Reflections on a Collective: Shari Albert's Medical Marijuana Education

While most joke about writers and actors waiting tables and working at call centers until their big break, Shari Albert writes about her experiences working in a Los Angeles medical marijuana collective.

Though she originally took the job as a means of survival between gigs after appearing in the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film "The Brother’s McMullen," she found herself liking the job's human contact and the availability of pot.

She writes: "In LA, you can go entire days without talking to another human, but this job forced me to get out of the house, interact with people whose lives were very different than mine, and learn, in the process, to let go of a lot of judgment I didn’t even knew I carried with me.

"On the flip side, I was smoking WAY too much weed. I realized this when hanging out with a friend, hitting the bong about three times more than he did, and not even getting high. At five feet tall, my tolerance felt like a football player's. He was concerned, as was I."

The schizophrenic nature of Los Angeles' medical pot laws are also touched on, such as pot, or "medicine," technically not being "sold."

Albert has since gone on to star in "Ugly Betty," "King of Queens," and "Law & Order." She's now working on a web series about a medical marijuana collective...of course.