The question that boggles everyone’s minds when they’re high. Or maybe that’s just me.
Not a giggle, but a cackle poured out of my mouth and echoed through my bedroom. My roommate rushed inside, “What are you laughing at?” she assumed it must be hysterical since I couldn’t speak or breathe through my chuckles.
I have a specific nighttime routine which consists of either smoking a joint or popping an edible in, getting into bed with a book or TV show and then dozing off to sleep. Every once in a while before I pull my book out, I go onto my phone. I open TikTok and get sucked into a deep dark hole. I scroll past videos which cause me to burst out laughing. Then I proceed to send the video to the group chat with my best friends and ask: Is this funny or am I just stoned?
The response is usually pretty 50/50. Sometimes they tell me it’s actually funny and sometimes they tell me to STFU and go to sleep. Laughter is the best medicine, right? So, who cares if I’m laughing at a dog eating a mango, while not actually enjoying the mango and trying to be polite to its owner.
Scientifically speaking, weed increases blood flow to the right frontal and left temporal lobes of the brain. Both of those areas are associated with laughter. However, it’s not proven that’s the reason we laugh more when we’re high.
A few years ago I took a weekend trip with my two best friends. That weekend we decided to hit the mall for some much-needed shopping. Obviously, we hot-boxed the car before actually heading inside the mall. Once we were fried we strolled through the offensively lit walkways. We stumbled past the wig kiosk and noticed a few wigs had fallen onto the ground. My friend goes, “Taylor, you dropped your hair on the ground.” The three of us were belly laughing because duh it was fucking hilarious. A smile is contagious and if one joint can pass a soft smile along to a few strangers, that’s one joint closer to world peace.