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Your Paranoid Nightmare: When You're Too High at Work or with Family

No one is more obviously high than someone trying to conceal the fact that they are obviously high. Here, people reflect on their terrible experiences trying to dupe their bosses and parents.
Photo by Inuk Studio via Stocksy

Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg share a special celebrity friendship. They just get each other. If you don't believe me, have a look at this video of Snoop and Martha making mashed potatoes. Halfway through the segment, after a few minutes of peeling and mashing, Snoop, clearly high as hell, exclaims with delight, "This smells good! What is this again?" Martha doesn't bat a tasteful eyelash. "Mashed potatoes!" she answers with equal enthusiasm, as if its totally cool that Snoop just completely forgot what he was doing on her television show.

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Chances are your family and co-workers don't have half the chill that Martha has. And that can make for some uncomfortable situations when you mix a family or work function with weed. For the majority of us who don't possess Snoop's easy stoner gentility or Martha Stewart's unwavering focus on side dishes, here are some horror stories of what happens when you get high in the wrong place, with the wrong company.

Carol

I was with my ex-boyfriend on a Thursday night when the coke he was getting for the weekend arrived. He were like, "Hey, why don't we just do one line of coke now to see if it's any good?" And I was like, "Hey, sure, why not? That's a brilliant idea for a Thursday night." Obviously, we did the whole gram and were up until 5 AM, at which point I decided to have a little nap until I needed to get up and go to work at 7:30. I ended up going to work on zero sleep and literally twitching.

Anyway, because I went into work about an hour before the day was supposed to start, I was the only person there when my big boss—like the top dog—came in. "Wow, why are you in so early?" he asked, and I said, "Oh, I wasn't feeling well. I had some work I needed to do, and I really didn't want to let the team down, so I thought I'd come in early and do it. That way, if I still feel sick later I can go home."

He told me I was an amazing employee, then he sent me home and told everyone else how conscientious I was.

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Liz

I was a freshman in college and had just moved into the dorms in Toronto. It was not only a new city—it was a new country. My roommates and I went to a suite down the hall, where one of the guys asked if we wanted to smoke a joint. Because I'm from New York City and thought I knew everything, I figured it would be no big deal. But this was Canada, and the weed was way better. The only problem: I had to be at my Scottish highland dance lesson in an hour.

After we smoked, I rode my bike the three miles to the dance teacher's house, hoping that whatever I was feeling wouldn't make it all the way up the stairs to her makeshift studio. But it did. I could barely stand up straight, let alone dance around two goddamn swords. Somehow, I found a way to make a fully-grown person in argyle socks and gillies look even more pathetic.

Nicole

I was 24 and it was my first week at a new copyediting job. I took my lunch break with a nice coworker I didn't know well. He offered me a hit off a little pipe; I assumed the weed would be pretty mellow. I didn't realize until later that he was a complete burnout who needed pure hash oil to get high. For him, it may have been "mellow work weed," but for me it was completely dank. I took one hit and couldn't read or write.

The rest of the afternoon I sat at my desk with a pile of fourth grade test-prep reading passages. I had already proofread them that morning but was now staring at them—paralyzed—with a pen in my hand. My boss came by after lunch and told me she would train me in the programming software when I finished.

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When I couldn't pretend to proofread any longer without seeming completely incompetent, I let my boss show me the software. I have no idea what she said. I tried to talk as little as possible because my words were mushy. I even kept my hand over my mouth because I was self-conscious about my lips moving. My coworker was nice enough to train me again the next day. It was one of the worst highs of my life, but any other time it would have been one of the best.

Kelly

I have this thing where, when I smoke weed sometimes, I hallucinate that I go into another dimension. It's really bad there. The first time it happened, I hallucinated that I was going to be trapped in a single moment for 17 years and that my life would start over in exactly the same way leading up to that moment, at which point I'd be trapped for 17 years, on and on for infinity. That went on for a little while, then God took me up into the sky and showed me the meaning of life in a book with golden pages. After a few hours of me being totally insane, my friends drove me home, and I had to talk to my mom when I arrived there. I kept telling her that God had revealed to me what the meaning of life was, and she just made me green tea and put me in bed and never inquired further.

By the morning, I had forgotten the meaning of life, and now we will never know.

I realized I had forgotten how to open and close my mouth.

Nadia

My parents, who are infinitely cool, took me to Paris and Amsterdam when I was 16. There was great anticipation on the train ride to Amsterdam because we all kept joking about the hash bars: Would we go to them? Would I be allowed to smoke? Would my parents leave me high in the red light district as funny prank?

We strolled down a charming cobblestone street into a cafe. My father very casually ordered four rolled joints. We did not discuss it. He then lit up the spliff and handed it to me and my mom. I was such a teenage asshole that I could not relax and somehow felt burdened that my first experience of hash in Europe was with my parents (again, I was a gaping asshole). My mother was being super chatty and giggling at everything. I took another drag, and my dad, completely deadpan, said to me, "Looks like you've done this before." I felt like it was all a trap—that my parents now had evidence that I had done drugs and my life would be spent grounded without a driver's license. Eventually, the paranoia and anxiety wore off, and we all watched Election in the hotel room.

Jessica

My brother-in-law gave me a pot chocolate last year, and I didn't realize it was super strong California weed. We wound up going to dinner with his co-workers, and I tried to keep it together so I wouldn't embarrass him in front of the people he works with, but when one of them asked me a question I realized I had forgotten how to open and close my mouth. When we finally got home, I had to pay the babysitter. She was talking to me, but I was afraid to say anything to her because I thought my teeth were hairy. My husband drove her home.