First Time Getting High With... Stu Zakim

As with most people, I didn’t get high the first time I smoked. Even more difficult, it was 1972 and the quality of the weed available, especially to 15-year-old kids in New Jersey, wasn’t worth the effort to smoke it. Let alone the time it took to separate sticks and seeds from the buds you were essentially left with next to nothing. Nevertheless I had many a vinyl record album cover that I could always find weed in when I had none.

Then, I went to visit my brother, who was a freshman at America University in Washington, DC. Of course, I wanted to be “cool,” and when he and his roommate started to get high, I said, sure, I had smoked before. But I hadn’t told them I never got high. Well, that situation was quickly resolved.

Imagine having drank only Coors Light and then someone offers you an IPA; clearly, I had been smoking low quality and before I knew it, I was totally fucked up. There was a comic in the 70’s and 80’s who played to stoners, Chris Rush, and he had a line I’ve always thought of when remembering my first high – “You know you’ve had enough to smoke when you brush something off your shoulder and it’s the floor!” I was so stoned, but the amazing thing was, unlike drinking too much, I didn’t get sick. I went to sleep and woke up the next morning feeling fine.

Later that year, I went with my brother and his friends when they came home for the year to see the premiere tour of Pink Floyd performing “Dark Side of the Moon,” at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City and I got higher than at AU. If you’re familiar with the album, when the lunatic starts to laugh, the speaker was very close to me and it scared the shit out of me. Regardless, a great show and played a large role in my life of sex, drugs and rock & roll…well, certainly the drugs and music.

A Happy and safe 2021 to the Munkey family.