While many people celebrate April 20 by smoking and getting high, for the disabled community, 420 Day has come to mean getting down… down to business… down and dirty… down to do chores.
“I organized the pantry today!” Trudy Weschler, 40, exclaimed. “You know how long I’ve needed to do that? There were cans from the Eisenhower administration!”
Trudy has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which causes chronic pain and frequent joint dislocations. The CBD-THC gummies that she takes ease her pain to the point where she can think clearly and get things done.
Her friend, Shirley Young, was equally enthusiastic, busily washing the floor and changing her sheets. “Of course I celebrate 420 Day! I don’t know how I would cope without medical marijuana. Just because I have cancer doesn’t mean that I don’t have a life to live.”
Dennis, who declined to give his last name, lives in a state where due to racism and ableism, marijuana is not legal in any form. He is lucky enough to have a friend who cultivates a strain that is helpful to him when the phantom pain from the leg he lost in Iraq really acts up. “I went to the park with my kids,” he said, ticking off the things he was excited to do that day. “I vacuumed the car. I made some marinara sauce.”
Indeed, as any disabled person can tell you, 420 Day is best celebrated by doing the “ordinary things” that you can’t do on an ordinary day, such as: eating, bathing, and dressing yourself. You might even find that your pain has eased to the point where you can sit at your laptop and write an article or two for a satirical website.