The first significant thing I noticed about getting stoned was dry mouth. The second thing was succumbing to uncontrollable laughter. The third thing was the munchies. But the fourth thing was the most interesting. I’ve since come to identify it as short-term memory loss, otherwise known in my head as the Chris Nolan Memento effect.

Basically when you’re blasted you tend to follow curious thoughts and left-field observations into a mental rabbit hole. These thoughts and observations can take hold of your mind and feel so compelling and enveloping that whatever your rudimentary activity of the moment may be — walking, making coffee, driving, ordering food at McDonald’s, taking out the garbage — you emerge at the other end of the tunnel with no recollection of what’s just happened. And you say to yourself, “How did I get here?”

You could have just ordered small fries and a Coke, but when you come out of the Paul McCartney / “Day in the Life” dream you have no memory of having done so.

And then another dream comes along and you drop into another rabbit hole, and it keeps going like this until the THC finally wears off.

Guy Pearce in Memento: “What am I doing?…oh, I’m chasing this guy. (beat.) No, he’s chasing me.”