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The Marijuana Smokers
Erich Goode
Chapter 7 - The Effects of Marijuana
Introductory Considerations
As with other aspects of the drug, describing the marijuana high
has political implications. Both sides of the debate wish confirmation
of their prejudices, and most facts presented will be distorted
to fit them. The postulate, accepted on faith, not fact, that
marijuana is a "crutch" and an "escape from reality,"
and that man ought to be able to live completely without recreational
drugs naturally approaches the drug's effects in a negative way.
Even if harmless, the effects, whatever they may be, are defined
as undesirable.
This aprioristic thinking dominates both sides of the dispute.
The pro side engages in the same mental gymnastics by deciding
beforehand that marijuana can do no harm. It is easy to say that
what we need is less bias and more fact; more fundamental than
facts themselves is the powerful tendency to read facts selectively.
At least two processes operate here: the likelihood of
accepting one or another fact as true depends on
one's prior attitudes toward the drug; and facts may be interpreted
to mean many things since what is a positive event to one
person may be seen as supremely damaging to another. The description
of being high by a user illustrates this axiom: "I felt omnipotent
and completely free. I'm a free soul, a free person, and I often
feel bigger and better than I am now." The marijuana defender
would see this as strong evidence for marijuana's beneficial
effects. The antimarijuana forces would interpret the description
as evidence of the fact that the drug is used as an ego-booster
by spineless personalities; a person should be able to "face
life" without the aid of artificial props. The goodness or
badness of the events themselves clearly depends on how
they are viewed.
Descriptions of the marijuana high run the gamut from pernicious
to beatific; one's conceptions of the drug's impact are highly
structured by ideological considerations. In the 1930S, widely
believed stories were circulated, detailing massacres, rapes,
widespread insanity, debauchery, and feeblemindedness as inevitable
consequences of the use of the insidious weed.[1] One
account, publicized nationwide, had a young man chopping his family
to bits after a few puffs of marijuana. The blood has disappeared,
but the controversy remains, and a novel element in the debate
has been introduced. Whereas marijuana's adherents in the 1930S
saw the drug's effects as being confined within a fairly limited
scope, largely hedonistic and artistic in nature, today's smokers
often extrapolate into philosophical and sociopolitical realms
as well. Although it strains one's credulity to accept the notion
that a marijuana "turnon" of contemporary political,
military and business figures will result in "everlasting
peace and brotherhood,"[2] this
utopian fantasy is as much a fixture of the ideology of many of
the drug's most committed propagandists as were the scare stories
for the marijuana prohibitionists of the 1930S. Yet the question
remains: What are the effects of marijuana?
This seemingly simple question is answerable only with major qualifications,
specifications, and prefatory explanations. To pry into the subject,
it might be fruitful to structure our thinking around a series
of interlocking issues. To begin with, the question of dosage
is crucial. Generally, other things being equal, the heavier
the dosage of a given drug, the more extreme the effects, with
some variations. Marijuana grown in different locations, under
varying climatic and soil conditions, will differ in strength,
which we explained earlier. Also, in general, hashish will produce
more striking and noticeable effects than marijuana containing
mostly leaves. It has been determined that the principle active
chemical in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol (abbreviated
THC). Thus, the most powerful effects may be obtained by administering
the pure chemical to subjects. It is, therefore, meaningless
to ask simply, "What is the effect of marijuana?"
without specifying dosage.
A second qualification before detailing the effects of the
drug involves prior marijuana experiences of the subject.
A significant proportion of marijuana users did not become high
the first time that they smoked the drug,[3] as
pointed out in our chapter on "Becoming a Marijuana User."
In part, much of this may be attributed to improper and inefficient
technique. However, even with the most careful instruction and
technique, some fail to become intoxicated. But when the neophyte
does attain a high, an interesting phenomenon occurs. The effect
of the drug on the newly initiated marijuana smoker appears
to be highly dramatic and almost baroque in its lavishness. His
laughter approaches hysteria. Insights are greeted with elaborate
appreciation. His coordination might rival a spastic's. The experienced
marijuana smoker, on the other hand, learns to handle his
intoxication so that the noticeability to an outsider is almost
nonexistent. He compensates for the effects of the drug, so that
his coordination is no different from "normal." This
is a learning process, not attributable to the direct pharmacological
properties of the drug (which, however, sets limits on the compensatability
of the subject). It is simply a characteristic that experienced
users share and neophytes lack. Yet it is an important qualifying
element in the marijuana picture.
In addition, many of the effects of the drug vary with the attitudes,
personality, expectations, fears, and mood of the user; this is
generally referred to as "set." One experience might
be euphoric and wholly pleasurable; another might be uncomfortable
and frightening, for the same drug, the same dosage, and the same
person. No one has adequate explanation for this variation. A1though
the vast majority of all users report pleasant effects much of
the time, a proportion will occasionally have an experience significantly
different from the usual one. A very few users—who do not, for
this reason, become regular users—report more or less consistently
unpleasant experiences with the drug. Here, personality factors
may be the controlling factor.
Some observers say that marijuana imposes behavior on the user,
that the drug has effects that can be measured, that whatever
happens to the human mind and body during a marijuana intoxication
is a function of the drug so that the individual is said to be
under its influence. To some degree, we have to admit that the
drug is an "objective facticity." It is difficult to
deny a certain degree of factorness of the drug's effect: the
drug is not a zero or a cipher. There are neophytes who smoke
oregano imagining their responses are due to the powers of marijuana.
However, suggestibility has limits. Were all of the world's cannabis
magically substituted for an inert substance that looked the same,
it would become known at once. It would be foolish to deny that
the drug has its effects. Now, this observation might seem blatantly
obvious. Not so. Because the drug's pharmacology exists only as
a potentiality, within which forms of behavior are possible as
an "effect" of the drug. The effects of any drug are
apprehended as subjective experience and experiencing a drug's
effects must be learned. The subculture translates and anticipates
the experience for the neophyte, powerfully shaping the experiences
he is to have. The same bodily response will be subjectively apprehended
in many different ways, and, in a sense the "effect"
is different. The important dimension is not simply, "What
does it do?" This cannot be answered until we know the answer
to the question, "What does it mean?" What does it mean
to the participant? How do the meanings of individuals relevant
to him impinge on his conceptions of the experience? By itself,
the simple physiological question is meaningless, since prior
experiences and learning substantially alter what a drug does.
Another fundamental question connected with, and prior to, the
effects of this drug is, "is the subject high?" The
same quantity of marijuana administered to two subjects will produce
a "bombed out of his mind" reaction in one and no response
in the other. Although objective tests may be applied to determine
this state, many users who report being high do not react very
differently from their normal state. Many inexperienced users,
of course, are not really sure whether they are high or not, and,
as stated earlier, some users seem unusually resistant to becoming
high. The point is, then, that whether the person is high or not
is problematic, and if we want to know the impact of the drug,
we must know this beforehand. The police make an issue of this
point; they feel that if the promarijuana argument on the
relative harmlessness of marijuana bears any authority at all,
it is merely because the varieties of cannabis available in America
are far weaker than varieties available elsewhere. The drug may
be innocuous, but only because it is the very weakest varieties
to which the American user is exposed. Were the drug legalized,
we would be flooded with extremely potent varieties, causing some
of the same kinds of debilitating and disastrous effects reported
in the East:
American-grown cannabis is likely to be a fraud on the hopeful
hippie in that its cannabinol content, in certain seasons and
places, may approach what would be near-beer to the boozer. This
marihuana is almost harmless except for asphyxiation from air
pollution. The hippie's kick is a psychic kick. Chemically speaking,
the victim often is not smoking marihuana, but burning underbrush.
He is not the victim of a drug, but is the sucker of a hoax. There
is enough of this gyp going on to help support the notion that
marihuana is innocuous.[4]
(There is some cross-fertilization in regard to the language going
on here; Donald Miller, Chief Counsel, Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous drugs, in an article which justifies the present legal
structure on marijuana, writes: "... many persons report
they obtain no effects whatever when they use marihuana. They
are not the victims of a drug, but merely have been deceived with
a hoax. There is so much gyping going on that it helps support
the notion that marihuana is innocuous. Chemically speaking, many
... 'triers' of marihuana really have... become partially
asphyxiated from polluted air.")[5]
The reader is seriously asked to believe that a great percentage
of all marijuana users, even some experienced ones ("the
hopeful hippie"), have never really been high, and that they
are experiencing a placebo reaction. Actually, this point serves
propaganda purposes: if anyone who has smoked marijuana has not
been damaged in any way, he must not have gotten high. Thus protected,
the antipot lobbyist is better able to defend the position that
the drug is really dangerous. Actually, the position itself is
something of a fraud. The placebo reaction occurs, of course,
with no mean frequency, but the greater the amount of experience
with the drug, the less likely it is that the subject has experienced
either no reaction or nothing but a placebo reaction. In fact,
the likelihood that a given person who has smoked marijuana more
than, say, a dozen times, thinks that he has been high without
actually experiencing what a truly experienced user would call
a high, is practically nil. The experience has been described
in such florid detail by so many more experienced users that he
who has not attained it is eventually aware of it, and knows when
he finally does attain it.
Throughout any discussion of the effects of marijuana, we must
alert ourselves to the complexity of the equation. The simple
question, 'What are the effects of marijuana?" is
meaningless. The answer to this query would have to be a series
of further questions: Under what circumstances? At what dosage
level? Engaged in what kinds of activities? Given what kind of
legal and moral climate regarding marijuana use? All of these
factors influence the nature, quality, and degree of response
to the drug.
Yet, at the same time, we must not exaggerate the variability
of marijuana's effects. Responses are to some degree systematic.
We do not wish to suggest that individuals react randomly to the
drug. The police will often make this assertion, in support of
the dangers of marijuana: "Medical experts agree on the complete
unpredictability of the effect of marijuana on different individuals."[6] The
reason why this statement is nonsensical is that, of course, the
effects of marijuana cannot be predicted with absolute certainty,
though there will be a reasonably high degree of predictability.
It is extremely important as to the kind of effect we wish to
describe or predict. Some of the many effects of marijuana
will be experienced by nearly all smokers who become high.
Many other effects will be experienced by only a few users.
The Marijuana High: Experiments and Descriptions
Of the thousands of works describing the psychic and bodily effects
of marijuana, the first to meet fairly strict standards of the
application of scientific controls—that is, (1) standardized
dosages were administered, (2) of actual marijuana[7] (3)
in a "double blind" situation, (4) with systematic measures
used to study the effects, (5) to groups with varying degrees
of experience with the drug (naive and experienced), (6) in a
uniform environment—was published in December, 1968.[8] (Also,
significantly, the drug was administered to a nonincarcerated
population.) All of the previous studies were lacking in some
of these respects, or were primarily anecdotal, informal, literary,
or were based on the literal descriptions of the high by smokers,
without checking the accuracy of their descriptions.
Conducted in Boston by pharmacologist-physician Andrew Weil and
psychiatrist, physician, and social psychologist, Norman Zinberg,
this study established beyond question the generation of a few
strictly biological effects of smoking marijuana and suggested
the likelihood of others. It did, however, totally negate the
possibility of some effects commonly associated with pot. The
strictly physiological consequences of marijuana, the study found,
were, first of all, highly limited, and second, extremely superficial
in their impact. Most of the multifarious effects described in
the literature are too ephemeral to be studied under rigid clinical
controls, or simply turned out to be myths. The only positive
effects which the Boston team could establish beyond dispute were
a slight increase in the rate of heart beat, distinct reddening
of the eyes, and probable dryness of the mouth.
This descriptive clinical study documented a few positive effects;
it also demonstrated some negative ones as well. Not only is the
public deluded into believing many myths about marijuana, but
experienced marijuana smokers themselves accept a few. For instance,
it is standard marijuana lore that, when high, one's pupils dilate.
Yet careful measurement under the influence of the drug produced
no such result; pupils remained the same size after administration.[9] How
could such a myth be believed by individuals with countless hours
of experience in the presence of others while smoking marijuana?
The Weil-Zinberg team suggests the answer: marijuana smokers customarily
consume the drug under conditions of subdued light, which would,
in the absence of marijuana, produce dilated pupils anyway. This
finding strongly underscores the need for controlled experimentation,
with each of the suspected causal factors being isolated successively
to test their impact. It also addresses itself to the possibility
of empirically false beliefs having widespread currency among
even the most knowledgeable of individuals.
This research team also turned up a negative finding with regard
to marijuana's impairment of various skill and coordination functions
among experienced users, an area in which it was thought to have
substantial impact. Marijuana, it is said, impairs the ability
to perform manual tasks and manipulations. For instance, it is
claimed that the widespread use of the drug represents a massive
danger to society because of its obvious deterioration of driving
ability, thus increasing the likelihood of fatalities on the road.[10]
"I ask the kids," a journalist
intones, in a series of articles attempting to avert marijuana
use in her readers, "If you have to fly someplace, which
would you rather see your pilot take, a martini or smoke
a marijuana cigarette?"[11] Aside
from the inaptness of the comparison (since very few drinkers
can become intoxicated on one martini, while most marijuana smokers
do become high on one "joint"), the striking thing about
the verbal gauntlet is that the author assumes that the answer
is a foregone conclusion. In fact, do we know the answer?
Which is, as a result of actual tests, the safer and which is
the more dangerous? Curiously, the assertion that it is far more
dangerous to drive under the influence of marijuana has never
been documented; it is assumed. After all, the role of alcohol
in driving fatalities is only too well known; something like twenty-five
thousand deaths every year from automobile accidents can more
or less be directly attributed to the overindulgence of liquor.
The reasoning is that if alcohol is dangerous, marijuana must,
of necessity, be worse, because it is legally prohibited; moreover,
the results of the two together can only be additive.
The only tests done on driving skills was completed a few months
after the Boston experiments in the state of Washington. A team
of researchers, including Alfred Crancer of the Washington State
Department of Motor Vehicles, and James Dille, Chairman of University
of Washington's Department of Pharmacology, conducted an experiment
on simulated driving skills.[12] (Tests
on actual driving conditions are planned.) The various driving
functions were accelerator, signal, brake, speedometer, steering,
and total test score; a total of 405 checks were made throughout
the course of the entire experiment, so that a subject's total
number of errors could range, theoretically, from zero to 405.
Subjects were experienced marijuana users who were also acquainted
with the liquor intoxication. They were administered the test
(1) high on marijuana—they smoked two joints, or 1.7 grams of
marijuana (as a comparison, Weil and Zinberg's subjects were given
half a gram as a low dosage and two grams as a high dosage); (2)
intoxicated on alcohol (two drinks were administered, and a Breathalyzer
reading taken); and (3) in a "normal" state of no intoxication.
What were the results of this driving test? The overall findings
were that marijuana did not impair motor skills, that there
were almost no differences driving high on marijuana and
normal. The total number of driving errors for the normal control
conditions was 84.46; the total number of errors while driving
high on marijuana was 84.49, a trivial difference, well within
random fluctuation. (The only significant difference between the
marijuana-high subjects and the same subjects "normally"
was that high users, on the Crancer test, had to check their speedometers
more.)
The same could not be said for alcohol. Being intoxicated on
liquor significantly diminished one's ability to take the driving
test without error. The total number of errors for the subjects
under the influence of alcohol was 97.44. Crancer, the principal
investigator in this experiment, concludes from it that the drunk
driver is a distinctly greater threat than the high marijuana
smoker. He is quoted, "I, personally, would rather drive
in a car where the chauffeur is high on pot than drive in a car
where the chauffeur is high on alcohol."[13]
However, it is difficult to extrapolate from
thus test, done in an artificial setting, to actual road conditions;
Crancer himself designed the test, and found an extremely close
correlation between test scores and actual driving skills. But
only real-life driving experiments will answer these points definitively;
in any case, at the very least the Washington State driving tests
certainly cast doubt on the fears of many propagandists that widespread
marijuana use will result in an even greater slaughter on the
nation's highways than prevails today. It is even conceivable
that were pot substituted for alcohol in many drivers, the death
toll would actually drop, not rise.
Certainly no one would argue that driving under the influence
of marijuana is preferable to being without the influence of any
drug. But Crancer speculated beyond the test-driving scores in
saying that his "feelings and observations, and that's all
they are—they are not scientific conclusions—lead me to believe
that marijuana has a submissive effect on users."[14]
The effects of the drug subjectively exaggerate
the sensation of speed, and the high driver often thinks that
he is going much faster than he actually is. Some of my own informants
report driving to the side of the road because they thought they
were traveling at a frighteningly rapid speed, when, in fact,
they were driving well under the speed limit. But it is difficult
to see how marijuana could possibly improve driving performance.
However, there is incomplete evidence that high on marijuana,
drivers often drive more slowly than normally, out of fear. The
proposition that the high driver is no worse than normal is definitely
worth exploring; it is conceivable that further tests will reveal
little or no deterioration in driving ability when high on marijuana.
But the hypothesis that the marijuana high deteriorates motor
skills far less than alcohol is, it may safely be said, firmly
established. There is no doubt that, in the typical case, marijuana
affects the ability to drive much less than alcohol.
The Crancer test results, by extension, would seem compatible
with the Boston team's research. Various tests by Weil and Zinberg
were administered to both inexperienced and experienced subjects
under normal and marijuana-intoxicated conditions. These tests
were "pursuit rotor" test, measuring muscular coordination
and attention; the "continuous performance" test, measuring
ability at sustained attention; and the "digit symbol substitution"
test, measuring cognitive functioning. Most generally, the results
consistently showed that among experienced marijuana smokers,
no impairment whatsoever was discerned in the ability to perform
cognitive and muscular tasks, whereas impairment was significant
among inexperienced subjects. Experienced users were fully as
able to perform motor skills and cognitive functions while under
the influence of the drug as in a normal state. Although further
research is needed in the kinds of motor skills in question,
this finding powerfully illustrates the need to support one's
prejudices with empirical facts. To justify marijuana's present
legal status, it is necessary to use damaging "facts"
about marijuana, such as its impairment of driving skills, even
though they are imaginary in character. Recent research shows
the argument that increased marijuana use would contribute considerably
to automobile fatalities to be largely specious. Nonetheless,
it will continue to be invoked for years to come, because of the
need for such an argument. The belief that marijuana makes one
a far more dangerous driver is believed, and will continue to
be believed, even though the chances are great that it is scientifically
false. Yet, scientifically false beliefs can exert a powerful
hold on men's minds.
The Boston research points to the clear presence of almost complete
compensation in the case of marijuana. The ability of the intoxicated
marijuana user to compensate for his state in pursuing motor tasks
is 100 percent. With alcohol, there is partial compensation. The
alcoholic will be able to perform better than the drunk man once
he has had a little experience with alcohol, but the experienced
drinker, sober, always performs better than the experienced drinker,
intoxicated. With marijuana, on the other hand, there seems to
be complete compensation. However, the inexperienced user, with
little or no experience with the drug's effects, will suffer a
distinct loss in motor skills and coordination, and will be unable
to compensate. (The Crancer driving tests, on the other hand,
found no difference between inexperienced and experienced subjects;
subjects who had never smoked marijuana before the test performed
just as well when high on pot as the experienced users did.) It
is a relevant question as to how quickly compensation takes place
for both marijuana and alcohol. I suspect that after a very small
number of experiences with marijuana—perhaps a half-dozen—full
compensation takes place, whereas with alcohol, even partial compensation
takes place only after long conditioning with its effects. The
question of the dose-relatedness of marijuana's impact on coordination
is relevant, although not fully answered. The Weil research team
supplied its subjects with low and high dosages, the former two
cigarettes of a quarter of a gram each, and the latter two cigarettes
of one gram each. Not too surprisingly, with the inexperienced
subjects, impairment was distinctly dose-related, i.e., the stronger
the marijuana administered, the more of a negative impact the
drug had on their coordination. However, with the experienced
marijuana smokers, a higher dosage of the drug had no additional
impact on their skills and coordination; they were able to perform
equally well normally, slightly high, and very high.
Because of obvious possibilities for distortions, as with the
pupil dilation myth, pharmacologists are uncomfortable leaving
the sphere of the directly observable, the experimentally verifiable,
the clearly empirically demonstrable. The sociologist, being somewhat
more detached from the scientific tradition, is less careful about
what he accepts as a "fact." He usually bases his data
on reported statements, rather than direct observation.
Now, this has both advantages and drawbacks. A competent pharmacologist,
performing a carefully controlled experiment, is far more certain
that what he says is true; it is less necessary to repeat the
same experiment, but if it is repeated, he has more confidence
than a sociologist that the results will be confirmed. Although
a sociologist will more often be wrong than a scientist working
within a firm experimental tradition, he will be able to cover
a wider field. By including within his purview the verbal reports
of the individuals whose behavior he is studying, he includes
a range of data which may be highly significant, and which may
tell us a great deal about human behavior. Since I am a sociologist,
verbalized reports by my respondents forms a rich lode of information
for me. Keeping in mind the realization of large possibilities
for distortion, we should nonetheless be able to piece together
a more complete picture of the effects of the drug than a pharmacologist
is able to do, although one which is more open to question since
it is less tightly tied down by unquestionable, demonstrable fact.
We should keep in mind the level of meaning at which we
are aiming. With some phenomena, we may look at the marijuana
smoker as a kind of scientist, reporting on the accuracy of an
observation, which we can check. We have an independent means
of measuring, for instance, reddening of the eyes. Aside from
asking the user, we can simply look at his eyes. Then, we can
check our observations, which we are sure are correct, against
the descriptions of the marijuana user, which may be subject to
error. If there is a discrepancy, as with pupil dilation, we should
supply an explanation for the discrepancy. However, there are
vast realms wherein the ultimate validating device is the experience
of the user, where the subjective grasp of the experience is
the experience, where external verification is not only impossible
but meaningless. It is a level of meaning complete within itself.
And it is here that we must part company with the more careful
pharmacologist.
Psychologists tell us that there are two analytically distinct
processes involved in sense perception. We have, first, the primary
functions, whereby the sense organs are stimulated directly. Certain
sounds are measurably louder than others and, other things being
equal, the mind will apprehend the louder sound as being louder.
However, the directly perceived sense must, in order to be actually
felt, be transmitted to the brain. Thus, there exists a secondary
function associated with sense perception, and that is how the
brain receives the message. The mind might feel differently
about one sound as another; perceptions, then, might also stem
from secondary functions, or what a brain decides to do with the
sense impression it receives. The mind can deal with similar sense
impressions in very different ways, according to their subjective
significance. It can, for instance, subjectively exaggerate the
significance of a "quiet" sound, while minimizing that
of a "loud" sound.
This distinction comes extravagantly into play with the psychoactive
effects of marijuana. For the overwhelming majority of all of
the effects described by marijuana smokers are those involved
with subjective experience. The directly observable consequences
of the drug are few, minimal in importance, and superficial in
impact. Those effects which can only be gotten at by asking the
user to describe them are extravagant, elaborate, and extremely
significant. These effects are wholly subjective and beyond the
reach of scientific tools and instruments. We are in the area
of "thinking makes it so." The experience is defined
in its totality by the subject himself. The mind assimilates and,
in a sense, becomes the experience. The subject apprehends a reality,
explores a subjective realm which reverberates in his own psyche,
accepts the total reality of a given phenomenon without regard
to external validation, and in a sense defines the configurations
of the experience completely.
For this level of meaning we must, of course, ask the marijuana
user what are the effects of the drug. We must rely on his descriptions
of the high to know anything about the subjective lineaments of
the experience. In our interview we included the question:
I want you in as much detail as you can, describe to me everything
that happens to you when you get high the high and everything
else. Try to describe it to a person who has never been high before;
please include everything that you feel, think, perceive, etc.,
whatever it is.
Of our 204 respondents, seven said that they had never been
high, and six said that they had, but claimed not to be able to
describe it in any way, holding that its reality was too subjective
and elusive for description. Our information, therefore, is based
on the 191 individuals who said that they had been high and offered
to describe their experience. It must be remembered that this
was an open-ended question, with no attempt to structure the responses
in any way. This has both virtues and flaws. On the one hand,
we did not force any responses on the interviewees. On the other
hand, their answers might, by their own admission, be incomplete;
they did not necessarily think of all the effects of the drug
in an artificial interview situation, to a stranger. However,
we assume that the ones they mentioned will be most salient to
them, a not unreasonable assumption, although one not in every
instance correct. A structured question will also yield a far
higher overall response rate. If we had asked our interviewees
directly whether or not marijuana had an impact on, say, their
conception of time, more than one-quarter would have agreed that
it did. Every effect would have drawn greater agreement, but the
rank-order of effects should be roughly the same with the two
techniques. This contention is born out when our data are
compared with studies wherein a direct closed-choice question
is asked for each effect. For instance, in an informal study of
seventy-four marijuana users in New York, 91 percent agreed that
marijuana made them feel more relaxed, 85 percent said that being
high makes music sound better, 66 percent said that the drug helps
a person feel more sociable at a party, and 35 percent claimed
that it helps a person understand himself better (62 percent disagreed
with the last effect).[15] The
structured question, however, was unworkable for my study,
due to the diversity of responses; we could not have offered every
possible effect as an alternative, for we would have had no time
for any other questions. If and only if we remember two methodological
qualifications will our analysis of the responses be meaningful:
- The form of the study instrument—open-ended or forced
choice—gives us results that are superficially different (the
magnitude of the responses, for instance), but fundamentally the
same (the order of the responses).
- Individuals who do not mention a given effect on our open-ended
question are not thereby automatically agreeing that marijuana
does not have that effect on them—they just did not think of
it at that moment in that situation ( although we do have a certain
amount of confidence that those who did not mention the effect
were less likely to experience it than those who did mention
it).
Overviewing the responses elicited, we see that there are over
200 totally distinct effects described. (We have presented only
those which ten or more subjects mentioned; there are almost 150
effects each of which was mentioned by fewer than ten respondents.)
Sixty-four of these were proffered by single individuals, completely
idiosyncratic responses that could not in any way be classified
with other responses which were somewhat similar. For instance,
one individual said that she had the feeling of "being sucked
into a vortex." Another reported more regular bowel movements
while intoxicated. A third said that she could feel her brains
dripping out of her ears. In addition to the sixty-four unique
and therefore totally unclassifiable responses, there were twenty-eight
where only two respondents agreed that marijuana had that effect
on them. However valid these responses might be to the individual
himself, they are not useable to us, since they are still quite
idiosyncratic.
Although the diversity of the responses was in itself an interesting
finding, the picture was not totally chaotic. Each individual
offered an average of roughly ten different effects of the drug
as a description of the high. Some of these effects were offered
independently by a large percentage of the interviewees although,
curiously, none attracted a majority; every effect described was
given by a minority of the sample. That is, in spite of the huge
diversity in the responses, some agreement prevailed.
Marijuana users seem to describe the effects of the drug in overwhelmingly
favorable terms. Certainly the vast majority of the effects mentioned
would be thought positive if the judge did not know that marijuana
touched off the state in question. Let us suppose that we have
been told that the list characterizes how some people react to
a warm spring day; our sense would be that they think well of
its effects. Thus, most of the characteristics of the marijuana
high, as described by its users, would be looked at as beneficial.
Yet with the knowledge that the triggering agent was marijuana,
the judge reinterprets his favorable opinion and decides that
the effect is in actuality insidious and damaging; the question
then becomes a moral rather than a scientific one, with the judge
being thrown back on his second line of defense—'Why should
anyone need an artificial stimulus anyway; isn't reality sufficient?'
But in spite of one's ideological stance, marijuana's effects
remains to be described.
TABLE 7-1
Effects of Marijuana: Responses by Users
| N | Percent |
|---|
| More relaxed, peaceful, calmer; marijuana acts as a tranquilizer
| 88 | 46 |
| senses in general are more sensitive, perceptive |
69 | 36 |
| Think deeper, have more profound thoughts | 60 | 31 |
| Laugh much more; everything seems funny | 55 | 29 |
| Exaggeration of mood; greater subjective impact, emotional significance | 48 | 25 |
| Time seems slowed down, stretched out, think more time has passed | 44 | 23 |
| Become more withdrawn, introverted, privatistic | 42 | 22 |
| Generally, feels nice, pleasant, enjoyable, fun, good, groovy | 40 | 21 |
| Mind wanders, free-associates, stream of consciousness | 40 | 21 |
| Feel dizzy, giddy, lightheaded | 39 | 20 |
| Become tired, lazy, lethargic, don't want to move | 37 | 19 |
| Feel light, airy, floating, elevated | 35 | 18 |
| Feel "happy" | 35 | 18 |
| Forget easily, have memory gaps, can't remember things | 34 | 18 |
| Feel freer, unrestrained, uninhibited | 34 | 18 |
| Stimulation of senses more enjoyable | 34 | 18 |
| Become hungry, want to eat more | 32 | 17 |
| Hear music better, musical ear sharper, more sensitive, accurate | 32 | 17 |
| Enjoy music more, greater pleasure from listening to music | 30 | 16 |
| Feel paranoid | 28 | 15 |
| Have hallucinations | 28 | 15 |
| Feel sleepy | 26 | 14 |
| Care less about everything, worry less, don't give a damn | 25 | 13 |
| Become erotically aroused, marijuana acts as an aphrodisiac | 25 | 13 |
| Mouth and throat feel dry | 24 | 13 |
| Concentrate better, become more involved in anything | 24 | 13 |
| Selective concentration: concentrate on one thing, shut out all else | 23 | 12 |
| Can communicate with others better | 22 | 12 |
| Euphoria, ecstasy, exhilaration | 22 | 12 |
| Sense of depersonalization: being cut off from myself | 22 | 12 |
| Food tastes better | 20 | 10 |
| Tend to fixate on trivial things | 20 | 10 |
| Feel secure, self-confident, get a sense of well-being | 20 | 10 |
| Able to understand others better, their meaning and being | 20 | 10 |
| The pleasure of touching is greater, touch more sensuous | 19 | 10 |
| Feel depressed | 19 | 10 |
| Tend to talk a lot more | 19 | 10 |
| Hear better, auditory sense more acute, hearing more sensitive | 18 | 9 |
| Colors appear to be brighter, more vivid | 17 | 9 |
| More uncoordinated, clumsier, motor skills impaired | 17 | 9 |
| Sex is more enjoyable | 16 | 8 |
| Become pensive, introspective, meditative | 16 | 8 |
| Senses become numb; marijuana acts as an anesthetizer | 15 | 8 |
| Body feels warm | 15 | 8 |
| Other people annoy me more, find fault in others | 15 | 8 |
| My vision is clearer, sight improved, see more, see more detail | 15 | 8 |
| Enjoy dancing more | 14 | 7 |
| Subconscious comes out; the real you emerges, one's truer self | 14 | 7 |
| Feel a sense of unity in the universe, a sense of oneness | 14 | 7 |
| Asthetic impulse greater, enjoy art works more | 14 | 7 |
| Feel more nervous | 14 | 7 |
| I feel thirsty | 14 | 7 |
| Skin feels tingly | 14 | 7 |
| Become outgoing, gregarious, convivial, extroverted | 13 | 7 |
| Eyes become hot, heavy, bloodshot, puffy | 12 | 6 |
| Body feels heavy | 12 | 6 |
| Sense of touch improved, more sensitive, can feel things sharply | 12 | 6 |
| Mind works more quickly, mind races | 11 | 6 |
| Experience synesthesia phenomena | 11 | 6 |
| Become more active, want to move around more | 11 | 6 |
| Feel a sense of unreality of everything around me | 10 | 5 |
There is an abundance of striking contradictions in the effects
described. The drug, it would appear, is associated with opposite
effects on different individuals—and even on the same individual
at different times. Yet these dualities are specifically located
with certain effects and not others. Only one individual said
that music sounded worse high, another that it sounded dimmer,
and a third that it sounded strange; these responses are obviously
negligible next to those who reported greater acuteness and appreciation
of music while high. Yet many characteristics attracted mutually
exclusive responses. Table 7-2 lists some of the more arresting
paradoxes.
TABLE 7-2
Contradictions in Effects Described (percent)
| More sensitive (36) | vs. numb, de-sensitizer (8) |
| Introverted (22) | vs. extroverted (7) |
| Emotion exaggerated (25) | vs. care less about everything (13) |
| Feel happy (18), things seem funny (29) | vs. feel depressed (10) |
| Mind wanders (21) | vs. greater concentration (13) |
| Feel paranoid (15) | vs. feel more secure (10) |
| More relaxed (46) | vs. feel more nervous (7) |
| Talk a lot (10) | vs. difficulty talking (8) |
| Time slowed down (23) | vs. time speeded up (4) |
| Feel light, floating (18) | vs. feel heavy (6) |
| Feel warm (8) | vs. feel cold (3) |
| Feel lethargic (19) | vs. feel more active (6) |
| Depersonalization (12) | vs. your true self emerges (7) |
| Touch more acute (6), fun (10) | vs. numb, de-sensitizer (8) |
| Mind more profound (31) | vs. fixate on trivia (10) |
| Selective concentration (12) | vs. synesthesia (6) |
Many of these responses were highly conditional. The impact
of marijuana seems to vary by mood and setting, as we mentioned,
and our interviewees made it clear that the drug affected them
in different ways at different times. For instance, nearly all
of the descriptions including "feel depressed" as an
effect of marijuana were pre faced by the qualification that only
if I feel depressed beforehand does marijuana make me feel more
depressed. The drug is often tagged with the power
to heighten one's present mood, so that a prehigh mood of elation
will yield to an even more exquisite feeling of elation, while
a depression beforehand will become an even deeper depression.
We must bear in mind the fact that such an investigation can
inherently yield only limited and selective information. However,
this is also true of laboratory reports, which only display one
facet of the drug crystal. Yet, piecing together several incomplete
stories might very well give us a more comprehensive one. In asking
the marijuana smoker the effects of the drug on himself, we
tap only the subjective vein, a valuable but fragmentary source.
This information should properly complement clinical findings,
not contradict them. Thus, since we have asked for the effect
of the drug on the person taking it, we have largely sidestepped
the objective-subjective dilemma which is so often a source of
confusion. We do not ask the smoker to be a scientist, reporting
objectively on drug effects, but to re-create the drug experience
itself, to convey the expressive character of the marijuana high.
One-third of the responses to the open-ended question reported
that their senses were more receptive, more sensitive. We straddle
two realms here. Tests can be constructed to measure the ability
of the subject to discern stimuli. But for the subjective impact
of sense-stimulation, we have to abandon the laboratory approach,
because it does not tell us anything; we must ask the subject
himself. Most responses have this dual character. And the subjective
meaning of phenomena and sense-impressions forms a vast and uncharted
territory, with a logic and integrity of its own—yet one of
immense significance.
Why should music be so often singled out as a locus wherein marijuana
is said to have such a pronounced impact? There are, after all,
five senses, thousands of sources of sound, an infinitude of possible
changes in thinking, doing things, feeling; why music? There are
at least three explanations:
- The physiological and psychological explanation. There actually
is something about the effects of marijuana that relates specifically
to music, to rhythm, movement, sound, and pitch.
- The culture explanation. Marijuana smokers happen to be people
who enjoy music and merely project onto marijuana, which they
also enjoy, the positive effects of any activity toward
which they feel positively.
- The logistical and ecological explanation. It just happens
that, given the personnel and the setting ( in one's living room
for the most part ), it is highly likely that music is one of
the activities in which marijuana users will be engaged while
high.
There is no doubt that reasons (2) and (3) operate powerfully;
the question is, do they account for all of the variance?
Is there any pharmacological thrust at all?
A quarter of a century ago, an objective test of musical talent
was done on incarcerated individuals, experienced with marijuana's
effects, who had been administered parahexyl, a marijuana-like
compound.[16] The
study found that the drug did not increase musical ability. The
typical test result (except for rhythm) was to improve very slightly
without the drug as a practice effect, and then to drop back to
the original, pre-practice level when high. Although the magnitude
of the differences was extremely small, this was a consistent
pattern.
However, the Seashore test measures neither musical talent nor
ability. What it does measure is the ability to discern differences
in pitch, loudness, rhythm, time, and timbre in a laboratory setting.
We have to guess as to the effect of the drug in an actual music-playing
situation. In any case, this objective test has nothing to do
with the subjective impact of music on the high listener. And
in this realm, the evidence is overwhelming that marijuana stimulates
a much more powerful identification, appreciation, and feeling
for the music. The music means more when high, musical ability
or not. "My most intense highs are when I listen to music,"
I was told by a twenty-seven-year-old mother. "I hear more.
I hear five different levels at the same time. I can see the vibrations
of the strings. I can identify exactly with what the composer
was feeling and thinking when he composed the music. I am in the
music, engulfed by it. It's happening through me."
Another respondent, a twenty-year-old salesman, specifically mentioned
the synaesthesia phenomenon as a catalyst for enjoying music more:
Once, listening to Wagner, I had three visions. I was a Pegasus
horse, flying through the air, with hundreds of smaller-type horses
spanning out behind me, all co]ors, like a peacock. I was also
a spirit, soaring through space. The third one was, I envisioned
myself, I was crawling on the ground, watching flowers bloom and
little animals crawling around. I've always enjoyed music more
high than straight. Music has a visual correspondent.
In the interview, I asked a specific question on music (as well
as sex and food): "What is music like when you are high?"
If this question failed to elicit a meaningful response, I then
asked the interviewee to compare the experience of listening to
music high on marijuana with listening to it "straight."
About 85 percent said they had actually listened to music while
high, partly a testimony to the fact that music is a fixture in
the marijuana mythology—everyone knows that listening to music
while high is the thing to do—and partly a simple matter
of the logistic fact that marijuana is smoked in one's living
room. But is there a physiological component as well? Out of this
music-listening contingent, 173 individuals, 10 percent felt that
music was more or less the same, high or straight; it sounded
no better and no worse. Two individuals thought that music sounded
worse high, and preferred to listen to it while not under the
influence of marijuana. All of the rest thought that music sounded
better, that the high experience improved the listening experience.
Their reasons varied, however. As for the dominant and first mentioned
reason for this, 40 percent said that their ability to become
subjectively involved in the music, their emotional identification
with it and appreciation of it, was heightened. They could "get
into" the music better and became, in a sense, part of
the music. About one quarter (23 percent) claimed that they could
separate out the various instruments, sounds, and levels of sound,
better appreciating the elaborate interweaving of sounds occurring
in a musical composition. Some even likened listening high to
having a built-in stereo set. The sounds actually seemed physically
separated; one respondent felt that he could hear the notes of
an organ bouncing off the ceiling, while the other sounds of the
piece were off somewhere else in the room. Related to this perception
was the sensation that they could hear one sound only, while all
of the other sounds seemed subdued; there appeared to be some
sort of ability to concentrate selectively on a single instrument,
tune, sound, or level. Ten individuals, or 6 percent of the high
music listeners, claimed that this was the first and most dominant
characteristic of listening to music while smoking marijuana.
Seventeen percent said merely that their hearing was more acute,
that being high improved their listening ability. And 6 percent
mentioned the synesthesia phenomenon, claiming that listening
had a visual correspondent. They could see the music while listening
to it.
Another of the more puzzling and intriguing products of the marijuana
high that our interviews tapped remains its impact on the subject's
perception of the passage of time. About a quarter of our respondents
claimed that under the drug's influence they sensed much more
time had passed than actually had. Time, in other words, seems
to move extraordinarily slowly. Now, the positivistically inclined
clinician will see this as a "distortion." It might,
however, be more fruitful to look at time in a more relativistic
sense. The division of the day into minutes and hours of standard
length is only one of many possible ways of looking at the
passage of time. Time also has a subjective element, a kind of
organic flow. Under certain circumstances, a visceral grasp of
time might coincide with a mechanistic one where, in laboratory
terms, the subject will be able to judge time "correctly."
Under other conditions, the two will be at variance with one another.
Yet it is too narrow to view the mechanical measurement of time
as its one true measurement; this may be expressed in many ways,
for different purposes. The subject's "erroneous" estimation
of time may have a powerful internal validity. We are reminded
of Hans Castorp's words in Mann's Magic Mountain: "But
after all, time isn't actual. When it seems long, then
it is long; when it seems short, why, then it is short. But how
long, or how short, it actually is, that nobody knows."
In the Boston experiments, three out of the nine inexperienced
users overestimated the passage of time under the influence of
a low dosage, while four did so with a high dosage. (No report
was given for the experienced users, who may have learned to compensate
for the time-altering effect of the drug.) In this case, our informal
reports and the laboratory findings to some extent corroborate
one another. It is impossible at this point to locate the source
of this phenomenon, but it is possible that the exaggeration of
mood described by my informants might have a good deal to do with
it. Somehow, the drug is attributed with the power to crowd more
"seeming" activity into a short period of time. Often
nothing will appear to be happening to the outside observer, aside
from a few individuals slowly smoking marijuana, staring into
space and, occasionally, giggling at nothing in particular, yet
each mind will be crowded with past or imagined events and emotions,
and significance of massive proportions will be attributed to
the scene, so that activity will be imagined where there is none.
Each minute will be imputed with greater significance; a great
deal will be thought to have occurred in a short space of time.
More time will be conceived of as having taken place. Time, therefore,
will be seen as being more drawn-out. One of our respondents,
a twenty-six-year-old secretary, expressed it this way: "Time
is different. You think it may take like five years to
pick up a cigarette."
Marijuana's reported effect on memory is one of the more fascinating
aspects of the drug's impact; almost one-fifth of the respondents
said that, while high, they tended to forget simple things, that
their memory seemed to be impaired by the drug. Psychologists
divide memory into three zones, corresponding functionally to
three areas of the brain; these are immediate, recent, and long-term
memory. The marijuana smoker never forgets who he is, who his
friends are, or where he is, but he may forget what he has been
saying just ten seconds before. Weil and Zinberg pinpoint this
speech impairment to marijuana's selective impact on the various
memory functions in the brain:
If this effect can be demonstrated, it is likely that it is, itself,
a manifestation of a more general acute effect of marihuana on
a specific mental function: namely, an interference with ultra-short
(or immediate) memory. By immediate memory we mean memory over
the past few seconds. To be more precise, the interference seems
to be with retrieval of information while it is an immediate memory
storage; once it passes into the next (recent-memory) storage,
it again seems to be easily accessible to consciousness.[l7]
Whatever the physiological foundation of the effect, my informants
commonly report it occurring. One user told me: "I can't
remember what I said two seconds after I said it. I'm unaware
of whether I actually said anything or not, even just after I've
said it." In fact, most of the activities which involve forgetfulness
while high take place when the subject is talking. This
is an event which is both likely to occur and is relatively
short-term. Thus the concentration on talking as a memory-impaired
locus.
Let us consider hunger. It is an important component of the marijuana
subculture that the drug makes you hungry. There seems, however,
to be no physiological basis for the hunger. Some of the descriptions
were so pungent that it is difficult to believe that some sort
of physiological mechanism does not back them up: "I get
a ravenous hunger high. When I start eating, my hunger is frightening.
I could eat my finger if it got in the way." Hyperphagia,
simply eating more, is common among high marijuana users,
but the physiological basis for it is obscure. Yet it would be
a mistake to throw out the observation, merely because it is not
grounded in biochemical fact.
Pot's impact on taste was almost as influential. In fact, since
there is no pharmacological reason for the hunger, it may perhaps
be accounted for by the fact that the subject wishes to eat more
be cause he knows that the food will taste much better.
The idea of food suddenly seems much more attractive. Taste was
reported as fabulously improved, almost a wild and orgasmic adventure.
One of our respondents said that he rolled on the floor in ecstasy
after eating some raspberries, so exquisite did they taste. Another
respondent, a twenty-eight-year-old woman artist and art teacher,
clearly delineated this distinction between the simple desire
to eat more and a true, physiologically-based hunger, a hunger
in the stomach rather than in the mind: "I love to eat when
I'm high. I'm more interested in food. I don't think it's a matter
of appetite; it's not hunger, it's mostly interest. Food tastes
more interesting." Some of our most interesting and dramatic
interview descriptions of the marijuana high were located in this
impact on the subject's hunger and taste. The following account
is presented by an eighteen-year-old college coed who was high
for the first time two weeks before the interview. She smoked
in her dormitory room with her roommate, who was a regular smoker:
Throughout the whole thing, every time we'd go to the cupboard,
we'd see this big bottle of Cremora, and we just had to find a
use for it; it was like an obsession. And finally (laughs) we
got some tuna fish, and we found a use for it. We mixed up the
Cremora and water to make tuna fish stew—we didn't have any
mayonnaise—and we used it like mayonnaise. And we thought it
was delicious (laughs). And we kept making more, and we devoured
it, and then we realized what we were eating. Except at the same
time, we felt, I felt, natural, except, you know, this is, like,
stupid, we're eating Cremora and tuna fish, and it's horrible,
and everybody will think we're absolutely nuts. But meanwhile,
it was delicious (laughs). And the whole time, I felt, like, the
things I was doing might be silly, but they felt very natural.
Hunger and taste was another question which I singled out specifically;
150 respondents, or about 75 percent of the sample, said that
they had eaten food while they were high. Of this 150, six said
that there was no difference between eating high and eating straight,
that marijuana had no effect on the nature of the eating experience.
Eight percent said that the experience was worse in some way;
they had less of an appetite, or the food tasted worse, and that
they did not enjoy the experience of eating food when they were
high. Thirty-eight percent said that the most dominant characteristic
about being high and eating was that one's appetite was stimulated;
one had a tremendous appetite while high. Thirty-one percent said
that the food tasted more delicious high than ordinarily, that
eating was a more enjoyable experience. Eleven percent said, merely,
that they were more acutely aware of taste, that they could discern
the various tastes more accurately while high. The remaining respondents
said that they were more aware, above all, of the texture of
the food while high, that the most important thing was that they
suddenly desired unusual combinations of foods, that they wanted
to eat weird foods they had never considered before, and that
they had a special craving for sweet things.
We should also expect sexual activity to be closely intertwined
with, and powerfully influenced by, smoking marijuana, and in
this, our expectations are well supported. Three-quarters of our
interviewees said that they had experienced sex while high on
marijuana. We asked several specific questions on the difference
between sex high on marijuana and sex normally.
First I asked, "Do you think being high on marijuana stimulates
your sex interest, or not?" More than a third of the respondents
said that marijuana had no effect on their sexual desire. Five
percent said that marijuana had a negative effect, that it turned
them off sexually. Thirteen percent said that the effect depends
on their mood or on their sexual partner. In this group, a common
response among the women was that marijuana acts as a sexual stimulant
when they're with someone with whom they're already intimate,
but when they smoke with a stranger, the prospect of sex becomes
even more distasteful than ordinarily. For these women, marijuana
seems to polarize sexual desire. But 44 percent, a strong plurality,
replied that marijuana definitely increased their sexual desire.
Next, I asked, "Is your enjoyment of sex any different high?"
The respondents were less divided on this question. An overwhelming
majority, 68 percent, replied that marijuana increased their sexual
enjoyment, that their orgasmic pleasure was heightened by the
drug. Yet most scientists claim that in physiological terms marijuana
lacks an aphrodisiac effect. If anything, it tends to reduce desire
and to dull the sexual areas. Norman Taylor, a botanist, writes,
"As to being a sex-excitant, marijuana appears to be just
the opposite."[18] Constantinos
Miras, a Greek pharmacologist and one of the drug's severest critics,
disclosed to a seminar at the UCLA Department of Pharmacology
that marijuana actually impairs sexuality, and when administered
to rats, their rate of "reproductive activity" declined
go percent.[19] If,
physiologically, marijuana is neutral—or even negative—to
sexuality, why are so many people sexually turned on by
it? Why, after smoking the faddish banana, don't its users descend
from a trial high to discover that it is neutral to sex desire
and enjoyment?
Consider the mythology. Its use has traditionally been associated
with the dramatic loss of sexual inhibition, and with what were
thought to be the inevitable consequences: depravity, degradation,
shame. Marijuana, according to an historic description, completely
inflames the erotic impulses and leads to revolting sex crimes.
For years, propaganda from the press assisted the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics' campaign to nurture an evil image. An account written
in the 1930s chronicles the degradation of a young girl lured
into smoking:
Her will power dropped away from her like a rent garment, leaving
her a tractable, pliant creature, as exposed to chance suggestion
as if her soul had been naked to the wind.[20]
The unfortunate girl so discarded her inhibitions that she accepted
proposals from strangers. When she came to her senses, she was
so mortified that she committed suicide.
The sex-loaded invectives of the antimarijuana campaign may have
been a tactical blunder. They seem to have attracted more recruits
than they discouraged. Sociologists and psychologists stress the
power of mood, expectation, social conditioning, setting, and
myth in shaping the nature of the drug experience. And our mood,
expectations, social conditioning, setting and myths have long
associated marijuana with sex. We have learned to associate it
with sensuousness and carnality, with hedonism and physical gratification.
And so it stimulates those very reactions which are called debauchery
by its critics and rapture by its adherents.
The human, unlike the caged rat, has a broad latitude in shaping
the nature of his environment, even of his own body chemistry.
Man's somatic responses are often influenced more by what he thinks
than by biological and chemical imperatives; in fact, it can happen
that what he thinks actually becomes his biological and chemical
imperative. Thus the user's attitude toward marijuana may determine
what happens to his body when he smokes it. It is only in the
narrowest sense that the drug is not a sexual stimulant; that
is, in the sense that it will not excite mindless, laboratory-located
animal tissue. But many human marijuana users report an actual
increase in sexual desire and sexual pleasure. Part of the reality
may be analyzed as a "self-fulfilling prophecy." With
marijuana's reputation, even a placebo could carry a sexual stimulus.
Women seem to respond more strongly than men to pot as an aphrodisiac.
Exactly half the women said that the drug increased their sexual
desire, as opposed to only 39 percent of the men. Two related
explanations come to mind: (1) marijuana is an aphrodisiac for
women because of its cultural association with sex: women are
more likely to think themselves into becoming excited; and (2)
women need an excuse to justify their desire. However, almost
three-fourths (74 percent) of the men said that they enjoyed sex
more high, but less than two-thirds (62 percent) of the women
felt the same. The explanation for this discrepancy probably lies
not in the properties of the drug, but in the characteristic sexual
attitudes of men and women in our society. A woman is concerned
with the ritual of sex and with what the textbooks refer to as
"foreplay." For her, these aspects of the sexual act
are often more meaningful than the immediate physical gratification
it gives her. Because a woman is more preoccupied than a man with
the path to sex, marijuana is more active for her during the overture.
For a man, on the other hand, seduction (the overture) is often
only instrumental. He is much more localized in both body and
temperament; his concentration is on the orgasm. So more often
he receives the most pleasure from marijuana during the act itself.
But it should be noted that this is only a difference of relative
emphasis: for both sexes, marijuana is more stimulating during
the act itself than as an aphrodisiac.
The answers to my questions also indicated that both sexual stimulation
and sexual enjoyment were directly correlated with frequency of
smoking. The heavier smokers were the ones who most often answered
"yes" to my two basic questions. I divided the sample
into frequent users (at least three times a week) and infrequent
users (less than once a week). Over half (52 percent) of the frequent
users said that marijuana stimulates their sexual desire. Less
than a third (30 percent) of the infrequent users agreed. Likewise,
more than three-quarters (77 percent) of the frequent users claimed
that marijuana increased their sexual enjoyment, while less than
half (49 percent) of the infrequent users agreed.
Do the frequent users smoke more often because smoking makes them
sexual, or does smoking make them sexual because they smoke more
frequently? Do some people have minds and bodies that are naturally
more receptive to the marijuana high, and therefore smoke
more frequently? Or have those who smoke more already explored
the psychic and bodily experiences available to them? Have they
had more exposure to the sex-enhancing properties of the drug?
Another variable, of course, is strength of dosage: both the quality
of the marijuana and the number of cigarettes smoked. But these
are almost impossible to calculate. I don't know, and neither
do my subjects, how potent their marijuana was. Most agree, however,
that when they get very high, marijuana becomes soporific. After
two or three "good" joints, the only erotic experience
the pot head will have will be in his dreams.
To many marijuana users, the question of whether pot is a sexual
excitant misses the point. Sex is just one example—though the
example par excellence—of the kind of activity the drug
enhances. But they were discriminate in their praise of the drug's
power. Whereas it was recommended as an adjunct, collaborator,
and stimulus to physical and sensual activity, it was found to
be an impediment to cerebral activity. Only about a third of the
sample had read anything during their high and, of these, about
two-thirds said that reading was actually impaired by the high.
Most material, particularly if it was logical, rational, traditional,
and "linear," was rendered stuffy, incomprehensible,
and impenetrable.
Marijuana seems to allow detours from the customary channels of
experience and permit transcendence of some of our peculiar social
inhibitions. The middle-class American is taught to be uncomfortable
about his body and its gratification. The process of toilet training
has made him uneasy about defecation. The taboos surrounding sex
and sex education continue to cling to him. He has learned to
respect the ritual surrounding food. He may not simply fill his
stomach: he must not become too fat, nor stay too thin, nor eat
at the wrong time or under inappropriate circumstances. He is
warned against belching, flatulating, sweating. Every one of his
bodily functions is stigmatized by prohibitions and restrictions.
Marijuana may diffuse some of the rigid associations acquired
from a culture ambivalent about bodily things. "Sex-evil,"
"sex-dirty," "sex-forbidden" is a class of
linkages which, under the influence of the drug, is sometimes
replaced by "sex-fun," "sex-nice." Consequently,
users often claim that their involvement in sex is more total
while high.
The attitude of play, of novel and unusual roles and activities,
is also part of the sex-marijuana calculus. A twenty-year-old
waitress said, "You do a lot of weird things in bed."
A graduate student in psychology said, "I come up with new
sex ideas." Alexander Trocchi, novelist and drug addict,
puts it this way:
Experts agree that marijuana has no aphrodisiac effect, and in
this as in a large percentage of their judgments they are entirely
wrong. If one is sexually bent, if it occurs to one that it would
be pleasant to make love the judicious use of the drug will stimulate
the desire and heighten the pleasure immeasurably, for it is perhaps
the principal effect of marijuana to take one more intensely into
whatever the experience. I should recommend its use in schools
to make the pleasures of poetry, art and music available to pupils
who... are... insensitive to symbolic expression. It provokes
a more sensual (or aesthetic) kind of concentration, a detailed
articulation of minute areas, an ability to adopt play postures.
What can be more relevant in the act of love?[21]
Marijuana cannot create a new mentality, a conscienceless, superego-free
psyche. It does seem to endorse some of our more whimsical and
carnal tendencies. The person who condemns marijuana because of
its bestial and violent effects probably does so because in his
subterranean self he actually regards sex itself as bestial and
violent. The person who claims that marijuana's liberating effects
will ultimately cause destruction and brutality probably has a
destructive and brutal image of man's inner being. He who in his
inner self condemns sex will, under the influence of marijuana,
have basically antisexual experiences. Marijuana does not create
anew, it only activates what is latent.
A young woman described it this way:
A boy smoked it with me so that I'd enjoy the sex more, but it
backfired! Every time he touched me, I'd get an electric shock,
but if he would move away, I'd get very cold. At another time,
it made me aware of the sex so that I'd become self-conscious
of my sexual aggressiveness and realize that I wasn't worthy of
sex. Often it would be like a psychodrama: I'd act out my problems,
and become aware of what was bothering me—and become upset by
it. I often became aware that I didn't want to have sex, and my
body would freeze up. It brings out what your subconscious holds
at the time...
Marijuana is much more than a mere chemical. The nature of its
social reality, how it is defined, regarded, and treated, how
its users shape their lives around it, will determine how it will
treat them. A twenty-seven-year-old divorcée, was able
to achieve orgasm only under the influence of marijuana. An eighteen-year-old
coed chimed in, explaining how sex on marijuana was better, "Well,
'cuz, like you're all, you know, loose, free, and wild, and abandoned,
and reckless and freaky. But, like, when I'm straight, I'm inhibited,
you know, and cold, I guess, but when I'm, you know, on grass,
I dig it." However, another girl experienced her only unpleasant
sexual episodes when she was high. In the midst of being seduced,
she saw little green men coming through the windows to attack
her.
Another of the most popular of responses describing marijuana's
effects dealt with laughter; there was widespread agreement that
many more things seemed to be funny when high than normally. Even
what we would consider quite ordinary in a normal state seemed
extraordinarily droll, peculiar, incongruous, and even ludicrous.
This is often pointed out by nonsmokers and critics as documentation
of the distorting mechanism of the drug. The fact that someone
laughs at something that is not really funny seems to prove pot's
ability to take the user's mind out of reality, that the drug
has the power to distort what is real, putting a "false conception"
in its place. However, the user would say that the fact that something
which appeared banal "straight" suddenly took on titanically
comic proportions means that the experience itself was heightened—that
the response was the experience; analyzing the reasons
for the laughter destroys its validity and richness. Who is to
say what is really funny and what is banal? (The user's reasoning
parallels perfectly the symbolic-interactionist perspective's
axiom, "The meaning is in the response.") If something
is funny when high then it is funny—at that moment and under
those circumstances. Whether something is funny or not is not
a quality inherent in the thing, but in the field which is generated
between the thing and the audience. The laughter evoked is the
act of funniness.
In any case, this aspect of the extreme sense of amusement while
high dominates our interviews and strikes the reader with dramatic
force:
The slightest little thing that's not right, it'll crack you up.
You'd break your sides laughing. I was high in school once, and
the teacher wrote a word on the board—this was in economics—and
I forget what word it was, but to me it seemed funny. In fact,
anything anybody does seems, like, it'll seem funny.
Nineteen-year-old high school student
I get silly.... So all kinds of things, like, can crack you up,
you know, that aren't really that funny, I guess, in regular life.
But they can be really, really funny out of proportion. You can
laugh for 20 minutes.
Twenty-six-year-old secretary
A friend told a joke, and I couldn't even listen to it, and yet,
I recall laughing at it, you know—I thought it was a riot, a
very old joke which I probably heard before.
Twenty-six-year-old social worker
Many of the responses reported can be summarized under the general
category that Matza calls a "sensibility to banality."[22]
Many of the things we take for granted somehow
are seen in a new light; the everyday is viewed with virginal
eyes. Often the straight nonsmoker cannot understand the response
of astonishment of a circle of marijuana smokers at a party at
what appears to be nothing at all. Cries of "Oh, wow!"
will greet the normal observer, and he will attribute them to
mere stupidity or silliness. But what is actually going on is
an appreciation of something that the detached nonuser has long
ago taken for granted, something which to him seems quite devoid
of any special meaning. According to Matza, and to most of our
respondents, marijuana touches off this new look at the objects
and events around us which we have ceased to wonder about.
For something to become ordinary it must be taken for granted....
To take... for granted... is to render... empty of human
meaning... it will not be an object for reflection.... Belief
suspended, an aesthetic of the ordinary may appear. The unappreciable
may be appreciated... the ordinary becomes extraordinary.[23]
Many of the effects attributed to the drug and described by our
informants fall within the orbit of the sensitization to the normally
banal. We do not ordinarily reflect on the food we eat, unless
it somehow seems extraordinary; marijuana is attributed with the
power to make our commonest meals, meals we would never remark
upon while "straight," seem uncommon and unbelievably
delicious. Laughter is evoked by seeming banality. We are struck
by the incongruity of the congruous, by the ludicrousness of the
ordinarily serious, by the absurdity of the everyday. Paradoxes
crowd in on us where we saw none before. A sense of wonderment
animates the high, whether it be in sex, food, jokes, music, life
in general, or, seemingly, nothing at all. (Everything is not
reduced to the same basic level; there can be degrees of
wonderment.) A twenty-three-year-old graduate drama student
describes his sense of wonderment at snow:
The way I'm using pot now is to try out everything new again.
Like, there was a huge snow about a month ago and I went down
to Riverside Park, completely stoned out of my mind. And the sky
was full of snow, and the snow was eighteen inches deep in the
park. And I went through the whole thing rediscovering snow, you
know, sort of kicking my way through it and saying, "What's
that, daddy?" You know, and sort of re-creating that experience
of, you know, snow before snow meant slush and taxicabs, and blech,
and inconvenience, and all of the other things that it means now.
To go back and find the child-like snow. Pot is trying things
out over again.
Of course, the effect need not involve such a conscious pursuit
of the new in the guise of the banal. Most of our respondents
felt the dramatization of the everyday without having to search
for it, without even stepping outside their living room where
they were sitting, smoking. Even the very act of smoking took
on, sometimes, a new semblance. "When I'm high, I get hung
up on little things that I wouldn't even notice straight,"
an eighteen-year-old coed told me. "Like, oh, wow, a cigarette.
You start thinking about the cigarette and you think, you know,
you're drawing in the smoke, and it's just going into your lungs,
and you think about what's happening."
The issue of the generation of panic states, or psychotic episodes,
by this drug marijuana is extremely thorny. There is no doubt
that some individuals at some time while taking the drug have
had some psychotomimetic experience. This is, however, a flabby,
imprecise, and not very useful statement, for a number of reasons.
First of all, it has never been established that these occurrences
with marijuana are any more common than under any other exciting
and possibly stressful situation, such as during a seduction,
in an examination, or in athletic competition. There is no clear
indication that the effects described as adverse effects of marijuana
are due directly to the drug or to an unusual and novel situation,
to social pressures and expectations—worrying about not becoming
high, for example, or becoming too high, about having a good time—or
possibly fears about the drug, about being arrested. One thing
is clear, at least from anecdotal material: the factors of "set"
and "setting" described earlier make a great deal of
difference in the generation of "adverse reactions"
to the drug, in fact, in the effects in general which the drug
has.
A healthy psyche, taking the drug in a supportive, familiar
and enjoyable environment, is highly unlikely to experience
a psychosis-like episode. The presence of stress, hostility,
strangeness, and a past with psychiatric difficulties, all make
it more likely. As with virtually any psychoactive drug, marijuana
can induce acute anxiety with some feelings of panic in the user.
This type of reaction is uncommon and is often related to an improper
set or attitude by the user, or pre-existing personality
problems. The perceptual alterations produced by moderately high
doses of marijuana occasionally produce a feeling of depersonalization
in the user, and his fear that this effect may last produces fear
and anxiety. Individuals who are insecure or threatened
by circumstances surrounding the drug experience, such as arrest,
are more prone to this type of reaction. Prolonged reactions have
been reported, but almost always are related to high dose use
in individuals with unstable predrug personalities or individuals
who have had experiences with more potent psychoactive drugs such
as LSD.
I have seen three cases of marijuana-induced psychoses... a]l
... were using marijuana for the first time in "far out"
environments. All had extreme paranoid reactions characterized
by fear of arrest and discovery...
The... psychotic reactions represented the users' attitude
toward experimenting with an illegal drug and their rigid personality
structure rather than an indictment of the pharmacological properties
of marijuana, and demonstrates only that "upright" Americans
committed to the current dominant value system should not experiment
with illegal drugs even though they might be quite capable of
handling accepted intoxicants such as alcohol. Were the illegality
of the drugs reversed, then their experiences would also be reversed.[24]
Clearly, a factor making for variability in potentiality for adverse
reactions is the setting. The user may find himself in surroundings
which are unpleasant to him, in the company of strangers or others
whom he does not like, or in danger of some kind. These circumstances
will influence his response to the drug. The fact that he is on
the street, in public, or in his own house or apartment, will
influence what he feels, sees, and does. Marijuana smokers often
report paranoia as one of the effects of the drug on their psychic
state while high. Many, however, qualify this with the reservation
that it is only because of the legal climate, because of the
drug's illegality, their fears of being arrested, the fact
that a friend may have been arrested, that this mood is engendered.
In other words, part of the setting of all users is the fact that
the outside world punishes the act, and this realization is often
woven into the experience itself, in the form of fear. Yet to
say that this effect is a direct product of the drug, and not
the legal setting in which the user consumes the drug, is to distort
the reality of the situation. As Kenneth Keniston said in a drug
symposium, given February 28, 1969 at the "New Worlds"
Drug Symposium, at the State University of New York at Buffalo,
"The only thing that we know for sure about marijuana
is that you can get arrested." The smoker knows this, and
sometimes responds, while high, accordingly. Those who charge
the drug with generating panic states are often the very same
ones who themselves produce them. Allen Ginsberg attributes his
sometimes-feeling of paranoia to the prevailing legal climate:
I myself experience... paranoia when I smoke marijuana and
for that reason smoke it in America more rarely than I did in
countries where it is legal. I noticed a profound difference of
effect. The anxiety was directly traceable to fear of being apprehended
and treated as a deviant criminal and put through the hassle of
social disapproval, ignominious Kafkian tremblings in vast court
buildings coming to be judged, the helplessness of being overwhelmed
by force or threat of deadly force and put in brick and iron cell.
From my own experience and the experience of others I have concluded
that most of the horrific effects and disorders described as characteristic
of marijuana "intoxication" by the US Federal Treasury
Department's Bureau of Narcotics are, quite the reverse, precisely
traceable back to the effects on consciousness not of the narcotic
but of the law and threatening activities of the US Federal Treasury
Department... Bureau of Narcotics itself.[25]
Another difficulty with the contention that marijuana is psychotomimetic
is that it is never clearly defined what constitutes a psychotic
episode. Thus, at one end of the spectrum of adverse reactions,
we might find various vague and superficial sequelae, such as
nervousness after drinking coffee, which are easily dispelled.
It is possible to place any effect on the Procrustian bed of value
judgments; hysterical laughter, for instance: "I laughed
for hours at 'Please pass the potato chips.'" Certainly laughing
for hours at such a straightforward request is not normal. Yet
the respondent reported the event in positive terms; a clinician
might see it in a different light.
In fact, the conceptual difficulties which plague the advocates
of the psychotomimetic position are even more fundamental than
this. The charge is not simply that cannabis generates psychosis-like
states. It is that being high on marijuana is a psychosis-like
state. The very nature of the experience is abnormal, according
to many medical observers. For instance, the Lexington studies'[26]
assertion that cannabis has psychotomimetic
properties relies on a questionnaire, a battery of questions which
purport to measure the degree to which the subject is suffering
a psychosis-like state. Yet, when the items in the questionnaire
are examined, they contain almost nothing that would qualify as
a true clinical psychosis, or anything like it. The general psychotomimetic
questions include: "Is your skin sensitive?" "Are
you happy?" "Are colors brighter?" "Time passes
slowly." "Are you having a lot of thoughts?" "Do
you feel silly?" "Is your hearing keener?" The
statements specifically related to marijuana (actually THC) include:
"My thoughts seem to come and go." "My appetite
is increased." "I notice things around me which I have
not noticed before."
In other words, what is labeled a psychotomimetic experience is
nothing more than the characteristics associated with the marijuana
high. The fact that any of these items were actually used to measure
a state labeled a psychosis is nothing more than a display of
the researchers' prejudices, a display of an archaic epistemological
ethnocentrism which rejects any and all experience which does
not fit the narrow positivistic mold. This form of reasoning clearly
illustrates the interpenetration of science and ideology—ideology
parading as science. The marijuana experience is, of course, different
from "normal." Marijuana is a psychoactive drug; it
influences the mind, influences perceptions. This is, in fact,
precisely one of the main reasons why it has the appeal it has
to some. Some people may like this state, and others may not.
But is it madness? How frail are the facts in the path of the
mighty concept!
Thus, the attribution to marijuana of psychotomimetic properties
is an ideological and political act. It involves a definitional
process of deciding that certain psychic manifestations subsequent
to smoking marijuana in fact (1) may properly be characterized
as psychotomimetic in nature; (2) are generated by the drug; and
(3) are not typical of, or generated by, substances of which society
approves. There is a tacit assumption in descriptions of adverse
reactions to pot that the laws prohibiting this substance
are legitimate, and that one of the reasons why it is outlawed
(and should continue to be outlawed) is that it is capable of
producing a psychotic episode. Yet there is a mirror process at
work; not only must we ascribe to marijuana a causal nexus with
temporary psychoses, we must also ignore the role of other substances
equally as capable of producing the same or even more extreme
states. It was found, as a parallel example, that numerous household
substances had the same chromosome-breaking properties as LSD—aspirin,
nicotine, caffeine, tranquilizers, and so forth. The fact that
no hue and cry was raised concerning these findings demonstrates
the political character of the controversy.
The firmer root which a marijuana subculture would take in American
society as a result of its legality is another change that must
be considered. Many of the values that marijuana users pass on
to neophytes are a contextual feature of its underground status.
Elements of paranoia (for instance, fear that one's phone is being
tapped by the police, apprehensiveness that someone who wants
to do harm is following when one is high on the street) are part
of the culture and are only partially a matter of personality
configurations. The cultural beliefs evolving subsequent to legalization
would not include these elements of paranoia, at least in the
same degree.
As Becker has pointed out,[27] the
more solid and fully developed that a psychedelic drug culture
is, the more it cushions the subject from untoward or psychotic
reactions by giving them an approved and fully explained status.
Where the high neophyte—or the individual who is not part of
a drug culture, or is taking a drug for which there has developed
as yet no subculture—senses reactions which he did not expect,
or which his companions did not expect, they rely on the interpretation
which a positivist society passes on to them about anything novel
or strange or fantastic: he's crazy. If he says, "I'm Jesus,"
or "I just saw infinity," or "I want to make love
to this flower," where no subculture which has handled such
eccentricities exists, the conclusion is obvious: he's crazy.
And the message flashes back to the subject; eventually this becomes:
I'm crazy! With this lack of cultural and interpersonal
support, the individual, high on a strange drug, loosened from
his traditional moorings, heavily influenced by the interpretations
of his behavior by his equally naive companions, comes to look
on his behavior and himself as insane. In this situation, psychotic
episodes are highly likely. But if his statement "I'm Jesus"
is met with "Groovy, baby; just groove on it," a psychotic
self-image is not likely to be engendered. The fully developed
drug subculture acts as interpretative "decompression chamber"
for bizarre feeling and behavior, which are alien to a rational
civilization. By finding such feelings and behavior acceptable,
even admirable, by setting them into a more or less commonplace
universal and to-be-expected context, and by providing some sort
of explanation for their occurrence, they are experienced by the
individual as a normal part of his drug adventure, an inevitable
unfolding of his destiny and psyche. According to this thesis,
with an elaborate and ramified drug subculture, few users of the
drug will experience psychotic reactions as a result of such a
definition by their peers; in fact, few psychotic reactions will
occur at all.
It is Becker's thesis that this process has in fact happened with
marijuana historically. Prior to the development of a society
of marijuana users with a distinct view of the world, and especially
with its own version of the effects of the drug, panic reactions
were common; nowadays they are rare. Extending Becker's argument
one step further, we would predict that they would be even rarer
in the absence of legal sanctions against its possession. The
paranoid elements would fall away. There would be less of a need
to set oneself off from the nonsmokers—the squares—since there
would be less need to play at being straight when one is high.
The "bad vibrations" which marijuana users often feel
from uncertain situations and individuals—often nonsmokers—would
lose much of their force. And a richer and firmer and more supportive
subculture would protect the high user from any potentially untoward
reactions, from incipient feelings which, in the absence of a
justification, might bring on panic.
In the approximately two and a half thousand man-hours of observing
marijuana smoking taking place, I did not encounter any response
that could qualify as a psychotic episode, even by the most generous
definition. The closest manifestation of such a state was when
a girl left a party because she felt uncomfortable. However, the
descriptions of the marijuana high brought out a small amount
of material; two girls experienced more or less consistent adverse
and even psychotomimetic episodes while under marijuana's influence.
And reactions which would be judged adverse by anyone were sprinkled
throughout the descriptions of the high. Some were more commonly
reported than others; as we saw, 15 percent of the whole sample
said that they sometimes felt paranoid while smoking, a not unreasonable
reaction given the present legal setting. However, considering
the number of respondents and the frequency with which they had
been high, acute panic states while under the influence of the
drug seemed to be extremely rare.
This generalization is corroborated by research done in a San
Francisco clinic associated with a heavily drug-oriented hippie
population. Summarizing his observations in the clinic, David
E. Smith, a toxicologist, writes:
In fifteen months of operation the Haight-Ashbury Clinic has seen
approximately 30,000 patients.... Our research indicated that
at least 95 percent of the patients had used marijuana one or
more times, and yet no case of primary psychosis was seen. There
is no question that such an acute effect is theoretically possible,
but its occurrence is very rare.[28]
We would expect that powerful differences in the nature of their
answers should obtain among different kinds of marijuana smokers.
For instance, do men and women react to the drug, or report acting
to the drug, in the same way, or are there systematic differences
between the sexes? Curiously, our data suggest small and not very
enlightening differences between men and women in their descriptions
of the marijuana high. They both give the same average number
of characteristics describing the high—about ten per person.
And for each effect, the proportion of men and women who proffered
it is about 54/46—the ratio of men to women respondents answering
this question. The only pattern that significantly departs from
this is in the realm of adverse reactions. Although for both men
and women the effects which the subject and an outside observer
of any ideological persuasion would describe as pleasant heavily
outweigh the unpleasant, women seem to be more likely to mention
unpleasant characteristics in their description of the high.
This pattern holds true, for instance, with feeling paranoid;
less than 10 percent of the men included paranoia as one description
of their drug experience, while this was true of 21 percent of
the women. Women were also more likely to report sometimes feeling
depressed (6 percent for men, 15 percent for women), introverted
(16 percent vs. 30 percent), or a sense of depersonalization,
being cut off from themselves (8 percent vs. 16 percent). In short,
women seemed to dominate the negative responses.
Differential involvement with the drug might also be expected
to yield differential responses. Strangely, the heavy marijuana
smoker (who used the drug at least three times per week) gave
the same number of average characteristics describing the high
as did the more infrequent user (smoking less than once per week).
Adverse reactions were slightly higher for the infrequent user,
but the differences were small, although consistent. Contrariwise,
the more the respondent smoked, the greater was his attribution
of favorable characteristics to the marijuana high.
Aside from three effects—the feeling that everything seems funnier
while high, the sense that time is moving slowly, and the impairment
of memory, as well as the sex findings which we mentioned—no
strong differences of any kind emerged from the interviews outside
of the pleasant-unpleasant orbit. In these three, the less frequent
smoker gave them more emphasis as a valid description of the high;
yet for even these, the differences were never over l0 or 12 percent.
What is so striking about these descriptions, then, is the relative
consistency of descriptions, the sameness in the qualities chosen
to describe the marijuana experience; the variations are always
minimal in comparison with the uniformity.
It is possible that our differentiation between the less than
weekly smokers and those who used the drug at least three times
per week is not sufficiently sharp to capture differences among
levels of use. As mentioned above, compensation with marijuana
probably develops fairly quickly and easily. Thus, most of our
less than weekly smokers were experienced users: they had had
sufficient experience with the subjective effects of the drug
as to be aware of how to control the high. Thus, the most striking
point of difference in the descriptions of the drug's effects
would lie between the complete neophyte, who had just been turned
on and had experienced the drug's effects once or twice, and the
experienced user, who had been high more than a few times. Our
differentiation, at any rate, did not yield any interesting contrasts
in level of use.
It is often asserted that "nothing is known" about the
effects of marijuana, and it is, for this reason alone, a dangerous
drug. In the narrow sense that even supposed experts disagree
fundamentally about most of the basic issues, this is true. But
a great deal of evidence has been collected, and if read critically,
a reasonably consistent picture emerges. The one thing that we
do know about the effects of marijuana is that many of
the components of the classic diatribes from an earlier age turn
out to be hoaxes. It is peculiar that "nothing is known"
should become a rallying antimarijuana argument today, since what
was asserted previously was that we do, indeed, know the effects
of marijuana—and they are all bad. However, what is not known,
above all, are the effects of long-term usage, particularly long-term
heavy usage. And unfortunately, even the most tentative and exploratory
answer to this question lies quite distant in the future.
N O T E S
1. If one were to do a social history of marijuana
use, it would be necessary to grapple with the question of the
events so hysterically described. There are several possibilities:
(1) events were fabricated, utterly and totally, by the Federal
Bureau of Narcotics, to initiate and justify the statute outlawing
marijuana possession; (2) marijuana use was unconsciously "read"
into events that actually took place; some murders, for instance,
may have taken place by someone who smoked marijuana, may have
smoked marijuana, would have been the kind of person who could
have smoked marijuana etc.; (3) the events actually occurred,
but were due to the unfamiliarity of the populace with a new drug,
and disappeared with the accretion of a subculture of users who
have learned, and who initiate the neophyte into learning, what
to expect of the drug, how to handle its effects, what to do in
case of unusual events or panic. For an imaginative presentation
of the third argument, and its extension to LSD use in the early
and middle 19605, see Howard S. Becker, "History, Culture
and Subjective Experiences," Journal of Health and Social
Behavior 8 (September 1967): 163-176 (back)
2. In regard to the "peace" component
of this equation, it must be remembered that an extraordinarily
high proportion of the American soldiers in Vietnam (and the Viet
Cong as well, according to returning veterans' stories) have smoked
marijuana; some estimates put the figure at 60 percent. (back)
3. Two complications muddy this simple statement:
(1) the excitement of smoking marijuana for the first time—the
idea of smoking—often produces many symptoms which are
similar to an actual high, for instance, an increase in the heartbeat
rate; (2) many initiates do not recognize the actual effects,
thinking them to be much more extreme than they are, and may be
high without realizing it. (back)
4. Malachi L. Harney, "Discussion on
Marihuana: Moderator's Remarks," in the International Narcotic
Enforcement Officers Association, Eighth Annual Conference
Report (Louisville, Ky., October 22-26, 1967), p. 50. (back)
5. Donald E. Miller, "Marihuana: The
Law and its Enforcement," Suffolk University Law Review
3 (Fall 1968): 83. (back)
6. Harry J. Anslinger and W. G. Tompkins,
The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk and Wagnalls,
1953), p. 21. (back)
7. Although researchers often complain of
the unstandardizability of the natural marijuana, it is, nonetheless,
the substance actually used illicitly, so that synthetic products
will produce misleading results. (back)
8. Andrew T. Weil, Norman E. Zinberg, and
Judith M. Nelson, "Clinical and Psychological Effects of
Marihuana in Man," Science 162, no. 3859 (December
13, 1968): 1234-1242. (back)
9. An earlier research study, Harris Isbell
et al., "Effects of (-) A 9 Trans-Tetrahydrocannabinol in
Man," Psychopharmacologia 11 (1967): 185, also turned
up the negative finding on dilation of the pupils. (back)
10. Donald B. Louria, Nightmare Drugs
(New York: Pocket Books, 1966), p. 36, and The Drug Scene
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 107-108; Edward R. Bloomquist,
Marijuana (Beverly Hills, Calif.: The Glencoe Press, 1968),
pp. 1gS-1g8; Pablo Osvaldo Wolff, Marihuana in Latin America
(Washington, D.C.: Linacre Press, 1949), p. 31; United Nations
Document E/CN 7/481, "Effects of the Use and Abuse of Narcotic
Drugs on Accidents in General and on Road Accidents in Particular,"
September 14, 1965. Louria correctly writes that "there are
no statistical data linking marijuana to automobile accidents."
Cf. Drug Scene, p. 107. This does not appear to dim the
fervor of Louria's argument, however. (back)
11. Myra MacPherson, "Parents Need Facts
on Pot," The Washington Post, July 10, 1969, p. K3.
The stated purpose of the article is something of an admission
of defeat of the antipot argument. The marijuana-using youngster
is well equipped to demolish the other side's arguments with facts
of his own, which, in its inexperience and ignorance, the older
generation is often unable to refute. The MacPherson article,
then, attempted to fill this void. Needless to say, what was provided
was not facts, but propaganda—as is true of the facts wielded
by the opposition. (back)
12. Alfred Crancer, Jr., James M. Dille,
Jack C. Delay, Jean E. Wallace, and Martin D. Haykin, "Comparison
of the Effects of Marihuana and Alcohol on Simulated Driving Performance,"
Science 164, no. 3881 (May 16, 1969): 851-8S4. Significantly,
The Journal of the American Medical Association rejected
publication of this important research report. (back)
13. Lloyd Shearer, "Marijuana vs. Alcohol,"
Parade, July 6, 1969. (back)
14. Shearer, op. cit. (back)
15. See Richard Brotman and Frederic Suffet,
"Marijuana Users' Views of Marijuana Use" (Paper presented
to the American Psychopathological Association, February 1969),
p. 10. (back)
16. C. Knight Aldrich, "The Effect of
a Synthetic Marihuana-Like Compound on Musical Talent as Measured
by the Seashore Test," Public Health Reports 59 (March
31, 1944): 431-433 (back)
17. Andrew T. Weil and Norman E. Zinberg,
"Acute Effects of Marihuana on Speech," Nature 22
(May 3, 1969): 437. (back)
18. Norman Taylor, "The Pleasant Assassin:
The Story of Marihuana," Narcotics: Nature's Dangerous
Gifts (New York: Delta, 1963), p. 21. (back)
19. Constandinos J. Miras, "Report of
UCLA Seminar," in Kenneth Eells, ed., Pot (Pasadena:
California Institute of Technology, October 1968), pp. 69-77. (back)
20. Lionel Calhoun Moise, "Marijuana:
Sex-Crazing Drug Menace," Physical Culture 77(1937):
19. (back)
21. Alexander Trocchi, Cain's Book (New
York: Grove Press, 1961), p. 123. (back)
22. David Matza, Becoming Deviant (Englewood
Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1969), p. 136 et seq. (back)
23. Matza, op. cit., pp. 138, 139. (back)
24. David E. Smith, "Acute and Chronic
Toxicity of Marijuana," Journal of Psychedelic Drugs 2,
no. 1 (Fall 1968): 41. (back)
25. Allen Ginsberg,"The Great Marijuana
Hoax," Atlantic Monthly, November 1966, pp. 108, 109. (back)
26. Isbell et al., op. cit., and Harris Isbell
and D. R. Jasinski, "A Comparison of LSD25 with (-)delta-9 Trans-Tetrahydrocannabinol
(THC) and Attempted Cross Tolerance between LSD and THC,"
Psychopharmacologia 14 (1969), 115-123. The items of the
questionnaire are not included in the published articles, but
are available from the senior author on request. One piece of
clinical evidence on the psychotomimetic properties of THC was
offered in passing: two subjects withdrew from the experiments
because of their experience with psychotic reactions. It need
hardly be stressed that these experiments have an extremely limited
applicability to marijuana use. Pure THC is considerably more
potent than the cannabis substances typically consumed, so that
the reactions of subjects will be considerably different for the
two substances. In addition, different reactions can be expected
in a laboratory as opposed to one's own living room. (back)
27. Howard S. Becker, "History, Culture
and Subjective Experience: An Exploration of the Social Bases
of Drug-Induced Experiences," Journal of Health and Social
Behavior 8 (September 1967): 163-176. (back)
28. Smith, op. cit., p. 41. (back)
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