Berkeley Pot Doc

by Steed Dropout
Mar. 2, 2015

SCORING IN BERKELEY’S POTSTERDAM

Doc. Bladgley--South side's savior. Photo by Ted Friedman.

Used to be, you were at the mercy of your pot dealer. Your dealer would routinely leave town.

Now you frequent a “dispensary” where you don’t score pot, or god forbid–dope. It’s medicine now.

But to score, you have to see a pot (M.D.) doc.

If you live near Berkeley’s. Potsterdam (pronounced Amsterdam), near Parker/Telegraph next door to a dispensary–you’re easily potted.

Berkeley’s best known (pioneering) pot-doc was Tod Mirikuriya, a legendary pro-dope psychiatrist, who was indicted by drug enforcement prosecutor’s and was vindicated before his death in 2007, then honored with a New York Times news obit.

With Tod, toast, who shoos you into a dispensary?

That would be Laurence Eugene Badgley, M.D.

Badgley rimes with bad guy, but Badgley is the good guy.

“You won’t flunk this [pot] exam,” he told me the other day. There is nothing that ails you that a little sativa won’t relieve. Badgley believes.

But that’s not how the guy behind the reception desk framed it. “If you are approved,” he teased.

I filled out a five page medical questionnaire, groaning out load in the reception area.

“I expected a proctologist,” I greeted the pot-doc.

We talked about Tod Mirikuriya and I recalled how the first time I’d sought his recommendation, Mirikuriya had raised a drugstore camera with flash and shot me, straight-on.

“This is not a drug deal,” Badgley observed. “Go ahead and take my picture,” the Doc allowed. “I’m open access. You can walk in the door off the street. I don’t think you are a fed.”

“You must admit it would be a helluva a cover,” I replied. I’m too old to be a fed.

“Can you imagine trying to sleep without sativa?” the doc pursued.

Badgley went over my questionnaire looking for reasons to approve me for what he called “sativa.”

“You say you have irritable bowel? Do you have diarrhea?”

I told the doc about marijuana citations in People’s Park. His jaw drooped. “I testify in court,” he volunteered. “I’d like to email you my hash study,”

He joked. I joked.

“It was a blast from the past,” Badgley said, as I left.

Next door, at the dispensary, I was awarded some free hash for re-upping.

“Tell Yelp about me,” Badgley urged.


More photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/berkboy/

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