The subject everybody knows about, but from the tattoo articles circulating out there, not much gets mentioned about it, and the ones that do, are lame and predictable. You’d figure some poser with no tattoos, who’s never tried herb, and launched a tattoo app out of his mom’s basement, would be using AI super-agents by now to auto generate some bullshit about cannabis and tattoo culture, then fuse together a few recycled talking points, upload random pics of tattooed peeps next to a cloud of smoke and call it groundbreaking, but I don’t see that.
The tattoo conventions I’ve been hitting demonstrate cannabis culture isn’t exactly hiding. These fuckers are very visible, lol. Custom glass companies show up with pieces sitting right there next to tattoo artists. Even in the same booths! Along with, clothing, jewelry, prints and everything else that has worked its way into these shows, and nobody seems confused by it.
I’m not talking about cheap glass either; some of this shit looks like the person who made it spent half their lives mastering gravity, color and molten glass. Tattoo peeps already get that kind of obsession without needing it explained to them. Trust me on that.
I know, I know, I tend to go the fuck out there before I direct the trajectory to the subject, which is California Sober. Here we go……...
The general idea is that alcohol and whatever other substances were causing problems are out, cannabis may still be in, and the rules are personal enough that two individuals can use the same phrase and mean different things.
I’m not here to decide, judge, or whatever, on who gets to use the word sober and who doesn’t, especially when the person living under those rules knows a fuck-ton more about what was screwing up their life than I do.
I wanted to hear from somebody who actually lives inside the cannabis side of this culture, so I asked my friend Sugar, @sugar_snack710, what California Sober meant to her. Sugar works with Hemper and Monopoly Melts, and one look at her page tells you cannabis isn’t some little side interest she brings up once in a blue moon. Her feed moves through glass, concentrates, cannabis gear, events, tattoos, just a lot of good shit.
Sugar’s answer was pretty straightforward. For her, cannabis is culture, community, passion and an industry she’s proud to be part of, and California Sober comes down to finding her own balance, being intentional about her choices and staying true to what works for her. She wasn’t trying to hand anybody else a rulebook, and I liked that part more than anything else she sent me.
She also started talking about rosin, which opened up another side of this that fits tattoo culture too well. Rosin is made using heat and pressure rather than chemical solvents, and Sugar talks about the terpenes, aroma, flavor and the care that goes into the process the same way tattoo people talk about machines, needles, healed work and all the little differences outsiders usually don’t understand. The deeper you get into either world, the more you start hearing people talk about craft instead of product.
A handmade piece has a maker, style, and a group of people who know what they’re looking at before anybody starts explaining it, which sounds familiar if you spend time around tattoo artists. A Temu version may technically do the same job, but tattoo collectors already understand there is a difference between something that works and something made by a person whose work you actually wanted.
The California Sober part gets more personal. One person may have stopped drinking years ago and still use cannabis at night; another may have left harder drugs behind and built a completely different life around the rules they made for themselves. Or, a person may want nothing to do with any substance at all. I don’t see much value in standing outside those lives with a notebook trying to figure out who deserves the label, when the results show up in the parts that matter. To be crystal clear, I’m describing personal life improvements.
I had just mentioned the other day to a co-worker as I described something that was told to me by an individual that hit rock bottom. He told me, that rock bottom had a basement. That hit hard, and it’s been imprinted in me for several years. I’ve met and interviewed California Sober lifestylists, that have saved their relationships, they’re showing up for work, and their family recognizes them again. The shitshow that used to follow them everywhere finally stopped getting invited.
Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean California Sober gets a pass. People rename habits all day long and the consequences will still show up if that habit starts running their life. Cannabis can become a problem for some, and anybody with a history of substance abuse has more to think about than a catchy phrase.
Tattoo culture doesn’t need people to fit inside one clean category anyway. I’ve interviewed artists and collectors who have carried some pretty brutal fucked up history into the room with them, and more than half the time you wouldn’t know any of it unless they decided to tell you. I’ve seen dates tattooed, or old coverups tied to another version of their life, and also the ones that carry nothing visible at all.
Tattoo media hardly talks or writes about any of this when it’s already right there. The cannabis people, glass makers, and ton of recovery stories. The filtered circulating articles seem to stick to styles, machines, same fucking artists you see over and over again that peaked out a decade ago, who still think they’re the only ones that can crank out a portrait. Then trends and whatever tat piece got enough engagement to become everybody’s favorite for the next forty-eight hours, because that artist fit 4 packs of hot dogs in his mouth and danced around like an out of work deranged circus monkey.
Inker can do better than that without turning into a recovery publication or pretending it knows more about cannabis than the people working in the industry. Cover the tattoo world as it actually looks when you’re standing inside it, including the shit people usually edit out before publishing.
California Sober isn’t going to work for everybody, and nobody with any sense should pretend it will. For the people I’ve met who say it helped them put their life back together, I’m more interested in the fact that they’re still standing than whether everybody approves of the label.
And if one of them is standing next to me at a convention while staring at a crazy piece of custom glass, I’m not checking their sobriety credentials. I’m checking the price tag.
J Gekko
Staff Writer, Inker