When I was in ninth grade, there was a rumor that a few kids spiked a teacher’s drink with LSD and he had to go home sick. Since it happened the year before I got there, I never really knew how accurate the story was—but if it was true, it certainly never made the local news. My guess is that my high school did its best to keep the incident under wraps as the details of it would have brought on much embarrassment and way too much pleasure to the student body.
I Guess No News Is Bad News These Days
Apparently this was not the same thinking at Broadneck High School in Annapolis, MD, where a teacher accepted a piece of a brownie from a student that said teacher soon discovered was baked with marijuana. According to the Capital Gazette, the principal released a statement advising parents of the situation and assuring them that the student was being charged with distribution of marijuana, second-degree assault and reckless endangerment—in addition to the action being taken in accordance with the school’s code of conduct policy. But why is the teenaged student being held 100% accountable for being a teenager?
I am not saying what the student did was okay on any level but it also doesn’t surprise me. What does surprise me is that a teacher would accept a homemade baked good—let alone share one—from a student. That strikes me as inappropriate, irresponsible and very odd.
When I was three years sober, I accidently ate a large and potent pot brownie. It was one of several neatly stacked and freshly cut brownies on a plate in my mother’s kitchen. I had forgotten that my mother had recently gotten into edibles but even if I had, I don’t think it would have ever occurred to me that she’d have them sitting on the counter, in plain site, in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, when her sober daughter was visiting. After devouring the first one, I was headed for the second when my mother casually mentioned that the brownies were “special.” After freaking out and calling my sponsor, I did the only thing a person can in that situation—I tried to enjoy the ride.
Of course, when weed infiltrates a digestive system that hasn’t been exposed a drink or a drug in years, there isn’t much enjoying going on. All I could do was get under the covers, into the fetal position and pray for it to be over—which, after nearly eight hours, it was. Was it pleasant? Not really but I wouldn’t necessarily call it unpleasant either. It was like having a 24-hour bug where you are tired and slightly delirious; it certainly wasn’t an experience I would describe as dangerous, unless you consider eating a box of Chips Ahoy and compulsively masturbating a problem. Years later, I learned a name for what happened to me at my mother’s house: a “freelapse,” which is to say that I got high but didn’t lose my sober time because it was unintentional (and trust me, if I was going to start my sobriety over, I wouldn’t go out on a pot brownie).
So what have we learned by the incident at Broadneck High School? A teacher should never accept anything edible from a student and no one should bring drugs to school. And if they do, they shouldn’t get so high that they think it’s funny to try to get an authority figure stoned because nothing will harsh everyone’s mellow like an older lady who can’t handle her drugs.
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