The Loner Stoner

Dueling it solo for the win

I have this good buddy I grew up with who, back in the day, had this habit of getting super stoned and then poof! Vanished. Off on his own somewhere, doing his own thing.

For this, we called him “The Loner Stoner.”

Every time he’d suddenly disappear, we’d laugh and shrug, and then proceed to keep laughing our asses off — the whole crew — about that and each other and everything else that seemed funny to us. So, pretty much everything.

Usually, he’d come wandering back from his wanderings at some point or another, and rejoin us and join in the laughter. Or sometimes not. Sometimes he was gonesville, hasta mañana.

But either way. It was all good. To each his own stoney ways.

Fast-forward thirty years, and now I, too, have become Loner Stoner, enjoyer of solo stoneyness.

I love it. Especially in the forest. But anywhere chill and inspiring, really. A park, a mountaintop, anywhere on or near the water. Wherever’s clever.

I especially love it as a writer, the chance to live in my own head for a while without interruption or guilt or the oppressive thought patterns of sobriety to interfere.

I finally get my buddy’s egregiousness (in the original, literal sense of an antonym to gregarious — loving being around people).

Now don’t get me wrong. People are great. But so are thoughts. Laughing together is great. As are contemplation and introspection.

Like most things in life and the universe, it’s the yin and the yang. One without the other is incomplete.

Do I still thoroughly enjoy passing a joint amongst strangers, a smoke’s blow from the main stage in a rocking-out crowd? Absolutely.

But if, for whatever reason, I’m all on my lonesome, I’m really not. I’m never truly alone. Because I’ve got the ever-entertaining company of my own stoney inner monologue.

And that’s a friend I can always make time for.

Colby Hess is a freelance writer and photographer from Seattle, and author of the freethinker children’s book The Stranger of Wigglesworth.

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