Transcript

Intro:

[00:00:00] Coming to you from the Hi-Desert of Southern California. Red Bench Reviews brings you Today’s Sesh with Jon. Grab a joint, load your bong, or pack your pipe, and let’s get this sesh started.

Jon:

[00:00:15] All right. Welcome to the show. My name is Jon, and I’ll be your host as we continue the search for the Holy Grail of Herb. Well, my friends, this is my first podcast and I thought I would talk about the first time I got stoned. Of course, getting stoned is not the same thing as just smoking pot. I, I smoked pot at least twice before I ever got stoned. And this is going back to the early eighties, probably like the first time I smoked pot was probably 1979, 80… somewhere in there. The the recollections are hazy.

[00:00:59] Back then, I used to spend weekend nights over at my sister’s house. It was very casual environment and I, and we got to watch lots of tv, something I didn’t get to do at home.

[00:01:13] And one night they invited their, their Navy friend, was a guy named Jeff, to come down from Long Beach to, you know, gets, gets stoned with them.

[00:01:27] And I had never smoked pot at that point. I had never been around pot. It was a completely foreign experience to me.

[00:01:35] Jeff arrived several hours later. He rode his 10 speed bike all the way from Long Beach to Orange in Orange County.

[00:01:46] Wow. What an adventure it must have been for him. But anyways, he brought his pot along with him and they rolled up some joints. And when it came time to smoke, they used a thing called the power hitter. A power hitter was uh, sort of like a little, how do I describe it? It’s a archaic device from the seventies.

[00:02:09] You, you have like a bottle with a little cap on the end, and on the cap on the end is a place for the smoke to come out and inside the bottle you place a joint. If you can picture this, you place the joint up into the cap of the thing and you stick it down in the bottle. And then when you squeeze the bottle, this is a plastic bottle. When you squeeze the bottle, it would shoot out a stream of marijuana smoke.

[00:02:38] Really easy, really, really fantastic little device.

[00:02:43] Actually, they lit up a joint or they, they went through a, a couple of joints with this thing and my sister, when it came around to me sitting on the sofa, my sister said, Hey Johnny, why don’t you check this out? And proceeded to squeeze the bottle and shoot a stream of marijuana smoke into my mouth.

[00:03:06] It passed around several more times. I took several different hits. It was a, it was a, it was a quality smoking experience, but it would say that I did not get stoned. My brother was working at a quick corner, a quick like delicatessen down on the corner that was open all night and I walked up to the corner and sat there in the delicatessen until dawn.

[00:03:33] Just, I don’t, I, I don’t think I was stoned. I, I remember always like going, I, I wanna feel some kind of effects, but I’m, I don’t think I’m feeling any effects. So that was the first time that I ever smoked pot, and I cannot say that I got high.

[00:03:51] And then later on I was invited to a Newport Harbor Prom. Is this must have been in the eighties. I I was 16 at the time, 16, 17. And this was at Lion Country Safari in Orange County and South Orange County. Lion Country Safari is now a big amphitheater and no longer exists.

[00:04:20] Lion Country Safari was, you’d drive in your car through the the back country area on these little roads and you would interact with zebras and giraffes and lions and all kinds of African creatures. It was, it was, it was a really funny kind of little thing that they had back then.

[00:04:47] Anyways, so there was this prom at Lion Country Safari. I was invited by a, a friend of my ex-girlfriend, and she was a real, real popular with her crowd in Newport Beach. She invited me and we danced a lot and she had brought some alcohol. We drank a little…

[00:05:14] But anyways, about halfway through the prom, we got invited with a little group of friends to go outside and go for a little walk. Well, this little walk entailed smoking a joint and a joint. They lit it up and it passed around and it passed around, and it passed around and I’m, I must have taken two, three hits, you know, and nothing happened.

[00:05:39] Well, what did happen is after about the third hit, security showed up. And was going to escort us to the office. And the funny thing is, everybody in the group just kinda like wandered off in a different direction. And a girl that invited me, this girl named Jill, she goes, come on Jon. And we just wandered off and the poor security guard was left with nobody and we all just walked away.

[00:06:08] But I, I walked away and I was wanting to feel some effects. And I didn’t, but we went back and we danced, and then we had a good time.

[00:06:19] And then another time, this is on March 23rd, 1983, March 23rd, 1983 is a significant day for me because that is the day that I first got stoned. Back in the day I was a Mod. And part of being a Mod is we took lots of speed and I had a good connection for speed, so I made it available to my friends.

[00:06:46] I was going to Orange Coast College at the time and, and I was taking a history of rock music class, and one of the guys in my class approached me and said that he had heard that he could get speed from me. And I was like quite surprised. I didn’t know that the word had gotten around, but I said, sure, yeah, yeah. What do you want? And he wanted a few pills. And, and I asked, you know, well, what do you want? What do you want to trade for it? What do you, well, you know, I, I had my price. And he said, well, how about if I give you some marijuana?

[00:07:25] And I did not smoke marijuana at this time. Of course, I had had two experiences that I just had told you about that we’re nowhere. And I was not interested in marijuana. I was interested in speed and going fast and staying up all night. And that’s what we did as Mods. We were go, go, go all the time. And so for some reason I just said, yeah, I’ll make a trade with you.

[00:07:53] I carried that pot around with me in my notebook for about three weeks. I finally went to a head shop down in Newport Beach at the, at Pier Records. In the back of Pier Records. They had a head shop. And I went into the head shop and I bought a little wooden pipe. I was determined, okay, I guess I’m gonna, I’m gonna try smoking this.

[00:08:16] And I tried to find people to smoke it with me because I didn’t want to do it by myself the first time. And I found my friend Suzanne, she invited me over and we sat around in her living room and it was about 11 o’clock at night and David Letterman was coming on the David Letterman show. We used her little pipe and she explained to me everything about pot.

[00:08:45] She explained to me about how you break up the pot, how you pack a bowl, how you inhale it, how you hold the hits in, and gave me an idea of what I was gonna feel. I really appreciate the fact that she did that. The pipe came around to me. I took a good hit, held it in. It was the beginning of a new experience for me.

[00:09:12] After several times of pipe coming around, David Letterman turned into a cartoon… watching the David Letterman show. It turned into a cartoon. It was, I was like, Oh my gosh, there’s visual effects with this. This is fantastic. I was like, finally after, you know, third time’s a charm as they say. I finally got a chance to, to really experience getting high.

[00:09:42] So that was really cool for me. It stuck with me. We, we smoked some more, uh, you know, I had traded I think like a dozen pills for like an eight. I gave, I think it gave me like an eighth of pot. So we, we smoked quite a bit that evening and I finally drove home on my Vespa motor scooter at about two, three in the morning, and it was so still and quiet. I remember it very well. It, it was just this nice slow drive. I remember thinking I was going so fast. I remember, I remember. Cruising at about 30 and thinking I was cruising at about 50. I was, I had all the classic experiences of just first time getting stoned. I was so happy.

[00:10:26] I, I got home. I parked my motor scooter. I sat on it and I smoked clove cigarettes back at the time. So I lit up a cigarette and was sitting there smoking and enjoying the effects that I was feeling. And, and then I, I packed my first bowl. That was, that was the, the first time I got stoned by myself was when I got home. It was about 4:00 in the morning. Heck, it was probably about 4:20 in the morning. And sitting in my parents’ house in Irvine, in the front driveway. I remember it being really still really quiet.

[00:11:10] And that was it. From that point on, I was a daily smoker. I, I quickly found people that I could get pot from. It turned out that my friend, Rodney Shepherd, Rodney Shepherd, who went on to be a guitarist for Sugar Ray, His sister was a pot dealer and they had skunk buds and skunk buds were amazing. But that is a story for another time. We’ll talk about skunk buds another time.

[00:11:43] Just wanted to say, you know, if, if you smoke pot for your first time and nothing happens. Get with somebody who’s really experienced, someone who’s got a little teacher in them and let them walk you through the experience.

[00:12:04] Anyway, so that is a story of my first time. Thank you for checking that out, for listening in and finding out about my beginnings.

[00:12:14] In the future. Podcasts will be, mostly, mostly, but we’ll be talking about all kinds of things. The podcast will mostly be about strain reviews. I’ll be smoking with you and we’ll be talking strain reviews.

[00:12:31] A matter of fact, I got to talking and I completely forgot to light up this bowl of Sour Diesel that I got sitting here. Well, I’m gonna dive into that bowl. Let’s, let’s, matter of fact, let’s just take a hit. Finish this off. Let’s just take a hit.

[00:12:58] Ah, oh my. That is some quality Sour Diesel. Let me tell you, we’re gonna do a full review of that coming up in a future episode. Anyways, I’m gonna sign off for today and just thank you for listening. Wow, that sour diesel is starting to kick in already. Oh my. But we’ll talk about that at another day. Thank you so much for joining me, and until next week, best of health.