Some fella once said that the unexamined life isn’t worth living. I just don’t know about that, though I suppose it depends on how you define ‘unexamined.’ For me, the purpose of writing has never been to shine a light on me, or even get near one, honestly. It is difficult, in the day and age of influencers and social media, to both write and live an unexamined life.

I love to communicate, but I don’t like to be visible when doing it. I don’t particularly care what people think, but I also don’t want to have to deal with…

Great chefs use simple dishes, such as scrambled eggs, as a way to gain insight into another chef’s style. I thought it reasonable to embark on my own quest to take my own tour of Oregon’s cannabis. Thus, mine involved vaping a lot of Purple Punch.

It didn’t take me long (about four farms sampled) to realize that getting to really know about cannabis terroir would be much more complicated than that.

The concept of terroir is tied to the wholistic natural environment in which a wine (or in this case, cannabis) is produced. It encompasses the water, the soil…

Do you want to minimize harm during a physician’s visit? Don’t make your patient repeatedly recount trauma.

Reading the Book “The Body Keeps the Score” allowed me to articulate and understand much more about how the traumatic events of my childhood have shaped my perceptions of the world. The author applies his extensive knowledge of a variety of types of PTSD, and discusses many scientific discoveries about trauma in addition to different treatments. While reading this book, it struck me that electronic health records should have a History of Trauma flag that physicians utilize in order to minimize patient harm.

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I write a lot about how to personalize your cannabis experience to suit your preference and needs, and I talk about a variety of strains and ingestion methods. Everyone’s body and preferences are different, so when you do discover where that intersection of perfect consumption method and strain — it’s magical.

A few days ago, I had just such an experience at the intersection of 54 Green Acres’ Green Dragon and Arizer’s Solo II. That may not be your sweet spot — you might be more of a CBD tincture person. Or perhaps an indoor grown is your deal. Regardless…

The realities of being estranged or going ‘No Contact’ with an abusive family.

When my half brother called me on Easter Sunday 2017 to tell me our father had died when he hadn’t, I was done with the entire lot of Hollabaughs. My family status changed at that moment in my mind from ‘estranged’ to ‘no contact.’ Instead of using Google Voice to call my family like many of my friends, I‘d use Google to see if my abusive dad was dead. Two and a half years after my half brother’s phone call, my search result finally yielded an obituary.

Few People Understand When You Grieve

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I started smoking cannabis and cigarettes at a young age, and I smoked the last cigarette of a 20 year habit on August 29, 2010. In 2018, when I started regularly dry herb vaping, is when I quit regularly smoking anything and everything. Here are some things I learned from quitting nicotine and quitting smoking 8 years apart.

When you first quit nicotine, your sleeping patterns go haywire.

The crazy thing about being addicted to a stimulant like nicotine is that really disrupts your sleeping patterns, and you’ll start to realize this when you quit. The sleep disruptions aren’t slight, either — for the first six months after I quit…

Since my introduction to cannabis when I was 16, I have wanted to learn as much about the plant as I could. When we moved to Oregon two years ago to work in the cannabis industry, I focused on learning as much as I could about what it was in cannabis that helped me as not only a patient but as a person. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about cannabis and the flavors and effects it can offer. Here are some of the ways I cultivated a cannabis palate.

Use a dry herb vaporizer.

On King of the Hill, Strickland Propane’s motto is…

The other day, someone made a sarcastic comment that happened to bump straight up against a deep insecurity I’m working through. They apologized, but not only did I think about that comment the rest of the day — I also sharpened it into a shiv and stabbed myself with it whenever I started to exhibit even the smallest amount of self-confidence.

As a member of Generation X, sarcasm has been my primary language, but I was bewildered that it took me this long to realize how destructive it could be. When I was sarcastic, I was never meaning to hurt…