Author Catherine Hiller grew up in New York's Greenwich Village, and smoked her first joint in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. When she took that first hit, she'd been in training, smoking cigarettes to get the motions right. But she says nothing could prepare her for the euphoria, and she's been unapologetically hooked ever since.

"It was just wonderful," Hiller reminisces on this week's HuffPost Weird News podcast. "It allowed me access to certain thoughts and ideas that I hadn't had before."

In her new book, "Just Say Yes: A Marijuana Memoir," Hiller chronicles her adventures in counterculture, and challenges preconceived notions about what a pot smoker is like.

Opinions about marijuana in the U.S. are changing -- it's now legal for recreational use in four states, and D.C. -- but a lot of Americans still might think that smoking weed almost every day for 50 years like Hiller would leave you an irresponsible burnout. Maybe for some people, that's sadly true. But not for her.