Election hangover cures: baking, getting baked

“We saw a huge uptick in a strain called Obama Kush.” Matthew Miller, general manager of the ECO Cannabis dispensary in Uptown Oakland

Even leading up to election day, there were plenty of reasons to be stressed. Millions of people would be voting during a deadly pandemic. Dozens of ballot measures would decide everything from the future of affirmative action in California to the future of the state’s gig-work economy. Oh, and President Trump had hinted he might not accept the legal outcome. Then, Florida was called for Trump and any hope of going to bed knowing the winner was pretty well washed away.

So, all around the Bay Area ( and, of course, across the country), people woke up with something of an election hangover.

Everybody has their own hangover cures.

Some people baked cookies or watched other people do it on “The Great British Baking Show.” Todd Berman went to San Francisco’s Holly Park to paint a tree.

“Making progress,” he tweeted, along with a photo of his drawing. It was a mix of colors and fast, jagged scribbles. “FYI,” he tweeted again, “I’m listening to the album ‘ Man Alive’ in my earbuds.”

In Vallejo, Rebecca Schwartz Lesberg knew well enough to have taken the day off. She spent the morning looking at all the races that did fall her way. In Delaware, Sarah McBride became the first transgender state senator. Mark Kelly, the Arizona astronaut, won the state’s U. S. Senate race for the Democrats. Todd Gloria was elected the first openly gay mayor of San Diego.

“You vote the whole ballot,” she said. “Getting to spend some time looking at the results of state legislatures and city councils … really gave me a lot of hope. It felt good to see that, whether the presidential election may or may not go the way that I want.”

It was leftover pizza for breakfast for Karen Datangel, who lives in San Francisco, who spent her morning checking returns. But not too often — and she avoided the room with the TV. “I’ve been trying to kind of cope with my usual morning routine — breakfast and coffee and exercise and meditation,” she said. “Just trying to move on with my day and actually try to get some work done.”

Eric Mill, a San Francisco therapist, said he’s been busier than usual in the leadup to the election. He didn’t expect it would slow down any time soon — he had clients booked backtoback throughout the day.

“New clients are reaching out, and old clients are restarting services,” he wrote in an email. “I have a number of sessions that were rescheduled to today to deal with this stressor, many of them planned last week, before the coverage last night began.”

Humans don’t like uncertainty, says Jennifer Dragonette, the executive director of the Newport Institute, a residential mental health facility. “I think we all knew or suspected we might not know the results last night … even so, that anxiety and sense of waiting … we can’t quite bring this emotional state to an end, and that’s causing a lot of distress.” She suggested the usual steps to dealing with stress — move your body, connect with loved ones, distract yourself with music or art. And, of course, try to limit social media. “People can get really locked into doom-scrolling or just looking for confirmation of what they already know.”

Downloads of the meditation app Calm have helped it climb 51 spots to No. 68 among free iPhone apps. “This is the highest it has ranked since it landed at No. 60 on July 21, likely boosted by the release of Harry Styles’ sleep stories on the app,” said Stephanie Chan, an insights strategist with Sensor-Tower. Headspace, a similar app, climbed 68 spots to No. 325.

For the more medicinally inclined, marijuana sales were up across the Bay Area, at least anecdotally. Caliva, a California cannabis shop and delivery service, saw online transactions increase by 7% and the units-per-purchase increase by 10% both the day before and the day of the election, said Hirsh Jain, Caliva’s director of government affairs. “Revenue was 14% higher than it was for a typical Tuesday.”

Citizens Research Alliance For Therapeutics ( C. R. A. F. T.), an Oakland cannabis collective and delivery service, was busier than average on election day. Operations manager Sunny Fabella estimated that orders and sales jumped 15% on Nov. 2 and 3.

Going into the election, business had already been up this year. “Overall sales are higher because of COVID,” Fabella said. “I think that’s general anxiety because of the pandemic. People’s orders are generally bigger because they don’t want as many deliveries. Before people would order every day or every other day.”

At ECO Cannabis dispensary in Uptown Oakland, there hadn’t been a noticeable change in business around the election, except for one particular strain, said general manager Matthew Miller.

“We saw a huge uptick in a strain called Obama Kush.”