I am a... doctor / pothead

Illustration by Cecilia Granata

I grew up and went to college among a religious crowd that didn’t have access to pot. In my third year of med school, my friend bought a huge amount of it, and we started smoking every day. Here’s the thing: Lots of days you just go home and watch TV, right? So why not do it high? When you smoke, you see everything anew, like a child. That’s my favorite part about it.

I’m an internist at a hospital in New York. I get high every day, but always after work. It helps me relax. Most of the day, even if you’re not outwardly stressed, your inner stress is very high—you constantly have between 15 and 20 people under your watch who are sick enough to die at the hospital. When you get home, you really need to shut your brain off.

A doctor friend of mine gets high on his rotations, but I never do, because while I can function for the most part, I tend to forget a lot of things and act like a jackass. I have to take calls from patients at home after work all the time, but that’s not really a problem. The thing about weed is that you can sober up for a few moments at a time. You can focus on one thing for, like, 45 seconds, but then you get distracted by the TV or by how pretty your candles are or something.

Of the eight internists at my hospital, I know of two others who smoke regularly—one more than I do, the other about as much. And of the other five, I think three smoke occasionally. I’m not open with my patients about it. I think I’d be judged. I don’t think people want to hear that their doctor gets high every day. We keep it a secret from our boss, but we have a suspicion that our boss’s boss, the chief of medicine, also smokes. There’s this thing I use instead of a roach clip—it’s a plierlike tool from an operating room—and we saw it on his desk. When a coworker made a joke about it being for smoking, he turned bright red.

A lot of doctors smoke. I think it’s more common than people realize, particularly among young doctors. It doesn’t affect my ability to think, but I do find myself searching for words a lot more than I previously had to, and my memory is kind of hazy. I never forget patient information, though. And anyway, a lot of doctors say they feel like they’ve forgotten a lot of things since they went to med school, almost as if their medical knowledge displaced all the other stuff.

I’m somewhat bad about hiding it. I smoke in public a lot. I once got Tracy Morgan kicked out of the AVA Lounge because I blew smoke in his direction, hoping he would come over. Instead, the bouncers thought it was him smoking and kicked him out. It sucked, but it was hilarious, too. I also travel with weed—I put it in my cigarette box. I feel like I’m very lucky, I never seem to get caught. Everyone I know thinks I’m an idiot for being so careless.

I’m a big proponent of weed, even outside of the fact that I smoke it. I think it’s insane that it’s illegal. I sorta wanna get in trouble, in order to fight this fight—I’d use it as a jumping-off point. Yes, I’m a little stoned right now.

As told to Michael Freidson, Allison Hope, Kate Lowenstein and Lauren Shopp