A toast to the enchanted land of Beer World

I wish I could visit Beer World.

I only know what I see in the ads, but that's where Beer World exists. It is a place of great camaraderie and joy, bright smiles and neon signs and hoisted bottles, glistening with pure beer sweat. People are always celebrating something that just happened.

The general mood: "Bro! We just finished painting the Hoover Dam, which was a manly job indeed, and now we are watching our team win as we also celebrate your wedding day! This is awesome, and also we all won the lottery, except for Bob over there but he's happy because they dropped all the charges, AND his dog came back!

"What else can we do but raise a glass of this indistinguishable mild central nervous system depressant and laugh with unbridled amazement at our good fortune, and the ease with which we can be placated with this carbonated joy-juice?"

The old ads were a bit more suggestive. There were platoons of comely blondes who would sidle up to the fellow who's smart enough to drink Old Barleymeister, and he'd give the camera a wink: "You, too, could have the Finnish Bikini Swim-Gymnast Team draped over you, if you drink Old BM. Brewed right since 1874, it's the beer to drink when you think 'I think I'll drink a beer.'"

Beer ads are intended to coax new customers, sure, but mostly reassure the locked-in customers that they have the full strength of a good ad campaign behind them. I actually don't drink the stuff anymore, because it's a lot of carbs and calories. But I'd still want to visit Beer World from time to time.

THC World, though — that's different. I've been there. It's really boring.

I should stop here and just let every letter writer know that A) I do not care what you do, B) I'm happy you can enjoy your stuff legally, and C) I've heard your arguments about weed vs. alcohol for 40 years and remain unconvinced.

The point of having a single-malt Islay whisky is to enjoy the experience of drinking, slowly, a single-malt Islay whisky, its peaty soul released perhaps by the presence of an ice cube or two. The point of drinking a can of THC soda is to get stoned.

I was well acquainted with the Devil's Lettuce, the Rascal's Arugula, Satan's Romaine, or whatever you want to call it. I swore off it when it gave me runaway tachycardia, and say what you will about 24-year-old Macallan Scotch mellowed in charred-oak casks, it does not make you feel like a hummingbird that had its blood replaced with espresso.

But I was soon glad to be done with it, because it gave me the feeling the next day that my brain was wrapped in wet cotton. It seemed a steep price to pay for 30 minutes of sensory enhancement followed by two hours of inert media consumption punctuated by the occasional revelation, like, "Whoever invented Taco Doritos had to be high."

"Ah," you say, "but that was old Minnesota Ditchweed. Today the cannabis technicians have perfected artisanal varieties that provide a mellow experience designed to soften the serrated edge of modern life." OK, maybe. But you're still wrecked.

If that's not the point, then explain why none of the varied products crowding into the newly legal THC space ever advertise themselves by saying, "You'll hardly feel anything."

Of course they don't say you're going to turn into a red-eyed insensate sloth who ordered pizza 17 minutes ago but thinks it's been, like, an hour, man, any more than the Beer World ads feature someone out back of the bar blorking up a belly of boilermakers. The copy on the cans and the websites tell you about relaxation — which is true, in the sense that someone on the other end of a taser gun is inevitably relaxed.

I am speaking from recent experience, thanks to the companies that send their THC products to the office where I work. Never thought I'd see the day when weed-pop was delivered to my place of employment, but here we are.

I tried several for research purposes. Half of the sodas tasted ugly. The gummies took forever, and then it felt as if you were being possessed by the ghost of a dental hygienist who had lots of nitrous oxide and novocaine.

I was unable to write a word. My dreams, which are usually plot-heavy, vivid, with lots of dialogue, were replaced with slippery thoughts that evaporated on contact, and the whole night felt like I'd been working a Rubik's cube made of cubes of Jell-O.

It's the insularity and solipsism of the stuff that makes it impossible for THC World to match Beer World in the inevitable commercials. Everyone in Beer World may be temporarily deluded into a state of communal euphoria, but everyone in THC World would be sitting around looking at their phones.

Are we better off? Well, we'll see! (Spoiler: not really.)