Questions to Ask a High Person
Relaxed questions for talking with a friend who is high, arranged from easy openers to slower, more curious ones, with notes on which questions tend to land badly.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What are you thinking about right now?
Why ask it
The simplest possible opener, and it works because it needs no cleverness in reply. Whatever comes out first is usually the honest answer, and it sets the pace of the conversation without asking anyone to perform.
How are you feeling, physically?
Why ask it
Worth asking early, and not just as small talk. If someone says their heart is racing or the room feels wrong, you want to know that in minute two rather than minute forty. A short vague answer with a tense face is worth following up on.
What does this song sound like to you right now?
Why ask it
Music is noticeably more absorbing when high, and people will describe hearing a bass line or a background vocal they had never registered. It gives them something to point at, which is easier than being asked to be interesting.
Is there anything in this room you've never really looked at before?
Why ask it
Attention narrows and fixes, so the answer is often a lampshade or a scuff on the wall described in unreasonable detail. It also anchors the conversation in the physical room, which steadies anyone who is drifting.
What's the best thing you've ever eaten?
Why ask it
Food memories arrive with the setting attached: someone's grandmother's kitchen, a roadside place at two in the morning. You get a story rather than a dish, and it is one of the few questions nobody dreads being asked.
What's a small thing that reliably makes you laugh?
Why ask it
Everyone has one and almost nobody has said it out loud. Expect a specific clip, a friend's particular noise, or a phrase from a family joke. Answers here are far better than answers to what is the funniest thing you know.
Where did you most like being when you were eight?
Why ask it
A specific age produces a specific place, where asking about childhood in general produces nothing. People describe a stairwell, a tree, a corner of a shop, and the detail that comes with it is usually the good part.
What's a film you loved as a kid that you suspect is strange?
Why ask it
The comedy is in the retelling: plots that made sense at six turn out to be genuinely unhinged. It also gives quieter people an easy way in, because describing a film is less exposing than describing yourself.
If you could be somewhere else for the next hour and then come straight back, where would you go?
Why ask it
The time limit is what makes this work. Without it people name a country. With it they name a specific bench, a friend's flat, or a beach at a particular hour, which tells you much more.
What's the most beautiful place you've actually stood in?
Why ask it
The word stood keeps it out of the realm of postcards and travel plans. Watch whether they name somewhere grand or somewhere ordinary at the right moment. The second answer is usually the more revealing one.
Do you think your pet knows your name, or just the sound of it?
Why ask it
An unanswerable question that people take completely seriously in this state, and it usually turns into evidence for and against based on one particular animal. Better than asking what they would say to an animal, which nobody has a real answer to.
What's something you believed as a kid for embarrassingly long?
Why ask it
Reliably funny, and it invites a confession small enough that nobody regrets it later. If you go first with your own, you will get a better answer than if you ask cold.
What are you weirdly good at that never comes up?
Why ask it
People are pleased to be asked and often a little shy about it: parallel parking, recognizing accents, folding things. Being high loosens the reluctance to claim a small skill, which is why this one works better here than at a dinner party.
What's the strangest job you can think of that someone genuinely does?
Why ask it
Sends the conversation outward instead of inward, which is a relief after a run of personal questions. It often turns into a shared attempt to work out how a whole industry functions, which can carry twenty minutes on its own.
How would you describe the sea to someone who had never seen water?
Why ask it
A genuine problem rather than a whimsy, and it produces real effort: people reach for weight, sound, cold, the way it keeps moving. If someone is enjoying being verbal, this is the question to give them.
What idea have you had recently that seemed brilliant and then fell apart?
Why ask it
Invites self-mockery without any sting, and it is a familiar experience to anyone who has been high before. Answers range from business plans to a theory about a television show that survived about four minutes.
What would you do more of if you never had to feel self-conscious about it?
Why ask it
Singing, dancing, drawing badly, talking to strangers. The answers are gentle rather than heavy, and they often reveal a hobby somebody quietly abandoned. Follow it with what stopped them and you get the real conversation.
What have you changed your mind about in the last couple of years?
Why ask it
Slower and more searching, so save it for later in the evening. It works because the answer requires no defending, only describing. Anyone who cannot think of anything usually finds one if you wait rather than moving on.
Who would you call right now just to say hello, if it weren't a strange hour?
Why ask it
Warm rather than sad if you keep it to hello rather than to something unresolved. People name someone they have been meaning to contact, and occasionally they do actually call, which is generally a good outcome.
Do you want to keep talking, or would you rather just put something on?
Why ask it
The most useful question in the set. Conversation while high runs out suddenly rather than gradually, and asking outright saves someone from politely holding up a chat they are done with. Take the answer at face value.
Talking With Someone Who Is High
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Getting the tone right
Ask, then let the silence sit
Replies come slower and often arrive in pieces. If you fill the gap with a second question, you lose the first answer. Ten seconds of quiet is normal here and is not a sign that the question failed.
Follow the detail, not the topic
The interesting part is rarely the subject and usually some small thing inside it. When someone lingers on one image, ask about that instead of moving to your next question.
Keep the room comfortable
Water within reach, lights not overhead, something to eat if the evening runs long. It sounds beside the point but it does more for the conversation than any question on the list.
Questions to skip
- Anything that invites self-examination of a painful kind. A question about a regret or a lost relationship lands much heavier than intended and can turn the whole evening.
- Questions that draw attention to being high, such as asking how high they are or how they look. This reliably tips people into self-consciousness and sometimes into anxiety.
- Anything about health, money, or how they are actually doing in their life. These are worth asking, just not now.
- Secrets, confessions, or anything about other people's private business. Someone who is high may answer a question they would normally decline, and that is not a fair way to get an answer.
- Long chains of questions in a row. It starts to feel like being interviewed, which is unpleasant when concentration is already patchy.
If they start to feel bad
- Stop asking questions. Say plainly that they are alright, that it will pass, and that you are not going anywhere.
- Change the physical situation: cooler air, a glass of water, sitting down, a lower light. This usually helps faster than talking does.
- Give them something simple and external to attend to, such as a familiar film or music they know well. Novelty is the problem, not stimulation.
- Avoid reasoning them out of it and avoid jokes about it. Both make people feel more watched.
- Get medical help if there is chest pain, breathing trouble, repeated vomiting, or if they become unresponsive or cannot be oriented. This is uncommon but not something to talk through.
A note on recording and repeating
Do not film without asking first
Filming someone who is high and posting it is a small betrayal that lasts much longer than the evening. Ask when they are sober, not while the camera is running.
What is said here stays here
People overshare in this state and often do not recall what they said. Treating it as off the record is the difference between someone relaxing around you and being careful around you afterwards.