( CNN ) -- She 's an acerbic columnist who 's made a living lighting up politicians and public figures in the opinion pages of The New York Times , but the only lighting up that Maureen Dowd did for her latest piece was the type typically done by her brethren over at High Times . ( OK , fine , her story was about the kind of marijuana that you eat , not smoke , but you get the point . Do n't be such a buzz kill . ) In her column published Tuesday , Dowd examined Colorado 's growing pains with its exploding marijuana industry . Her objective was to point out that for all of the revenue , tourism and cases of munchies that have made it an economic windfall for the state , legalizing pot has n't been without problems -- she quoted health officials who say hospitals are treating `` growing numbers of children and adults sickened by potent doses of edible marijuana , '' and she brought up cases in which overly potent pot candy may have led one man to kill his wife , and another to leap to his death from a hotel balcony . Gauging by the chatter on social media , her point was lost amid the cautionary tale she told . While she was in Denver , she decided to experiment with edible marijuana for the first time . From the sound of it , it will probably be her last . `` I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January ... I should try a taste of legal , edible pot from a local shop '' she wrote . `` What could go wrong with a bite or two ? Everything , as it turned out . '' Dowd said that after eating pot-infused chocolate-flavored candy , she `` lay curled up in a hallucinatory state '' in her Denver hotel room bed for eight hours , paranoid that a room-service waiter would narc on her . `` I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me '' she wrote , invoking memories of the Dearborn , Michigan , cop who called 911 to report that he and his wife may have died after consuming pot brownies . That call , which occurred in 2007 , went viral at a time before everyone had a Twitter account . That 's not the case anymore ; Dowd 's long , strange trip has been retweeted thousands of times . `` Maureen Dowd has a Pulitzer but this is what she 'll be remembered for on Twitter , '' @ conradhackett tweeted. `` ' I really want to get high with Maureen Dowd ' - said no one ever , '' cracked @ kelly_carlin . With the skewering she 's taking , Dowd may be wishing for short-term memory loss so she can forget all about it . CNN 's Justin Lear contributed to this report .
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd 's experiment with legal ##ism did n't go well . She said she was ` ` curled up in a tight ball '' for several hours . Dowd is largely being ignored on social media .