Maine residents Lee and Sue have been on Instagram for less than two weeks, but their account, @420oldfatlesbians, has already gone viral, garnering over 8,000 followers with their deadpan humor about life as two "old lesbians" who love to get stoned.
The 25 videos they have posted thus far have accrued tens of thousands of views. Their Instagram followers have seen the two women summon stoner spirits with their “weed-ja board,” smoke pot out of a snowball “ice pipe" and even fashion a bong out of a Mrs. Butterworth's syrup bottle.
“I’m about to tap this sweet lady,” Sue said in a video before Lee lit the syrup bottle-turned-bowl and Sue inhaled deeply.
Sue and Lee, who asked that their full names not be published because marijuana use is still not legal federally, told NBC News they started their Instagram account shortly after relocating from Florida to Maine to begin their retirement.
"This is like we’re returning home," Lee said, noting she and Sue are from equally cold Chicago. After living in Florida for years and “having no seasons and super hot weather and being fat, we wanted to be somewhere cooler," Lee added.
Sue and Lee would not provide their actual ages, just saying they're in their "third trimester" of life.
“After we moved here, we realized how open weed growing and weed using was,” Sue explained. “There’s a lot of dispensaries, there’s a lot of grow-equipment shops, so that speaks to what's going on.”
Compared to Florida, Sue said, “it’s nice to live somewhere where it’s open" about marijuana use.
Maine has a medical marijuana program, and both Lee and Sue are medical marijuana cardholders. A voter referendum approved recreational marijuana use in 2016, but the state has yet to fully implement the plan, according to the Press-Herald.
The couple said one reason they’re going semi-public with their account is because they're "tired of the stigmas on weed, on lesbians, fat people, old people,” Sue said. “People need to just be who they are and not worry about what others think," she added.
Lee said she started to smoke weed to help with pain after getting neck surgery.
“It’s really incredible what marijuana does with pain compared to opioids,” Lee explained. “Opioids, you just get addicted to them, and they really don’t help the pain, because you need to take more and more and more, but marijuana is great, because you can’t overdose, and it just really, really helps the body.”
Sue said she’s always been open about her love for weed and, as a former end-of-life caregiver, has seen what the drug can do for people in pain.
“I have turned my friends onto the healing powers of it, and I would love for it to be federally legal and the stigma taken out of it,” she said.
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The couple has been together for 12 years, and they tied the knot in Florida soon after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.
As for their popular Instagram videos, they say the creative process comes naturally to them.
“I come up with an idea, then we talk about it, see if it would be funny, might help somebody or whatever, and we go from there,” Sue said.
“And then we go to the dollar store for props,” Lee added.
Their favorite marijuana strain? White Widow, the couple said. According to Leafly, smokers of this world-renowned, Amsterdam-bred strain experience a “powerful burst of euphoria and energy” that stimulates “both conversation and creativity.”
