Ashley Nickel, Cannabis Curious Podcast

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:00):

This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over. Welcome back to How to Do the Pot, a podcast de-mystifying cannabis for women. I’m Ellen Scanlon. On these short episodes, we share women’s stories about the first time they bought legal weed. I hope they bring a little fun and a new perspective into your week.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:22):

Ashley Nickel is the Michigan-based host of the Cannabis Curious podcast.

Ashley Nickel (00:29):

The first time that I bought legal pot was in Colorado. I had planned an entire trip to Colorado just to buy legal weed and to see my morning jacket at Red Rocks. So my first time walking into a dispensary, I felt like a kid at an amusement park, like I was doing something that I never thought I’d be able to do before I was excited. I was nervous. I was curious. I was observing every single aspect of the process. Oh, they took my ID, and now we’re locked in a room, and now they’re letting us into the main lobby. And then I felt overwhelmed by the amount of options and choices, and so impressed by bud tenders and everything that they knew and could tell me. And then, as a patient or a consumer there, I wanted to buy dang near everything I saw.

Ashley Nickel (01:25):

But I remember what I was most excited about was gummies because at the time edibles were fairly hard to come by if you lived in a state that wasn’t legal. Flower was always much easier to come by. So I remember being very excited to buy gummies and a couple of pre-rolls, and getting out to the car and immediately opening all of it and smelling all of it, and looking at all the packaging, and then taking some gummies, and being very nervous about how are they going to make me feel, what’s this experience going to be like? And then, I met up with friends for dinner in Golden and just had the best night ever, because when is cannabis not an enhancer of your experience? It always is.

Ashley Nickel (02:13):

So buying legal cannabis was fun. It felt different. It felt new. And at times it even felt wrong. Sometimes I will still have that feeling going into a legal dispensary like, “Oh, I shouldn’t be here,” or looking over my shoulder, wondering who can see me. I think it’s really interesting how deep the programming has gone into all of us in terms of how it’s framed how we think about our cannabis consumption. It really does, for me, humble me to how impactful the media can be when it comes to shaping our thoughts and ideas about life.

Ashley Nickel (02:53):

And so, I’m very excited that we are moving in a different direction with cannabis, that we’re starting to get more real stories out there, just like this one, that it’s exciting and fun and new to walk into a perfectly legal and above board shop and buy perfectly legal and above board weed, and to smoke that weed and enjoy it however you see fit.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (03:18):

Thanks for listening to this episode of How to Do the Pot. If you’d like to share your story about the first time you bought legal weed, please send us a voice memo to hi@dothepot.com or DM us @dothepot. Please also follow along on all our socials and visit dothepod.com for lots more information about women and cannabis. Thanks to Madi Fair, our brand manager and our producer, Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlan, and we’ll be back soon with more of How to Do the Pot.