What was it like working in the cannabis industry during the pandemic?
It was definitely interesting. A lot more masks. Not being able to see people’s faces or their smiles was definitely an adjustment, because I’m a very smiley person. I was definitely an advocate for the use of masks, but it definitely had its downfalls, like that, where it made it hard to humanize an interaction with facial expressions.
Why did you become a budtender?
I was in the Air Force for almost 10 years. I wanted to go career, but unfortunately, I became disabled through my service with nervous system issues, and then I had to get out. And so they ended my enlistment about halfway to my 20 years.
I’ve been working in the industry here since I returned back from the military, basically. Cannabis was going to kind of be something I wanted to get into, because I wanted to help other veterans. As a veteran myself who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other disorders that have come from serving, (cannabis) helped me.
Because that’s very much the mindset I come from is, you know, cannabis is supposed to be not just fun, but it’s also supposed to help.
How did you find NoDak?
When I got back to Eugene, which is where I enlisted from — I was born down in Sacred Heart on campus, and when cannabis turned legal, he ended up opening a dispensary, and he went legitimate. So he allowed me to get my foot in the door, and he gave me my first job in the cannabis industry as a budtender in 2019.
Then the pandemic hit, and the dispensary I was working in at the time in Springfield shut down. The owner of Nodak just so happens to be a military veteran himself, and is actually kind in a similar position as me, where he got out after serving and became injured himself and everything.
At NoDak, customers are referred to as “patients.” What does it mean to care for your patients there?
Caring about patients is about understanding them and about providing a different kind of service, one where they feel more at home, rather than like they’re walking into a stranger’s basement.
We look at cannabis as medicine and so everybody that comes through, we make sure that they get the things that will help with whatever they’re needing assistance with, whether that be anxiety, social awkwardness, an upset stomach, or pain. We get a lot of people who are in pain. These claims can’t be backed by science, so I have to have to phrase that first, but it definitely does have a very healing effect for a lot of people, myself included. I am a veteran and it definitely helps me with a lot of the symptoms that I have. So I can testify to it from my point of view.
On a lighter note, tell me about the first time you got high.
Oh god. The first time I ever smoked cannabis was probably with my friend in Kaiser, when I was living in Kaiser, okay? And that was probably at an age that I shouldn’t really talk about. One of the more memorable times was with my brother when he didn’t live with my parents, he had his own place in the quads over near campus. He got me so stoned one day and we went out. He was playing the banjo at the time, and one of his other friends had an instrument that was with us. And we went out to one of the grassy knolls on campus and we just sat there and just played some music together while we were all stoned.
So that one, and then definitely the time in my friend’s Astro van. He had an Astro van at the time, and we would hotbox it in the driveway. I remember MF Doom’s Mm Food album had just come out recently, and I had just gotten it, and so we put it in a CD player and in the Astro Van, and we, I guess you could say, got to Astro traveling.
