High Culture - Marijuana in the Lives of Americans PDF

High Culture - Contents The Psychedelic Library Homepage Books Menu Page High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans by William Novak Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. An Overview of Marijuana 2. The First Time...

High Culture - Contents The Psychedelic Library Homepage Books Menu Page High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans by William Novak Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. An Overview of Marijuana 2. The First Time 3. Marijuana Activities I: Food and Music 4. Marijuana Activities II 5. Sex and Intimacy 6. The Social Drug http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture.htm (1 of 3)4/15/2004 6:51:18 AM High Culture - Contents 7. "I Get Paid for Paranoia" A Self-Portrait of a Marijuana Dealer High Culture 8. Marijuana and the Mind Appears in The Psychedelic Library 9. The Personal Drug: Heart, Body, by permission of the author and Soul Copyright 1980 William Novak ISBN 0-394-73828 10. Looking Back: When Grass Was Greener 11. Varieties of Marijuana 12. Dangers and Problems, Real and Alleged 13. Using Marijuana Well—and Using It Badly 14. Looking Ahead: Smoders Speculate on the Future Appendix I: Letters from Smokers (and Nonsmokers) Appendix II: Studies on the Effects of Marijuana in Users Annotated Bibliography Selected Bibliography ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I could not have written this book without the assistance of a number of people. I learned a great deal from conversations with experts in various areas of marijuana research, including Norman Zinberg, Andrew Weil, Lester Grinspoon, Howard Becker, Wayne Harding, Richard Evans Schultes, Erich Goode, Jack Margolis, Lance Christie, Jonathan Earle, Carlton Turner, and Laurence Cherniak. I am grateful to Daniel X. Freedman, Charles Tart, Reese Jones, Solomon Snyder, Harry Klonoff, and Walter Houston Clark for answering the questions I asked them. Michael Aldrich of the Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library in San Francisco was http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture.htm (2 of 3)4/15/2004 6:51:18 AM High Culture - Contents helpful and patient beyond my ability to thank him. Laurence McKinney was extremely generous with his time and ideas and offered many thoughtful and valuable suggestions. I am grateful to the librarians at Wessell Library of Tufts University, and to the staff of the Economic Botany Library of Harvard University for assistance in locating obscure books and articles. Steven Axelrod, my agent, and Ann Close, my editor, supported this project from the beginning, providing much-needed encouragement and advice at various points during the preparation of the book. Several people were indispensable in the preparation of the final manuscript: Peggy Wagner, Pamela Eells, and especially Linda Manaly Novak. I benefited from the advice and comments of many friends: Karen Gorman Kramer, Marc Kramer, Eva Fogelman, Richard Siegel, Jeanne Maman, Leonard Fein, Barry Novak, Joel Rosenberg, Carol Kur, Bill and Isa Aron, Naomi Katz Mintz, Anne Fishman, Stephen P. Cohen, Robin Maradie, Moshe Waldoks, Anne Pomerantz, and Leon Wieseltier. Nancy Grubbs typed the manuscript twice and was a strong support throughout. Special thanks to the members of the Joint Distribution Committee. Finally, I owe a great debt to the hundreds of marijuana users who contributed anonymously to this book through their conversations and letters. This is really their book as well as mine, and I thank them for sharing their ideas and experiences, first with me— and now with you. Introduction Send e-mail to The Psychedelic Library: [email protected] The Psychedelic Library | Books Menu Page http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture.htm (3 of 3)4/15/2004 6:51:18 AM  High Culture - Introduction The Psychedelic Library Homepage Books Menu Page High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans by William Novak Introduction Jacob's Ladder This is a book about the personal uses of marijuana, and so I will begin personally. My first exposure to marijuana occurred while I was in college, where some of my friends were using it and making positive claims on its behalf. At first I resisted any association with drugs, believing, along with most of the population, that people who used drugs were undoubtedly troubled, unhappy, and alienated. And yet, my friends who smoked marijuana did not fit into any of the stereotypes that had been created by a public anxious about the new "drug problem." They were not dropouts, or hippies, or amotivated, or unhappy. They did not progress from marijuana to "harder" drugs. Nor did they appear to be using marijuana to avoid dealing with reality or to escape. I grew increasingly curious about marijuana, and following several years of equivocation, I finally tried it in 1969, at the age of twenty-one. I was far too nervous to get high that first time, but I do recall the feeling of relief that came from knowing that I had finally, inevitably, lost my marijuana virginity and was thus joining that half of the world Who Knew What It Was Like, even if in actual fact I did not. In time, though, I would find out. A decade later, I was still curious about marijuana. Having learned what it was like for me, I now wanted to find out what it was like for other people. This book was my way of finding out. For me, marijuana has been an intellectual stimulant, serving as a useful tool in breaking down certain conceptual boundaries and categories that, I now see, kept out more http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (1 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction light than they let in. Marijuana also presented a different version of reality than the one I was used to. Sometimes, when I have been high, I have felt like a visitor to another land, a land both familiar and new at the same time, only inches and moments away from the land I normally inhabit but also remote—and uncharted on any map I have consulted. During these visits, I have often wanted to take notes, to be sent back as postcards to myself in the places I have temporarily left behind. Sometimes the message on the postcard is a simple greeting, or a knowing smile. At other times it is a feeling or an insight I want to preserve and remember, or perhaps a fresh way of seeing a familiar object, idea or person. Occasionally, the postcard might describe an experience or an encounter lived deeply and intensely. And sometimes, the message is a brief one saying, "Hey, when you get back to the world you normally occupy, try to recall some of what you saw and felt and understood while you were here." As marijuana users are well aware, remembering and retaining the marijuana experience after it is over can sometimes be difficult, because the marijuana high carries with it a built-in erasure factor commonly known as "interference with short-term memory." But preserving at least some of the experience is important, because for many smokers the real and lasting pleasure of being high is to read those postcards on another day, to integrate into one's "straight" life the texture and illumination of a different reality, and ultimately, to bring the two worlds a little closer. That they are often only slightly and subtly different from each other merely serves to make the challenge of integrating them that much more difficult. For me, the existence of these two worlds and the need to bridge the gap between them suggest the Biblical motif of Jacob's ladder. In chapter 28 of Genesis, we are told that Jacob is traveling, and he stops for the night at a place he will name Beth-El. There, he falls asleep and has the famous dream: Here, a ladder set up on the earth, its head reaching to heaven, and here, angels of God going up and down upon it. Jacob's ladder represents in visual terms the intention of this book: to establish a link, a bridge, perhaps even a ladder, but at least a means of access and communication between two different states of consciousness. I want to describe the "high" world in a way that makes sense in the "straight" one, where most of us spend the bulk of our lives. By drawing upon the experiences of marijuana users, I hope to provide a realistic understanding of what being high is like, in a way that makes sense both to the experienced smoker and to the person who has never tried marijuana. To this end, I shall say no more about my own marijuana use, preferring instead to serve as a guide to the experiences of some three hundred other people. To read their accounts is, I hope, to become comfortable going up and down that ladder which links one state of consciousness to another. For those who have never tried marijuana, or who have tried it with no apparent result http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (2 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction (a common occurrence), I hope to provide a reasonably complete answer to the question: "What is it like?" For those already familiar with the drug, I have ordered some of its effects and experiences into a cultural and social context. More importantly, this book provides language and expression for various feelings and perceptions that marijuana users know well but may never have been able to put into words. I also hope that users can benefit from this book by learning from each other more successful and satisfying models of marijuana use and by becoming more aware of the experiences—and some of the problems—that their fellow smokers report. These are some of the elements that struck me as essential for a book about the personal uses of marijuana. I searched for such a book in vain, concluding, finally, that it did not exist. Indeed, I used to think that it could not exist; how else could I account for its absence? The idea, after all, was so obvious that somebody must have done it already. But nobody had, so I have attempted to write the sort of book about marijuana that I have long wanted to read. There are, to be sure, many good books about marijuana, and I have read virtually all of them. But what I read was mostly academic or scientific, dealing with medicine, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, or other fields of knowledge. Those rare selections that were personal tended also to be literary, and usually had an exotic and false ring to them—especially the well-known and elaborate accounts of the nineteenth-century French writers, including Baudelaire and Gautier, who described their experiences with hashish. But these men, it turns out, did not smoke small quantities of hashish—which is made from the same plant as marijuana—as some Americans do; they ate hashish, and in large quantities, a combination that can induce florid visions. In addition, hashish is often more potent, being to marijuana roughly as Scotch is to beer. There is another difference as well; scholars now believe that the accounts of the French hashish writers were influenced by their interest in certain other drugs, notably opium. In short, then, I could find almost nothing in print that bore much resemblance to what the people I knew were experiencing and describing. When asked, my friends and acquaintances spoke not of dreamlike visions or elaborate fantasies but of simpler, more direct, and more modest experiences. Often, they would describe a new way of looking at something, or an interesting insight, or perhaps a feeling of joy or contentment; marijuana, they seemed to be saying, was certainly interesting, pleasant, and above all fun, but it was rarely alien to their normal consciousness. Before I began to write this book, I had no reason to believe that the marijuana experiences of these people were unique; now, after interviewing and corresponding with three hundred marijuana users of various ages, backgrounds, and social classes, I know that they were not. Marijuana in the 1980s Nobody knows with any certainty how many Americans use marijuana regularly. Some current estimates suggest that as many as fifty million people have tried it, of whom about http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (3 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction half smoke it with some regularity. There are probably between five and ten million people who use marijuana at least two or three times a week, and this is possibly a conservative guess. In 1977, a Gallup Poll reported that one American in four over the age of eighteen had tried marijuana at least once; that figure, the report added, had doubled since 1973. In the years since 1977, it is reasonable to assume that the numbers have once again increased sharply. The consumption of marijuana has grown steadily in each of the past twenty years, both in terms of bulk and in the number of smokers; in all likelihood, the trend will continue well into the 1980s. The financial implications of all this are staggering. At an average retail price of $35 an ounce, marijuana sales make up an industry that boasts something like $10 billion a year in sales. And that figure is estimated to be four times larger than it was as recently as 1974, when many observers thought that marijuana use had peaked. These facts may come as a surprise to those who thought they had witnessed the fading away of the counterculture of the 1960S. Actually, what has happened is that the counterculture is merely no longer visible. Many of the styles, values, and modes of behavior that once characterized it have become accepted—albeit in a diffused form—into the mainstream of American life. Like the other aspects of the culture that spawned its widespread use, marijuana has not disappeared either, but rather has grown up and changed its clientele. One need only look at today's movies, television, books, political trends, and public attitudes to be reminded that much of what used to be considered counterculture is now more or less accepted by large segments of the population. True, some things have changed. The hippies are gone, the students are quiet, the communes have mostly disbanded, and many of the young radicals of a previous decade are now selling insurance or practicing law. But many of the survivors of the sixties continue to smoke marijuana, and their number has been swelled by the coming of age of the seventies generation. While most of the psychedelic trappings associated with marijuana in the 1960S have fallen away, marijuana itself remains, playing a significant and in many cases a prominent role in the personal lives of millions of Americans, a role that has gone largely unexamined. What this means is that great numbers of marijuana smokers are no longer part of the younger generation. People who were in their twenties when they first smoked marijuana as students in 1968 are now in their thirties, and many of them are ambitious professionals who work in banks, schools, offices, publishing houses, advertising agencies, law firms, hospitals, and in politics—including the White House. As these people have grown older, their reasons for using marijuana have changed, as have their patterns of use. Clearly, it is no longer helpful to attribute the popularity of marijuana to the alienation of the young, or to American foreign policy, or to political protest movements. To learn the details of America's love affair with marijuana, it is necessary to turn to the only people who have known them all along: the smokers themselves. Not surprisingly, the dramatic increase in the consumption of marijuana during the l970s has had an effect on the public debate about marijuana, which is now far less heated than it once was. First of all, marijuana smokers themselves now have access to levels of power and public opinion that were hitherto unavailable to them. In addition, nonusers of http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (4 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction marijuana are far more likely than before to have direct knowledge of the drug and its users. As a result, as more people smoke marijuana without noticeable bad effects, fewer people are worried about its alleged dangers. The issue, in short, has become dramatically less polarized, almost as though the advocates and opponents of marijuana had struck a bargain: "We'll stop making our optimistic and inflated claims about how marijuana is really good for you if you'll stop exaggerating its potential hazards and dangers." While no such negotiating actually took place, both sides in the debate have significantly relaxed their respective positions. The best indication of this moderation can be seen in the changing marijuana laws. As this book goes to press, the possession of marijuana has been changed from a criminal to a civil offense in eleven states. In 1973, Oregon became the first state to eliminate criminal arrest and jail penalties for the possession of small amounts of marijuana, and to substitute a citation-enforced civil fine, roughly equal in seriousness to a parking ticket. (Subsequent studies in Oregon have revealed that the residents of that state now smoke about the same amount of marijuana as they did before the new law.) Ten other states have enacted similar reforms: Alaska, Maine, Colorado, California, Ohio, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, and Nebraska. In addition, President Carter has called for the federal decriminalization of marijuana. Political change, of course, is directly affected by personal attitudes. Ten years ago, most people who used marijuana did not tell their parents about it; these days, marijuana users are as likely to be concerned about what to tell their children. In the 1960s, those parents who discovered or were told that their sons and daughters were using marijuana were often outraged or horrified. Today, many parents are aware that their children use the drug, and while they may not approve of it and may have little idea as to how often their children indulge, neither do they seem to be expending much energy worrying about it. They have simply learned to live with marijuana, as they have learned to live with premarital sex, rock music, and other phenomena of the 1960s that have become part of mainstream culture. The Purpose of This Book This book focuses on the individual user and attempts to answer certain basic questions. First, what happens, exactly, when a person smokes marijuana? How does that person feel? What does he or she experience? And second, how do marijuana users really use marijuana? When and where and why and how often do they smoke? What do they get out of it? Does marijuana help—or hinder—them personally, socially, mentally, creatively, or in other ways? Do marijuana users experience any special problems or conflicts? Does marijuana seem especially appropriate in certain situations and activities, and inappropriate in others? What do smokers think about marijuana and their own use of it, and how does it fit in with the rest of their lives? And finally, now that marijuana is being increasingly accepted as a legitimate recreational activity, where might the new lines be http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (5 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction drawn to separate use from abuse, and what might it mean to use marijuana well—or badly? These are not new questions. Some have been asked before, but most often in terms of laboratory calculations or technologically measured responses, or, at best, through questionnaires. Seldom have they been asked in subjective and personal terms, in open- ended conversations with marijuana smokers in their own homes. Even less often have marijuana smokers had the opportunity to answer these questions in their own words, rather than in the technical terms of the social scientist, or the specialized language of computers or statistics. This does not mean, of course, that social scientists, physicians, and other researchers and experts have nothing important to tell us about marijuana—merely that they can't tell us everything. Unfortunately, the history of marijuana research includes numerous attempts to make the facts conform to certain prejudices on the part of the researchers, although in some cases, the researchers have changed their minds in the face of the evidence, in other cases, the studies have been discredited. Recently however, marijuana research has been conducted on a more impartial plane, and some social scientists, including Erich Goode, a sociologist, and Charles Tart, a psychologist, have conducted important research by communicating directly with marijuana users themselves. Despite some progress in recent years, the degree of ignorance about marijuana (and other illicit drugs) on the part of the nonusing public remains formidable. It is comparable, perhaps, to what most Soviet citizens might understand about the nature of a free and democratic society, or to what Americans might know about alcohol if they had never taken a drink, been to a bar, or seen an advertisement for beer or liquor. There are various reasons for this ignorance. For many people, marijuana is an unknown quantity, and they fear it. In addition marijuana's identification with different fringe and minority groups during the twentieth century has made it appear less than respectable. The fear and ignorance about marijuana that reached its zenith in the late 1930S, in response to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics's carefully orchestrated campaign of hysteria, has not entirely abated Most important, the marijuana experience is not easy to comprehend for many Americans, representing as it does a break from the reality with which most people are familiar. It differs, too, from more familiar American alternatives to conventional reality such as dreams, insanity, and alcohol intoxication, to which smoking marijuana is sometimes naturally, though wrongly, compared. Marijuana is different: its users can almost always function normally under its influence and can, if they wish, conceal the fact that they have used it. As one observer of the subject has put it, the only way to know for sure whether somebody is high on marijuana is if he tells you—and perhaps not even then. How This Book Was Written The bulk of this book is based upon lengthy interviews I had with marijuana users during http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (6 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction 1978 primarily in Boston, and also in New York and California. In each interview, I first asked some general questions, and then encouraged the person I was speaking with to lead the discussion into areas of his or her personal interest. These interviews were recorded and transcribed, and I sent a copy of the transcript to the people I interviewed, inviting them to elaborate on or to clarify anything they had said, or to add anything they had thought of in the aftermath of the interview. Most of the interviews lasted close to three hours, yielding an average of some twenty pages of transcript. The majority of those I spoke with chose to get high during the interview, which usually facilitated their recollection of previous high experiences. "It's like mountain climbing," one smoker told me. "When you're standing on a peak, you get a clear and unobstructed view of those peaks you've already climbed." Being high also served to encourage some of the people I met with to be more relaxed and more personal during our conversation. In all, I spoke with a hundred users. Finding them was easy. I inquired among those smokers I knew, who in turn led me to others. I was in the especially fortunate position of having a long list of people who were not only willing but actually eager to speak with me; a number of users, upon hearing of my book through reports in newspapers, radio, and television, contacted me and requested interviews. Many told me that they had never before had the opportunity to reflect openly and at length about what was an important part of their lives, a source of considerable pleasure and, in a few cases, a source of anxiety and conflict as well. Each interview provided fresh material; I found less conventional wisdom about marijuana, at least among its users, than I had anticipated After the first twenty or so interviews, it became clear that the subject was a larger one than I had realized and that my sample would be neither broad enough nor varied enough for what I wanted to accomplish. And so I began work on a second front, soliciting letters and written statements from marijuana smokers in all parts of the country. To do this, I placed classified advertisements in about twenty national, regional, and college publications, saying, more or less in these words, "Author writing a book about the personal uses of marijuana wishes to correspond with people who have ideas, experiences, and anecdotes. Anonymity guaranteed." An ad in Rolling Stone was particularly successful, resulting in about fifty letters. Query letters in High Times (a monthly magazine for users of recreational drugs) and the New York Times Book Review led to another hundred letters. Local radio and television publicity, including a syndicated radio announcement based on an article about my work in the Village Voice and broadcast on FM stations in several cities, generated the rest of the letters. In all, I received about three hundred responses, of which approximately two-thirds turned out to be useful. I answered each query with this reply: The Marijuana Book The book will be published in 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf, New York. You can help by answering as few questions as possible—in as much detail as you can. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (7 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction No names will appear in the book, but it would help if you told me your age, profession, sex, and so forth. Please feel free to duplicate this sheet, and to send it to anybody you know who might respond to it. THE QUESTIONS: 1. When do you smoke, where, and how often? With whom? Do you smoke mostly under certain circumstances? Are there certain moods or settings that you find particularly suitable—or unsuitable—for using marijuana? 2. How (if at all) has marijuana affected your values or personality? (Please be as specific as possible.) 3. Is marijuana an issue between you and any of your friends? Between you and your parents? You and your children? You and—yourself? If so, can you explain the nature of the problem, and your solution, if any? 4. Have you invented or participated in any special stoned activities, or stoned games? 5. Could you go into detail and explain how, exactly, marijuana affects you with regard to any of the following activities: sports, playing music, listening to music, dreaming, sleeping, sex, socializing, thinking, watching television, going to work or school, feeling, introspection—or anything else? 6. How, if at all, does marijuana affect your creativity? 7. Have you had any insights—however trivial or wrong they may now seem (or however wonderful)—while under the influence? 8. Have you ever had an especially bad/good/interesting marijuana experience? 9. Where do you think things are headed with regard to marijuana use in America? l0. Is there any difference, for you, in the effects of different kinds of http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (8 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction marijuana? 11. Are there any myths or misconceptions about marijuana which you would like to see corrected in a book like this? 12. What would it mean to use marijuana "well"—or "badly"? Thank you very much for your assistance! Because I encouraged my correspondents to go into detail on particular subjects that interested them, not all of my questions were answered, and I did not receive many responses to any one question. For this reason, and because my sample was arrived at by means that were anything but scientific, I have refrained from making quantifiable judgments except where I was fairly certain that I was correct. Readers interested in such things as the most common effects of marijuana are referred to Appendix II, where I have included conclusions from several other studies. The people represented in this book are self-selected. They tend to be unusual in the following respects: marijuana is probably more important to them, and they probably use it more often and more consciously, than is true for most smokers. Those users who responded by mail tended to be between the age of fifteen and forty; having grown up in a relatively free climate with regard to marijuana, the younger smokers were less nervous about telling their experiences to a stranger than were the relatively older users. A number of college and graduate students are represented in this book, along with some high school students, mental health workers, teachers, writers, artists, musicians, housewives, office workers, salespeople, mechanics, broadcasters, computer programmers, restaurant workers, drug dealers, journalists, and prisoners. Among the people not fully represented in this book, in terms of their probable statistical representation among all marijuana smokers, are, most significantly, users under the age of about fifteen. This is really a separate group of smokers, whose use and misuse of marijuana appears to be rather different from that of the larger population. The statements and the generalizations about smokers in these pages do not necessarily apply to this group. Also not fully represented in this book are smokers over fifty, members of minority groups, blue-collar workers, civil servants and politicians, latter-day hippies, and, so far as I am aware, homosexuals. Women and men are represented about equally. Except for occasional changes in grammar and style for the sake of clarity, quotations from users appear virtually unedited. At the back of the book, I have included in full some of the more interesting and informative letters I received. With both the letters and the interviews, I have omitted or slightly altered any details that might reveal the identity of the person being quoted. In a few cases, where an individual makes several appearances in the book, I have provided a pseudonymous first name for the sake of continuity. Scientists or other experts quoted from either conversations or written work are referred to by their full names. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (9 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction A Note on Language With some exceptions for the titles of books and articles, I have used the spelling "marijuana" throughout. I have not distinguished among such terms as "high," "stoned," "wrecked," and so forth, and neither did most of those who communicated with me. A few years ago, there were clear delineations: a smoker might first "catch a buzz," and then get "high." If he or she continued smoking, or if the marijuana were of good quality, the next stage might be "stoned" and then "wrecked," followed by "wasted"—although few smokers want to alter their consciousness to that extent. These days, most users employ these various terms casually and more or less interchangeably, which is how they are used in this book. Curiously, there is no adequate word in our culture to describe the opposite of being high. Users speak of "coming down" after being high, and of being down, straight, sober, and even normal, but nobody seems very satisfied with these terms, which don't really express what the user means: simply the absence of feeling high. A "joint" is a marijuana cigarette. A "toke" is a puff; the word is also used as a verb. To "turn on" once meant to smoke marijuana for the first time; now it simply means to get high, which is also known as "partying" by younger smokers. A "roach" is the butt of a joint, universally thought to be the most potent part of the cigarette (although this has never been established for certain); the word is thought to have come from the butt's resemblance to a cockroach. A "lid" is a measurement of marijuana, either an ounce, or slightly less, depending on the year and the city; today, the expression is used more in the West than in the East and appears to be on its way out. A "head," which comes from the epithet "pothead," refers to somebody who smokes marijuana; among many smokers, "head" refers to anybody who smokes more than they do. Throughout this book, I have used the pronoun "he" as a convenience in referring to smokers of both sexes. The single most popular expression among marijuana smokers is "oh wow!" In writing this book, I have done my best to avoid using this phrase. Instead, my purpose has been to suggest some of the thoughts and feelings that lie behind "oh wow!" and to investigate and describe some of the many things the words can mean. Marijuana smokers refer to marijuana in a variety of ways, with "pot," "grass," "smoke," and "dope" being the most common designations. "Herb" and "weed" are popular in some circles. Older names for marijuana include "jive," "goof-butts," "muggles," "gauge," "Mary Jane," "loco-weed," "tea," "reefer," and "boo." The botanical name of the most common type of marijuana is Cannabis sativa L.; more often, it is simply called cannabis. On the subject of names, a Boston poet had this to say: I've always been partial to "cannabis" as a name for it; "kif" and "bhang" are http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (10 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction pretentious and pedantic, although they sound wonderful. "Hash" is hash; "grass" and even "marijuana," I find, are two words that folks even at our callow level of hipness shun to use. "Shit" is a word we use mid-Saturday evening at some stranger's apartment in Central Square where we're stopping off on the way to somewhere else. A joint is circulating, and we decide we don't care what we sound like, and the word has to be used with an adjective like "good" or "bad" or, better, "dynamite." If we happen to be near MIT, it might be, "toroid... y'know what I mean?" Then there's a whole set of poetic synonyms, most of which I've forgotten, like silt, gelt, wacca-wacca, dog, wind, bull, wand, shazam, pussy, wing, volt, dirt, moon, and so on. But mostly: the weed, stuff, and of course, dope. "Dope" has an interesting history: it began as the word parents and teachers used derogatorily to ward off its use by kids; the word caught on sometime in the '60s, at first humorously, as if to try on the bourgeois characterization for size, then in self-satire, then with just a slight waning-to-infinitesimal giddiness, then finally, more routine use, no longer ironic. It's almost all used up as a word, but the more I have the stuff, the more I'm not altogether certain it's a bad designation. But that's still an open question. One way or another, each word we use has its own shape, its own set of resonances, its own social context. I like "cannabis," especially in phrases like "Oh yes, he uses cannabis." A name's a posture. Notes: 1. Biblical quotation: Genesis 28: 12. From Everett Fox, "In the Beginning: An English Rendition of the Book of Genesis," Response 6, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 75. Revised, 1979, by the translator. (back) 2. For a comprehensive consideration of the French hashish writers, see Lester Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered, pp. 55-85. (back) 3. Gallup: Marijuana in America (Princeton, N.J.), Report No. 143, June 1977, p. 1 (back) 4. Social scientists: See Erich Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, and Charles Tart, On Being Stoned. (back) 5. For more on names by which smokers call marijuana, see "R., the Dope Connoisseur," "What Do You Call This Stuff?" High Times, March 1979, pp. 18-19. (back) http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (11 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM High Culture - Introduction Send e-mail to The Psychedelic Library: [email protected] The Psychedelic Library | Books Menu Page http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culturei.htm (12 of 12)4/15/2004 6:51:50 AM  High Culture - Chapter 1 The Psychedelic Library Homepage Books Menu Page High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans by William Novak 1. An Overview of Marijuana Suddenly you're through the looking glass. It's your bedroom or living room all right, and everything is exactly the same, but everything is exactly different than it ever was before you were stoned. And suddenly you don't care about your arthritis, or that you have to appear in court the next day because of a speeding ticket, or that you've got a mid-term paper due in two days, or that you've only got one ear. — A Child's Garden of Grass General Effects Only two effects of marijuana on the human body have been established without question: a reddening of the eyes (conjunctival vascular congestion) and a temporary increase in the rate of heartbeat (tachycardia) Marijuana also appears to dry up the mouth and the tear ducts. Although marijuana is not new to American life, and although its recorded history goes back several thousand years, it was not until 1968 that these basic facts were established. In a study conducted at Boston University, Dr. Norman E. Zinberg of the Harvard Medical School and Andrew Weil, then a medical student at the same institution, conducted a series of pilot experiments in an effort to learn about the effects of marijuana intoxication http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (1 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 on human beings. What made the experiments notable was that this was the first study of cannabis to be conducted in a double-blind fashion, with neither the subjects nor the administrators of the experiments aware during the study of who was smoking marijuana and who was smoking a well-designed placebo. Among other findings, the Zinberg and Weil study disproved the commonly held notion that marijuana causes a dilation of the pupils This "fact" had been so prominently believed by the general public that it was often used by the police as a cause for searching a residence for illicit drugs. Some drugs do cause a dilation of the pupils, but marijuana Is not one of them. This basic error is typical of the state of marijuana "research" until the 1960s, before which, apparently, nobody had thought to study the drug scientifically. The misconception about dilated pupils arose in the first place, Zinberg and Weil speculated, because smokers were using marijuana in darkened rooms; that, and not the drug, accounted for the change. Subsequent studies and surveys have revealed other basic effects of marijuana. Users commonly report an increased ability to concentrate on whatever it is they are doing or thinking about; for many, marijuana leads to a general increase in the intensity of most aspects of life. Another very common effect is a heightening of sensual excitation: listening to music, viewing a film or work of art, making love, eating—all are commonly reported to be enhanced by marijuana. Often, when a user is high, one of his senses will work cooperatively with another in a process known as synesthesia: for example, a smoker may have the sensation of being able to "see" the music he is listening to. In addition, many users find that abstract ideas and sensations become more concrete, and more visual as well. Under the influence of marijuana, time appears to pass more slowly, short-term memory seems to be impaired, and smokers often find themselves feeling relaxed, free, creative, and outside the normal restraints of time, space, and, sometimes, social amenities. Users speak of a sense of "well-being" and commonly feel peaceful and content. They tend to feel happy, as well. "When I'm high," says a day-care worker, "my mouth starts to hurt from smiling so much." The high normally reaches its peak within about half an hour after smoking; after another hour, it often gives way to a slight lethargy or tiredness. Conversation and general awareness, after being stimulated during the first hour, will often fade a little in the second. This process is known as "coming down," and for some smokers it is slightly unpleasant, resulting in a headache or in a "cloudy" or "foggy" mental state. The effects of coming down may be delayed by a second or third round of smoking or by going to sleep. The most common aftereffect is tiredness, which, for a few smokers, extends into a kind of hangover the following day. Although different kinds of marijuana appear to have somewhat different effects, the determining factors reside in the individual rather than in the drug. Marijuana's most common effects occur in the mind of the user. Ideas may flow more quickly ("like throwing gasoline on a fire," observes a scientist), and the smoker may find himself thinking more imaginatively and perhaps gaining a new perspective on a familiar scene or problem. The new perspective sometimes renders events transcendent; at other http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (2 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 times, it illuminates the mundane; occasionally, the user may have trouble knowing the difference. There are physical effects as well, and smokers sometimes talk of such responses as a tingling sensation in their limbs, a drop in body temperature, and various other subtle changes. But it is not clear whether these changes are real or merely imagined As sociologist Howard Becker explains it, "There are all kinds of physical and even psychological events going on in your body all the time. Most of them you've learned to ignore, like momentary tics of a muscle, or quivers, or other things of that kind. Ordinarily, you feel it happening and you say, 'Oh, that.' When you're a child, you tell your mother and she tells you not to worry about it. And the next time it happens, you ignore it. On marijuana, however, you might not ignore it, especially if you're nervous about using the drug. But if you just sit and pay serious attention to your body for a few minutes, whether or not you're stoned, you'll discover all sorts of things going on, things you would normally ignore, things which are capable of being interpreted if you're so inclined." Many smokers speak of an increased awareness of their bodies in positive terms. "I can almost feel the blood rushing through my veins," says one man, "and the boom boom boom of my heart." How Marijuana Works The agent in marijuana that is thought to be responsible for most of the drug's effects is a psychoactive chemical called delta-g-tetrahydrocannabinol, commonly known as THC. Generally speaking, THC is found in greater quantities in marijuana plants grown in tropical climates, although the determining factor is not environment but heredity. While potency is generally measured in terms of the THC content, marijuana also contains dozens of related chemicals known as cannabinoids, which are unique to the cannabis plant. Research on the effects of these other chemicals is still in the early stages. Much of the THC in the marijuana plant is concentrated in the sticky resin exuded from its flowering tops when it reaches maturity. These flower tops, together with the upper leaves of the plant, are dried, crushed, and shipped from their country of origin to marijuana smokers in the United States and elsewhere. (Hashish is generally made from the resin alone, although contrary to popular belief, it is not a standard substance; like stew, hashish is made differently in different societies. According to folklore, hashish used to be made by having laborers run naked through fields of cannabis. The resin that stuck to their bodies was scraped off with a special blunt knife, and was then treated and dried and pressed into hashish.) Whether or not a person will feel high after smoking marijuana depends on a number of factors. An obvious consideration is the quality of the marijuana that is being smoked, which is generally measured in terms of potency, or THC content. Quantity is important http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (3 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 too, but only up to a point. Most smokers agree that while there is a significant difference between a single toke and smoking an entire joint, there is little difference between, say, two joints and three other than the increased likelihood of fatigue and headache. There is, apparently, a law of diminishing returns after the first joint. In addition to the quality and quantity of the marijuana that is smoked, the nature and extent of the high will also depend on such factors as the freshness of the marijuana, the origin of the plant, and which part of the plant is being smoked. However, without the use of a laboratory or of rather technical machinery, there is no way for the smoker to know for certain the strength of a particular sample before smoking it. Indeed, it is not always easy for the smoker to assess the potency of the marijuana even after smoking it, but that is another discussion (see chapter 11) Until legalization occurs, there can be no equivalent other than hearsay and an educated guess as to the tar levels indicated on a package of cigarettes or, perhaps more accurately, to the proof markings on a bottle of wine or whiskey. Until a few years ago, drug researchers believed that most of the effects of marijuana were determined by the drug itself. But the more marijuana is studied, the more it appears that the marijuana experience depends on a host of other factors. For the sake of convenience, these are frequently grouped together by researchers under the rather formal phrase "set and setting." "Set" has to do with a series of factors relating to the smoker, including his personality, history, mood at the time of smoking, life-style, outlook on life, past drug experiences, and especially his expectations of the drug's probable effects at the time of its use. "Setting," on the other hand, has to do with factors relating to the smoker's external environment, as described in physical, social, and even cultural terms. In his study of marijuana smokers, psychologist Charles Tart described set and setting in this way: "The particular effects of a drug are primarily a function of a particular person taking a particular drug in a particular way under particular conditions at a particular time." Although most researchers at least pay lip service to the importance of set and setting, they often describe the effects of marijuana as though they were the same for everybody. Even smokers are often convinced that other smokers experience the same results they do. But the facts indicate otherwise. It makes little sense to discuss the effects of marijuana in general, because people do not smoke marijuana in general. Marijuana smokers are individuals who differ from each other in many ways and who use the drug with different degrees of frequency, at different times, and for different reasons. Just as the bored housewife who drinks compulsively at home in the afternoons has little in common with the priest who sips wine at communion, other than that they are both consuming an alcoholic beverage, so, too, marijuana smokers are a diverse group who use the drug in a variety of ways. There are smokers who use marijuana only for special occasions, others who smoke on weekends, and still others who use it habitually, like cigarettes. Some people smoke it for fun, or to stimulate thinking, or for sex, or for relaxing; others smoke because they hope to be stimulated verbally, sensually, emotionally or creatively. Still others use marijuana as a medicine or a sleeping aid, or to work or to escape from work. Invariably, these differences have little to do with the drug, http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (4 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 and everything to do with its users. The point seems simple enough, but it needs reinforcement; almost everything that most people have been taught about drugs is negated by the idea of set and setting. An analogy from religion may be helpful here. The Buddhist or Hindu mystic who has a religious vision is unlikely to witness an appearance by Elijah or Jesus; such a possibility lies outside his set and setting. Or, in the words of Thomas De Quincey, the English writer who described the effects of opium to an eager public, "if a man whose 'talk is of oxen' should become an opium eater, the probability is, that (if he is not too dull to dream at all)—he will dream about oxen." That is an example of set. Setting refers to a complex of variables outside the individual using the drug. In our own time, a particularly important aspect of setting is the attitudes of our society toward various illicit drugs. For example, in the 1960S American smokers commonly described feelings of "paranoia," but these feelings have been declining steadily over the past few years. In some other cultures, where marijuana is more generally accepted, they do not occur at all. Similarly, volunteers in experiments who are asked to smoke marijuana in sterile laboratories under rigorously controlled conditions of neutrality do not normally have the same experiences as they do smoking at home with their friends. The point would seem obvious, but it is routinely overlooked by drug researchers. Being High "Our normal waking consciousness," wrote William James, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.... While William James was interested in drugs, he was not thinking of marijuana when he wrote these words. Still, his observation sounds familiar to contemporary marijuana users, for whom the drug's effects represent what is commonly referred to as an altered state of consciousness. As marijuana smokers are well aware, contemporary Western society operates under a common and convenient myth that holds that there is only one real and operative form of consciousness, variously known as the ego state, rationality, or logic. This, we are told in many ways, is what is known as "reality," while other forms, other states of consciousness, be they dreams, physical sensations, drug-induced states, hypnosis, precognition, or intuition, have been—and for the most part still are—considered to be http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (5 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 distortions and aberrations. Many marijuana users find it difficult to adhere to these beliefs of what constitutes reality. Indeed, for some, marijuana has served as a teacher whose principal lesson has been that life holds multiple forms of reality. "Marijuana has helped me to see the phenomenal power of plural" is how one man puts it, continuing: "There is more than one way to look at something, and marijuana has made me aware that perception and consciousness can come in more than one kind of package." A computer programmer speaks of "getting into another realm, and, when that isn't possible, at least accepting that there is another realm." It is only in recent years that social scientists and others have begun to pay serious attention to altered states of consciousness, which include such diverse phenomena as parapsychological manifestations, meditation, and prayer. Of those who have investigated states of consciousness resulting from marijuana and other drugs, Andrew Weil has made an especially significant contribution. After completing work on the 1968 marijuana study in Boston, Weil went on to write a book about states of consciousness, with and without drugs. The Natural Mind was published in 1972, and it is something of a classic among marijuana users, being a lively and imaginative theoretical treatment of the marijuana experience. Weil believes that all people are high all of the time on some level, and that the point of using drugs is not so much getting high as connecting with a high that is already there. And so for most users, Weil writes, smoking marijuana becomes an opportunity, and sometimes an excuse, to experience a mode of consciousness that is actually available to everyone all the time without drugs, even though most people do not know how to get there in other ways. Drugs, Weil insists, do not contain highs; highs are latent in the human nervous system, waiting to be triggered or released by various mechanisms. This is a message that marijuana users hear all the time from opponents of drug use, but coming from Andrew Weil, it carries more credibility and seems far less of a moral prejudice. In one way or another, many of the people I interviewed for this book made a similar point: "I don't think marijuana really adds anything that isn't there in the first place," I was told repeatedly. "It just enhances and brings out what's inside of you." Again and again, smokers described variations on this basic theme, not casually but thoughtfully, and often after a decade or more of smoking marijuana. Although these various articulations of the same idea mean that it has become part of the conventional wisdom about marijuana, it is interesting that each person came to this realization individually, and nobody seemed aware that many other marijuana users had come to believe the same thing. Objectivity, or Double Consciousness One of the least understood aspects of marijuana intoxication on the part of the nonusing public is the process of "double consciousness," whereby the smoker, despite being http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (6 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 affected by the high, is nonetheless able to reflect upon it with almost complete objectivity while it is taking place, and is able, if the need arises, to "come down" from the high almost at will. "Every time I get stoned," says an Oregon woman, "I have the feeling that I'm watching myself" Her daughter describes a similar feeling: My body's there, but my mind is up higher, watching me. Once I got high in school, and we were playing volleyball. I was watching the ball going back and forth, and I realized how stupid the whole thing must have looked. Here we were, a bunch of teenagers lunging out to hit a ball over a net, for no real reason. It looked so funny that I started laughing in the middle of the game. Other smokers refer to this phenomenon as "detachment," or "disassociation." For a Chicago man, double consciousness feels like being in a bubble, where he is part of what is going on but also removed from it. Smokers who experience this phenomenon—and it is very common—do not regard it as a detriment to their enjoyment of the high. On the contrary; for most users it actually increases the pleasure. Lenny, a New England businessman, explains that the sense of being grounded provides "something concrete to stand on while the rest of me can drift off." He elaborates: Because marijuana is a stimulant, you're aware that you're stoned. You're aware that you're not functioning or perceiving things entirely normally. But your judgment remains more or less the same, so you can usually tell how stoned you are. With a depressant, like alcohol, your judgment is affected, so you're not always aware that you're not aware. That's a crucial difference: on marijuana, you know that something has changed; on alcohol, you might not even realize it. The sensation of double consciousness is so common a part of the marijuana experience that many smokers are often not even aware of it. An interesting exception is this Atlanta secretary, who feels it to an unusual degree: When I'm very stoned, I find myself switching constantly between two or more frames of mind. In both of them I am aware of being stoned, but they differ in their effects. One frame of mind, which I call A, allows me to really get into being stoned. I have insights and revelations, I feel good, let my imagination run free, and generally have a good time. In A, reality is secondary and I rely on instinct to deal with real situations. In B, the other frame of mind, I deal more directly with reality, and am more aware of the world around me. I can get into a conversation or a piece of music, or if I'm driving, I can concentrate on that. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (7 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 The neat thing about all of this is the way I can switch from one frame of mind to the other. It can happen, initially, as often as every few seconds, and once I figure out what triggers the switch, I can do the switching at will. For example, it might have something to do with whether my eyes are open or shut. Sometimes just changing the direction of my gaze can cause the jump from A to B or back again, or it could be something as simple as changing positions in my chair. And if I have started a nice fantasy in A, I can switch to B temporarily, and then jump right back to A and pick it up right where I left off. Related to double consciousness is the ability of most smokers to "come down" or "turn off" the marijuana high when it becomes inappropriate or interfering. Typically, this occurs when the user is pleasantly stoned at home in the evening. The phone rings with an urgent business matter, or bad news, or somebody the person doesn't care to speak with while stoned. Most experienced smokers can handle this situation easily, although this usually involves some kind of sacrifice or payment, a using up of part of the energy of the high, in order to deal properly with the problem or person at hand. Novice smokers routinely find themselves undergoing a kind of on-the-spot training, in which they must suddenly cope with a minor emergency when they are stoned. Usually, to their surprise, they function perfectly well, and this in turn provides reassurance and confidence for the future. Often, there is a sense of mastery and pride that the user feels after meeting such a challenge, and a sense of control that contributes to the enjoyment. Why People Smoke People use marijuana for a variety of reasons. The most famous, peer pressure, is indeed one of them, but it is actually far down on the list, and is much less prominent a reason than the public apparently believes. The most important reason that people try marijuana is out of curiosity; they stay with it if the experience is fun or enjoyable or stimulating. Our society finds it profoundly difficult to accept the notion that some people use marijuana and other nonmedical drugs primarily because they lead to experiences that are fun, or meaningful, or both. Built upon formidable Puritan roots, American culture retains the lingering legacy of, in Mencken's famous phrase, "the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy." That a rational and responsible person might deliberately perform an act that may not be socially useful or in any way related to the work ethic is a difficult notion—unless, of course, that person needs to use drugs. And so, in each decade of the twentieth century, society has invented various reasons to explain the increased use of alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs, including Prohibition, the end of Prohibition, economic depression, war, social tensions, political alienation, conformity, nonconformity, and most recently, the youthful rebellion and the "me decade." By now it http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (8 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 should be clear that while such "reasons" come and go with the years, the use of drugs continues to escalate without regard to the explanations. In the 1960s, social generalizations about drug use did make some sense. In that era, marijuana smoking was something more than a personal decision; it constituted an act of belonging to a specific subculture or community, with its own norms and values. These days, however, marijuana smokers belong to the same society as everybody else; one result of this change is that even those smokers who appear to use the drug casually have often given serious thought to their reasons for smoking. For some, this reflection may be due to their discomfort in performing an illegal act; for those who find themselves sharing most of society's values and norms, marijuana smoking constitutes an act of defiance they feel they must explain, if only to themselves. When marijuana users talk about what they find attractive in marijuana, they often mention its effect of allowing the mind to wander almost effortlessly, visiting new places and returning to familiar ones, and focusing in on issues and objects that often lie beyond the normal range of concerns. The focus may be on the secrets of the universe, or a sudden preoccupation with the colors or the pattern of the living room rug; marijuana generally does not respect the operative boundaries that separate the ridiculous from the sublime. When one's normal range of concerns becomes fixed on depressing, trivial or unproductive topics, marijuana may help the user get unstuck, as this research scientist explains: I smoke pot because I enjoy the idea that one minute my mind and body are tired, confused and depressed, and the next minute it doesn't matter. The high has built up unknowingly while I've been smoking, and the doors of my mind have been opened. My problems and frustrations don't go floating away, but rather, they are no longer important for a while. I can still conjure them up if I want there are, after all, still bills to pay, doctors to visit, relatives to deal with. But where does such worrying get you? Often, marijuana allows its users to shift their minds away from their own problems and to focus instead on the world immediately around them. And that world, the smokers report, is suddenly more interesting, more alive, more rich with details and possibilities. A retired professor mentions that he smokes whenever he wants to enjoy what he is doing even more. "Life is beautiful," he says, "why not make it transcendent?" Many smokers find that when they are stoned, they appreciate ordinary things more deeply and become more intensely involved in routine experiences. This is in sharp contradiction to the popular view that smokers use marijuana to "escape" or to avoid coping with "reality." Indeed, both of these uses are possible and, particularly in the case of younger smokers, not uncommon. But most adult smokers find it difficult to use marijuana as an escape, because it simply doesn't work well in that capacity. As a law student put it, "If I smoke to forget some important problem, I'll usually end up thinking about it all the harder. Very often, in fact, I'll be able to solve it, or at least http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (9 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 to understand why I have it." Some smokers argue, with respect to those who do use marijuana to escape, that it is unfair that such people are judged more harshly than their friends and colleagues who escape in other ways, through television, for example, or music, movies, friends, sleeping, work, or a dozen other routes. Every recreational activity has the potential of being used both well and poorly, and marijuana is no exception. As one smoker puts it, "If something you do for pleasure gets in the way of your life, then it's escape. Otherwise, it's play." Besides, argue some smokers, a certain amount of escape is both necessary and desirable. A Detroit family described the role played by marijuana in the recuperation of their daughter, a high school student who had been bedridden for months by back surgery. During this period, she used marijuana daily to cope with the pain and the boredom. She regards her own use as escape, but defends it as being essential to her mental health and happiness during an otherwise miserable winter. But for most smokers, escape is simply not a real issue. On the contrary; for many, marijuana leads to a greater sense of involvement that may, paradoxically, be experienced in terms of detachment or separation. In such cases, marijuana may help the user isolate a particular problem, task, or experience, acting as a kind of chemical coloring agent that shows component parts in relief from the whole that surrounds them. A man who works for an insurance company describes how this process works for him: Smoking marijuana helps me see my life as a continuous whole. It allows me to step back from my daily concerns and see the direction in which I am headed. If I then feel I should make adjustments, marijuana helps me decide how to proceed. By removing myself temporarily from my daily concerns, I can see how certain little things—an argument I may have had, for example—are just not as important as I had once thought. Not only that, but it also makes me feel that the only way to get past such a problem is by constructive action, rather than mournful brooding. Claire, a radio announcer who studied philosophy in college, makes a similar point about the relationship between detachment and involvement: Plato believed that the true philosopher had to step back from the everyday world—the Agora, the marketplace, he called it; there, men are too busy with the mundane details of life: buying and selling, eating and sleeping, taking care of business. To find truth and beauty, Plato said, a man has to remove himself from the business of the everyday world. For me, marijuana serves such a function. It is a way of stepping out of the routine, and gaining a fresh perspective. It allows me to take the time to simply enjoy and appreciate what is going on, to see beauty in everyday things that I would otherwise never notice. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (10 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 How Smokers Know They Are High For some people, the change from "straight" to stoned comes gradually, and there is no distinct point where one sensibility yields to another. Other smokers find that marijuana hits them all at once: "Five brains open up in my head." An Ohio woman notices that every time she smokes marijuana from a batch with which she is unfamiliar, she experiences a period of waiting and wondering, not knowing what exactly is going to happen, or even whether she is going to feel stoned. Smokers who have been high hundreds of times sometimes have a similar experience. David, a journalist for a Jewish magazine, describes smoking as involving a "leap of faith" and compares the process to that of climbing a ladder whose top step is missing. "You have to take a bit of a jump," he explains, "and if you don't make the effort, you won't get high. There's no free ride." Judy, a psychotherapist, often finds herself concerned that she won't get high after smoking; to compensate, she will have what she calls "an insurance toke." For example, if she has smoked with friends before going out to dinner, she may, upon arriving at the restaurant, remain in the car an extra moment for the insurance toke, to make sure she will remain high through the meal. The insurance toke serves another purpose; generally, the most interesting and energetic parts of the high occur within a few minutes of smoking, and to achieve the best results, some users prefer to smoke smaller quantities of marijuana spread over several hours, rather than a larger amount all at once. One way that smokers know they are stoned is that they begin to experience a certain distance between themselves and the rest of the world, which they often describe as similar to the relationship between a film or a play and its audience. Some smokers report that they see themselves as the audience; others feel like the actors. "I find myself making dramatic gestures as though somebody's watching me, even though nobody is" is how one woman describes it. Similarly, many smokers experience the world around them in staged or dramatic terms. One person calls it "the capital letters syndrome," explaining, "When I'm high, the person I'm with is not just standing around the kitchen making cookies, but is instead Standing Around the Kitchen Making Cookies. The actions seem more important, more deliberate, and more meaningful." David makes a similar point, saying that when he is stoned, he notices that his friends become an exaggerated extension of themselves: It's very different from the effects of alcohol, which seems to change people in a different way. On marijuana, sloppy people get sloppier, tidy people are continually emptying ashtrays, witty people become even more clever, and funny people are a riot. Unfortunately, boring people become excruciatingly boring, although they are often easier to tolerate because I too am stoned, and I'm usually more flexible and less uptight. My friends become so very much more themselves, almost to the point of http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (11 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 being self-parodies. I think to myself: here is Joel becoming so Joel, Eva being the essential Eva, and Leora as a caricature of herself. Some smokers feel this way about themselves, as well. Laurence McKinney, a Boston writer and educator, explains why: There are parts of you—in fact, 95 percent of you—that are like everybody else. Physically, you're almost exactly like everybody else. But your personality is different. How you view things, your likes and dislikes, the various elements which make up who you are, these are different as well. This has to do with the higher cortical centers in your brain. Now here comes marijuana, which is suddenly going to speed up the entire operation, like pouring grease onto a fire. So for about an hour and a half, you are going to be very much yourself. Every person becomes much more themselves. And the things that particularly interest you normally will become fascinating when you're stoned. There appears to be no standard way in which people experience and identify the moment wherein they know for sure that they are stoned, and not all smokers experience that moment consciously. For some, it may be a physical sensation in the body, or a certain familiar mental process. For a Wisconsin teacher, it is a series of perceptual changes that she describes: Within a few seconds of taking a toke or two, the show gets on the road. If the marijuana is good, I can tell right away. Little visual scenes, like the arrangement of the salt and pepper shakers on the table, or the linoleum patterns, will start to hint at inner meaning. Across the room, the sparkle of an aluminum pot becomes a sly wink. The radio music from the hall starts to manifest itself with a new clarity, as though the radio and I were the last living things in the world. When I get up, my motions feel exaggerated, goofy, entrancing. Somebody comes into the room and we get into a conversation. All attention is on the subject at hand. At some point I might mention that I'm stoned; the other person says she hasn't noticed, and I wonder how that could be. Relating to Marijuana http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (12 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 Almost by definition, committed smokers enjoy a relationship with marijuana. "If I go for a week or two without smoking," says a Philadelphia clergyman, "I feel like I haven't been home." But among smokers there exists a wide range of attitudes toward the drug, depending on such factors as the frequency with which they use it, their age, and the attitudes of the culture around them. There are smokers for whom marijuana is barely a drug at all; they use it habitually and have long ago stopped getting high. At the other end of the spectrum are those who use marijuana as a kind of miracle drug, who ascribe to it an endless string of positive characteristics, sometimes viewing it as a kind of sacrament that must be treated as something special in order for the user to fully enjoy and appreciate its gifts: Grass gives you time, a very precious gift, to think about what you did today, and what you're going to do tomorrow, and also what you did yesterday, and why. You learn the reasons for the things you do, and it lets you learn quickly, without wasting much time. All dope is good for the experienced user, but you have to know how to use it instead of lose it, or else it's wasted—and so are you. And so is the time you've used up without learning anything. This approach is similar to the quasi-religious attitude of those smokers who view marijuana in terms of a natural product that has been put on earth specifically for the enjoyment and enlightenment of human beings. A college freshman explains: Like trees, earth and water, pot is truly a gift from heaven. It makes you happy, confident and patient. It makes me truly enjoy people and enjoy living. If you go up to a complete stranger and ask if they want to get high, chances are they will jump at the opportunity. I came within an inch of going to prison once for possession of marijuana, but I'll never quit getting high. I have never met anyone who regrets that he has started smoking, and I believe that everybody should try it once in his life. For Judy, this feeling occurs only occasionally, when marijuana appears unexpectedly: A particularly wonderful thing is to come upon some dope by surprise. Like on a Saturday afternoon: my husband and I have driven around trying to buy furniture, and we're on each other's nerves and fighting. We decide to treat ourselves to Chinese food. It sounds like a great idea, we are both thinking, but it's too bad we don't have any dope. Then one of us gets the brilliant notion that there may be a roach in the ashtray, and lo and behold, there is! Actually, there are several, but there is only one just big enough to help erase the cares of the day, and allow us to http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (13 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 laugh at them and enhance our dinner. The "roach in the ashtray" experience occurs infrequently, and it really has to, by definition; it is most authentic and most gratifying if it's a surprise. For many smokers, there is an inverse relationship between the frequency with which they smoke and the extent to which they value marijuana. Carol is a psychiatric nurse in her mid-thirties who smokes only once or twice a month. Her life by no means revolves around marijuana, and yet it is clearly important to her: Sometimes I have found myself thinking: this particular high tonight is worth the whole cost of this ounce, even if it's fifty dollars. Obviously, this is one item in which I'm getting my money's worth. I really don't flinch anymore if the ounce is fifty dollars. I know I'll keep it a long time and get immeasurable pleasure from it. Part of a smoker's relationship with marijuana may involve a personal understanding of how it works, of what it means to the smoker. Occasionally, a smoker will explain this in metaphorical terms. Marijuana, says an Oklahoma man, "is truly a weed that turns to a flower in your mind." David uses a different image: I think there's a lot of mythology about how grass works. If you open a window, for example, and see a lovely view, you surely don't assume that the window caused the view. And yet people are always making that mistake about grass. It doesn't give you anything new; it gives you access to new things. The results are the same, but the process is different. Notes 1. Epigraph Jack S. Margolis and Richard Clorfene, A Child's Garden of Grass (New York, Pocket Books edition, 1975), p. 26. (back) 2. "Only two effects": Andrew T. Weil, "Cannabis," Science Journal 5a: no. 3 (September 1969): 36-42. (back) 3. The Boston University study is described in Andrew T. Weil, Norman E. Zinberg, and Judith M. Nelsen, "Clinical and Psychological Effects of Marihuana in Man," Science 162 (13 December 1968): 1234-42 (back) http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (14 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 4. A complete list of effects, as recorded in the Weil-Zinberg experiments and in other studies, appears in the second appendix to this book. (back) 5. A fuller description of the effects of the major cannabinoids appears in chapter 1 l. (back) 6. Making hashish: Marihuana Reconsidered, p. 39. (back) 7. Tart: On Being Stoned, p. 13. (back) 8. William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1935), p. 298. (back) 9. Weil's view of altered states: Andrew Weil, The Natural Mind, p. 96. For another view of Weil's book, see Lester Grinspoon's review in the New York Times Book Review, (15 October 1972), pp. 26-28. (back) 10. The public's attitude toward drugs: see Norman E. Zinberg and John A. Robertson, Drugs and the Public. (back) 11. "Five brains": Joseph Berke and Calvin C. Hernton, The Cannabis Experience, p. 62. (back) Chapter 2 Send e-mail to The Psychedelic Library: [email protected] The Psychedelic Library | Books Menu Page http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture1.htm (15 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:15 AM  High Culture - Chapter 1 The Psychedelic Library Homepage Books Menu Page High Culture: Marijuana in the Lives of Americans by William Novak 2. The First Time So grand a reward, so tiny a sin. — Indian proverb Slow Beginnings The great majority of smokers speak easily and fondly of their initial experience with marijuana. A number of smokers spoke in terms of two first times: the first time they tried marijuana and the first time they actually got high. It turns out that a surprisingly large number of smokers—perhaps as many as half, perhaps even more—did not get high on their initial attempt. This curious fact is one of the few aspects of marijuana use that has attracted serious thought and attention, although even here there are still unanswered questions. The first marijuana experience is rarely ordinary and is seldom forgotten Commonly, the novice smoker either feels nothing unusual, or else becomes extremely stoned, experiencing dramatic and sometimes memorable effects that may never again be equaled in their intensity. Normally, if the first time is pleasant, there will be others in its wake. If there seem to be no effects at all, the novice may be discouraged. Some beginning smokers, however, are actually relieved when nothing happens; this sets them at ease, since they understand that at least no uncontrollable or frightening event is about to take place. http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture2.htm (1 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:38 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 In their 1968 study of the effects of marijuana, Weil and Zinberg found that "naive" users (subjects who had not tried marijuana prior to the study) did not become subjectively high in a neutral setting and showed only minor changes in measured physical responses to marijuana. One of the naive subjects, upon smoking marijuana for the first time and sensing that it wasn't the placebo, told the experimenters: "I have probably had something but it can't be marijuana because I would be more stoned than this." In fact, the only one of nine naive subjects who did get high during his first attempt was the young man who during the preliminary interviews had shown the most eagerness to try marijuana. In a different study, Erich Goode found that among the respondents to his questionnaire, 41 percent said they did not get high the first time, and another 13 percent weren't sure whether they did or not. Not everybody who tries marijuana shows a noticeable response or undergoes a change of consciousness. Some people appear to be completely resistant or immune to marijuana; they don't, as the Jamaicans say, "have the head for it." "It really does happen," says Norman Zinberg. "There are people who refuse to accept or submit to the experience, who just do not metabolize it. The experience is there, but what people do with it is enormously variable." It is not known whether or not the inability of some people to feel the effects of marijuana is determined physiologically. Many first-time smokers, consciously or not, simply refuse to let go; marijuana is a sufficiently subtle drug that the user must want to experience it. People who do not feel high after their first experience may well exhibit obvious physical effects, and laboratory studies have shown that volunteers may have red eyes, a dry mouth, and an increased heart rate without actually feeling anything different from their everyday, normal sense of reality. Back in 1953, which in terms of marijuana research was still the dark ages, Howard S. Becker, the sociologist, published an essay entitled "Becoming a Marihuana User"; it has long enjoyed the status of a classic, not only among marijuana researchers but in general sociology as well. Becker's essay is important because it suggests a complete and compelling answer to the intriguing question of why so many marijuana smokers do not get high on their first attempt. Becker argues that this may be because most people have to learn to use marijuana, and he outlines a three-step process by which this education occurs. The first phase is merely mechanical and involves learning the technique of inhaling the smoke. A joint, after all, is not smoked like a cigarette; marijuana smoke is most effective when held in the lungs for as long as possible. This can be difficult, initially, for the smoker of tobacco cigarettes to master, and almost impossible for the nonsmoker. Mezz Mezzrow, a white jazz musician whose book Really the Blues tells a great deal about marijuana use among American musicians between the wars, recalls that even he, the most celebrated smoker of his era, failed to get high the first time he tried: I didn't feel a thing and I told him so. "Do you know one thing?" he said. "You ain't even smokin' it right. You got to hold that muggle so that it barely touches your lips, see, then draw in air around it. Say tfff, tfff, only http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture2.htm (2 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:38 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 breathe in when you say it. Then don't blow it out right away, you got to give the stuff a chance." Since Mezzrow's time, and especially during the 1970S, there have been several new developments in the technology of smoking paraphernalia that have made the task of inhaling the smoke considerably easier. The most popular alternative to the marijuana cigarette is a water-cooled pipe known as a bong, which originated in Thailand two centuries ago. The bong allows the user to inhale smoke that may be cooled by ice cubes or tempered by hot water, or even both at once. In addition, there is always the option of eating marijuana, especially in baked goods, but this is more talked about than done. Among veteran smokers, the hand-rolled joint still prevails. After the new user has mastered the proper smoking technique, he must move on to the second step in Becker's scheme, which is to perceive and experience the effects of the drug. That these effects may already be present in the novice smoker is irrelevant unless and until they have been identified and recognized. "The user must be able to point them out to himself and consciously connect them with his having smoked marijuana before he can have this experience," writes Becker. "Otherwise, regardless of the actual effect produced, he considers that the drug has no effect on him." The new user's ability to make this connection depends, as Becker sees it, on his having "faith (developed from observations of users who do get high) that the drug actually will produce some new experience" and on his willingness to continue trying it until it does. But many first-time smokers, unaware of the complexity of this seemingly simple process, lack the patience to wait for the new experience to manifest itself and, more important, lack the knowledge even that patience is required. And so, not having undergone any observable changes on the first or second attempt, many would-be smokers assume that there is nothing in it for them and wonder, in some cases, if there is anything there at all. Presumably, there are several million Americans who have tried marijuana without experiencing any effect and who therefore believe themselves, incorrectly, to be immune to it. Indeed, many probably suspect that the whole enterprise is something of a hoax. Becker's third and final step sounds at first a bit obvious: the user must learn to enjoy the effects he has just learned to recognize. Indeed, for all of the attendant pleasures described by its adherents, being high on marijuana is not intrinsically enjoyable for everyone, involving as it does the shock of another consciousness, frequent disorientation of time and space, occasional awareness of unconscious truths and processes that might easier be left unnoticed, and various physical discomforts such as hunger, fatigue, and dryness of the mouth. To many novice smokers, these annoyances may be more than enough to convince them that marijuana is considerably overrated. While Becker's article represents the most complete answer to the question of why so many first-time users fail to get high, the question is still open. In part, the answer may have to do with the uniqueness of marijuana, whose effects are not directly comparable to anything else in the life of the novice smoker. The most common point of reference, naturally, is alcohol, and the person familiar with that form of intoxication may try http://www.druglibrary.org/special/novak/high_culture2.htm (3 of 15)4/15/2004 6:53:38 AM High Culture - Chapter 1 marijuana and wait in vain for a fairly concrete assault upon the senses, all the while remaining oblivious to the more subtle effects of cannabis. Another possibility, according to some researchers, is that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is changed by an enzyme in the liver into the metabolite known as 11-hydroxy delta-9-THC; it is this metabolite, some scientists believe, rather than "raw" THC that causes the high. Since it is normally present in the body in only minute quantities, several smoking sessions may be required for the liver to start producing sufficient quantities to affect the user. The First Time Most marijuana smokers were introduced to marijuana by a friend, a teacher, a sibling, or a slightly more experienced companion. Others were first turned on at a party, on a date, or with a group of friends. None of the people in my sample reported using marijuana for the first time when they were alone, while Erich Goode found that only 3 percent of his respondents turned themselves on. Although many people experience no effects at all, the opposite phenomenon is also common. Lenny recalls that he enjoyed his first smoking experience so much that he immediately bought two ounces, one of which he sold to a friend, thus becoming a user, a buyer, and a dealer all at once. When the first experience is good, it is often memorable. A salesman from Michigan recalls: I was starting to feel different. A fog started to separate me from my two friends. Charlene wanted to go back, so we piled into my brother's car and started back along the dirt