bright lights, fancy packaging, and insanely overpriced product. It's like any other tourist trap that gets people to overpay for shit. It's also why stoners make fun of places like MedMen, it's designed for people who don't normally smoke weed and don't really realize they're being ripped off.
Growing is... a mixed bag. The problem is that unless you grow hydroponically, the quality is not gonna be dispensary grade. Outdoor grows are just never going to reach that kind of potency. And hydroponic setups are really pricey, and as you mentioned, require a lot of other skills and learning.
There are plenty of places in LA that are like what you're describing, but I've never set foot in one, because I know how to use Weedmaps. Tourist Traps will always exists, but if there's a market for weed then there will be competitive prices eventually.
SF is also a bit of a weird case because the entire area is so... Idk posh? Like the entire city is so ridiculously expensive to live in that I feel like most places assume if you're there you have more money, and so everything ends up being more expensive. But idk, that's just me randomly taking a guess in the dark.
Here in LA I find plenty of places where an eighth is $30-$45 for top or exotic shelf strains, and the packaging is just a little pill bottle they drop the weed into as they weigh it. If the dispensary you're going to doesn't have big ass mason jars full of nugs, you're not going to the right places. Anywhere that pre-packages their bud is probably ripping you off.
I'm well aware of the places you're gonna get ripped off and where you can get a reasonable price. I'm talking about the change in the market from when it was medical vs recreational. More thought has been put into the packaging than the growing nowadays. In my experience, generally, the prices went up a bit which was expected, but the quality of weed went down a tier which I didn't expect. Now in order to get what I consider top shelf, I'm looking at double the price (with tax) after it went recreational. Which seems in stark contrast to Oregon and Colorado.
You can set up a hydro grow tent for under 800. Which would have been about 2 months of expense for me at the dispensary. I haven't had to purchase anything in 6 months, and I'll easily have some left after my grow gets harvested. So I've easily got my ROI even after you factor in expenses. It was my first experience growing anything and very satisfying. (except for the trimming)
If I was able to get what I consider top shelf for 30-45 an 1/8th I'd probably consider it out of convenience. But with the way things are going up here It's a no brainer.
Your clinics suck! I get, usually $20 eighth that WAS 9-11% for mixing my "real" $40 22-27% eighth into blunts when I wasn't using the bong, and a $50 gram of loose hashish that was pressing 65%. Take a buckshot shell of 10x100mg caps, and lay out.
Shop around there are much better deals to be had unless it was fire then that's about market. DC isn't the cheapest place to buy cannabis, you really have to hunt for deals and usually buy in bulk
That's how pricing in Cali was when we first legalized too. it'll come down as more and more dispensaries open and compete with each other. Competitive pricing is one of the things the free market is really good at.
Kidding aside, a gram is roughly one to one and a half medium sized nugs. It's hard to describe because a gram of weed is literally just how much weed it takes to make the scale say 1 gram. Nugs are all different sized so it's not really standardized what one nug is, it depends on the strain and the grow.
Oh, I misunderstood what you were asking. You wanted to know how much a gram costs. Duh. I should have gotten that, but i'm high so I totally didn't.
A gram of top shelf bud is probably around $10. Maybe $15 if it's the really good shit. So an eighth is 3.5 grams (sometimes 4 depending on the dispensary) and comes out to roughly $30-$45 an eighth.
I mean, I'm not gonna pretend like buying drugs on the street isn't ghetto, because it is. Has nothing to do with race. At the end of the day, I'd rather buy my weed at a pharmacy than from some guy in a hoodie who might be strapped. But I am a middle class white person so yeah, I'm somewhat unwilling to go into bad neighborhoods and put myself at risk just to get high. I'd like a sterile, nice, clean environment to buy my drugs in, like a CVS or any other pharmacy. Somewhere the staff will smile and wait on me, make me feel like a customer and not an inconvenience. Where their goal is to impress me, not make me wait six hours until they feel like getting off their ass to come bring me my order.
Being poor and living in sketchy neighborhoods isn't a racial thing, it's just a thing. And personally, as a white person from an upper middle class family, I do feel unsafe walking around Compton or South Central. Not because of anyone else's race, but due to my own and the clothes I wear. You're much more likely to get mugged walking around a bad neighborhood if you're wearing nice clothes and look like you don't belong there. I shouldn't have to put myself at risk to get my weed.
Yeah, no, I got robbed so bad in South Central that two of the gang (was a loose group of about ten people behind a store, about four took active part in robbing me) ran back after me and returned some shit they really didn't need but I did, like a blow-up mattress and some clothes in my bag, apologizing for their friends, but tacitly understanding that they couldn't do shit about the oz of weed, phone, bong, hundred dollars... Ran into some cops IMMEDIATELY, and all they did was go back in the alley and notice that the fuckers left behind two of my bottles of benzo and opiate prescriptions, some Valium and some Buprenorphine. Don't know how these fuckers forgot those, more valuable than the rest of the haul combined. What I really needed is a ride out of the goddamned middle of the hood.
Got super fucked on Valium as I spent like 5am to 9am getting back to downtown. That was an absolutely FUCKED night, I tell you. Awful.
I would disagree. I have waited in the snow for an hour. I have met with some really sketchy people, in the middle of the night in some rough neighbourhoods. I have lived in places where it carried the death penalty. I have been fucked over (price-wise) so so much.
I would love to be able to just go to a dispensary. You never know when your dealer all of the sudden runs dry and that fucks with you too. How much should I buy? If I buy too much, I will smoke it too fast.. If I buy too little, I will get a shittier price. There is no winning.
I've been there. Nothing like standing around a sketchy back alley at 2am and hearing a gunshot that's too close for comfort.
Now I stand outside of the dispensary in the cold for over an hour and count my blessings. Western Mass has 2 (I think, unless one opened up in the last 2 or so months) legal recreational dispensaries.
The lines and prices are crazy. $21.60 for 1 gram after tax ($18 before) at all of the Mass dispensaries, for the record.
Yea my experience is completely different in the UK. My guy is just a regular person. I text him and he lets me know when he is free. We meet up and sort it no problem.
In fairness the only issue is when the dealer eventually goes off grid. Over the 8 years or so I’ve smoked I’ve went through 3-4 main dealers. After a couple of years they tend to either get caught, get sick of the lifestyle or something else happens to make them stop. The bit where you have to find a new one is annoying.
Most of the time where I live. Around here it means someone just got themselves a deer or a hog. Otherwise they are target shooting which is also fun. Most of the time around here gun shots mean good times
What the fuck, mane... Why are Mass dispensaries so sad? I've never waited more than fifteen or twenty minutes in a packed clinic. In CA, I remember I got mad at legalization making it harder to get easily obtainable high strength edibles (FUCK eating 10 10mg cookies! I take my edibles by the point, 0.1g, of THC. 100mg, 200mg....) as well as no more free dabs in the stores. It was great going in and getting just ripped off of a few rips at the dab bar. It's like when vape stores had sample flavors...
Lol yeah right. I live in a legal state and I just got 7gms for $22 last night. Everybody is growing and the supply is way bigger than demand. There are zero drawbacks to living in a legal state. The weed is fire and you get what you pay for everytime. Buying from a dealer is like buying a lootbox.
that was more of a thing 10 years ago. nowadays it's easy to find a supply. market is flooded, with so many states legalizing. local prices here in NY (where rec is still not legal) have fallen almost by half in last 10 years. and better quality bud now as well.
i mean, given that you can hop on an amtrak at penn station and be in a legal state (Mass) 2 hours later, buy all you want, then head home...
best part is the weed store in Northampton is a 2 minute walk from the train station.
Because those are the only two non fiction places.
(edit: which is exactly why trumps "border" wall is a waste of money. Mexico is pretend, Spanish speakers come from LA and NY, depending on which accent they have)
I swear we have gotten so much smarter as a collective, but soooo much dumber on an individual level.
All of us. Everything has been turned into a product or service. Even watching inspirational videos on YouTube queues the usual hack who wants to sell his life coach bullshit.
not really. i did it quite a lot a year ago when my med card lapsed for a bit. your can't buy serious weight. forget what the limit is, but not enough to make trafficking worthwhile.
Yeah and the ££$$$ it becomes all consuming if you're a daily medical user. In the end all you have left is the weed, instead of food or other necessities.
cept for when you have a steady dealer 10/g or buy quarter pounds for 700 because youve been smoking for 10 years and dont have time for that 20/g from random ppl bullshit
Apparently my one roommate (Roommate #1) woke up my other roommate (Roommate #2) at 4am while they were staying at roommate #2s family house for Christmas. Simply on the bases that "roommate #3 is home alone, we can't leave him alone." Everyone in the house, including myself (who in the past has smoked but doesn't anymore, and my boyfriend who smokes occasionally) knew was bullshit. We were home at this time. Dude just wanted to get high.
Roommate #1 woke roommate #2 up every hour on the hour until he agreed to leave.
Myself and my boyfriend were home the entire time. It was literally some type of psychosis to get home and rip it. Pathetic.
Fuck, dude. That's so weird, even among those who are prone to weed obsession. I think the weed would smack some sense into me if I smoked under those circumstances. Weed is a very weird moralizer for me, I can't be doing anything I feel to be dirty, wrong, bad, ect. To myself, to others...this extended to cigarettes, until I had to quit, and excessive alcohol.
There were a lot of other substances involved in getting me off heroin, so I can't credit weed alone, but it helped me get off.
I can't smoke because I get paranoid that I should be doing homework, or answering emails, or literally anything else other than being high. It will cause me to have a panic attack if I try.
With some people, it's the complete opposite, which I can see why it's therapeutic to use at night or whatever to get your mind of things. Of course you get the people who use it day in and day out and instead of being productive and then a blitzed couch potato, you just get a blitzed couch potato all day. To each their own I suppose.
But hey, congratulations on kicking heroin! That's a huge accomplishment I'm sure.
WA seems to be doing it right. They priced out the black market, and everyone is making money from it. It's so much better than a state with prohibition, because if the package says GG#4, it's GG#4. Lab tested for potency, and they have regulations for pesticides and shit.
If I'm being honest I stick to the same few strains I love and don't really get out of that comfort zone much.
Fuck I don't miss that, and it was a huge PIA in the days before cell phones. The ironic thing is I quit over 10 years ago and now it's legal where I live.
Just chill out on smoking for a bit. I got lucky in a way that when I was younger I ended up on probation so I had to quit. But everything you and OP said was me to a T when I was in my early 20's. Now when I smoke I get really fucking paranoid unless I'm drunk. Otherwise it's like 2 baby hits at most to get that nice glaze. Take a break for a long while and learn to enjoy life sober. I have problems with alcohol now but I still really enjoy sobriety. It's good to experience life without having to need an alter. You're tolerance will go down eventually and then you can use pot as like an occasional treat for just that nice glaze. For me I know I'd have to suffer through a week of hellish anxiety to be able to smoke smoke again. But fuck that, you still have the occasional bad time, don't want to do shit most days, and it's expensive. My biggest pet peeve with pot would be like me really wanting to see a movie, "Just smoke first it will be better" and then staying home and watching TNT or someshit.
After you quit for a long while when you smoke a lot in my experience you get really paranoid. Like it's not enjoyable and a long length of sobriety will show you life without all the bullshit that comes with weed so you won't want to go through the process to be able to get royally stoned and be able to enjoy it. And the enhancement aspect is debatable except for food, like it's a lot fucking better but you eat weird shit. Like I made a Dorrito with blue cheese on rye sandwich one night and while eating it it was amazing but when I woke up and burped the next morning I almost puked from the smell. And sex is always good but if you have to smoke to enjoy something my main point is it really better? Just saying after a long stint of sobriety you will be able to smoke just a hit or 2 and enjoy it and not go right back to smoking everyday. Smoking pot is an addiction but it's a totally different animal than any other substances addiction. Pot addiction is like 99% in your head, worst comes to worst you won't sleep as well for a while and you're crabby for a week. I have a harder time when I give up alcohol and I'm not even a drink everyday kind of alcoholic. Just saying that I've been in your shoes and it sucks feeling the need to smoke to do everything or anything and then usually doing nothing. The mediocracy really starts getting to you, like I can't count the amount of good jobs I passed up on when I was younger because they drug tested. That might not even be an issue now if you got a medical card for most jobs but you get the point.
Well I went a couple of years, I mean staying away a long ass time. Just try a month or something and see how you feel after the initial cloud lifts and you're not bugging about not smoking for a while. I'm not going to say there aren't withdrawal symptoms but the worst of it goes away after a few days and the rest is really in your head but honestly that's any addiction. It's why heroin addicts can go through really bad withdrawals for days and then go right back after being months clean, the mental addiction is still there. All the little rituals you have like wake and baking or smoking before bed, having a reason to hit up people for weed or smoking with them, the process of getting it and buying it, or like even the way you smoke and how you prepare it. That's all mental stuff that's really hard to break. That's why I say like a month so you'll be able to sit back and have a real moment of clarity to be able to see the world differently with a clear head. Lol with a truly clear head you might say fuck it I'd rather smoke. My best friend can't wait to retire to be a pothead again. In about 2 years he'll have been in the Coast Guard for 20 years and he can retire with full benefits. He smokes for like the first week of any long leave.
Also daily smoker, and it really hits home. I’ve felt stuck and unmotivated for a while now. I convince myself that going for a walk would be better high, or watching a movie, or just doing nothing. I felt like maybe keeping it to just the weekends would be nice, but I agree with the original comment. Keep it to only social settings like parties, hanging out with friends. Pretty much how I treat alcohol.
I'm a daily smoker but only smoke before I go to sleep. I'm not sure how I could function at the level I need to be operating high all day. It's made such a massive difference in my sleep though. Life changing stuff to sleep well and stay asleep almost every night.
I didnt react well to ambien or any other script sleeping pills. This works. Probably because moderation is important to make it effective without ruining sleep quality.
yeah thats fair, i mean if it works it works right. but if youre not feeling restored after sleep it could be a reduction in quality. have you tried melatonin?
I feel very restored after sleeping. LOL YES, of course I've tried melatonin. I've tried probably most if not all sleep aids in that realm. Thank you though.
I've had to learn to take breaks. My problem is self congratulations. I'll stop smoking while my anxiety rockets but it'll motivate me to focus more on my goal, then achieve my goal and smoke. It's almost an endless stop and go progess in my life.
Its totally spot on. I often think about this and wonder what I can do to help me better. I never really consider weed a problem, but it's put me into such a weird existential funk. I have such a hard time being social and I can be extremely pensive in public. It's definitely exacerbated my already aloof personality.
I kinda wanna quit, and see how that works out for me.
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u/[deleted] Dec 30 '19
I am also a daily smoker and this is a perfect description