How to get it
If you’re in California and you’ve decided that marijuana is right for you, congratulations! You’re part of the minority in this country who can with reasonable protection from the government exercise their right to use this plant. But let’s leave the politics to the side and get you medicated.
This article is long, and for that I’m sorry. But I purposefully am packing it with detail because THIS is the part where most people who could benefit from pot just chicken out. I want you to see exactly what it takes to get pot. Everything including the details of my story. If you want the short version, just read the bold and bulleted items below.
Also, I want you to know right now that I’ll personally help you if I can. Click here to contact me directly. But first, read these Getting Started articles and get familiar with the basics.
Here’s what you’ll do: get a doctor’s recommendation and find a dispensary and buy your medicine. Ready? Or maybe a bit more detail?
Get a doctor’s recommendation:
First, you need a doctor to write down formally that s/he recommends that you use medical marijuana. (btw, in case I haven’t mentioned it elsewhere, there’s really no such thing as ‘medical marijuana’. It’s just marijuana, but the term is very consistently used, I assume to reinforce the most legally and morally defensible use of marijuana for most people — medical compassion.)
You don’t have to use your own doctor to get this recommendation. In fact, I don’t recommend it. They’re not setup for the demands of this role quite yet. Get a specialized doctor. Finding a doctor for this was tough for me. I researched most of them in SoCal, and there are some shady operations. When you’re making your choice, it’s important to understand that you will need to VERIFY that you have a doctor’s recommendation potentially at any time, 24×7. Yes, you’ll have an embossed piece of paper with the recommendation, but any dispensary or police officer will CALL to verify with the doctor’s office (this is the main reason I don’t recommend using your normal doctor for this recommendation). So you can save a few bucks getting a doctor to give you a piece of paper, but you want to be sure it’s a real doctor with the resources to answer the phone 24×7 and vouch for you.
I don’t want to make this an advertising thing, but I was treated beautifully by MMEC, the Marijuana Medicine Evaluation Centers and recommend them most highly. Here’s my story: I got my cancer diagnosis in late December, so I found myself needing to get my doctor’s recommendation literally on the 24th of December. I called MMEC on that day and got an appointment with a compassionate, professional, credible doctor in a normal doctor’s office setting. Hard to believe that would happen ANYWHERE these days! I waited my turn, then went into his office and we talked for a bit about my health. I showed him one paper from my regular doctor’s office that explained my diagnosis (lymphoma) and showed him my prescriptions that I brought with me as well for my bipolar disorder and PTSD. He discussed how marijuana can best be used (vaporizing) and how the different varieties can help with different ailments; he calmly covered these and many other important points on that frightening day for me. He spoke to me and my wife together, knowing that she would be my caregiver throughout chemo. I particularly appreciated his insight; we hadn’t thought of that! He told us the pros and cons and didn’t sugarcoat anything. We paid a very reasonable fee (I think it was $125) and got our recommendation for 1 year (seems to be the maximum from what I understand, and then you renew. I’ll blog about that when I get there!). We went directly from the doctor’s office to a nearby dispensary where we had a very nice experience as well. I’ll focus on that part of it below.
One more thing about the doctor’s office. They don’t have to give you a recommendation. They may give you a recommendation for less than a year. In the case of MMEC, if you don’t get a recommendation, you don’t pay. MMEC is a credible place, not a ‘pot card’ factory. But if you’re reading this, my guess is that you’ve decided pot is right for you. You just need to be sure you know exactly what you want out of it. Do you have insomnia? Anxiety? Chronic pain? Cancer? Aids? Glaucoma? Be sure before your MMEC doctor’s appointment to look on this site and elsewhere at the lists of ailments that this plant can address. Pick the one(s) that apply to you that you think justify you getting the recommendation. I have a good friend who had some tough experiences when deployed as a soldier when much younger and yet he has had even worse experiences with psychiatry upon his return to the States. He has significant anxiety but hates pharmaceuticals with their long lists of side effects. The doctor at MMEC gave him a 1 year recommendation and by that evening he had found a peace that eluded him for 20+ years. That is the power of this simple plant, my friends. But I digress… 
Hidden in the mass of words you’ve just read through is a very simple process:
1.) Make an appointment with the doctor.
2.) Go to the appointment with your prescriptions, your ailment list already decided, and at least some documentation from your regular doctors showing that you have at least some of these ailments.
3.) Pay for your recommendation
4.) Go to a dispensary and buy your medicine.
Steps 1-4 for most people happen within 1 day. It’s so easy and painless and it’s quite an adventure!
Finding a Dispensary:
This is actually easier for a beginner than for a veteran. There are SO many good dispensaries in SoCal, chances are that any dispensary you pick will be fine. I use WeedMaps (linked in the left sidebar) but I know there are other guides. Just go to the site, enter your location and it will map out the closest dispensaries. You can spend some time getting to know how the products are displayed and described and priced. I started at Spectrum of Kindness dispensary in San Diego. I rarely go there now because I have found places more suited to my needs now (and more convenient for me), but they are patient and kind and oh so friendly to newcomers especially. Notice that on WeedMaps you can also see customer reviews and get a VERY good detailed idea of how each dispensary treats its customers. Wish we had this level of detail for everywhere we shop!
Again, if you need help, just click here to contact me directly. I’ll help as much as I can.
What to expect at the dispensary:
When you arrive at the dispensary, you’ll walk in like you would in a doctor’s office or someone will open the door for you. Usually this will bring you into a waiting room, often with comfortable seating, movies on flat screens, magazines, etc. There will also be a desk with someone who will greet you and ask if you’re a first-time patient. They’ll take your recommendation (from the doctor) and your driver’s license (did I mention that you need to bring your ID? Bring your ID.)
So you’ll give your ID and recommendation to the greeter/receptionist/security dude and s/he’ll give you a form to fill out. These forms can be a page or two or they can be a 10-page book. They legally make you part of a ‘collective’. Legally, these dispensaries are setup as a group of people who produce and consume pot. Technically speaking, although this is not true in practice, you’d only go to one dispensary and buy there. Except they won’t call it ‘buying’ or refer to ‘prices’ usually. They talk about ‘donations’, because technically you’re donating to the collective at a determined rate per weight of marijuana. You would also could grow marijuana (reference the Legal information in the Getting Started section) and give it to the dispensary. They then ‘compensate’ you — notice they don’t ‘buy pot’ from you — for the assumed cost of growing and harvesting the plants. This ‘cost cover’ is about half of what the ‘donation’ price will be. The cost of maintaining a dispensary is high, and it seems that they all have about a 100% markup with very little if any profit. Many of the dispensaries are in fact setup as non-profits from what I understand.
As you fill out the paperwork, don’t be surprised if you hear them calling to verify your recommendation — this is normal. Once you’re verified, some shops will give you a card or folder or something, but really you just need to bring back your ID on future visits. You’ll then possibly need to wait for a few minutes if the ‘bud room’ is busy. Watch TV, talk to other patients, read a magazine…chill out, man! One other note about the paperwork. Some dispensaries ask you for things you don’t have to give, or ask you to sign something that you don’t have to agree to. I frequently leave some parts unsigned or skip a field, for example if I’m asked to sign that I’ll ONLY use that dispensary (they’re not allowed to make this a condition of membership) or they ask for my health conditions (not their business and they have no legal right to demand the info). Don’t let the legalese bully you. Basically you’re just agreeing to support the collective and be nice.
The marijuana is kept in a separate room and you’ll be taken back to meet the ‘budtender’ or BT. This is the point that I’d recommend you just be a newbie. Tell them you’re new at this and tell them what you want to accomplish clearly. I have yet to find someone who DOESN’T enjoy educating new patients.
Here are the basics. The pot you’ll want to buy is actually the flowers of some combination of INDICA or SATIVA strains of the plant. The names of the pot are widely varied — Blue Dream, Granddaddy Purple, Jackie Haze, etc. But they’re all mostly either indica or sativa or a HYBRID. The BT should be able to tell you which is which and what is dominant in the hybrid. They are sometimes wrong, so as you get more experienced you’ll want to look at your dispensary WeedMaps menu and research the strains they have in stock beforehand. The short version is that sativas are not as likely to make you sleepy as indicas. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re sleep and you take a sativa, you may still be sleepy and want to take a nap. But it’s not the pot making you sleepy.
Next is the decision about amount. Pricing is usually present in gram/eighth/half format. So the price for a premium, top-shelf sativa like Jack Herer might be priced as 20/60/220. This means that a gram is $20, an eighth of an ounce or 3.5 grams is $60, and a half ounce or about 14 grams is $220. How much you need depends on how much you need! I use about a half gram in the filling chamber (bowl) of my vaporizer. Remember that the bowl is where you put the ground marijuana flowers so that you can pass hot air through them and vaporize the active ingredient. The vapor is captured in a bag that fully filled is about 25 inches long and 10 inches in diameter. So I dose my medicine in ‘bags’. When you’re starting, you may need only a breath or two to have the effect you want, especially since you’ll probably be a bit nervous and will be very careful. But a normal ‘dose’ for me is a bag, our about 4-5 deep breaths. A gram of marijuana will produce about 9 bags easily (more if you’re willing to sacrifice on taste and smoothness of the vapor) In the grips of the nastiest chemo symptoms, I might use 9 bags in 24 hours. With my lightest symptoms I might use only 3 in 24 hours, taking a strong dose just before bedtime. So a gram for me lasts anywhere from a day to 10 days, but probably averages on the very low end of that. You’ll have to figure out what your usage rate is. I’d suggest you start with a ‘split eighth’ of an indica for bedtime and a sativa for during the day. Most Southern California dispensaries will split the 3.5 gram ‘eighth’ into two bottles for you, with two different strains, about 2 grams each.
I’ll focus in later articles on how to spot the best quality pot, but for now, know that most dispensaries are going to give you good quality herb. It’s not hard to find unless you’re totally picky. Eventually people seem to become like wine snobs, but with pot. Here are some common strains that I’d recommend, in anticipation of future articles reviewing specific strains.:
Sativa dominant:
Jack Herer
Blue Dream
Trainwreck (don’t worry, names are overdramatized. this is a beautiful strain)
Bullrider
Sour Diesel (or Super Sour Diesel)
Durban Poison
White Widow
Silver Goo
Jamaican Lambsbread
Jackie Haze
XJ13
Indica dominant:
Hindu Kush
Bubba Kush (preferably pre-98)
Blackberry Kush
Bubba Walker
Nepal Kush
(indica dominant strains generally work great when you need to dull the pain and be calm and sleepy)
When you pick out your weed, the budtender will put it in containers, usually the same plastic containers used for pharmaceuticals, with child safety caps. You’ll give him or her the ‘donation’ for the medicine. Probably less than $60 for an eighth and you’ll be good for quite a while unless you’re using recreationally and have lots of friends! Keep your receipt — I understand that medical marijuana expenses are deductible for state taxes in Cali, but check with your tax professional to be sure. I actually do have a degree in accounting but I hate it passionately and have someone else do my taxes even though I can’t really afford it.
One last note for the drive home. Leave the bag closed — usually it’ll be stapled. An open bag or partial joint, I believe, is considered an ‘open container’ violation if you are pulled over. Again, I’m not an expert, but if I were you I’d keep the bag in the trunk, closed, just to be sure. You won’t be (I hope) using the medicine in the car anyway, so be safe. Once you’re home, it’s time to look at the ‘How to use it’ article for the next steps. Thanks for your patience in reading this article. If you have any questions or I can help further, contact me directly.
Stay well!
