Weed: The User's Guide: A 21st Century Handbook for Enjoying Marijuana

by David Schmader, Alex DeSpain (Illustrator)

Overview

This well-baked and hilarious guide to the brave new world of marijuana is “required reading for longtime potheads and new users alike (Dan Savage)”.

“This fun and insightful book is the perfect owner’s manual.” —Rick Steves
 
The United States is in the midst of a weed renaissance. Recreational marijuana is greenlit in a growing number of states, with medical marijuana legal in many more. The Stranger writer and performer David Schmader is your witty and well-baked tour guide to this brave new world of legal marijuana.
 
Here, you’ll learn:

• Which presidents were potheads
• Hemp vs. cannabis
• Dealing with dealers
• What is the difference between a blunt and a spliff
• How to make an apple into a pipe
• How to clean a bong
• How to make the world's best pot brownies
• What to do if you are high and you don't like it
• How to maximize your high with food (chilled grapes and a cheese platter, or $10 worth of whatever you want from 7-Eleven), entertainment (from abstract expressionism to buddy comedies) and nature (dog parks are a stoner's paradise).
 
Packed with history, ways to enjoy, recipes, safety and legality tips, and medical-use information, this little manual is the perfect addition to your stash!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632170422
Publisher:	Sasquatch Books
Publication date:	04/05/2016
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 7.60(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Schmader is a writer living and working in Seattle. From 1999-2014, Schmader served as associate editor at Seattle’s Pulitzer-winning newsweekly the Stranger, writing the column Last Days: The Week in Review. In 2015, Schmader became creative director of the award-winning nonprofit writing center the Greater Seattle Bureau of Fearless Ideas, where he also serves as writer-in-residence. In his spare time, he’s the world’s foremost authority on the brilliant horribleness of Showgirls, hosting annotated screenings of Paul Verhoeven’s stripper drama at cinemas across the U.S. and supplying the commentary track for the bestselling Showgirls DVD.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The life-enhancing potential of marijuana first made itself known to me when I was nineteen. A group of friends and I were headed out to a Mexican restaurant, and en route one friend whipped out a joint and passed it around. I’d smoked weed before and enjoyed it. I’d eaten Mexican food before and enjoyed it. But the combination of the two was revelatory. One of weed’s great powers is sensory enhancement, and my sensory-enhanced encounter with a nothing-fancy enchilada plate was a full-immersion. Technicolor opera starring pico de gallo–soaked rice and delicious bits of charred cheese around the edges. When I was done, I felt like I’d just had a short face-to-face with God in my mouth. 
This enchilada epiphany led me to further investigation of weed’s power to enrich sensory perception and facilitate immersive engagement with the world. I was thrilled to find it worked with music (I spent what felt like hours swimming around in the space between notes on Cowboy Junkies’ languorous The Trinity Session), comedy (ditto sob-laughing through compulsive replays of 30 Rock’s “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah”), and conversation. 
Still, the fact remained that all these seriously enriching pleasures were forbidden—banned by law and disparaged by society, the majority of which lazily adhered to the stereotype of potheads as basement-dwelling burnouts on the level of the fictional Cheech & Chong. 
But what about all the high-functioning, life-loving adults—doctors, lawyers, engineers, entrepreneurs, authors, parents—who comprise the vast majority of weed smokers I know? The reality of responsible adult marijuana use is a fact of life that’s ever more apparent, thanks in large part to citizen-driven efforts to reclassify, decriminalize, and legalize marijuana. This book is a guide for all those interested in exploring the wide, wonderful, post-“War on Drugs”-terror-hyperbole world of marijuana. 
That all sounds great but perhaps you’re wondering: Does weed require a “user’s guide”? Aren’t the basic facts known to every middle-school rebel puffing behind a Dumpster? 
Yes and no. (But mostly no.) 
Yes, marijuana’s ability to produce psychoactive effects in human users is common knowledge. But beyond this fact lies a world of nuance and discernment that I will map in this book—synthesizing information from the existing pool of marijuana wisdom and offering myself up as an experienced test subject and tour guide. (Another reason for a user’s guide is that today’s concentrated marijuana products are a far cry from the grassy stuff folks might’ve smoked at Woodstock or in the ’80s in college—a fact that makes even past personal experience an unfortunately unreliable guide to twenty-first-century weed.) 
In this book, you’ll find all you need to know to about the current state of recreational marijuana, from methods of ingestion and varieties of effects to edible recipes and tips for maximizing your marijuana experience. 
What you won’t find in this book is reckless encouragement to smoke marijuana. Even among people who love it, experiences of being high differ widely, and there are tons of folks who just don’t enjoy the sensations marijuana offers. To these people, I offer my sympathies, my support, and Chapter 7: If You’re High and Don’t Like It. 
To everyone else, a final bit of wisdom from Stephen Colbert, who delivered this gem at the end of a scared-straight drug lecture on Strangers with Candy: “All I’m saying is, if you still want to smoke pot, then be prepared to spend a lot of time laughing with your friends.”

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Chapter 1 A Brief History of Weed 1

Chapter 2 Methods of Ingestion 23

Chapter 3 Varieties and Effects 53

Chapter 4 Recipes and Instructions 65

Chapter 5 Marijuana Etiquette 107

Chapter 6 Maximizing Your Experience 127

Chapter 7 If You're High and Don't Like It 143

Chapter 8 Safety and Legality 147

Chapter 9 Medical Marijuana 101 163

Chapter 10 Glossary of Cannabis Culture 173

Closing Note: What You Need to Do Now 187

Acknowledgments 191

Resources 193

Sources 195

Editorial Reviews

A hugely informative, completely hilarious, and desperately necessary guide to marijuana—written by one of the funniest guys I’ve ever known, who just so happens to be the person who got me high for the first time.”
—Dan Savage

“If weed’s already a part of your life, this fun and insightful book is the perfect owner’s manual."
—Rick Steves
 
“A witty guide full of history, recipes, safety and legality tips, and medical information.”
—Publishers Weekly

“[Weed] is smoothly written and completely thought out, covering the basics of usage (smoking, vaping, consuming edibles, and applying the substance topically) as well as ‘marijuana etiquette’ (don’t bogart, man!).” 
—Booklist

“Buy everyone this book.”
—The Stranger

“...an encyclopedia of marijuana history, use, and culture for those questions you’re afraid to ask at your friendly neighborhood pot shop...”
—Seattle Weekly

“[An] indispensable book for beginning or returning dope smokers.”
—Portland Mercury

“David Schmader is a goddamned Seattle treasure….Funny…entertaining…” and “useful.” 
—The Seattle Review of Books

“One of the very best cannabis books as of late.”
—Comics Grinder

“You don’t need to know anything about weed to find [this book] entertaining.”
—Toke of the Town

[Schmader tells you] how to find the sweet spot of being a successful stoner without the lazy, dropout stigma stopping you from achieving your fully baked dreams.”
—Eugene Weekly

“As poignant as it is hilarious.”
—High Times

“Marijuana users from the novice smoker to the seasoned toker will appreciate the colorful anecdotes, recipes, and safety tips.”
—Business Insider

“Consider this the modern man’s instruction manual for marijuana.”
—Men’s Journal

"You should just read it… explain[s] the varieties of weed particularly well."
—Drunk Booksellers

"All that stuff that really matters."
—Cannabis Magazine

"A well-written and engaging little book about marijuana use. Schmader is a gifted, witty, and entertaining writer."
—New York Botanical Gardens

From the Publisher