The author is a 33-year-old journalist with a Masters in English now seeking a PhD at a northeastern university. He sees marijuana and other drug prohibition as a human rights issue on par morally with the struggles — past and ongoing — of America’s other historically oppressed groups.

The lack of clarity in the public mind about what comprises responsible use or abuse of a drug is a perpetual problem for me and millions of others — especially meek users who have been jailed with violent offenders because they had a plant that our Mighty Freedom-Loving Government disapproves off. We have wasted millions, maybe billions, telling kids to say “no” to drugs — but we don’t go another step to explain why Mom has to go to the drugstore every week. Or why Dad drinks so much coffee. Or why the cigarette industry proves to even the most strict libertarians that a little government oversight might help keep companies from pushing their powerful smokable stimulants on young people. No, Americans enjoy a strange type of hypocrisy whereby they can get downers and uppers from a commercial pharmacopeia that is larger than any in human history — while we look down at the junkie or the stoner next door.

It’s my luck that an addiction to a legal drug, alcohol, caused me all sorts of problems with the law. After being pulled over twice for driving while intoxicated in three months, I was forced to deal with my alcoholism and employ spiritual discipline and painful focus. The alcoholic self had been calling the shots, diverting me to expensive bars when I didn’t even want to drink. It was truly frightening when I realized that I no longer had a choice. I didn’t want to drink, but my body screamed for the relief of a double gin and tonic or three. I needed the help of A.A. — even though I maintain fundamental disagreements with how that recovery program works, and am not as active as I used to be.

It took three painful months to finally sober up to the dark reality my life had become. Though I am grateful for the support of other people in recovery, there are truisms in the A.A. and medical communities whose illogic continue to mar the understanding an alcoholic might make about his or her uses of substances besides alcohol — and let’s remember there are many.

In A. A. and other treatment programs, it’s deeply discouraged to even entertain the use of an illegal drug like marijuana, since it “would certainly reawaken the alcoholic mind” and “drive one to relapse.” That’s what I thought, too. But I don’t just have alcoholism– by far, my worst difficulty in life has been persistent Obsessive Conpulsive Disorder (with invasive thoughts) and generalized anxiety. I don’t know if they caused my booze problems, but they certainly made it harder to give up.

I was sober five months. I had a new house and seemed to be improving after an annus horribilus that, besides being busted, involved a relationship break up, a kitchen fire, and getting mugged. The desire to drink was almost gone, but my anxiety — particularly the idea that I had “done something wrong” — scorched my body. Sometimes I only left the house to see my probation officer, so deep was my fear of the world. He was happy with me, unlike his other cases, I was committed to changing. But he never understood how my anxiety was so painful that drinking was starting to have a sick appeal. For someone who barely escaped the deep throes of alcoholism — a disease that kills two thirds of its hosts — the idea of drinking was horrifying. But the temporary relief a few beers would produce made me consider a jaunt to the package store.

In February of 1998 my mind was intensely focused on the urge to find relief in the bottle. I had no support or understanding for my ongoing problems. I felt like I was missing a layer of skin.

Then I made a fateful compromise.

Realizing I really craved only a change in perspective, it occurred to me that alcohol was not the only option. Another was much safer.

So that’s when I found myself digging up an old marble bowl my sister left after a visit and toking on the remaining resin. This idea shamed me, but I knew drugs well enough to determine it was the better choice.

I don’t think old resin ever did so much to change one man’s point of view about pot.

Marijuana, to my mind still, was a fun drug, but part of the past. I doubted anyone would accept the idea of smoking pot as an emotional palliative. The term used in AA for my behavior was “marijuana maintenance”, as if it were a lousy substitute for the great inner alchemical work I was supposed to do with the Twelve Steps. But nobody in AA talked about being a multiple diagnosis drunk — I couldn’t tolerate any longer the stress that seemed to stretch my muscles to painful degrees.

But suddenly none of that mattered. MiraculousIy, I wasn’t paranoid that I was breaking the law, and the terms of my probation. A hit or two of resin for someone who had been off dope would mean a complete shift in consciousness.

As I scraped and toked at the awkward tarry chunks, I was suddenly an observer to my crisis, not someone caught up in its drama. “What am I worried about, again?” I thought. “There is nothing to be afraid of. The past is over.”

Though marijuana was often fun, I never took seriously the idea that it could have therapeutic use. I was amazed as, in minutes, it extinguished the whiny emotional pain bodies infecting my mind, and gave me a larger view. And it occurred to me I no longer craved alcohol. “I might be switching one addiction for another, ” I thought. “But at least I won’t have to be detoxed — if I only smoke pot.”

Despite the initial success, I was very wary and angry at myself a few days later for acquiescing. I was sure my probation officer and people in AA would know I was “relapsing.” Shame started to intensify.

Until I reconsidered what I had done with strict logic. The marijuana didn’t make me paranoid; it calmed me. The majority of alchies are on some pharmaceutical medication — I would gladly taken a benzo or two as needed, if a script had been available.

But I didn’t even have medical insurance. Pot was available. And it would never catch up to me or drive me to drink.

I say that after having quit the sauce for almost two years — while I cultivated a new love, and a new awareness, for the healing properties of pot. Suddenly I had more than enough. Even better, I also didn’t have to struggle in group situations where a social lubricant is shared. People, including my friends, would always feel awkward partying around me, making me only feel more self-conscious and alienated. Instead of becoming a recluse, I found that, with the help of marijuana, I could be calm and even joyous at events where drinks were served.

Still, I am sad that the legality of marijuana still poses risk. I could be drug tested, any time, and my positive result would not benefit from a rational explanation about how I had taken up another, less harmful, less addictive, non-fatal drug to ease my mental illness. It would be a stretch in the mind of the enforcement community to accept I could smoke dope and never pick up the substance that would really kill me.

Indeed, when I consider how much better off a chronic pot smoker is than a compulsive alcoholic, the social approval of drink makes no sense juxtaposed to the fierce condemnation of the wonderful, insight-giving herb.

I am not going to lie and say my use has always been moderate or periodic. I have been stoned for days. But that didn’t bother me so much when I realized I was taking a medication, not feeding a vile addiction. And my outward life improved enormously. I got a new job, lost weight, read many books — and never had to lie to my overseer, since he never asked me about pot. I could sincerely tell him about my recovery from alcoholism and became his ideal model for success. I take no pride in the deception — in fact, it’s filled me with dread at times — but it wasn’t deliberate. I went to meetings and took care of myself the way any good A.A. would. But the affinity for weed must be kept hidden for now. Were I not on probation, I would be marching on the streets for legalization.

For the first time in my experience with it, I felt the plant was showing me its distinct personality. I would hear a strange funny voice in my head, and sometimes wondered if the plant wasn’t communicating with me. Additionally, my sense of color and perception improved vastly. I mastered the star constellations — which I had never bothered to notice before — and even developed theories about how healing powers of color corresponded to the Eastern Chakra system. (I had been wearing mostly red, I realized, perhaps to reassure the low, frightened security chakra, whose color is traditionally rosy.).

Confident that experimenting with other power plants would not sully my recovery efforts, I had several experiences with illegal psychedelics — accentuated by a few tokes — which I found deeply healing. I have felt like a new man. The presence of marijuana and other natural intoxicants is as much to thank as the absence of booze. I stay away from narcotics, which seem particularly dangerous for the self-medicating alcoholic. But I don’t smoke cigarettes or even drink coffee. My drug intake is quite modest — it’s just not in line with social norms. Since police officials have the right to do a surprise visit at my home to see if I am hungover — or something else — I have had to exercise deep caution. Not even my pot-smoking sister knows — for she would worry, as she has the AA view about drugs. My mother is a psychiatrist specializing in addiction but she considers the use of power plants or LSD absurd for the recovering alcoholic, even though the founder of AA took acid and thoughr it could be very helpful for other drunks. I lay off the green during weeks with the family. It is not a challenge.

Marijuana is not for everyone, and certainly may be used irresponsibly. But prohibition, which forces people like me to the black market, is a constant reminder of how Neanderthal our drug policy is. This is reflected in the laws but also in the minds of most people — who wouldn’t understand how marijuana saved my life that February day.

This account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life – a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . . same scene, orange house, brown sky, red clouds, yellow path, violet fields . . . Flash . . . Flash . . . Flash. The flashes came about once a heartbeat. Each flash brought the same simple scene into view, but each time with a different set of colors . . . exquisitely deep hues, and astonishingly harmonious in their juxtaposition. Since then I have smoked occasionally and enjoyed it thoroughly. It amplifies torpid sensibilities and produces what to me are even more interesting effects, as I will explain shortly.

I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis, in which I viewed a candle flame and discovered in the heart of the flame, standing with magnificent indifference, the black-hatted and -cloaked Spanish gentleman who appears on the label of the Sandeman sherry bottle. Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

I want to explain that at no time did I think these things ‘really’ were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences. There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part appreciating the work of the creator-part. I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids. In this sense, I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic, but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses. Possibly this is because I know it’s my own trip, and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to.

While my early perceptions were all visual, and curiously lacking in images of human beings, both of these items have changed over the intervening years. I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high. I test whether I’m high by closing my eyes and looking for the flashes. They come long before there are any alterations in my visual or other perceptions. I would guess this is a signal-to-noise problem, the visual noise level being very low with my eyes closed. Another interesting information-theoretical aspects is the prevalence – at least in my flashed images – of cartoons: just the outlines of figures, caricatures, not photographs. I think this is simply a matter of information compression; it would be impossible to grasp the total content of an image with the information content of an ordinary photograph, say 108 bits, in the fraction of a second which a flash occupies. And the flash experience is designed, if I may use that word, for instant appreciation. The artist and viewer are one. This is not to say that the images are not marvelously detailed and complex. I recently had an image in which two people were talking, and the words they were saying would form and disappear in yellow above their heads, at about a sentence per heartbeat. In this way it was possible to follow the conversation. At the same time an occasional word would appear in red letters among the yellows above their heads, perfectly in context with the conversation; but if one remembered these red words, they would enunciate a quite different set of statements, penetratingly critical of the conversation. The entire image set which I’ve outlined here, with I would say at least 100 yellow words and something like 10 red words, occurred in something under a minute.

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights – I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguey. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguey painting. Perhaps Tanguey visited such a beach in his childhood.

A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I’m down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex – on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word ‘crazy’ to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: ‘did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.’ When high on cannabis I discovered that there’s somebody inside in those people we call mad.

When I’m high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won’t attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day. Some of the hardest work I’ve ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it’s a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I’ve made the effort – successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

But let me try to at least give the flavor of such an insight and its accompaniments. One night, high on cannabis, I was delving into my childhood, a little self-analysis, and making what seemed to me to be very good progress. I then paused and thought how extraordinary it was that Sigmund Freud, with no assistance from drugs, had been able to achieve his own remarkable self-analysis. But then it hit me like a thunderclap that this was wrong, that Freud had spent the decade before his self-analysis as an experimenter with and a proselytizer for cocaine; and it seemed to me very apparent that the genuine psychological insights that Freud brought to the world were at least in part derived from his drug experience. I have no idea whether this is in fact true, or whether the historians of Freud would agree with this interpretation, or even if such an idea has been published in the past, but it is an interesting hypothesis and one which passes first scrutiny in the world of the downs.

I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say ‘Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!’ I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it’s as if two people are reading each other’s minds.

Cannabis enables nonmusicians to know a little about what it is like to be a musician, and nonartists to grasp the joys of art. But I am neither an artist nor a musician. What about my own scientific work? While I find a curious disinclination to think of my professional concerns when high – the attractive intellectual adventures always seem to be in every other area – I have made a conscious effort to think of a few particularly difficult current problems in my field when high. It works, at least to a degree. I find I can bring to bear, for example, a range of relevant experimental facts which appear to be mutually inconsistent. So far, so good. At least the recall works. Then in trying to conceive of a way of reconciling the disparate facts, I was able to come up with a very bizarre possibility, one that I’m sure I would never have thought of down. I’ve written a paper which mentions this idea in passing. I think it’s very unlikely to be true, but it has consequences which are experimentally testable, which is the hallmark of an acceptable theory.

I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I’ve negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I’m not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you’re high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don’t advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I’ve never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn’t too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

Every age has its peculiar folly and if Charles Mackay, the author of the 19th century classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds were alive today he would surely see “cannabinophobia” as a popular delusion along with the “tulipmania” and “witch hunts” of earlier ages. I believe that we are now at the cusp of this particular popular delusion which to date has been responsible for the arrest of over twelve million US citizens. I also believe that future historians will look at this epoch and recognize it as another instance of the “madness of crowds.” Many readers of this Web site have already arrived at this understanding, but for some of us enlightenment came later than we would have wished. Consistent with the goal of my Uses of Marijuana Project of encouraging users to write about their involvement with cannabis, I thought I would share something of my cannabis enlightenment, a story that now spans a third of a century.

In every life there occur seminal events that modify the seemingly established trajectory of one’s personal history. For me, three of the four big ones were, in chronological order, the decision to go to medical school, the extraordinary good fortune of meeting the woman I married, and the gift of children. The fourth was my improbable encounter with cannabis, an event that divided my life into two eras; the before cannabis era, and the cannabis era (my son David refers to these phases of my life as BC and AD for before cannabis and after dope). My cannabis era began to unfold in 1967. As the senior author of a book on schizophrenia, I found myself with what I estimated would be two to three relatively free months before my co-authors would finish their chapters. Because I had become concerned that so many young people were using the terribly dangerous drug marijuana, I decided to use the time to review the medical literature so that I could write a reasonably objective and scientifically sound paper on the harmfulness of this substance. Young people were ignoring the warnings of the government, but perhaps some would seriously consider a well-documented review of the available data. So I began my systematic review of the medical and scientific literature bearing on the toxicity — mental and physical — of marijuana. It never occurred to me then that there were other dimensions of this drug that warranted exploration.

During my initial foray into this literature I discovered, to my astonishment, that I had to seriously question what I believed I knew about cannabis. As I began to appreciate that what I thought I understood was largely based on myths, old and new, I realized how little my training in science and medicine had protected me against this misinformation. I had become not just a victim of a disinformation campaign, but because I was a physician, one of its agents as well. Believing that I should share my skepticism about the established understanding of marijuana, I wrote a long paper that was published in the now-defunct International Journal of Psychiatry; a shorter version was published as the lead article in the December 1969 issue of Scientific American. In these papers I questioned whether the almost ubiquitous belief that marijuana was an exceedingly harmful drug was supported by substantial data to be found in the scientific and medical literature. While there was little reaction to the paper published in the psychiatric journal, there was much interest in the Scientific American article.

Within a week of the appearance of the article, I received a visit from the associate director of the Harvard University Press, who suggested that I consider writing a book on marijuana. I found the idea both attractive and daunting. The subject was worthy of a book-length exposition, and I would have a reason to deepen my exploration of this fascinating and harmful misunderstanding. And there was another reason, perhaps the most compelling of all. The one aspect of my work that interested my twelve-year old son Danny was my study of marijuana. His illness began in July of 1967, just about the time I had decided to learn about the dangers of marijuana. He was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, and his prognosis was, of course, grave. He was both excited and pleased when I told him that I had decided to write a book on marijuana.

A few weeks later I learned that the Board of Syndics of the Harvard University Press had rejected the book proposal as too controversial. Until that moment I was unaware of the existence of this board, which must approve every book published by the Press. An image of the Rembrandt painting “Syndics of the Cloth Guild” came to mind: a group of serious-looking, longhaired men sitting around a table, exuding caution and conservatism. I was disappointed but not surprised that they rejected this proposal; it was the first instance of academic resistance to my work in this area. I could have signed on immediately with a trade publisher that offered the prospect of selling more books. But I believed that a conservative, prestigious press would lend more credibility to a book that promised to be quite controversial. The director of the press was undaunted; he believed that he could persuade the Syndics to reverse their decision. And so he did.

It turned out to be a much bigger project than I had anticipated. I found that I had more than the medical and scientific literature to review. Because so much of the misinformation and myths about this drug had their origins in the gaudy writings of the French Romantic Literary Movement, I felt compelled to examine the works of Théophile Gautier, Charles Baudelaire, and other members of Le Club des Haschischins, as well as those of Bayard Taylor and Fitz Hugh Ludlow. It was fascinating to learn that much of the mythology about cannabis that was being promulgated by the US government had its origins in these writings. It is difficult to imagine that Harry Anslinger (our first drug tsar) was directly familiar with these 19th-century authors, but clearly some of their hyperbolic descriptions of the cannabis experience, largely products of effusive imagination under the influence of copious amounts of hashish, are echoed almost a century later in the “teachings” of Harry Anslinger.

I had come to understand that marijuana was not addicting in the usual, rather vague understanding of that word, but I certainly got hooked on learning about it. I was fascinated by my growing understanding of how little I actually knew about this drug, and even more so by the many false beliefs I had held with such conviction. It soon dawned on me that I, like most other Americans, had been brainwashed, that I was a part of this madness of the crowd. And the more I learned about cannabis, the more it seemed to be capable of providing experiences which would be worth exploring personally sometime in the future. In the meantime, I felt like an explorer sailing an inaccurately and inadequately mapped ocean. Where earlier cartographers had found many shoals, I found few; where others found barren and dangerous islands, I saw lands that looked increasingly interesting as I drew closer. The clearer the view, the greater the temptation to land and make a direct exploration, but I reminded myself that the point of this trip was to chart the ledges and shoals, not to explore forbidden lands to look for riches. Long before I decided to land, more than a year after the publication of Marihuana Reconsidered in 1971, it had become inescapably clear that while marijuana was not harmless, its harmfulness lay not so much in any inherent psychopharmacological property of the drug but in the social and legal consequences of our firmly held misbeliefs.

After the publication of Marihuana Reconsidered I was often asked about my personal experience with cannabis. Some questioners were skeptical when I replied that I had never used it: ” What, you wrote a book about marijuana and you never experienced it!” The implication was that inexperience would invalidate my claim to expertise. I would defensively respond, “I have written a book on schizophrenia and I have never experienced that.” It was not until some years later that I realized that there was validity to this criticism of my lack of personal experience with cannabis. Especially in the later phases of this research and writing, I had flirted with the idea of trying marijuana, not because I believed at that time that it would inform my work, but because it appeared to be such an interesting experience. I decided against it out of fear that it would compromise my goal of producing as objective a statement as I could. Of course the further I pursued the subject the more I realized how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to produce a truly neutral and objective statement. But I was not about to add to this difficulty by personally exploring marijuana at this time even though the temptation to do so became greater as I learned more about it.

I had another reason for postponing personal experience with cannabis. If the book were successful, I expected to be called as an expert witness before legislative committees and in courtrooms. I correctly anticipated that some of my interrogators would want to know whether I had ever used cannabis, and I wanted to be able to deny it so as to preserve at least the appearance of objectivity. In the beginning I did not believe this question unfair. It seemed to me to be no different from other questions about my credentials. But I soon learned that when it was asked, it was almost always put by a legislator, lawyer, judge, or media person who was hostile to the suggestion that cannabis might not be as harmful as he firmly believed. It became increasingly clear that the question was asked, not in the spirit of learning more about the context of my understanding of this drug, but rather in the hope that I would answer affirmatively and that this would discredit my testimony. More than a year after the publication of the book I was testifying before a legislative committee when a senator who had already revealed his hostility asked, “Doctor, have you ever used marijuana?” Perhaps because I was irritated by the hostility reflected in his previous questions and his sneering tone of voice, I replied, “Senator, I will be glad to answer that question if you will first tell me whether if I answer your question affirmatively, you will consider me a more or less credible witness?” The senator, visibly upset by my response, angrily told me that I was being impertinent and left the hearing room. That was the moment that I decided that the time had come.

Later that week Betsy and I went to a party in Cambridge where we knew that some guests would be smoking marijuana. Ever since a review of Marihuana Reconsidered had appeared on the front page of the New York Times Book Review (under the banner, “The best dope on pot so far”) people had been offering us marijuana, and we had been politely and often a little apologetically declining it. Those guests who knew of our previously resolute abstemiousness were surprised when we decided to join them. We were cautious, as cannabis-naive people should be, as we inhaled our first tokes ever. Shortly afterward my first and only unpleasant cannabis experience began. A lit joint was passed around a small circle and we took turns inhaling big, noisy puffs and holding them in for a few seconds. One by one the others said they had had enough and waved off the passing joint; they were high, or at least claimed to be. I asked Betsy, “Do you feel anything?”

“Not a thing!”

“Neither do I.”

We were disappointed. We had been looking forward to this initiation for several years. I had come to expect so much from the experience, from the magical possibilities of this subtly altered state of consciousness — and now nothing! I began to wonder; was this all there was to it? Was my acceptance of the claims of cannabis aficionados just as naive as my earlier belief in the propaganda disseminated by the Harry Anslinger truth squad and its descendants? Could it be true that all I had accomplished in over three years of intensive research was to swing the pendulum of my gullibility from one extreme to the other? Soon my disappointment gave way to a palpable level of anxiety. Was it possible that I had spent all this time studying what must be for some people an enormously persuasive placebo? Would not the author of a book that took as a basic premise that marijuana is a real drug be considered fraudulent? I tried to reassure myself. I reminded myself that I had, after all, carefully explained to the reader that many if not most people do not get high the first time they use marijuana.

At that time I believed that the anxiety I experienced that night was generated by a precipitous loss of confidence in my newly arrived-at understanding of cannabis, an unshakable belief that after more than three years of hard work, I had gotten it wrong and as a consequence had misled a lot of people — certainly sufficient grounds for a good dose of anxiety. It was not until much later, both chronologically and in my experience with “stoned thinking”, that I began to question that explanation. It occurred to me only years later while I was smoking cannabis that I might have actually achieved a high that first night, an “anxiety high,” not the kind I had expected. This was certainly not impossible; a small percentage of people who use cannabis for the first time experience some degree of anxiety. There are even a few people who always get anxious when they use marijuana. Among the Rastafarians of Jamaica, these folks are considered slightly deviant but are understandably excused with the expression, “He don’t have a head for ganja!”

This was not a problem with my head, for a week or so later we smoked cannabis and again neither Betsy nor I noticed any change in our states of consciousness that would even remotely suggest that we were high. Thankfully, however, I was not the least bit anxious this time — only disappointed again. Finally, on our third attempt, we were able to reach the promised high. Our awareness of having at last crossed the threshold arrived gradually. The first thing I noticed, within a few minutes of smoking, was the music; it was “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” This music was not unfamiliar to me, as it was a favorite of my children, who constantly filled the house with the sound of the Beatles, the Grateful Dead and other popular rock bands of the time. They frequently urged me to get my “head out of classical music and try listening to rock.” It was impossible not to listen to rock when they were growing up, but it was possible for me, as it was for many parents of my generation, not to hear it. On that evening I did “hear” it. It was for me a rhythmic implosion, a fascinating new musical experience! It was the opening of new musical vistas, which I have with the help of my sons continued to explore to this very day. A year later, I related this story to John Lennon and Yoko Ono, with whom I was having dinner. (I was to appear the next day as an expert witness at the Immigration and Naturalization Service hearings that Attorney General John Mitchell had engineered as a way of getting them out of the country on marijuana charges after they became involved in anti-Vietnam War activities.) I told John of this experience and how cannabis appeared to make it possible for me to “hear” his music for the first time in much the same way that Allen Ginsberg reported that he had “seen” Cézanne for the first time when he purposely smoked cannabis before setting out for the Museum of Modern Art. John was quick to reply that I had experienced only one facet of what marijuana could do for music, that he thought it could be very helpful for composing and making music as well as listening to it.

In my next recollection of that evening, Betsy and I and another couple were standing in the kitchen in a circle, each of us in turn taking bites out of a Napoleon. There was much hilarity as each bite forced the viscous material between the layers to move laterally and threaten to drip on the floor. It seemed a riotous way to share a Napoleon. But the most memorable part of the kitchen experience was the taste of the Napoleon. None of us had ever, “in our whole lives”, eaten such an exquisite Napoleon! “Mary, where in the world did you find these Napoleons?” “Oh, I’ve had their Napoleons before and they never tasted like this!” It was gradually dawning on me that something unusual was happening; could it be that we were experiencing our first cannabis high?

We drove home very cautiously. In fact, one of the observations I made on the way home was how comfortable I, an habitual turnpike left-laner, was in the right-hand lane with all those cars zipping past me. It seemed like a very long time before we arrived home. Not that we were in a rush — the ride was very pleasant. Time passed even more slowly between our arrival and our going to bed, but once we did, we knew with certainty that we had finally been able to achieve a marijuana high. And that marked the beginning of the experiential facet of my cannabis era, a development that furthered my education about the many uses of this remarkable drug.

I was 44 years old in1972 when I experienced this first marijuana high. Because I have found it both so useful and benign I have used it ever since. I have used it as a recreational drug, as a medicine, and as an enhancer of some capacities. Almost everyone knows something of its usefulness as a recreational substance, growing numbers of people are becoming familiar with its medical utility, but only practiced cannabis users appreciate some of the other ways in which it can be useful. It has been so useful to me that I cannot help but wonder how much difference it would have made had I begun to use it at a younger age. Because it has been so helpful in arriving at some important decisions and understandings, it is tempting to think that it might have helped me to avoid some “before cannabis era” bad decisions. In fact, now, when I have an important problem to solve or decision to make, I invariably avail myself of the opportunity to think about it both stoned and straight.

I cannot possibly convey the breadth of things it helps me to appreciate, to think about, to gain new insights into. But I would like to share several not too personal instances. For example, let me tell you about the worst career choice I have ever made; it was my decision to apply to the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute as a candidate for training in psychoanalysis. I began this training, which was enormously costly in both time and money, in 1960 and graduated seven years later. Although I developed some skepticism about certain facets of psychoanalytic theory during training, it was not sufficient to dull the enthusiasm with which I began treating patients psychoanalytically in 1967 (coincidentally, the same year I began to study cannabis). It was not until about the mid ’70s that my emerging skepticism about the therapeutic effectiveness of psychoanalysis began to get uncomfortable. This discomfort was catalyzed by cannabis. On those evenings when I smoke marijuana it provides, among other things, an invitation to review significant ideas, events and interactions of the day; my work with patients is invariably on that agenda. This cannabis review-of-the-day is almost always self-critical, often harshly so, and the parameters within which the critique occurs are inexplicably enlarged. My psychotherapy patients, patients who sat opposite me and who could share eye contact and free verbal exchange, always appeared to be making better progress than my psychoanalytic patients. I was generally satisfied with my work with the former, and invariably at first impatient and later unhappy with the lack of progress made by patients on the couch. There is little doubt that it was the cumulative effect of these stoned self-critiques that finally, in 1980, compelled me to make the decision not to accept any new psychoanalytic patients. The subsequent decision to resign from the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute was very difficult, a little like deciding to get a divorce after more than a decade of marriage. But I have no doubt that it was the only way I could deal with this growing discomfort and rectify what was now clearly seen as a mistake. Some of my former psychoanalyst colleagues might believe, among other things, that I have merely traded my involvement in what I considered a macro-delusional system for immersion in an inverse micro version. Such a possibility notwithstanding, I am indebted to cannabis for the help it provided me in achieving the clarity necessary to arrive at this most difficult decision.

Cannabis can also be used as a catalyst to the generation of new ideas. Experienced cannabis users know that under its influence new ideas flow more readily than they do in the straight state. They also understand that some are good and others are bad ideas; sorting them out is best done while straight. In the absence of an agenda, the ideas are generated randomly or as close or distant associations to conversation, reading, or some perceptual experience. It is sometimes worthwhile to have a stoned go at trying to solve a particular problem. An illustration comes to mind. In 1980, during my tenure as Chairperson of the Scientific Program Committee of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) I “invented” and then edited the first three volumes of the Annual Review of Psychiatry, a large book which is still published yearly by the APA. Mindful of how much money this annual publication was earning for the APA, the chief of our sub-department of psychiatry asked me to put my “thinking-cap” on and come up with a way for the Harvard Department of Psychiatry to supplement its shrinking budget. Taking his request seriously, I smoked that night for the express purpose of trying to generate relevant ideas. Within days, at a meeting in the Dean’s office, it was agreed that the idea I arrived at that evening would be pursued — the publication of a monthly mental health letter. The first edition of The Harvard Mental Health Letter appeared in July 1984 and it soon achieved considerable success as an esteemed mental health publication and a steady source of income to the Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry. Would the idea have come or come as easily in a straight state? Maybe.

All through the seemingly endless heated discourse on cannabis in this country over the last three decades, little has been said or written about its many uses. The overwhelming preponderance of funding, research, writing, political activity, and legislation have been centered on the question of its harmfulness. The 65 year old debate, which has relatively recently included discussion of its usefulness and safety as a medicine, has never been concerned with its non-medicinal uses; it is always limited to the question of how harmful it is and how a society should deal with the harm it is alleged to cause. It is estimated that 76 million Americans have used cannabis and more than 10 million use it regularly. They use it in the face of risks that range from opprobrium to imprisonment. From the time I began my studies of marijuana, 12 million citizens of this country have been arrested for marijuana offenses. The number of annual marijuana arrests is increasing, and in 2000 over 734,000 people were arrested on marijuana charges, 88 percent of them for possession. Because the government allows confiscation of property in drug cases, many have lost valued possessions ranging from automobiles to homes. Most have to undertake expensive legal defenses and some have served or will serve time in prison. Unless we are prepared to believe that all these people are driven by uncontrollable “Reefer Madness” craving, we must conclude that they find something in the experience attractive and useful. And yet there is very little open exploration of these uses with the growing exception of its value as a medicine. Even here, government officials want to mute the discussion out of a fear expressed by the chief of the Public Health Service when in 1992 he discontinued the only legal avenue to medicinal marijuana: “If it is perceived that the Public Health Service is going around giving marijuana to folks, there would be a perception that this stuff can’t be so bad… it gives a bad signal.” The government has, until very recently, refused to acknowledge that cannabis has any value, even medicinal, but there are millions of citizens who have discovered through their own experience that it has a large variety of uses they consider valuable and that the health costs are minimal.

This large population of marijuana users is a subculture, one that has been present in this country since the 1960s. Three decades ago it was an open, vocal, active, and articulate culture on and off the campus. Today it is silent and largely hidden because most users, understandably, do not want to stand up and be counted. They have more than the law to fear. Urine testing is now a fact of life in corporate America; a positive test result can lead, at the very least, to a stint in a “drug treatment” program, and at most, to the loss of a job, career destruction, even imprisonment. Users are very mindful of this minefield, and most find ways around it. Even more pervasive and in some ways more pernicious is the stigmatization attached to cannabis use. Young people often experience little of this, at least among their friends. But as they grow older and move into increasingly responsible and visible positions they become much more guarded. Many believe, correctly, that colleagues would regard them as deviant if they knew. This stigmatization is abetted by the media, which have created and perpetrated a stereotyped image of “potheads” as young, hirsute, slovenly dressed ne’er-do-wells or disreputable, irresponsible, and socially marginal hedonists who use marijuana only to hang out and party. One reason for the fierce resistance to marijuana is the fear that it will somehow taint middle-class society with the “pothead” culture.

There is no denying that many, especially young people, use marijuana primarily for “partying and hanging out” in the same way that many more use beer. And most non-users, until they become aware of its medical value, believe that smoking to party and hang out pretty much defines the limits of its usefulness. This stereotype is powerful, and reactions ranging from puzzlement to outrage greet claims that this party drug could be useful as medicine or for any other purposes. People who make claims about its usefulness run the risk of being derided as vestigial hippies. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that most people who use cannabis do so behind drawn curtains, alone or with others who share some appreciation of its value.

It is unfortunate that those who, from personal experience, are aware of its usefulness are so reluctant to be public about it. I believe it would be good for the country if more people in business, academic and professional worlds were known to be marijuana users. The government has been able to pursue its policies of persecution and prosecution largely because of the widespread false belief that cannabis smokers are either irresponsible and socially marginal people or adolescents who “experiment”, learn their lesson, and abandon all use of the drug. That lie is unfortunately perpetuated when those who know better remain silent. It’s time to let the truth come out. Just as the gay and lesbian out-of-the-closet movement has done so much to decrease the level of homophobia in this country, when the many people of substance and accomplishment who use cannabis “come out”, it will contribute much to the diminution of cannabinophobia.

Not many well-known people are identified as users of cannabis. A few politicians have been outed by their enemies (one went so far as to claim that he did not inhale), and some would-be political appointments have failed because of a history of marijuana use. Occasionally a screen star, musician or professional athlete is arrested for possession. Aside from Allen Ginsberg, some popular musicians, and a few notables from the Beat and hippie movements, few people in the public eye have voluntarily acknowledged cannabis use. Except for one well-known scientist, the physicist Richard Feynman, academics have been most cautious. Feynman, by courageously acknowledging his ongoing use of marijuana, won the respect and appreciation of many and the enmity of others. Fear of “coming out” is, of course, not without foundation. As long as the present stereotyped understanding of marijuana use and its effects continues to prevail, anyone who acknowledges using it will risk being taken less seriously from then on. It is thought that potheads could not possibly be considered mature, serious, responsible, and credible. Yet only those who actually use cannabis can teach us how useful it is.

There was a time not so long ago when it was generally assumed that any use of marijuana was “merely recreational.” This was certainly true at the time I wrote Marihuana Reconsidered. The chapter on marijuana as medicine (The Place of Cannabis and Medicine) was concerned with past (19th and early 20th century) and potential uses; there was no overt and little covert use of cannabis as a medicine at that time. Now, there are many thousands of patients who use cannabis medicinally. And as the ranks of these patients grow, so does the number of people who observe for themselves how relatively benign this substance is. Seventy-four percent of Americans presently believe that cannabis should be made available as a medicine; very few people would have held this belief in 1971. Currently it is generally thought that there are two generic categories of marijuana use: recreational and medical. But in fact many uses do not fit into these categories without stretching their boundaries to the point of distortion; they fall into a third category, one that is more diverse and for that reason difficult to label. It includes such disparate uses as the magnification of pleasure in a host of activities ranging from dining to sex, the increased ability to hear music and see works of art, and the ways in which it appears to catalyze new ideas, insights and creativity, to name a few. Furthermore, at its edges, which are fuzzy, there is some conflation with both medicine and recreation. Yet, the preponderance of these uses falls into this broad and distinctive third category that I call enhancement. This is the class of uses which is generally the least appreciated or understood by non-cannabis users. It is also the case that some people who use or who have used marijuana may not be aware of some if not most of the enhancement possibilities.

One category of cannabis utility that we have studied is its usefulness as a medicine. Because there is not at this time a systematic clinical literature on the medicinal uses of cannabis, James B. Bakalar and I asked patients to share their experiences with cannabis as a medicine for our book, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine (Yale University Press, 1993, 1997). We supplemented these anecdotal patient accounts with our own clinical experience and what we could glean from the medical literature. Anecdotal evidence is not as persuasive as that from double-blind placebo controlled studies, the more scientifically sound modern medical approach to the safety and efficacy of new therapeutics. As the results of such studies become available we may be compelled to modify our estimate of the clinical usefulness of cannabis. At this time, however, it is difficult to imagine that future studies will subtract much from the clinical experience-driven perception that cannabis is a remarkably versatile medicine with relatively little toxicity.

It is my intention to roughly follow the same format in the Uses of Marijuana Project (www.marijuana-uses.com). While I will attempt to illuminate the various uses of cannabis through literary accounts and by sharing some of my own experiences, the prime source of what I hope will be a fairly comprehensive understanding of the uses of this versatile drug will come from contemporary users. Some will identify themselves; others will prefer to remain anonymous for reasons that have already been noted. Either way, I hope to present enough information about the witness to put his or her account into a meaningful context. Unlike medicinal use, which will eventually be fitted with scientific costume, an understanding of those uses which fall into the category of enhancement will probably always be based on anecdotal accounts; it is unlikely that marijuana’s capacity for the enhancement of sexual pleasure, for example, will ever be the subject of a modern scientific (double-blind placebo-controlled) study. However, if this ethnographic method is successful we should be able to provide a reasonably proximate picture of the varieties and value of cannabis use in contemporary society. And in so doing, we cannabis users can make a significant contribution to the demise of cannabinophobia, one of our age’s most damaging popular delusions.

In the meantime, Betsy and I are gradually being given the opportunity to explore another dimension of the ways in which cannabis can be valuable; we are discovering its usefulness in the task of achieving reconciliation with the aging process, including coming to terms with the inevitable physical and emotional aches, deficits and losses. Cannabis also enhances our appreciation of the time we have, now that we are both emeritus, to enjoy our children, grandchildren and friends, literature, music and travel, and our daily walks in the New England woods. Of still more importance, it helps us to realize the wisdom of Robert Browning’s words, “Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be…”

The author is a fiction writer and teacher of literature, writing, and film at a four-year college in New York. His fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in Fiction International, Boston Book Review, American Book Review, Gulf Coast, New Delta Review, and numerous other venues.

Sometimes I ponder — and since I’m signing my name to this, I might as well go in for the whole ounce — whether I might be a marijuana addict. I don’t think I am. But from my time as a cigarette addict I know that there is something called “the voice of the addiction.” With cigarettes, as I was trying to liberate myself from them, this voice would say things through me, things like, “I need cigarettes when I’m writing.” Or with coffee in the morning, or after dinner. Under the spell of addiction, I thought this was my own voice, my own choice, the exertion of free will manifest in a preference, or at the very least a chosen crutch. As I discovered through the painful tedium of giving them up, cigarette chemicals made me lie to protect them. Nicotine wore many masks, and that of artist was among them.

So if I write about cannabis and the positive effects I’ve seen it have on my fiction, can I trust this isn’t another chemical mimicking my voice in order to keep me hooked?

I believe I can. That is, marijuana operates differently. I’ve always had more choice as a consumer of grass than I had as consumer of tobacco. As a result I can speak without illusions (to the extent that anyone can ever speak without illusions) about its effects, positive and negative.

For one thing, I have, like other burners of the illegal weed, seen the well run dry. My main supplier will be out, my backup supplier, my doper friends can’t even spare a joint, everybody shrugs their shoulders — thus I will be forced to give it up occasionally for a week, two weeks, even a month or more. I have also done this voluntarily. I’m a marijuana fan, but I’m no mindless sycophant. It’s common knowledge that prolonged extensive exposure contributes to short-term memory loss especially when, uh … what was I saying? Oh yeah — I’ve always tried to keep my liaison with Mary Jane mutually respectful. I smoke very small amounts usually, and have done so, on and off, for more than half of my life to date, starting at age 14, with a break at age 17 while I dated a girl from a strict family (whose father was a New York City cop), but resuming again in my second semester of college at age 19 (with a new girlfriend) and continuing until now, aged 36. I smoked it while earning my Ph.D. in English and while writing the stories that would earn me a National Endowment for the Arts grant, the most lucrative public fellowship for an individual artist in the United States. Of course, I had to sign a “no drugs in the workplace” declaration in order to get the money and for the year of my fellowship honor that declaration (and you’ll never hear me say I did otherwise).

A funny thing happened, though, when I tried to write fiction without my bud Mary Jane, then and at other points in my writing career. It got dull. Not incompetent or without interest, but dull all the same. Good thing I had a full-time job the year of my fellowship. I didn’t have much time to write anyway.

I’m not making this up — my fiction is just not the same without Mary Jane’s perfume at my lips. More than once, it has happened like this: I’ll sit down to write, with best intentions and a plan of what I want to accomplish, but when I turn on the tap nothing will come out. I’ll try to force a few lines, but they’ll be wooden and uninspired. Then I’ll toke. Without even trying to brainstorm any more, I’ll be awash in clean ideas and sharp images. My imagination will be freed to bounce any which way.

I swear I’m not making this up. It’s not that I find it impossible to write without pot, of course not. But my fiction is much better with it.

The difference is not what you might expect. Marijuana does not release in me fountains of imagery, long, flowing rivers of metaphor, giddy explosions of linguistic bombast, nor wild imaginings of far-off Xanadus and pleasure palaces therein. I think that this stereotype of the pot-smoking writer is a hangover from the Romantics’ association with opium in the 19th century, be it Coleridge’s fantastic “Kubla Khan” or Poe’s brilliantly deranged “MS. Found in a Bottle.” To be sure, I’ve at times twisted real fatties and tried those types of flights, but with limited success. The imaginative boost is cancelled out by the physical incapacitation brought on by the drug. Indeed, much of the myth of the opiated artist might itself be a fictional construction, especially in the case of Poe, a writer for whom myth and fact have always been hard to extricate from one another. It is likely that Poe took advantage of a current craze (as he was famous for doing) when he adopted an opium reverie style in certain works. Alcohol was most clearly Poe’s drug of choice, and it clearly hurt rather than helped him accomplish writing. No — for me, marijuana use while writing stops short of excess; I smoke in minute amounts, and then to facilitate the process of what a fiction writer normally does, with or without an imaginative aid.

This is what a fiction writer does: gets herself into difficulties. Then gets herself into more difficulties. Then gets herself into even more difficulties. Then, finally, handcuffed, chained and locked in a trunk, Houdini-like, escapes. Complication is the essence of fiction. Complications that the writer can’t see her own way out of are manna, because then you can be assured the reader won’t see his way out of the mess either. Then, out of nowhere, you liberate yourself, resolving the conflict in an unexpected way, amazing both yourself and your reader.

All this requires the ability to do sudden back-flips with plot, reevaluations of who a character is and what s/he stands for, periodically bursting into songs or tears along the way.

But while my experience is as a fiction writer, I don’t think the use of marijuana is peculiarly suited to any certain genre. Nor is it new. We can now look back, nearing millennium, on a rather long and hopefully soon-to-be-distinguished history of marijuana’s effects on the compositional processes of numerous American writers. “I smoke marijuana every chance I get,” wrote Allen Ginsberg in “America,” a poem that is now so popular that it’s probably being taught this very day in some classroom in the United States or elsewhere in the world. This is a far cry from 1956, when Ginsberg first wrote it. An all-powerful, authoritarian nation insisting on its own backward interpretations of reality was both choking and curiously empowering for Ginsberg and for the other Beat Generation writers who made marijuana a part of their poetics and their incipient cultural movement in the late 50s and early 60s.

I can identify with this myself as a writer and, as a friend of Mary Jane, a criminal. Aside from the drug itself and its effect on my prose — the way it points out logical trap doors and places sudden, theatrical brick walls in thin air — my imagination benefits, as did Ginsberg’s, from marijuana’s heightening of the conflict between the individual’s creativity and the oppressiveness of authority. On the one hand, marijuana loosens the rigid forms of thinking imposed by various authorities in one’s life — family, church, school, government, capital — and is helpful in creating a mind that can range widely. It is “a hopelessly practical world,” as Indian novelist Arundhati Roy tells us. Marijuana took me a while to really understand, but I remember liking it before I ever smoked it, because it stood for rebellion against the pragmatic, workaday world. In this respect, it made much more sense than cigarettes. I didn’t see the advantage of smoking cigarettes as a teen (I got hooked on them in grad school); it was Mary Jane who was truly cool. She met me in the back of the school bus and we got off several stops before we had to and detoured through patches of Long Island woods and vacant lots, deliciously stoned, giggling at the 1970s world of mothers at grocery stores and fathers earning wages.

On the other hand, as any novice doper knows, marijuana imparts a feeling of paranoia, and dealing with the fear that inevitably came along with smoking pot when I was younger was part of my process of coming to understand the drug. Whether this is purely chemical or a nightmarish superego-reaction to thumbing one’s nose at authority by participating in an illegal activity, I’m not certain. I don’t know how marijuana might have affected my writing, or what paranoid effects would still result, had I grown up in a society in which it was legal. But I am sure of this: once I learned to ride out the feelings of desperate culture-fed paranoia that frequently followed getting stoned when I was a teen (“I’m filing my brain! I’m throwing away my future and becoming a drug addict!”), I began to translate what was formerly fear into creative euphoria. Heightening the dread of authoritarian control over my life proved extremely fruitful in my art.

This is old news by now to fans of Beat icons like Ginsberg and William Burroughs, both of whom create large, oppressive machines of control in their works and position themselves as sane criminals doing impossible battle with them. It is reported that poet and wit Frank O’Hara, upon hearing Ginsberg’s opening to “Howl” (“I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness . . .” ), quipped, “I wonder who Allen’s thinking of.” Whether true in the strictest sense or not, it was a useful construction for Ginsberg to be paranoid, to imagine everyone of genius he was acquainted with was under surveillance and attack — it led him into creativity. To have been bothered with details at such a moment, to have had to present a quotidian list of names, would have broken the spell. Moreover, I would submit that, there being no one single truth about the world but myriad truths, this heightening of the oppressiveness of authority through the intentional cultivation of paranoia does not make for lies, but allows new, perhaps previously inaccessible truths about the world to come to light. “America” and “Howl” speak to us today even in worlds of sobriety, even in the dead white light of the classroom.

Please note that while I am speaking here of the usefulness of marijuana for writing, I am not making similar claims for the use of ANY intoxicant, or even any ILLEGAL intoxicant. Alcohol has never been of any use to me as a writer, at least while actually writing. It is a good lubricant in social situations, and I’ve gained insight into the practice of writing by speaking with other writers over a few beers, of course. But at the word processor it tends to fog rather than clarify. And that goes double for most anything else under whose influence I’ve ever tried writing. Except caffeine. And caffeine is particularly fruitful in tandem with marijuana.

Let me add a few final thoughts on writing and Mary Jane, by way of conclusion:

Used correctly (my preference is frequent small amounts, with periods of abstinence when needed), weed allows an easier acceptance of failed experiments, and promotes the desire to experiment in the first place. Is there any better situation for the artist than playing all the time without being afraid of failure?

On a related note, marijuana is fun, and writing should be fun. Even if there’s despair in the work, the act of creating it should bring a degree of pleasure and satisfaction. This is perhaps the reason human beings create things to begin with.

Unusual states of attention are possible through marijuana. I’ll leave it to the scientists to say why, but a detail can be made very interesting when explained to you by Mary Jane. The negative image of this is the cliché of “staring at your navel.” But such a seemingly insignificant object can be reconfirmed in all its actual glory through such attention. One’s navel, for instance, is the vestige of the tube which connected you to your mother while you still lived inside her, before you were born. Why should we not occasionally contemplate it?

Relatedly, the contemplation of objects leads to the contemplation of words-as-objects. Mary Jane loves to point out that there is an intermediary between you and the reader: the language. That individual words point in numerous directions at once; words were all once poems, says Emerson -“each word was at first a stroke of genius.” Words, too, all sound. They have shapes. They are made up of letters that can be

s

t r

e w n

a

cr

s

os

the

page.

I’ll end my remarks here. For me, Mary Jane has been good to know, for a variety of reasons. And whatever the laws say, it is part of American Literature already, in addition to what it did for popular music in the wake of the beat movement — Ginsberg & Kerouac begat Dylan begat Lennon, etc.

And that’s not even going into jazz.

Yessir. “Legalize it,” as Peter Tosh once sang, “And I’ll advertise it.”