I truly couldn’t care less how someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos spends their mornings. Oh, so they wake up at 4 a.m. and meditate for an hour before running six miles? Fuck off.
I’ve never found the topic of a morning routine to be all that interesting in any context, and lord knows nothing will come between me and the solid 45 minutes of scrolling on my phone I require before I even consider getting out of bed. But it was during one of my recent scrolls that I encountered a man whose morning routine I actually found inspirational.
Each day, @highondadaily420 wakes up, opens TikTok, goes outside and makes the same announcement to his 55,000 followers: “Oh yuuuup, it’s time to wake the neighbors. Let’s get it.”
He then proceeds to cough his absolute brains out, his face turning cherry red (presumably, he’s just taken a huge rip of weed off camera). He continues to cough for several seconds, sometimes blurting out unidentifiable words or curses between breaths. And that’s the whole bit. His most popular version currently has 2.4 million views. Even Cheech and Chong have commented on his videos, calling him a legend.
I don’t smoke weed, and yet, there’s something about this practice that I find delightful. The concept of “wake and bake” isn’t new, but @highondadaily420 has delivered a fresh spin upon it. He isn’t simply grabbing his bowl from his nightstand and toking up. Instead, he gets dressed, steps outside and decides to share the experience with the world, both via TikTok, and with his neighbors who’d have to be deaf not to hear him. “Waking the neighbors” further implies that he’s doing all of this early, while the people around him might still be sleeping. With such a process, he subverts both stoner stereotypes and the “rise and grind” culture of morning routines.
Occasionally, he also posts with food in hand. This morning, for example, he held a pizza hot pocket throughout his coughing fit. In another, he grips a burrito.
There’s no context to any of his posts. We don’t know his name, where he lives or what he does with the rest of his day. Nor do we know what his neighbors did to deserve this. All we know is that he’s committed to waking them up. We don’t ever see him smoke, either. We hear him cough, and occasionally he exhales smoke or sits in a cloud of it, but never do we see him ingest. Frankly, I’m not even sure how he maintains his ability to cough as much as he does — I can only assume it’s because he’s committed to the bit and the philosophy that you have to “cough to get off.”
Above all, though, I think I’m jealous of @highondadaily420. He has a simple act that he reliably enjoys and shares with the world. His insistence on doing so daily, potentially to the annoyance of his neighbors, is ultimately brave and defiant. Every day, he does something he loves, and not for any clear purpose. He merely sits outside and gets high, loudly. And for some reason (cough, cough) we all love watching it.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
