It’s a lovely shabbes dinner, the night before war.

I don’t think anything of the tray of blueberry muffins laid out for dessert. What surprises me is she bites into one. This girl who never gets high.

“Had half,” she shows me, blue and yellow fluffy chunks, a chewed-through weed muffin. I’m equal parts proud and concerned. These are no ordinary desserts.

“Better stop there, sweetie.”

I eat the other half in solidarity.

They never do anything at first. We carry on with white wine and karaoke in front of a huge tv screen. Boogying. Gyrating. There’s a tingle but no biggie. Probably a trace amount of green in the cannabis cakes.

But then she gets weird. Tight throat, she says. Cold to the touch. Ok, she’s getting the hit. Time to go. I make our excuses, hug the host, lead her out.

Her eyes sort of swivel, twitch away from me. She’s finding it hard to breathe, she says. We walk home, I drape my coat over her shoulders. She’s stiff, back arched, staring past me.

“How long does this last?”

“About an hour, hour or so.” I lie. Because it’s a four-hour trip, minimum. Let’s get her home, then break the news.

“Feel like I’m going to die.”

She’s pale. I remember she has an underlying heart condition. She seems fine but spooked. I’m also feeling the deep wild kick of weed in my bloodstream. Once upon a time I also thought I was dying, nearly phoned an ambulance after eating lumps of hash dissolved in tea.

So I get it. She’s having a bad trip, for the first time, aged thirty-something. Gotta be scary. The whiter-than-white skin? We used to call that ‘pulling a whitey’. Standard weed overdose.

On the couch back at hers she’s asking for an ambulance. I resist – come on, it’s just an edible kick –........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)