April 20, 2006

• Happy Stoners Day

  The following is a repost of my 4/20/2005
  Stoners Day  post.

  Next
  month, one Sunday will be set aside officially to honor mothers. 
  The month after that, fathers get their day.  Unofficially today,
  4/20, is Stoners Day.

  I heard on the radio that this afternoon after school is out, all over
  the country kids will be toking up at 4:20 PM.  The reporter
  suggested that because of the unofficial holiday many young people who
  had never tried marijuana would be smoking for the first time.

  This thought scares a lot of people.  It doesn’t exactly thrill
  me, but I can’t honestly say that it worries me, either… for one
  thing, I tend not to worry about things I can’t control.  I can
  control my own behavior, however, and after over three decades of
  smoking dope, for the last couple of years I’ve been clean.

  That doesn’t mean I’ve gone over to the hysterical anti-marijuana
  camp.  I don’t think the fields should be poisoned with
  herbicides.  That’s bad for the environment.  I don’t think
  growers, dealers and users should be imprisoned.  The
  socio-economic costs of that are unreasonable.  It should not be
  viewed as a criminal justice problem.  If it is a problem it is a
  public health matter.

  One of the persistent myths about Cannabis is that it is a gateway
  drug, that it leads to the use of other stronger drugs.  All the
  extant research of which I’m aware suggests that most of those for whom
  marijuana was a step on the way to cocaine, heroin or some other hard
  drug, used alcohol and/or nicotine first.  If Cannabis leads to
  the use of illicit drugs it is not because of any inherent quality in
  the herb, but because of its being illegal and bringing the user into
  contact with the illicit drug trade.

  I’m not aware of any research that focused on whether refined sugar
  came before the booze and tobacco, but I’d bet the farm on it.  It
  is in the nature of the unbalanced brain chemistry of addiction that
  one drug leads to another.  With continued use, most drugs will
  eventually stop providing a euphoric high and will at best only relieve
  the pain of withdrawal.  That is when most users either go into
  toxic overindulgence or start casting about for something that can
  bring back that good old feeling.

  There is some controversy over whether weed is addictive or not. 
  I hear that subject brought up at NA meetings occasionally.  Even
  though we say at the start of each meeting that we don’t care what you
  used, how much, etc., sometimes a newcomer will say that pot is his
  drug of choice.  Then he may go on to say that he knows people say
  it isn’t addictive, but he knows better because he got addicted to it.

  I’m not aware of any specific research that has focused on that
  particular angle, either, but I have my theories.  I think the
  addictive character of Cannabis depends on individual brain
  chemistry.  It is widely accepted that, for example, some people
  can use alcohol without losing control and becoming an alcoholic. 

  Eighty years ago when AA was founded, they called that mysterious
  difference between the social drinker and the hopeless drunk the
  “X-factor”.   Since then, orthomolecular medicine has
  identified some factors in brain chemistry such as prostaglandins and
  essential fatty acids, that account for the addiction.

  Orthomolecular medicine has also discovered that Cannabis affects some
  people differently than others.  Some of us are
  stimulated by weed, while for others it acts as a relaxant or
  sedative.  I have known people who had once used pot for
  stimulation to help them get going in the morning or to facilitate
  their creativity as artists, writers or musicians, who later found that
  it was spacing them out or putting them to sleep and they could no
  longer work under its influence.  Most of them blamed the weed,
  said the new stuff was getting “sleepier.”  I don’t think so.

  Weed
  has a stimulant effect on those whose neurotransmitter balance is
  relatively high in serotonin and low in catecholamines.  A high
  level of catecholamine and low level of serotonin makes pot act as a
  sedative, putting the user to sleep.  Anecdotal evidence and
  personal experience suggest that when a person experiences a change in
  the way the weed affects him, it usually goes from being stimulating to
  being relaxing, and not the other way round.

  Anecdotal evidence and personal experience also suggest that those for
  whom the weed is stimulating do not tend to become addicted to
  it.  This group includes me.  I was always a morning
  smoker.  Most days, one doobie or a good bong hit would get me
  going and I wouldn’t want any more until the mid-afternoon blood sugar
  slump.

  During the decades that I used pot, there were three periods of about a
  year that I abstained totally.  I experienced no physical
  withdrawal symptoms, no cravings for weed, no drive to smoke. 
  Each time I resumed smoking it was as part of the bonding ritual, the
  social pass – the – pipe – and – party togetherness thing.

  I was always of the Gallagher school of dope-smokers.  The wild
  physical comic said, “Kids! Don’t smoke dope… after you’re already
  stoned.”  For me, toking up in the evening was a waste of good
  weed.  After I got together with Greyfox, we wasted a lot of
  dope.  He was one for whom the herb was a sedative.  He’d
  always try to get all his important work done before he toked up
  because after he toked up, forget it.  He calls us the Mr. and
  Mrs. Jack Sprat of marijuana.

  When he’d toke up with me in the mornings, it would wreck his whole
  day.  If I got down with him in the evening, it wrecked me
  totally.  I didn’t like the feeling of getting too stoned. 
  The stuff stays in the body so long that I spent years uncomfortably
  stoned, spaced out, with raging munchies all the time, just because
  when he smoked, I smoked with him. 

  When Greyfox got clean, there was no question of my continuing to smoke
  dope or to grow it.  Quitting wasn’t just easy.  It was a
  relief.  No more munchies, no more paranoia about the cops, no
  more rash on hands and arms from handling the resinous plants. 
  And this leads into my theory about the addictive quality of Cannabis.

  Over the last two years, I’ve been talking to a lot of former dope
  smokers.  The ones who consider it an addictive drug also say
  that, like Greyfox, for them it was a way to unwind and relax. 
  The ones like me, who used it to get going and enhance their
  imagination and creativity, had less difficulty quitting.  Some of
  those who acknowledged having been addicted to it, also recalled that
  in the early years of their use, it had been more stimulating and then
  had become “sleepy” for them.  This suggests to me that some part
  of the serotonin cycle is responsible for Cannabis addiction.

  Before two years ago, through thirty-some years of off and on use,
  Greyfox hadn’t been able to stop smoking dope or tobacco or drinking
  alcohol without experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms and strong
  cravings.  Any periods of abstinence had been followed by relapse
  and escalating addictive use.  This time, there were no cravings,
  no desire to indulge.  The difference this time was the amino acid
  supplements to balance his brain chemistry, the same sort of
  orthomolecular therapy that I’d used to kick my sugar addiction — only
  a different mix of aminos — mine supplemented catecholamine and his
  supplemented serotonin, among other things.

  Whether you’re using pot or not, and if you are, whether it gets you
  going or mellows you out, have a happy Stoners Day, everyone, and let’s legalize it,
  quit making criminals out of ordinary people who just happen to have
  chosen a drug that just happens, for no good reason, to have been
  prohibited in this culture where drug use is the norm.  Making it
  illicit makes it more attractive to rebellious adolescents, too. 
  Over the past thirty years, I have changed my opinions and my tune on a
  lot of things, but I still say now as I said then:  END MARIJUANA
  PROHIBITION!
  

  • 2:32 pm
  • 32 Comments