Most wines:
A.) Give me serious heartburn (reds especially, but whites too).
B.) Taste like flat, sweetened battery acid.
C.) Sneak up on my better judgment like a stealthy sommelier samurai causing serious regrettable actions that I typically don't remember first-hand. When I do hear the news of my ever-embarrassing drunken behavior, I know wine was the culprit. (Or shots. But usually wine. No--it's a toss up, really).
D). Dish out absolutely THE WORST hangovers known to momkind (unless, of course, shots are involved). I can shake off a six/twelve-pack of beer hangover with some water and two Advil. But wine? Fah-get-about-it! I could swallow an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a factory of Advil, but I still can't stop my head from pounding or find motivation and energy to venture out of bed after a wine bender.
E.) Transform my tastebuds into tiny hairs (cilia, if you will) that no toothbrush can adequately remove the next day.
F.) Inevitably stain every shirt or dress I own, especially as the drinking progresses. Curiously, I never can remember to fight said stains until after they are set-in. Go figure.
For these reasons (and many more), I turned to marijuana. Yes, I'm lucky because it is legal where I live. I feel sorry for moms who were like me before I gave marijuana another try.
Yes, I smoked pot in high school and college. Who didn't? Hell, I showed up to my senior prom stoned and drunk after smoking pot out of a water bong made from a Gerber baby food jar (back in the old days when they still used glass). I also used a beer bong to ingest a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. What can I say? A receiving line of nuns didn't scare a good Catholic school girl like me. In college, I dabbled in marijuana but found beer to be a better (cheaper? more available?) suitor. It was the 90s after all, and I came of age when Nancy Reagan told me to "just say no." I was convinced that the egg in the frying pan was my brain. In college, I only smoked pot if I couldn't escape the peer pressure or if I was camping. For most of my adult life, pot just wasn't my thing.
And, then, I had kids.
Like most moms, having children changed my body. My children are almost two years apart, so I had to lay off the alcohol for a while. That four-year hiatus really changed the way my body reacted to alcohol. What used to be my friend and confidant turned into a moody son-of-bitch. Beer tasted terrible. Only cheap, sweet wines tasted okay enough to drink occasionally. And hard liquor? It nearly forced me to puke no matter the mixer. Once liquor slid into my belly, everything else felt the urge to evacuate. OR I would break into a sweat accompanied by a hot flash that could rival any menopausal woman. Except I wasn't menopausal! Damn kids.
What was a gal like me to do? Where does a woman in these circumstances turn? Of course I tried antidepressants. And Xanax. And adderall too! Granted, I needed all those drugs and was prescribed those drugs at one point in time or another. But how does a woman with my circumstances "unwind?"
Marijuana was my last hope. Picture Princess Leia in Star Wars (You know which one!) when she bends down and inserts the Death Star plans inside R2D2.
I turned to a mommy friend whom I knew was a "stoner" and begged, "Help me Mommy Wan Kanobi, your my only hope." Thankfully, she helped. A LOT.
