Maureen Dowd had a really bad pot trip, then wrote a column about it

(Image credit: Getty Images/Meet the Press)

last updated 8 January 2015

On Wednesday, Pulitzer-winning New York Times writer Maureen Dowd came out with a doozy of a column. "I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January, the giddy culmination of pot Prohibition, I should try a taste of legal, edible pot from a local shop," she begins. "What could go wrong with a bite or two?" Well, nothing, for an hour, Dowd recounts:

But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he'd call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy. I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me. [New York Times]

The fact that, as Dowd learned the next day, she was supposed to eat just a bit of the pot-laced candy bar sets up the moral of the column: Colorado is "coming to grips with the darker side of unleashing a drug as potent as marijuana on a horde of tourists of all ages and tolerance levels seeking a mellow buzz," but unclear on the right dose.

For a while on Tuesday night, Dowd's bad trip is all anyone was talking about on Twitter, mostly in a mocking tone. But I'll sign on to this half-compliment, from The Week's Sergio Hernandez. --Peter Weber

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Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.

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