The Pages That Raised Us: High Times Is Home Again

I was 14 when I first held a copy of High Times in my hands. I didn’t just flip through it; I studied it. Absorbed it. Let it rearrange the way I saw the world.

This wasn’t a magazine. It was a passport. A mirror. A manifesto.

And now, somehow, it’s back. Not as a brand play or investor flip, but as a cultural revival, led by people shaped by its pages, like I was.

No other magazine has done what High Times has. Full stop.

Fifty years of rolling joints, rolling presses, rolling out truths the world wasn’t ready for.

This wasn’t a cannabis magazine. It was the magazine. A sacred object passed hand to hand, from dorm rooms to remote fields.

It smelled like weed, ink and revolution. It found its way into record stores, reggae shops, grow ops, tattoo parlors, border crossings.

I’ve met 70-year-old cultivators in the Andes who learned to grow flipping through High Times. Talked to stoners in Barcelona, Berlin, Belgrade, Bangkok, Bucaramanga and Boston who wrote letters to the editor just to feel less alone.

It was global before the Internet. Community before social media. A guidebook for the weird and the wonderful. The gospel of the green.

And now, after years of silence, dilution and strange detours, it’s back. For real. In the right hands. With a middle finger to the corporate cannibalism that nearly gutted it.

Because High Times was never meant to be polite.

It was meant to burn.

The Pages That Raised Us

Flipping through High Times felt like finding your people.

Suddenly, you weren’t a freak. You were home.

You cracked it open and you weren’t alone. Not in your room. Not in your town. Not in your little indoor tent setup behind a stack of moving boxes.

You were part of something. Big, loud, disorganized, beautiful.

Every page was a wink. Every article, a handshake from someone who got it. Every photo, proof that this life, this lifestyle, this plant, were real, alive, growing.

It was where you learned. Where you dreamed. Where you laughed at the absurdity of prohibition. Where you cried reading stories about people caught in its jaws. Patients who couldn’t get their medicine.

Then the world changed. Laws loosened. Markets ballooned. The algorithm took over.

And through all of it, no one replaced High Times.

It was the original counterculture homepage. A guiding light for anyone who ever needed a little more truth. A little more joy. A little more space to breathe — and blaze.

So when I heard it was coming back, I held my breath. I paused. Then I asked who was behind it.

And somehow, that hope I was holding?

It sparked again.

A Chance To Get It Right

This return isn’t about nostalgia. And it’s not about personalities.

It’s about rebuilding something that mattered. And making sure it matters again.

High Times lost its way for a while. It drifted. It dulled. Some people got burned or let down. Trust was fractured. But the flame never fully went out.

Now there’s a window — maybe a narrow one — to do things differently. To rebuild, slowly and carefully. To earn back trust instead of demanding it. To speak directly to the people who never stopped caring.

The ones who never needed a trend to feel like the plant meant something. The ones who still believe that cannabis is culture, and culture needs protecting.

The only way forward is to prove it. Not with slogans or stunts, but with consistency. With voice. With vision. With stories that matter.

Cups, Chaos And Community

Part of this revival includes the return of the Cannabis Cup.

Not the corporate expo version; the real thing. Wild, chaotic, joyful.

Third-party judging. No pay-to-play. No polished VIP booths.

Just growers, terps, talent, truth.

The kind of space where subcultures collide and community forms in the haze.

The kind of event that helped shape the movement, not just document it.

And it’s going global. Again.

Growers in the Andes. Hash makers in Barcelona. Activists in Bogotá. Dabbers in Cape Town. Teachers in Oakland. Seed freaks in Bangkok.

Because High Times never belonged to one country.

It belongs to all of us.

This isn’t about legacy brands or comebacks.

It’s about possibility.

About doing justice to something that raised us, shaped us, connected us.

And if you’ve ever stood in a haze of smoke at a Cup, or cracked open High Times in some corner of the world just to feel a little more seen, you already know:

The real ones never left.

Now the flame’s back on.

Cover image: High Times October 2003 issue.

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