Descriptive accounts of marihuana intoxication have been written by noted authors, Beaudelaire (1961), scientists, Moreau (1945), and common users Tart, 1970, 1971; Isbell et al., 1967; Report by Advisory Committee, 1968). Adequate description of the state of mind produced by low doses is difficult because it is not approximated in the usual states of consciousness or by other commonly used drugs. The closest non-drug approximation may be the altered state of consciousness experienced in the hypnotic trance or transcendental meditation or the, transition zone between waking and sleep (Weil, 1971). Due to the highly subjective nature of the experience, there is much individual variation in the effects described.

Tart (1970, 1971) studied the range of potential common effects in an extensive survey of 150 users. Changes noted by these studies at low doses (usually smoked dose about five mg. THC) include euphoria, with restlessness and mild mental confusion. Sensory perception of the external environment. is altered. Users often perceive an overestimation or slowing of elapsed time and expansion of space, enhanced sense of tactile, olfactory, gustatory perceptions and often a feeling of hunger. Visual alterations reported are more vivid imagery and seeing forms and patterns in objects that are usually amorphous. Increased awareness of subtle qualities of sound such as purity, distinctness or rhythm are characteristically perceived by users. A dreamy, relaxed state and disinhibition, with uncontrollable laughter is reported and users often believe that interpersonal relations are altered, and act to potentiate social interaction.

At moderate doses intensifications of changes experienced are reported. Users' reports include disturbed associations, dulling of attention, vivid visual imagery, fixed ideas, rapidly changing positive and negative emotions, fragmentation of thought, flight of ideas, impaired immediate memory, altered sense of identity, increased suggestibility and a feeling of enhanced insight. At higher doses, interpersonal relations are dulled and the user feels less social and more withdrawn.

At larger doses psychotomimetic (hallucinogenic-like) phenomena are experienced in a wavelike fashion. These include distortion of body image, depersonalization, visual illusions and distortions, synesthesia, dream-like fantasies and vivid hallucinations.

Data from Isbell et a]. (1967) and Perez-Reyes et al. (1971) have indicated that the hallucinogenic oral dose is in the range of 0.4 to 0.5 mg./kg Delta 9 THC. Thus, the hallucinogenic dose is 80 times larger than the delivered dose of smoked marihuana producing minimal subjective effects (five micrograms/kg.) or about 11 to 14 times larger than the usual smoked dose.