Willie Nelson helped Maureen Dowd overcome her bad pot trip

(Image credit: Marijuana Policy Project)

last updated 8 January 2015

In June, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about a really bad marijuana trip she'd had in January while covering Colorado's "giddy culmination of pot Prohibition." Her column became so famous that the Marijuana Policy Project based its first Consume Responsibly billboard on Dowd's Denver bummer:

Her column also caught the attention of Willie Nelson, who invited Dowd, via Rolling Stone, to get high on his bus with him "anytime." It's not clear if she accepted Nelson's offer to get high, but Dowd did board his bus after a recent Washington, D.C., gig. "The man is the patron saint of pot, after all, and I'm the poster girl for bad pot trips," Dowd wrote in her column this weekend. "It seemed like a match made in hash heaven." She was nervous, she said, but:

I needed a marijuana Miyagi, and who better than Nelson, who has a second-degree black belt in taekwondo and a first-degree black belt in helping Norml push for pot legalization?... So, Sensei, if I ever decide to give legal pot a whirl again, what do I need to know? [The New York Times]

Nelson's first rule is that, unless you are a child taking marijuana medically, avoid edibles. For the rest of Nelson's insights into the world of pot, read Dowd's column. No matter what you think of Dowd, it's actually pretty charming.