My 76-year-old dad smoked weed with us for the first time. We ended up calling 911.
This all started on a pretty typical Saturday night.
Myself, my partner, my sister and her partner, along with my mom and dad, were having one of our usual family nights at my parents’ house. We do this maybe once a month. Nothing fancy, just dinner, hanging out, catching up. We’re all in our early 40s now, and my parents are in their mid-70s. My dad is 76.
We ordered Chinese food, ate way too much, and had a really nice evening. After dinner, like we often do, we decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood to help settle everything.
My sister, my partner, and I all smoke marijuana fairly regularly. My parents don’t smoke at all. My dad especially has always been very “old school” about it. I remember him saying once that he tried it maybe a single time when he was a teenager in the 1960s, didn’t feel anything, and never bothered with it again.
About six months earlier, something kind of funny had happened. The 6 of us were at Red Lobster for dinner and found a small package of legal, government-bought pre-rolls that someone had apparently dropped and forgot right under the table. There were about seven joints in it. We thought it was hilarious, took a couple home, and ended up sharing a few ourselves over time. My dad, for whatever reason, ended up holding onto the rest of them at his house and kind of forgot about them.
So on this Saturday night, as we were getting ready for our walk, someone brought them up again. It was one of those casual, half-joking suggestions at first, just something like maybe we should bring one along and have a couple puffs on the walk. Nothing serious. Just a bit of fun.
My dad actually got curious about it. He went looking for the package, found it, and seemed happily interested in the idea. There was a kind of lightness to it, like he was treating it as a novelty more than anything else. So we headed out.
We walked to a nearby park, just talking and laughing along the way, and eventually we stopped and lit one up. The four of us who smoke regularly had a couple of puffs each, and my dad joined in. At first, he didn’t seem to feel anything at all. He even said he wasn’t noticing any effect, so he took a few more hits.
Looking back, that was probably the moment things started going sideways. He ended up having roughly the same amount as I did, maybe even a bit more, except I have a very different tolerance and he hadn’t touched anything like this in over 50 years.
At the time, though, everything still felt normal. I was feeling pretty relaxed myself, and we were just slowly making our way back home.
That’s when I first noticed something was off.
My dad’s walking started to look unsteady. At first it was subtle, like a slight wobble, but within a few minutes it became more obvious. He was struggling to keep his balance and seemed to be concentrating very hard just to stay upright. I remember asking him if he was okay, but he didn’t really respond in a clear way.
By the time we turned onto the street where my parents live, we were only a few houses away, and I could see his face had changed. He looked pale in a way that didn’t seem right, and there was something off about his expression. His lips even looked slightly discoloured, which immediately made my stomach drop.
I asked him again if he was okay, and this time I was physically holding onto his back because I could tell he was struggling. He barely got the words out, just something about wanting to get home.
We made it to the house and went around to the back door like we always do. My dad got there first, went up the steps, and then just sat down. That was the moment everything shifted from “this is weird” to “something is seriously wrong.”
He started fading in and out almost immediately. One second he’d be somewhat responsive, the next he’d be completely gone. We were trying to keep him upright, but he was slipping in and out of consciousness. He wasn’t really speaking anymore, and when he did, it was just faint, unclear sounds.
His breathing looked shallow. His skin looked off. He wasn’t moving properly at all. It was like his body was shutting down in front of us.We had never seen him like that. Ever.
We were shaking him, trying to get him to respond, asking if he was in pain, trying to figure out if it was his heart or something else. Nothing was making sense. We knew we had all smoked the same thing, but none of us had ever seen anything like this from marijuana.
At some point, my sister and I just looked at each other and didn’t even need to say it out loud. We needed help. We called 911.
While we were on the phone with dispatch, those few minutes felt like they stretched forever. He was still in the same condition, drifting in and out, barely responsive. I remember thinking I was watching my dad die in front of me, and I couldn’t process how something that started as a normal family walk had turned into this.
Then more details started coming together in pieces while we were waiting.
My partner realized that my dad had also been drinking earlier in the evening. We hadn’t really paid attention to how much, but when we checked, the wine bottle that had been mostly full earlier was now completely empty. My dad was the only one who had been drinking it besides a small amount my partner had. That meant he had likely finished most of a full bottle of wine on top of everything else.
Then my mom mentioned that he was on medication for high blood pressure.
At that point, the combination in my head just became this terrifying mix of alcohol, marijuana, and medication, and I honestly had no idea what we had done or how bad this could get.
To make it even harder, I was also very high at this point, which made the panic feel even more intense and disorienting. I was trying to stay calm, but internally I was completely spiralling.
The paramedics arrived about ten minutes later and immediately took over. They were calm, professional, and started asking him basic questions to assess his awareness. He could barely answer. He was mumbling, not forming clear responses, and still drifting in and out.
They laid him down, hooked him up to monitors, and started checking everything. Blood pressure, oxygen levels, heart rate. Within moments, we saw the numbers.
The paramedics immediately noted that his blood pressure was quite low and started giving him oxygen right away.
Even with that, he was still in the same state. Eyes closed, barely responsive, not really able to engage with anything happening around him.They stayed with him for a while, continuing to monitor and stabilize him until the ambulance arrived. By then, it had been roughly half an hour since everything started, and it still didn’t feel real.
They loaded him onto the stretcher and took him into the ambulance. He was on oxygen, eyes closed, and still not really responsive. Watching him be taken away like that was honestly one of the most frightening moments of my life.
My mom went with him to the hospital, and the rest of us stayed behind just waiting for updates, completely shaken.
Over the next couple of hours, we slowly started getting news from my mom that things were improving. First, he began responding again. Then he started recognizing where he was. Eventually, he was able to communicate more clearly, and later on he was even able to drink a little water and have ice chips because he was extremely dehydrated.
By early morning, around 5 AM, we got the call that he was stable. His blood pressure and oxygen had returned to normal, and he was fully awake and talking again. He was confused about what had happened and couldn’t believe how strongly everything had hit him.
A little after 6 AM, the hospital gave the OK that he could go home. My mom said the doctor explained to her that what happened was most likely the result of the combined effects of the marijuana, the alcohol, and his blood pressure medication all lowering his blood pressure at the same time, something none of us had ever even considered could interact that way, and it turned what started as a normal family night into one of the scariest situations of all of our adult lives.
I was shaken for days afterward. I genuinely thought I was watching my father die in front of me that night. There were moments that night where I was convinced we were losing him, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt fear like that before.
As a grown ass man in his 40s…I cried more that night—and in the days after—than I have in a very long time. It wasn’t just shock in the moment. It stayed with me. The image of him sitting there, slumped over, barely breathing, lips blue, fading in and out, not responding, just stuck in my head.
It was terrifying.
We’re just incredibly grateful he’s okay. 💙