30 Documentaries in 30 Days: Day 1, Super High Me

I recently restarted my Netflix subscription and I am totally in love with the "Watch Instantly" feature. Today I was browsing through the documentaries, and the first one to come up was one called "Super High Me." Netflix describes the film thusly:

"Determined to find out the true effects of cannabis on the human body, stand-up comedian and former Stoner of the Year Doug Benson chronicles his experience as he avoids pot for a month and then consumes massive amounts of the drug for 30 days. More than just an amusing story about one man's quest to get superhigh, this 2007 documentary also examines the hotly contested debate over medical marijuana use."

The cover featured the face of a chubby, happy man with a dozen doobies in his mouth. I clicked the "Watch Instantly" button.

What It's About:
Doug Benson is a comic who used to do a bit in his-stand up routine about watching Supersize Me, and deciding he would do a documentary called Super High Me, where he just smoked weed all day long for 30 days. After one of his shows, a filmmaker who was in the audience asked if he really wanted to do it, and the rest is Hollywood history.

Doug smokes regularly, but he's not the daily wake-and-bake kind. But he's does like his weed, and was once voted the "#2 pot comic in America" by High Times magazine. It did not mention who the #1 pot comic was. Any guesses?

Anyhoo....for 30 days he smokes no weed at all and we follow him as he does his stand-up, which is pretty funny in a subtle stoner humor type way. He also gets his sperm count & lung capacity tested, takes the SAT, sees a creepy therapist, and has his psychic abilities measured. He's funny throughout, and you can definitely see that his skin looks much better when not smoking. He also loses two pounds, and his sperm count & lung capacity are better. His doctor is sexy. As Benson is getting his nuts examined by the doctor, he asks why you have to turn your head when coughing. Sexy doctor replies, "So you don't cough on my head." As that scene later fades out, we hear Doug saying: "I'll grab your balls, and then you cough in my face." It doesn't sound funny, but it was.

Also in the first 30 days, we meet a medical marijuana dispensary owner in Los Angeles. Later in the film, his dispensary gets raided by the DEA, who takes all his weed and all his "patient" records. Angry picketers stand outside the clinic and someone yells to the cops, "Go raid a meth lab, you pussies!" The film gives a nice history lesson on the legislature legalizing medical marijuana, and for the first time made me appreciate the significance of Obama's pledge that the feds will not raid state-approved medical marijuana dispensaries.

Anyway, back to Doug Benson. After 30 days without weed, he enters into 30 days of smoking weed from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to bed. And that motherfucker can smoke some weed. He's one of those guys who exhales a thick, gray cloud of smoke after every hit off a joint, bong, vaporizer (he and Sarah Silverman share one backstage at one point), or bowl. So then we see clips of him totally baked out of his mind for the rest of the film. He gained eight pounds and his skin lost the glow he'd developed in the weed-free month. I will say that in the 30 days without weed, he was a much better movie host and generally funnier. Although he was still funny when he was high, there are times where all the incessant weed smoking just renders him stupid. It happens. However, his sperm count, psychic ability and SAT score all improve. So there.

Rating: Thumbs Up