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Confessions of a Reformed Pot Smoker |
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Written by D.L. McCracken
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Wednesday, 08 March 2006 |
That would be me. I grudgingly consider myself an aging hippie. Grudgingly because I detest the 'aging' part but there's just no getting around it anymore. I am a remnant of the original era of the hippie - I am a member of the generation that invented the word and the lifestyle - the far out, spaced out, bell-bottom and buffalo sandal-wearing, patch oil scented flower children. We had a ready-made war to protest even if Canada wasn't really part of it and rebelling against the establishment was our job, man. Peace (we invented that symbol too).
We had the best music too. The sounds of Hendrix, Joplin, Buffalo Springfield, Dylan and Morrison were the hippie's anthem, the tunes were far out and the words spoke to each one of us. Of course they spoke even better if we were stoned. Then they became profound.
That's another word we invented - 'stoned'. Not sure if the term is still used today but I have heard reference to the word 'wasted' which actually is a much better description of the effects of the new and improved soft drugs that kids are smoking these days. But more on that later.
Back to the drugs of the late 60s and early 70s. Drug of choice for most hippies back then was marijuana - either 'grass' or 'hash' and of course the standard, 'pot'. Both could be rolled in a joint but hash could also be inhaled in a variety of cleverly conceived techniques - hot knives come to mind. Boring in it's cleverness but equally effective in its desired result. And in the end, we were all tokers although we didn't restrict our activities to midnight.
Keep in mind that marijuana wasn't the only drug of choice back in the day but for people like me, it was enough. We just wanted to have fun and having fun back then had nothing to do with frying our brain cells.
And fun is what we had. Life was simple right down to the nicknames we attached to our drugs of choice. Today if you google 'marijuana' you are served with lists several pages long containing slang names for the drug. Back in the day like I said it was grass, hash and pot but occasionally we referred to it as a doobie (joint) and when we were trying to be incredibly clever, there was always mary jane - mari juana...get it?
I'll admit that I smoked my fair share of grass and hash back in the day and probably my next door neighbour's share as well. Life was good back then. We toked, we grooved, we laughed and we pigged out on cheesies. And the next morning we got up, got dressed and went to work. No nasty hangovers. We didn't toke to forget or to make life more bearable or to help us get through the day. And we never had a problem with addiction. Rest assured one would have to participate in some pretty serious pot smoking to become even mildly dependent.
Which brings me to the point of all this nostalgia.
There is a movement afoot in Canada to decriminalize marijuana. Proponents of decrim have been vocal for several years now as they shout from the rooftops with their "facts" about the safety of marijuana. There are countless websites written by marijuana proponents promising that today's marijuana will not cause users to become addicted - "you can't get addicted to THC". They will take on any scientific evidence on the harmful effects of marijuana and bend over backwards to discount the proof. If Albert Einstein himself was still with us and conducted his own studies on the negative effects of marijuana, the naysayers would simply add a new section to their websites titled, "Einstein is An Idiot".
And the people who are reading these websites and absorbing the information being provided by pot activists? It's our kids. Your kids and mine. They want to believe the side being presented to them by the pot activists because - you guessed it - they want to smoke pot and it would be cool if it were legal because it would be less of a hassle but legal or not, they want to smoke pot. As we all know, kids think they're invincible. Even if half the information being provided by the opponents to marijuana decrim has even a small measure of truth, they believe with all their heart that it won't happen to them.
So this is what you have to make your kids understand - today's marijuana, the 2006 pot crop that your kids want to smoke is ten times more potent than the marijuana of the 60s and 70s. Take any drug and increase its potency ten times and you're talking a seriously powerful drug. Ever taken a 5 mg. Valium? Think what 10 of those pills would do if taken at the same time.
Because today's marijuana is ten times as potent, the effects of smoking the drug will be ten times as intense and I'm not referring to the pleasurable effects of pot. Ever hear someone say smoking pot makes them paranoid? It's no longer just paranoia; the term now is 'marijuana induced acute panic anxiety reaction'. Take a panic or anxiety attack and have it freak you out for several hours. Then there's the whole marijuana induced psychosis thing. It is not a pretty sight.
Now this next part is going to make the pot activists very angry and I expect to get hate mail for what I'm about to share. But someone must take a stand here and spell it out for parents who aren't sure what they should do about their children and marijuana.
Today's marijuana because it is so potent, can lead to psychological dependence and physical addiction if your teenager smokes it on a regular basis. If you do not believe anything else I have written here, believe this. By the time your kid reaches psychological dependence, they have lost interest in everything in which they derived some enjoyment including family, friends, school and extracurricular activities. They have become secretive and either lock themselves away from the rest of the family or they stay away from the house altogether for longer periods of time. They dress differently; they have a new more mysterious circle of friends. Their school grades have dropped. They suddenly no longer have that burning desire to be a teacher or a lawyer. They need the drug. If they can't get the drug, they are morose, moody, sad, angry...and what I've just described is only psychological dependence.
Physical dependence - addiction - is much worse. Both require drug detox and rehab but addiction will take much longer to resolve. If it ever does.
Parents need to initiate the topic of marijuana. If you're waiting for your kid to come to you, it could already be too late. It's no longer safe to fall for the "it's only marijuana" line. The marijuana of my day was simply a recreational drug in every sense of the word. The marijuana of today is a potentially dangerous and deadly drug with horrific long term consequences.
Somebody has to set the record straight. Who better than a former pot smoker?
Author's note - as expected, the hate mail is pouring in. Pot activists are starting to scream. The article has been copied and pasted into discussion boards full of indignant potheads. And as predicted, they will do anything to discount the information presented in the article. Alas, I inadvertently provided in the form of a brain fart, a certain amount of fodder for their outrage - I renamed Albert Einstein. With apologies to Mr. Einstein I have since corrected my mistake but of course the potheads will continue to use one brain fart to discount the entire article. If nothing else, they continue to be quite predictable. |
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