Hey Guys! At one point in my life I was a stoner, but it didn't last long and I felt after about 6 months I learned all I could from weed and have moved on to a far healthier life. While I was in this green haze I would then as I do now watch a lot of Trek. While watching it in this mental state I learned a lot about how to watch the show! When watching baked I would see the charactors not like charactors in the show but what they repersented in a metaphorical sense. I didn't see Picard or Janeway or Kirk as captains but leaders and there suborinates as architypal figures. The aliens where just sperate tribes or groups and while I knew I was watching Star Trek I could see past the sci-fi shell to the story itself. I was never able to see the show in this manner without post show diesection and introspection but after my stoner watching days it's like a superpower that has never gone away. The other thing I noticed is that when you watch the shows baked that the flavor of the time it was made is very obvious! Each show oozes with it's time of production and I found while I enjoyed watching them all, the best show to watched ripped was TOS! I remember putting on "Amok Time" with my roomate, loading up the bong and laughing so hard when Spock smashed the computer that I couldn't breath for 10 minutes. The Doomsday Machine was almost too much to bear! Have you guys had a smililar experince?
In the early to mid 80s (before TNG), I had a ritual. TOS aired at 6pm on the local station on weekdays, so I'd get home from work, roll three joints at 5:30, and light the first one at 5:45. By the time the show started, I was primed. I was very particular about when I would get high in those days, only doing it after work. I learned early that I could not indulge and then go out in public, because once I decided to go for a drive while high. Ten minutes later I was automatically driving to work, thinking about something other than my driving, when I suddenly realized it was only Saturday. Since then, I only use the stuff indoors. When I got a VCR and watched them that way while under the influence, I'd get very absorbed into it, one time spending 20 minutes analyzing and rewinding a 2 minute scene (Joe Tormolen's breakdown in The Naked Time). I watched everything in the scene-- actor delivery, camera work, music, all of it. However, it doesn't work for me with TNG, DS9, VOY, or ENT. I suppose it works with TOS because of the sense of familiarity, because I was watching those when they first aired in the 60s. I'm 62 and I still smoke the stuff when I can get it. Though right now, I'm out. The only other show that worked with that stuff for me was Patrick McGoohan's The Prisoner, also from the 1960s. Oh, and also with The Three Stooges shorts, but only with Curly.
It was more complicated than I made it sound. Rates were low enough I could usually get an o-zee then. First step was to dump it into a flour sifter to get the loose stuff first, and save the better stuff for later. There was a special tray I used to roll. I couldn't hand roll worth crap (still can't), so I used one of those little hand held rolling machines. And I think I burned incense. Each session, I repeated all the steps. It was an old apartment house that had been a hotel during the 1920s, some units (there were only 25 single room apartments) had original Murphy beds in the wall with manufacturer labels showing a patent date of 1911. A lot of the people in the building indulged, including the manager. She'd join us in our weekend parties. Her husband was a former convict who didn't use the stuff, but he was an alcoholic. He could buy a case of beer at 6am, and go on another run at 9. We frequently had to carry him downstairs to his apartment, unconscious. One guy in the building was a dealer.
Me and a few friends once played a drinking game while watching season 7 of ds9. Take a drink every time Damar does. That got us pretty goofy.
I found TOS the most enjoyable in that mental state but Voyager was absolutly terrifying! I think it was from a fear of the Borg that I've had since I was a little kid! I remember watching the Scorpion two parter and having panic attacks as the "leader" tried to save one of her own from an enemey tribe while she crosses their territory!
It was that type of neighborhood. It was 9 blocks from downtown. There were 5 bars within 3 blocks. The YMCA was 2 blocks away, and I worked there for a short time as a desk clerk renting out rooms. There was a greasy spoon diner next door to the Y. Just around the corner from us was the Blackstone Hotel, which was home to several prostitutes. One night there was a fire there, and all the girls and their pimps were wandering around the sidewalks. It wasn't that serious, because the hotel stayed open afterwards. I finally got my first good job downtown, and since my rent was so low (about $100 a week, utilities included or perhaps even less), I stayed there though everyone thought I would move to a better place. My reasoning was now I could afford to buy things I wanted (like a computer, a color tv, and weed). I was without a car for a while too. I'd only made less than 9k any year before, but this new job started me at 17k. It was like being suddenly rich. I stayed there another 4 years, only leaving when I took a job transfer within the company across the state.
The weird thing about the Y was, the swimming pool was on the 5th floor. We had one guy who lived at the Y when I worked there, he wound up on the news for killing a garage mechanic after being dissatisfied with their service. That was the kind of publicity we didn't need.
As a fellow fan of Bukowski, I must agree. Hank would be proud. However, Bukowski did say he stuck to drinking. He wasn't into drugs. Still though...the part about the dude who drank a case at 6AM and another at 9AM...yeaaaa Bukowski.
I didn't smoke a joint until I was 26, now those numbers are reversed, so I have to catch up on it for all those times I missed. I first had the opportunity when I was 19 or 20, but I was so paranoid I was convinced the cops would be breaking down the door as soon as I lit up. Edit: And that first joint was in a Christmas card, after someone I worked with found out the wife and I had never gotten high. We tried it in bed. It worked very well.
A positive drug story who would have thought! I tried to watch TNG baked but I got very aware that I was watching somethign from the late 80s and early 90s and it seemed like my willing suspension of disbelief went out the window! For me the only series I can really watch is TOS in that state. Even when it's scary there is still a positive 60s look and feel to it which is so very cheerful you know? It permiates every fiber and is such a product of it's time!
No really! Even before the remastered, John Winston gets a chance to really sell that agonizer scene in the teaser.