April 20, 2011

• Stoners Day

  
  Next month, one Sunday will be set aside officially to honor mothers.  The month after that, fathers get their officially recognized 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 growing and smoking Cannabis, I quit almost eight years ago. 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/or users should be imprisoned.  The socioeconomic costs of this are unreasonable.  It should not be viewed as a criminal justice problem.  If it is a problem at all, 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 stronger drugs.  All the extant research of which I’m aware indicates that most of those for whom marijuana became a step on the way to cocaine, heroin or some other hard drug, had 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 illicit, bringing the user into contact with the illegal 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 begin seeking something that can bring back that good old feeling.

  The issue of whether weed is addictive is controversial.  Users disagree, as do those who have investigated the matter scientifically. My own experience and anecdotal research agrees with the opinion of orthomolecular medicine: the addictive character of Cannabis (as well as that of alcohol) depends on individual brain chemistry.

  In 1935, when Alcoholics Anonymous was founded, they called the mysterious difference between the social drinker and the hopeless drunk the “X-factor”.   Since then, researchers have identified some factors in brain chemistry such as prostaglandins and essential fatty acids, that account for the addiction, and orthomolecular medicine has found ways to treat the imbalances nutritionally.

  Orthomolecular medicine acknowledges 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, saying that 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 each when I abstained totally.  At no time did I experience physical withdrawal symptoms, no cravings for weed, no drive to smoke.  The only thing I missed was the companionable feeling of smoking with my friends. Each time I resumed smoking it was as part of the social bonding ritual, the pass – the – pipe – and – party togetherness thing.

  My husband calls us the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of marijuana. 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, and he did most of his smoking alone.  He always tried to get his important work done before he got loaded because after he toked up… forget it.

  When he’d smoke 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 loaded.  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 munchies making it more difficult to adhere to my healthy diet and avoid food allergies, no more paranoia about the law, none of the itchy red rash on hands and arms from handling the resinous plants… and this leads into my theory about the addictive quality of Cannabis.

  I have talked to a lot of dope smokers and former 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, don’t consider it addictive.  If they quit, they had less difficulty quitting than did those for whom it was a relaxant or sedative.  Many of those who acknowledged having been addicted to it, recalled that in the early years of their use, it had at first 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.

  Up to about eight years ago, through thirty-some years of off and on use, Greyfox hadn’t been able to stop using weed, tobacco, or alcohol without experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms and strong cravings.  All periods of abstinence had been followed by relapse and escalating addictive use.  When he quit all of them at once in 2003, there were no cravings, no desire to indulge.  The difference that time consisted of orthomolecular amino acid supplements to balance his brain chemistry. I had previously used similar supplements to kick my lifelong sugar addiction — just a different mix of aminos — mine supplemented catecholamine production and his supplemented serotonin, among other things.

  Whether you’re using weed or not, and if you are, whether it gets you going or mellows you out, whether it is a pleasant indulgence or a troublesome addiction, HAVE A HAPPY STONERS DAY EVERYONE, and let’s LEGALIZE IT, quit making criminals of ordinary people who just happen to have chosen a drug that just happens, for no good reason, to be prohibited in this nation where drug use is the norm.  Its being illicit makes it more attractive to rebellious adolescents, too.  Over the past forty years, I have changed my opinions and my tune on a lot of things, but I am still saying now as I said four decades ago:  END MARIJUANA PROHIBITION!

  • 4:37 pm
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