Scared Stupid

When I was in my early twenties, I moved into an apartment in Hollywood, conveniently located near Rock and Roll Ralph’s around Sunset and La Brea. My new roommate Shelley and I had met at Irvine Meadows, which my mother thought meant we both loved hiking in nature, but really, we met at a Guns N’ Roses concert. Shel was there for Sebastian Bach, the lead singer of the opening act, Skid Row. I was there because Jon Bon Jovi was the man of my dreams. I mean he was charismatic, passionate, humble and that HAIR!

We both had dates that just weren’t as fanatical as we were about the lead singers. We stood in the stands singing “I Remember You” at the top of our lungs, leaning into each other like we’d been friends for two decades and not just for two hours. Between acts, Shelley mentioned that she was looking for a new apartment in Hollywood. I shared that I, too, needed a new place to live, and s within a month we were roommates and a lifelong friendship was born. She was a bridesmaid in my wedding. We had babies born just two months apart. We spent nearly every Christmas together even as life moved on and our kids’ interests sent us in different directions during most of the year in between those holiday lights.

Shelley and her husband recently bought a place in Palm Springs, and they escape to the desert nearly every weekend. In August a couple years back, when it was 125º in the shade, she invited me to check out their groovy new pad.

Now back in the day when we were 20-something party girls, Shelley and I knew most of the bartenders along the Sunset Strip and they all knew our favorite drinks, but I don’t recall a time when we smoked pot together. I guess I’d outgrown it after college and I’ve pretty much regretted it every time I’ve had a puff in the last 30 years. Either the pot is different from what I remember or I am.

But when we were in Palm Springs, Shelley revealed that she had a friend who grew really great pot, and like me she didn’t like to smoke it, but what she loved to do was make pot butter and pour it on popcorn, and she assured me her pot butter gave you a subtle happy high, PLUS she never had a better night sleep. Well, happy high is my kind of high and solid sleep has been an elusive fantasy since I hit menopause, so it didn’t take much arm-twisting for me to settle in on the couch for a movie and Shelley‘s pot butter popcorn that first night of our weekend getaway. It tasted good, like theatre popcorn with a little essence of oregano.

But I did not sleep much that night, in part I think because the swamp cooler wasn’t working well and it was friggin’ August in the desert. The next morning, I mentioned to Shelley that I didn’t experience the promised sleep benefits. She said we‘d had the lowest THC form of her infused butter, so that night we could try her most gourmet version.

And so, on our second night we ate popcorn and played CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY while dranking wine and gorging on cannabutter-covered corn, and honestly I still didn’t feel anything.

Until I did. Shelley’s promise of happy laughter was realized and we rocked and rolled on the carpet like the young girls who met in the Meadows of Irvine.

But when I went to bed, the deep sleep I craved so desperately just didn’t come. I lay there with the room slightly spinning, unable to turn off my racing brain as usual, only this time it was running at Usain Bolt speed. At some point in the night, in my irrational, drug-induced stupor, I reached into my toiletry bag and grabbed my bottle of doctor- prescribed sleep meds.

Within moments, I was out. But sometime in the wee hours, when the crickets had quieted and the desert was a cool 92 degrees, I had to pee but I had to really work to sit up in bed, at which point I discovered that the floor was made of Jell-O and there was no way I could stand on it and support my gumby legs. The door that was probably three feet away looked like it was ten yards. I was Alice in a distorted Wonderland.

The next morning, Shelley woke me up saying something about needing to get home by a certain time, but I could hardly sit up. I knew I needed to change the sheets, but I had to lay down between each corner I pulled off the mattress. I pryed the pillowcase off while draped over the side of the bed. I couldn’t form sentences.

Getting to Shelley‘s car with my bag was a feat that I don’t recall accomplishing. I found myself staring out the sunroof at passing clouds, my seat set to a full recline as Shelley drove across the desert singing along to all the songs we loved as roommates. Bon Jovi, Skid Row, Cinderella and Poison. I tried to sing along but the words wouldn’t come out. I felt like I was watching myself from a distance, like my present mind was swimming to the surface and then I’d sink into the murky dark water and get tangled in seaweed.

Then I pulled up this memory of a TED Talk I’d once seen by a scientist who had been studying the effects of strokes on the brain when she became her own subject, experiencing a stroke herself. She witnessed parts of her brain shutting down just like she’d studied, yet with some unanticipated interactions between her right and left hemispheres. She was fully aware that she couldn’t speak, understand language or communicate what was happening inside her.

And while Shelley thought that I was just horribly hungover and had little tolerance for pot, I was wondering if this is what it feels like when someone is about to die. I imagined that when a person inadvertently realizes they just ingested a drug laced with fentanyl, there must be that moment when they think “Holy shit. This is not good.” Before lights out. We’ll never know their last thoughts. And maybe no one will ever know mine. Maybe I am clinging to my last stages of consciousness right now. Or maybe I will be a vegetable hearing “Livin’ On A Prayer” and not being able to sing along. Hearing my husband and kids telling me they love me and not being able to say “I’m in here! I hear you!”

I was clinging to hope that this fear was all in my head and I’d recover like that brain scientist and live to tell the tale. It was my prayer.

I have a vague memory of getting home, really having to concentrate to find my bedroom then falling into bed. My husband, too, assumed a wild weekend with my rock-n-roll bridesmaid. But I was in a cloudy haze for a couple of days, quietly wondering to myself if it I might have done irreparable harm to my synapses.

It wasn’t until several days later that I remembered I had reached for that bottle of Ambien. When I googled side effects of mixing the two, there are a lot including dizziness, confusion, difficulty concentrating, impairment in thinking and motor coordination. My clarity came back and I threw out the Ambien. I swore off pot and pot butter. I was scared straight and I will never be so stupid again.

As shared at Story Salon on October 29,2025 when the theme was SCARED STUPID.