Maureen Dowd, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize winning op-ed columnist, spent her latest column recounting a particularly bad experience with edible marijuana.
In Tuesday’s column, titled “Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude,” Dowd wrote about how she visited Colorado in January, just after recreational marijuana became legal in the state. She got a caramel-chocolate flavored, edible marijuana bar. After an hour, she didn’t feel anything, but then things got strange for Dowd.
“I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain,” Dowd recalled. “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.”
Dowd said that her paranoia grew to the point that she was convinced she had died. She was scared that the effects had taken so long to wear off.
Later, Dowd used the column to bring up areas of concern in Colorado, since recreational marijuana was legalized. The Times recently reported that, after five months of legalization, the state is starting to experience the downsides, including a climb in adults and children being treated for taking high doses of edible marijuana.
Dan Riffle, director of federal policies with the Marijuana Policy Project, told Yahoo News that experiences like Dowd’s prove that edible marijuana products need to be labeled so inexperienced marijuana users know the side-effects.