Getting high in Israel

This summer I got the opportunity to go to Israel for a month. Here is my experience of trying to get high while over there:

Now before I left for Jew Land, I imagined the “weed scene” there to be quite dope. I was excited to try things that can be seldom found in the states like hash and hash oil. I fantasized about smoking a bowl of some quality middle eastern hash and then running around the sand dunes or frolicking in the red sea.

Fast forward to my first day in Tel Aviv (the party capital of Israel). I was traveling with two friends and we had booked a condo a head of time. We dumped our luggage and set out to get some food. As we were walking, they both expressed doubt about my plan to find weed since I had no contacts or even an idea of where the local dealers hung out. I remained undeterred, figuring that if I asked some of the locals I would be high in no time.

I must've asked over a dozen people that we encountered along the way to the falafel joint, the corner store to buy booze, and back to the condo. I even asked the dude who sold me my falafel. The general response (amongst the people who understood English that is) was “sorry, wish I had some”. Ok screw it, I'll just get drunk I thought. My friends and I, pre-gamed by killing a large bottle of vodka and then went bar hopping. By the end of the night, I was quite sauced, but determined to smoke a joint before passing out. So on our long walk back from the bar, I asked every single person I saw along the way if they had any weed (I know not the smartest idea, but I was a man on a mission). I was met with no luck and passed out without smoking anything.

The following day, I said goodbye to my friends as they left for Russia. (they were only stopping over in Israel for a little) Being alone, I became even more determined to find weed. I very rarely drink alone as I find it quite depressing. However, I have no qualms about smoking with myself and I as company, and sometimes even prefer it. This time I decided to try the area where all the clubs are. I asked the people waiting in lines, the ones hanging out smoking cigarettes outside, and every random group in between. All to no avail. I was about to call it quits, go back to the condo, huff some raid and pass out.

As I was heading back, I saw a group of kids talking in English with no accents. That must mean…. AMERICANS! I walked over and started shooting the shit with them, sharing my repeated failures to score dope. One of them who had been living in Israel for a year explained to me that several months ago weed/hash was quite abundant (like I imagined Israel to be), but currently the whole country was facing a horrible drought. Fortunately, him and his friends knew one of the few dealers who was still in stock and were waiting for him to come by so they could pick up an 1/8. Sound like a Cinderella story? Not really. The kid told me, that maybe I could get in on this deal but that it would be very expensive and that the quality would suck. The two things you want to hear the least when buying weed.

So we waited for about an hour until the dealer shows up in a cab. They shadily do the transaction and then the dealer gets back in the cab and leaves. After they picked up the weed, the kids seemed extremely reluctant to sell to me. Finally they agreed to do .3gs for $10. One of them just told me to open up my hands and he eyed out what he thought was .3. I thanked them and we parted ways. When I got back to the condo, I examined the weed and immediately noticed two things:

1) They had given me much, much more then .3 probably close to a full gram
2) This was without doubt the worst weed I had ever seen.

Oh well, I rolled my self up a nice fat joint and sparked it up while enjoying the nice view from the condo. Well, I got high, but barely.

The next morning, I rolled up the rest of the weed into two joints, smoked them and actually got decently silly. The rest of my day was awesome: went to the beach, ate some amazing middle eastern food, explored the ancient city, went to an open-air market, blew line of coke off a stripper's butt crack…. Overall it was one of the best times, I have ever had high.

The day after, I got up early and caught a bus to my grandma's place in Jerusalem, where I stayed for 4 days. Then afterwards, I hopped on a bus to Haifa (big city in the northern part of Israel). I checked into a hotel, dropped off all my shit, and spent a full day exploring the city. Before retiring to my hotel for the night, I bought a large bottle of wine (not usually my drink of choice, but it was so cheap and the jew in me couldn't resist). I drank that bad boy by myself and got pretty sauced once again. And once again, I became determined to find some weed.

However, this time I was met with much more luck. One of the first random people I asked pointed me to a small shop and said the owner should be able to help me out. I walked, or more accurately, stumbled inside and asked the dark skinned, middle aged bald man at the counter for weed. He eyed me suspiciously for a little bit, but I guess my drunken gaze reassured him that I was no cop. He walked out of the store and mumbled something in Arabic to one of the guys chilling outside. The guy asked me in his best English, how much I needed. I replied “give me 40 shekels worth”. He told me to stay put and that he would be right back. 10 minutes later he came back with a Tupperware container which contained about 1g of ground up weed and tobacco. He told me to take it for free.

I went back to my hotel sparked up a joint and passed out. It wasn't until the next day that I seriously questioned the situation: Some guy I never met before, who was Arabic (don't mean to sound racist, but there is certain realities that one must face in the middle east) gave me weed for free. I had read about several stories of Arabs spraying rat poison on weed to fuck over Jews and this sketched me out. So, I decided that the best thing to do was to play it safe and not smoke any more of that weed.

After these two encounters, I gave up looking for weed during the rest of my stay in Israel. I later found out, from talking to various locals, that the drought was a side effect of Israel's recent move to drastically increase security at borders. This made it almost impossible for Lebanese or Egyptian Hash to get into the country, which was previously quite abundant. My prayers go out to the Israelites.

 

Lol i am, what i thought was obviously, kidding

 

I was joking