I Thought Trading Antidepressants for Marijuana Was Safe. I Was Dead Wrong.

One pot-shop worker got swept up by the anti-big-pharma mentality on the job. But going off her meds was a cold reminder that the magic green plant isn’t always the answer.

Illustrations by Cristina Spanò

“I don’t know anything about marijuana,” the young man announced to no one in particular as he approached the glass counter displaying baggies and little medicine jars of the cannabis we sold at the pot shop. The media had started referring to people with jobs like mine as “budtenders,” a title I found appropriate given the personal struggles our customers confided in us like many did with those serving alcohol.

Based on age alone, I might have pegged the man as an undergrad at one of the local universities, either upperclassman or even early graduate studies, but his face lacked the animation possessed by those hopefully investing in their futures. Plus, he was alone. College students usually arrived in clumps. In the weeks since MJ’s had opened in a small industrial pocket of a college town in eastern Washington, I’d grown adept at spotting veterans. They sported a specific brand of world weariness: one born of depth, not breadth. His were the haunted e…