The Golden Bachelor couple has called it quits! Did you see it coming? I have thoughts. So do listeners. But first, it’s almost 4/20, the international get-high holiday in honor of marijuana. Just in time, I chat with Dr. Peter Grinspoon, author of  “Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth About Marijuana.”

As I mention in the episode, Peter’s father is Dr. Lester Grinspoon. Here’s more, from our interview: [edited for clarity]

PETER GRINSPOON: So my dad was legendary in the medical, psychiatric and cannabis spaces, and he did a lot of great work. He also wrote a book … which really helped the first state to legalize medical marijuana, in 1996. My dad also wrote a book on psychedelics in 1979 calling for the use of psychedelics in psychiatry about 40 years before everybody else did. And he was sort of crucified by Harvard Medical for his stance on cannabis and psychedelics. But now pretty much everybody agrees with him.

LAURA: Wow. And at the same time, he did not use himself until he was much older. Is that correct?

PETER GRINSPOON: I think he started using in like his 50s . … And you know, my brother Danny was fighting a losing battle against childhood leukemia In the early 1970s. My parents, they said screw it, and they bought him some marijuana to try, and it was really transformative for the last year of his life. He could eat, hold down food and, most importantly to me, play with his little brothers.

Read Dr. Lester Grinspoon’s obituary in The New York Times.

 

LAURA STASSI

Four-twenty. Do you have it marked on your calendar? It’s the international get-high holiday in honor of marijuana. I’m Laura Stassi, and I’m talking with a leading cannabis researcher who also has thoughts about dating. Plus, only a few weeks before their all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Italy, and a few days after they tape an episode of “Family Feud. Golden Bachelor Gerry and wife Theresa call it quits.

“Smoke … and Mirrors.” That’s coming up next on Dating While Gray: The Grown-Up’s Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships.”

You might not think to ask a marijuana expert for dating advice, but I did when I talked to Dr. Peter Grinspoon. He’s a primary care physician, a cannabis researcher, and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School. Peter’s latest book is called “Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth About Marijuana.” He is pro-pot, even as someone who has overcome a prescription medication addiction that cost him his first marriage.

You’ll hear more about that in a few minutes. But first, I told Peter about that time I came across a dating site profile question asking if I’m, quote, 4/20 friendly. I asked Peter if he thinks that’s a helpful piece of information for determining romantic compatibility.

PETER GRINSPOON

Absolutely. It’s not that both couples have to smoke. But if one person was like intolerant of it or hated the smell, or had a bad experience with it, and they didn’t want to be around someone else who’s smoking it, that gives them a warning. I met my wife a match.com, by the way.

LAURA STASSI

Oh!

PETER GRINSPOON

If both people are 4/20 friendly, it makes you know – there are many other variables, but it makes the match that much more likely to succeed.

LAURA STASSI

I feel like a lot of people my age might not take medical marijuana seriously, because it seems ridiculously easy to get a medical marijuana card. It’s like, you know, nod, nod, wink wink.

PETER GRINSPOON

Well, I would agree. I think more studies needed everywhere because unfortunately, with the war on drugs, for the last 50 years, most of the research has been just trying to prove that it’s harmful to sort of support the war on drugs. More recently, we’re doing neutral research that asks, is it harmful or beneficial — not research that has the presumption that it’s harmful, I mean, a lot of good research was done, but it’s sort of tainted by political winds and political pressures and funding pressures.

LAURA STASSI

Okay, are we calling cannabis a drug? Are we calling it medicine?

PETER GRINSPOON

Yes. It is a drug and medicine. It’s a recreational drug. You know, some cannabis advocates say all medical use is medical use; you know, if someone’s dying of cancer, that’s a medical use. If, you know, you’re going to concert, and you just want everything to be more vivid and enjoyable, that’s recreational use. So I think it is a drug, a recreational drug, a pretty relatively benign one — for most people.

There are certain people that should avoid it, certainly. And it certainly clearly certainly, it helps people with the symptoms of cancer: pain, anxiety, insomnia, nausea and vomiting, weight loss. It helps people with chronic pain. And I think that insomnia and anxiety are really well-proven as well, even though like most other medications, it doesn’t work for everybody. And then finally, it’s pretty well proven for multiple sclerosis. It helps with muscle spasms and bladder irritability, and also for Parkinson’s disease. So the list is growing. But, you know, there are many controversial uses. It’s hard to find a veteran that thinks it’s not helpful for PTSD. But, you know, some of the psychiatrists don’t go along with that. So a lot more research, as you said, needs to be done.

LAURA STASSI

So when you talk about psychiatrists don’t necessarily agree with that, have there not been studies or is it just the whole, you know, label: This is marijuana? Well, both.

PETER GRINSPOON

Well, both. I mean, the psychiatrists have been propagandized against cannabis for the last half century. And I think they’re a little bit unduly negative about it. I mean, what’s interesting is that, in my experience — I wrote about this in my book — a doctor’s vantage point on cannabis really affects his or her attitude towards it. You know, it’s hard to find an oncologist that’s not pro-medical marijuana. It’s something like 90 percent of them are because they see it helping their patients so drastically. At the other end of the spectrum are the, for example, adolescent psychiatrists. We see the rare but very tragic cases where cannabis can help trigger or worsen psychosis in a teenager or young adult. And they tend to generalize their, you know, empiric evidence to cannabis in general, and they tend to be against it. And the truth is obviously somewhere in between.

LAURA STASSI

With the established benefits for older people, are there areas where there’s much more of a yellow light as far as using marijuana?

PETER GRINSPOON

Well, first of all, the demographic that’s increasing most rapidly is people over 65 using cannabis. It’s literally like, doubling every four or five years. Because it helps. As you get older. You accumulate diagnoses, specialists, and medications. And you end up with this terrible polypharmacy, which is, when you’re taking five or more medications, I have some older patients, I’m like 15,20 medications. And this is expensive, confusing, it can be even dangerous if you make a mistake.

And cannabis can do several things at once. Like in a chronic pain patient, a lot of older people have chronic pain. It can help with the pain, the perception of pain, the anxiety, the insomnia, and what goes up is a health-related quality of life. So older people generally are fighting, the cannabis helps with their quality of life and helps manage many of their symptoms, and also helps them cut down on some, if not many of the pharmaceuticals that are taking.

Now, certainly cannabis has its risks. It can make short-term memory a little bit worse. It can give people dry mouth and can affect balance and coordination. So certainly, there are things that need to be addressed. The other thing is like cannabis, like many other medications can cause confusion. But pain medications can cause confusion; sleeping medications can cause confusion. So just like any other medicine, you have to educate the patient about the risks and the benefits.

And with cannabis, a great way to avoid problems is to start very low and go slow. When I’m treating older patients, I start with a teeny dose, and we work our way up very slowly. And in this way, we tend to either avoid side effects or catch them early.

LAURA STASSI

Maybe I’m not aware of everything that’s going out there. But it doesn’t seem like medical professionals are intricately involved in people who use marijuana. Do you know what I mean? It’s like, they get this card. And then it’s like, oh, who? It’s not like they’re being treated with marijuana? Do you understand what I’m saying?

PETER GRINSPOON

Those are two very important questions. First of all, in terms of getting a medical marijuana card, there seem to be sort of three different pathways. One is you go to one of these card mills, they don’t do anything — and you get a card. Those tend to be a little bit less expensive, too. There are dedicated and very educated medical marijuana doctors who actually will sit down with you and educate people on how to use it safely and what to watch out for. That’s what I do in my private practice, anybody can sign up for me. They have to be Massachusetts to get a card. But for education and counseling, I provide this, and there are a lot of other cannabis doctors that provide this.

So you actually can get a medical card from a real doctor that really helps you. Now the best model is what I do in my day job, which is the primary care doctor knows a lot about cannabis. And he or she is the one to certify patients because the primary care doctor knows what other medications you’re on. They’re in the electronic medical record, and they know your specialists and all about your history. And I feel it’s most effective when I certify or prescribe cannabis as a primary care doctor. The reason this doesn’t happen very often is that primary care doctors and doctors in general just don’t know much about cannabis. But that would certainly be the safest way to do it.

Now I must say that I have a couple patients that have really wanted to be on medical cannabis. And people just haven’t been able to because any amount makes them anxious. But generally, for most people, there’s a low dose where you don’t get anxious. If anything, your anxiety gets better and you tolerate it really well.

LAURA STASSI

And with alcohol, a lot depends on you know, body weight. Is it the same with cannabis or is it more brain function?

PETER GRINSPOON

It’s more brain function. It distributes really rapidly throughout your whole body and it’s very fat-soluble. And it’s not like alcohol, like a 300-pound person wouldn’t get as drunk as a 100-pound person with three drinks. Whereas with cannabis, it goes right to your brain, especially if you’re smoking it, and the body weight doesn’t make as much of a difference.

LAURA STASSI

Do you advocate for smoking versus ingesting?

PETER GRINSPOON

Smoking cannabis has never been linked to lung cancer or COPD or emphysema, but it does cause irritant. Bronchitis — people are like coughing and hacking. And with smoking, you do get combustion particles. So we don’t usually recommend smoking. I like to recommend an under-the-tongue tincture, like those old-fashioned tinctures of cannabis that we had in this country 100 years ago before we criminalized it. Either that or an edible. If people need to smoke it — I mean, somebody’s dying of cancer and they — if chemotherapy, let them smoke cannabis. But there are other ways to inhale it, if you need to inhale it, because it works a lot more quickly if you inhale it. So say you’re nauseous and you need relief immediately. They have inhalers like asthma inhalers, and there’s also something called a dry or vaporizer where you can heat it up to 400 degrees instead of burning it, smoking, at 1100 degrees. And you could extract the medicine without irritating your lungs. So people have options.

LAURA STASSI

Some people, especially people in the recovery community, think that it might not be wise to advocate for marijuana use for people who have addiction issues. How do you respond to that?

PETER GRINSPOON

Well, that’s a complicated question. And I have a very long chapter in my book, “Seeing Through the Smoke.” about this. But in short, our recovery viewpoint has been sort of dominated by Alcoholics Anonymous, and then Narcotics Anonymous, and their philosophy is abstinence-only for life. One is too many; 1,000 is never too much. If you were addicted to heroin as an unhappy 18-year-old, you can’t have a glass of wine at your daughter’s Bar Mitzvah at age 50. And there’s no scientific evidence for that.

Now, everybody has to be careful, and people can switch addictions from one drug to another. Now, cannabis is less addictive than many of these other drugs, but it still can cause euphoria. And it still can cause addiction. But at the same time, cannabis, you know, is a mild psychedelic drug that a lot of press about how psychedelics can help people with addiction. And I know so many people that have transitioned from alcohol misuse or opiate misuse, to cannabis. And we consider that harm reduction. So I’m really for a big tent, a big recovery tent, and for meeting people where they are and I do think cannabis can be an important part of people’s recovery.

LAURA STASSI

Okay, is there anything else we need to know about anything?

PETER GRINSPOON

I just want to say one thing about Dating While Gray. My father passed about three or four years ago, at the age of 92, he had a great life. And now my mom is sort of at a retirement community, sort of like getting asked out on dates at age 93.

LAURA STASSI

Oh, I love it. I would love to talk to her.

PETER GRINSPOON

And she you know, she doesn’t really you know, she was married to my dad for like, 66 years. But you know, she is healthy and you know, happy alone, but I think she’s tempted. And it is weird to have your 93-year-old mom being asked out on dates when your parents were married for 66 years. So I’m really glad you have this podcast.

LAURA STASSI

Well, it’s funny you say that because I’ve had a couple of episodes on grown kids. And it does not matter how old your parents are, or how young your parents are or how long they were married. Nobody wants to think about their parents as anything but their mom or dad. You don’t want to think about them as potential sexual creatures or romantic creatures.

PETER GRINSPOON

I’m conflicted. I would love her to find someone and be happy but it’s also just weird. So, I’m conflicted.

LAURA STASSI

Thanks to Dr. Peter Grinspoon, author of “Seeing Through the Smoke: A Cannabis Specialist Untangles the Truth About Marijuana.” By the way, Peter’s father is the groundbreaking marijuana scholar Dr. Lester Grinspoon. What an interesting life he lived. You can find a link to his New York Times obituary by going to datingwhilegray.com and clicking on Bonus Content.

Speaking of weed and romance, here’s a voicemail I received after the Dating While Gray episode “It’s 420 Somewhere.”

CALLER 1

I’m recently divorced after a 35-year marriage to a person who used cannabis almost every day, and still does, I presume. When I’m ready to date again — not yet. I’m giving myself a year. But I’ll be looking for a partner who like me, will answer the cannabis-friendly question in shades of gray. Pun intended. It’s fun once in a while to help get into a creative zone to enhance sex, to reduce inhibitions. But as a daily practice, no way.

As a teen I was a good girl, brainwashed by the war on drugs that was waged against us in the ‘70s. I tried pot in college, and I liked it. But I didn’t have much access. So it was a special occasion thing. Toward the end of my marriage, I needed cannabis to enjoy being intimate with my then-husband. It enabled me to focus on body sensations and escape from the painful knowledge that our marriage wasn’t working. And one of the reasons it wasn’t working is because he was high all the time.

There’s research to support that frequent, regular cannabis use can negatively impact memory and motivation. And that sure was the case for my ex-spouse. That said, I’d rather eat half a gummy and feel a little buzzed than to suffer an alcohol hangover. As a social lubricant, alcohol is so much worse for our bodies and our minds than cannabis, I don’t like smoking weed because I don’t like to do that to my lungs, but an occasional edible or a tincture can be fun.

LAURA STASSI

Thanks, listener, for telling us your true story. Tinctures — we also heard Dr. Peter Grinspoon recommend those. Coming up next: remember the Dating While Gray episode when I said this?

SOUNDBITE OF EPISODE

LAURA STASSI

Okay, no more Golden Bachelor talk from me.

SOUNDBITE ENDS

LAURA STASSI

Oops, I take it back. I have to! The Golden Bachelor a couple is in the news again. That’s after the break.

BREAK

LAURA STASSI

Welcome back. I’m Laura Stassi. And yes, I did promise months ago, no more Golden Bachelor talk on this podcast. But maybe you’re aware, I was still talking about it on a one-hour radio broadcast special. It aired on NPR member stations all over the country in the winter and early spring. Here’s the introduction to the radio show we called “Beyond ‘Reality’ TV: Inside the Lives of Older Singles.”

SOUNDBITE OF BROADCAST SPECIAL

LAURA STASSI

 If you watch the reality TV dating show The Golden Bachelor, you know how it ends. Only weeks after 72-year-old Gerry meets 70-year-old Theresa, he gets down on one knee and asks for her hand in marriage. The actual proposal was filmed in late summer, but it was a big secret until the show finale in late November. That’s when Gerry and Theresa reunited on stage in front of a live audience, after spending all those weeks apart so as not to spoil the big reveal.

The happy couple announced not only were they engaged, they’re getting married! In a little over a month — on national television, of course. Oh, boy. As a journalist whose primary focus is dating and forming new romantic relationships at age 50 and older, I can’t help but think: What just happened? Sure, it’s a TV show. But these are real people with homes in two separate states almost 700 miles apart. They each have grown kids and grandkids. She’s still working. He retired over 15 years ago. It’s hard to believe they’ve already figured out the details of their life together.

END OF SOUNDBITE

LAURA STASSI

Well, folks, it gives me no pleasure to state the obvious. The Golden Bachelor couple did not figure out the details of their lives together. All that glitters is not – well, you know the rest. As Gerry and Theresa told ABC News Good Morning America a week ago. they have decided to quote, dissolve their marriage. Sheesh, Gerry still can’t say the D word  –divorce. Although, according to the celebrity news website TMZ, he’s the one who filed the papers only a few hours after announcing the split.

Did you see it coming? Honestly, I was surprised it happened so soon although not much about the show surprised me. Take a listen to this never-before-aired clip from the Dating While Gray and Slate Golden Bachelor live finale watch party back in November.

SOUNDBITE FROM WATCH PARTY

LAURA STASSI

I know what gonna happen. I think they’re gonna get married on TV.

CHEYNA ROTH

Oh, maybe.

DAISY ROSARIO

That’s what I suspect.

CHEYNA ROTH

Well, that’s lame because they’ve already announced that they’re getting married. They’re engaged. Guys, what are we doing here?

LAURA STASSI

I think it’s gonna be like a rating thing. Like, they’ll do a TV wedding.

DAIRY ROSARIO

Yeah, like as part of this season.

CHEYNA ROTH

Oh! I’m sorry. It’s past my bedtime. I’m usually like in bed, curled up by now.

DAISY ROSARIO

I thought you had another hour but it’s — you’re on East Coast time.

LAURA STASSI

Yeah, no, that’s my prediction, is that they’re going to announce on January 22 or whatever, they’re gonna get married.

DAISY ROSARIO

We called it! January 4th, the wedding’s January 4th.

LAURA STASSI

Everybody got come back here. Dress in your finest attire, we’re going to a wedding.

CHEYNA ROTH

Oh boy.

DAISY ROSARIO

The golden wedding.

LAURA STASSI

The golden wedding.

SOUNDBITE ENDS

That was Slate’s Daisy Rosario and Cheyna Roth with me. Good times.

Gerry and Theresa will not be moving to South Carolina together, as they earlier told People magazine. They will not join the growing trend of committed romantic couples who are in live apart together relationships — even though in the divorce announcement, Gerry said it’s quote, best for the happiness of each of us to live apart.

Also, they will not be taking that splashy international all-expenses paid trip together, which might be the biggest head-scratcher. As one Golden Bachelor follower wrote on ABC’s Facebook fan page, “You’d think Gerry and Theresa would have wanted to take their honeymoon in May to Italy and spend some time together to talk about their marriage and try to figure things out instead of just ending it so soon.”

I hear you commenter. Doesn’t that make total sense for a real-life situation? But as one Dating While Gray Facebook page follower wrote, “For a fairytale ending, it’s better to read a book.”

Here are some other comments from Dating While gray listeners about the end of this golden era.

CALLER 2 20:31

Perhaps I’m a hopeless romantic, but I was actually shocked and disappointed by how quickly Gerry and Theresa got a divorce. I’m disappointed because I think the Golden Bachelor programming will now lose some of its value. People will view it more cynically, and I doubt it will continue to inspire seniors to take the chance the way it did when we were all living through the show’s original episodes.

 CALLER 3

I never felt that Gerry and Theresa were gonna stay together, I was a little surprised at how quickly this marriage dissolved. But when you’re older and you’ve established your life, the idea of suddenly disrupting it for someone that you’ve known for a very short time that you’ve met on a reality TV show — the odds are against you. They had their own lives, they had their own homes, they had their families, they’re embedded. Do you really want to upset all of that just for a TV show relationship? I just did not see that happening.

CALLER 4

I mean, let’s face it, they got together on a television show. They had a very short amount of time to get to know one another under very strange, forced, artificial circumstances. And honestly, even if they had met, quote unquote, in the wild, you know, in the real world, people would be cautioning them, like don’t hurry into anything. I mean, the turnaround between when they met and when they got married was insane. Like, who does that?

CALLER 2

I think it does underscore that the show did not allow contestants to talk about a lot of important issues like, where are you going to live? How are you going to merge your families? What’s your financial situation? I remember being shocked that Gerry didn’t know what Theresa did for a living until close to the final episode. And it’s not something that you start out asking somebody, but you certainly think that you would have asked by that point.

CALLER 3

So I’m not the least bit surprised, and The Bachelor doesn’t have a good track record with lasting relationships. Anyway, for me personally, I watched the show because I want to see older people portrayed as realistic people who still had feelings and desires that they had when they were younger. But I don’t say that I was necessarily bought into the whole idea of Gerry and Theresa living happily ever after.

CALLER 2

I would like to see a better ending. But I figured that that just showed that the Golden Bachelor is just like the rest of the Bachelors.

CALLER 4

So no, I’m not even remotely surprised for reasons that don’t even really have anything to do with them personally, except that it always bugged me that Gerry could not pronounce Theresa’s name properly. He calls her Treesa. He’s taken a syllable out of her name. I didn’t think that was a very good start. Just one other thing I want to say is, I hope that Leslie and Faith and really, all of the other women realize that they dodged the bullet. And they’re very lucky that they were not kept.

LAURA STASSI

Thanks, everyone, for weighing in.

You know, a marriage counselor once told me, I’m like a dog with a bone. I just will not let go. But I’d like to think I’ve changed. So I do highly suspect — as a journalist, as a woman, as an older single – that there is a lot of darkness behind this split. But I’m learning to accept that we will never know the details. The cast has strict non-disclosure agreements. And ABC has invested, and made, a lot of money in this fantastical version of older adult dating.

Time will tell if the divorce has any impact on the Golden Bachelorette show that’s supposedly in the works. Time will also tell if the split affects either Gerry’s or Theresa’s standing with the franchise — and also their future earning power as role models for older adult dating. Gerry’s already signed with a talent agency. Would you pick up what he’s putting down?

Time will also tell whether either Theresa or Gerry — both in their 70s, both once-widowed and once- divorced — will ever get a third chance to find true love.

END CREDITS

 Dating While Gray’s audio production and mix is by Steve Lack: Audio. Theme music by D. Peterschmidt. Please like and follow Dating While Gray wherever you get podcasts. That way, you’ll never miss an episode. And, if you’re so inclined, leave a review letting everyone know what you love about us.

For more on the show, check out datingwhilegray.com. That’s where you can find the Dating While Gray archive of episodes. You can also find links to send me questions, comments, tips, and true stories – through email and voice mail. You know I love hearing from you.

While you’re there, sign up for the free Dating While Gray e-newsletter, delivered every Friday to your inbox. That’s datingwhilegray.com.

I’m Laura Stassi. Thanks so much for listening.

 Episode transcripts are posted on the Dating While Gray website before they are thoroughly proofread. The audio of this episode is the authoritative record. For terms of use and permissions, please email laura@datingwhilegray.com.