Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(57)

Dan stared straight at me, and it was hard to discern his take on my new hobby.

“I used to think that something was wrong with everyone, and now that I know I’m the one with the problem, everyone seems a lot more interesting,” I explained.

“I don’t think you should judge yourself so harshly,” Dan said. This was a phrase Dan repeated to me frequently, and one I’ve never quite gotten on board with.

“I do,” I told him. “I feel like that’s what’s been missing this whole time. Circling around other people in order to avoid myself. I deserve to be on the receiving end of my own judgment. It’s my comeuppance.

“It’s like this little porthole into a whole new world has opened up,” I continued. “When I’m stoned, I can find joy in shaving my legs.”

This was when I realized I was stoned. I had popped a chocolate-covered Kiva blueberry on my way out the door that morning. I don’t usually take them in the morning, but I had therapy and thought—Why not? That’s my favorite thing about edibles: forgetting you’ve taken some, then feeling a little psychological twinkle, and suddenly things get just a wee bit more dynamic. Weed lit up my curiosity in things I hadn’t had interest in for years. That’s what I was missing—getting lost in life a little more.

    Dan told me that if I could access that state of mind when I was high, it was already part of my psyche—which meant that I could access it without anything at all, or through meditation.

“I’m not there yet,” I said. I had been trying for months to meditate, and it was going nowhere, fast. I could only do forced meditation when I was with Dan. He made me short recordings and long recordings, and I’d try it for a few days at home, and then forget, or remember—and then forget.

“Not only is it easier for me to be around people, it’s definitely easier for people to be around me. I am able to have conversations with people I never had the patience to listen to before. I’m so much less judgmental. Everything becomes a little bit softer, less apocalyptic. No black and white. More middle. More pleasant.”

“Well, that’s great. I don’t have a problem with you taking edibles,” he told me.

“The other good news is—it’s cut my drinking in half.”

This was a sentence that I never expected to come out of my mouth, so I want to be very clear: I have no intention, now or in the future, of giving up alcohol. This isn’t a book where I get sober at the end. However, cutting my drinking in half was an unexpected perk, and that is when I started to get serious about cannabis.



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I had been approached by various weed companies to start my own line of cannabis products, but I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon until I had done due diligence and fully investigated what was available on the market. This meant that it became my job to know everything about every available oil, weed, candy, herb, and food item that contained cannabis.

I was sitting around my house in Los Angeles one weekend, with Glen and Shana, doling out the new edibles that I wanted them to try.

“Chelsea,” Glen asked me, dripping in sarcasm. “Would you consider yourself a medical practitioner?”

“No, I think of myself as more of a pharmacological intuitive,” I said, testing out the term in everyday usage. “I have a history of helping people, Glen, yourself included.”

Glen and I both suffer from psoriasis, but only one of us had clear skin until I shared with Glen the prescription that had knocked it out of my system. Two doxycycline, twice a day, for ten days.* I gave the very same prescription to my hairstylist when she had a terrible bout of acne. Twice a day, ten days, never on an empty stomach. Glen no longer has psoriasis, and my hairstylist no longer has acne, and there are several African villagers who now have the cure to malaria.

My sister Simone is required to give formal presentations at work, which makes her nervous. Her anxiety causes dry mouth, so I gave her a bottle of Propranalol, which is a beta-blocker that cuts off the signal from your neurotransmitters that tells your brain it’s anxious.

    “Thank God we have a doctor in the family,” Simone said, after her second promotion.

My area of expertise isn’t only limited to cannabis and pharmaceuticals. I have had a 100 percent success rate helping many women—friends who, prior to my intervention, hadn’t gone number two in years—become regular. Women in particular struggle with regularity, so it is important to have bowel movement advocates out there. There are over-the-counter calcium magnesium pills called Mag O7 from Aerobic Life, and if you start with four each night, typically by day three you will start to have regular bowel movements. At that point, I advise patients to reduce their intake to three pills in order to avoid morning diarrhea.

Breast inflammation before your period? Rose hips, once a day for a month. (Molly told me that one.)

Hangovers? Two Excedrin, and the headache will be gone in less than ten minutes. Caffeine is the antidote to headaches caused by alcohol, and Excedrin contains caffeine. If you’ve been drinking, milk thistle helps if you take it before you go to bed, but it’s hard to remember to take something when you’re shit-faced.

All in all, I’ve had an incredible track record with curing people, and the only mistakes I make are usually with myself, like the time I swallowed a yeast infection pill that was supposed to be administered vaginally—and then waited expectantly in the forty-eight hours that followed for a loaf of bread to pop out of my mouth.