I can’t remember exactly how old I was that day, but I couldn’t have been more than ten, since the latch on the door was difficult to reach. It was one of those rare moments during my childhood when I was alone, and I always took advantage of such opportunities to seek out the forbidden – furtively reading my parents’ copy of the Kama Sutra, peering into the exotic bottles in their liquor cabinet, rifling through odd drawers. Today, I was tiptoeing around my disheveled basement, seeking the unknown. I had made my way past the abandoned canvases from my father’s bout with painting, trudged through the piles of clothes to be taken to Good Will, and jumped on the mostly-springless brocade couch. I stood at the entry to the furnace room, staring at a door I had never noticed before. It stood, unassuming, to the left of the furnace, kept closed by a small scrap of wood shoved through the latch.

Standing on the top of my toes, I slowly pulled the wood out and stepped back to let the door swing open. Before me was a room full of plants neatly arranged like a staircase, and above them, the most dazzling display of lights I had ever seen. I was captivated. Something inside me knocked on my consciousness, saying something about this is weird. They were just plants, and my house was filled with plants. What was so odd about that? I pondered this question for a minute, and decided that the fact that I only discovered them during one of my stealthy excursions was reason enough to be wary. I carefully stepped down off the small ledge that comprised the threshold, shut the door, and relodged the wood in the latch. I never asked my parents about what I saw.

*                  *                   *

Thanksgiving, senior year in high school: I have escaped from familial gorging with my cousin, who is two years older than me chronologically, but worlds ahead experientially. She has brought me to one of her friend’s houses – his parents are nowhere to be seen – and we are standing in his garage, surrounded by cans of oil and rusting bicycles. I am shivering slightly in my dress pants, turtleneck sweater, and headband, though perhaps more from the jitters that embody my naiveté than from cold. With some assistance from my cousin, I hesitantly smoke out of a purple Graffix bong. We then descend into her friend’s basement bedroom, armed with Honey Nut Cheerios, and watch “Beverly Hills 90210.” I spend more time watching his cat, whose tail is whirring in loop-de-loops, making a faint whe-te-te-te, whe-te-te-te sound as it whips past the shag carpet. They ask me, am I high? I say I don’t know, maybe not, but boy does that cat look weird, and the TV is a big, strange box, and it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m laughing, I think.

*                  *                   *

February, senior year of high school: He is my first boyfriend, I think. Or rather, we are entangled in a dizzying game of friend, lover, lover, friend. We are on a date, perhaps, for it involves dinner and, ostensibly, a movie. Naked Lunch. I am driving my “little tank,” my 1979 Volvo stick-shift, and talking about drugs. He grew up in a seriously Deadicated household, saw his first “show” when I was still playing with play dough, and at 17, had already altered his mind more times than a wedding dress. I tell him I want to smoke with him, so we skip the movie, pick up his best friend and his latest girlfriend, and head for the basement.

“What do you see? Tell me everything,” he is imploring, vicariously experiencing my first real high like the day, long ago, when he had his. I have my eyes closed, sitting cross-legged on his thinly carpeted basement floor, and I am speaking ribbons into the air.

“I am reaching up, pushing on a great weight. It might be my skull, only I’m on the inside. I can feel a world around me outside, and I am leaning all my weight on the wall, trying to get out…..Now I’ve opened the door, or pushed through the wall, or cracked my head, but I slither out and I’m surrounded by brilliant blue, and I’m flying. Flying. Slowly at first, like I’m getting the cricks out of my neck, or my arms, but I’m gathering speed. On either side of me, I can see people I know. My parents, friends, my grandmother, they’re scattered around, floating in space, and I wave at some of them as I pass by. I’m flying higher and faster now, and I am leaving all of them behind me, twisting into the sky. I have now reached a completely open space, like the top of Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center, when you reach that place of suspension at the very top, before your car starts to drop down the other side, the part that’s outer space, when you dive into the future. I’m alone, I’m being held up by the wind. I’m spinning, spinning, spinning.”

Wow, he says, and I grin in tingly disbelief. We leave his friends in the basement, gather Zephyr, his dog, into our haze, and enter the frigid clarity of the New England night.

*                  *                   *

I have a Granny Smith apple rammed into my jacket. A paper clip, a stick of Trident gum, and a jagged square of my window screen (hacked out with a Swiss army knife to use as a makeshift screen for our apple-turned-pipe) fill my jeans’ pocket. My roommate huddles next to me as we seek unremarkable trees under which to smoke. We smirk over eating the apple and tossing the core when we’re done with it, giggling through our shaky attempts at unwrapping the small rectangles of flavored rubber that we so frequently chew.

I have to keep a journal for my Writing Seminar, and invariably fill it with images of flower petals and pedal pushers, and I have never written just for the sound of the words before and there are so many words to be written. I read my writing out loud a lot, and my roommate nods knowingly, or squints sympathetically, or jumps off of her bed and onto mine, makes me put the paper down, and feeds me a diet cocoa/ confectioner’s sugar concoction she has the audacity to call frosting. We learn the roads of our new urban home better than anyone else we know, because, living in a dorm, we take long walks to smoke. I realize that our horizons are broader, our psychological maps more nuanced, and all for the sake of a deserted road to serve as our concert hall as we rap “Little Drummer Boy” onto a wooden pipe with a lighter.

*                  *                   *

A cream-soft T-shirt hangs lackadaisically off her right shoulder. Braids whip against the side of her head as she spins with increasing speed. I bend my knees deeply, extending my arms over my head from my waist. We are swimming in late afternoon winter sun, misted with our own sweat, working out choreography through intense improvisation and movement play. We are very high.

I catch my dance partner’s eye and she cocks her head slightly and nods, in her “yea, girl, I know” way. The baby grand piano in the corner seems to shrug and say, c’mon, try to impress me, I’ve seen a lot of dancers. The slippery wood floor throws me a skid and I take it to a slide, playing right along. We fling and flop and flow for hours upon hours, madly crystallizing beauty in a notebook, screaming anguish and exaltation without speaking.

Later, we will discuss our notes and begin the endless process of rearranging, altering an arm movement here or a spin there, to perfect our form and clarify our guiding concepts for ourselves and our dancers. We will take the uninhibited expression that flowed so freely and reexamine it in the light of sobriety, knowing that in returning to any improvisation session, some things stay and some things go. That freedom, however, is an integral part of the process. For now, though, feeling spent of energy and somewhat more sober, we slide our tired into our shoes and scuff up the stairs of our artist colony home.

*                  *                   *

The town has only one street, really, and a dead-end one at that. My boyfriend and I are staying at the Paradise Pension, in a room “big enough to play football (i.e. soccer) in.” After two months of grueling travel, we are blissfully grateful to have Mehmet, our host, give us our first native experience in Turkey. He drives us to the Ihlara Valley, filled with rock-cut churches carved by early Christians in hiding from persecution, and detours our return trip to buy fish for dinner from three men who keep their catch in a small pool, only beheading on demand.

That night, the other off-season travelers – mostly Canadian and Australian – join us in preparing a feast with Mehmet and his other friends, all small-town men who learned how to make a bundle in the four months of wild tourism in the region. Following dinner, a fifty-odd-year old weathered man opens his tattered bomber jacket and extracts the largest joint I have ever seen, wrapped in a careful cone, lined with aluminum foil. He begins to tell me how the locals grow their own marijuana, but that the police can be strict – when they choose to be – so we have to be discreet. He then lights it and hands it to me.

Astounded, having meticulously formulated an impression of the country that specifically excludes any activity of this sort, I graciously accept his offer and proceed to get “mad baked” with five Turkish men, my then-boyfriend, and a nomad American male. We lounge on the roof deck of the pension, taking in the bizarre surroundings, mostly oddly hewn caves carved into a material known as “tuff,” the crumbly clay-like substance left from a volcanic eruption many centuries ago. Through years of erosion, the tuff has formed countless phallus-like pillars – so much so that one area is affectionately known as the Valley of Love. The sky is slightly pink, and a striated mesa – which we shall climb the next day – guards the horizon.

These men live in a world unknown to me and barely understood, yet on these nights, in the pink and sweet blur of the Fred Flinstonesque landscape, we relate to each other as humans, simply that. Eventually, we will depart, for more parts unexplored, but not without bidding farewell in its truest sense, hoping that they all will fare well and that someday we may meet again.

*                  *                   *

A few years ago, I was home visiting my parents. I promised my roommate at the time that I would bring back gardening supplies, should we ever want to risk “growing” in our apartment. Subconsciously, out of habit, perhaps, I found myself waiting until my parents were out one day to descend the basement stairs and return to the small room next to the furnace. I had stowed my limited growing supplies there after graduating from college, at which point the room had turned into a disorganized storage space, retaining only the faintest vestiges of its prior incarnation.

The shard of wood still held the warped door in place, and I felt a vague sense of shrinking as I removed it, mentally regressing to my first encounter with the room. As the door creaked gently on its hinges, I started. No longer glutted with old wool coats and beach pails, instead the room was lined with six massive pots, each with a sawed-off trunk, flanked with a bank of lights, wired from the ceiling. Thoughts began running through my mind….they have grown here within the past year …where do they keep it?…why is this still being kept a secret from me?…what would I tell my children?

As I mused over my undirected distress, I realized anew that marijuana still holds a special niche in our culture that demands clandestine behavior generally reserved only for aberrant sexual practices and adult love for children’s television programming. This beautiful tool that I use for creativity in artistic expression, to heighten any sensory experience, to reinforce the existing or newly forming bonds of friendship that I find so readily within its confines, and so much more, is relegated to the basements of our lives, the unacknowledged corners of otherwise honorable homes.

As I think about the difficulty I still have in discussing marijuana openly with my parents – who obviously don’t think it is evil or the great gateway to the road to debauchery – I wonder how this situation can be remedied. It would be too easy to get angry with them for not owning up to their behavior; our society would ostracize them. I don’t have a quick-fix solution, but I hope that my children and their contemporaries will have a more balanced view of the nature and uses of marijuana than that which predominates today.

For a short period of time in the 70s it was possible to believe that this “popular delusion” was beginning to lose it deeply embedded grip. Whatever the cultural conditions that made it possible, there was no doubt that the discussion about marijuana was becoming more sensible. We were gradually becoming conscious of the irrationality of classifying this drug as one with a high abuse potential and no value. It seemed to me that if that trend had continued, it was likely that within another decade marijuana would be sold and regulated in the United States in much the same way as alcohol.

We had reason to be optimistic at that time. In 1971 the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse, appointed by President Nixon, had recommended the elimination of penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use and casual non-profit transfers of small amounts. In 1973 Oregon had become the first state to decriminalize marijuana, making possession of less than an ounce a civil offense accompanied by a small fine. In 1975 Alaska had eliminated all penalties for private possession and cultivation of less than 4 ounces. President Carter had endorsed decriminalization, as had the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, and the National Council of Churches. By 1977 most states had reduced simple possession to a misdemeanor, and by 1980 11 states had actually decriminalized possession.

Unfortunately, this trend did not continue and the marijuana reform movement peaked in the late 1970s. In 1978 Dr. Peter Bourne, the White House drug advisor who helped President Carter move toward reform, resigned and was replaced by Lee Dogoloff, a hardliner. Under President Reagan the government instituted a program of “zero tolerance.” By 1983 it was spraying the dangerous insecticide Paraquat on domestic marihuana crops and using military methods to uproot cannabis plants and arrest growers in northern California.

In 1987 Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg had to withdraw under pressure because he had smoked marijuana as a law professor. In 1989 under President George H.W. Bush, the federal government began Operation Green Merchant; it confiscated lists of people who had ordered indoor plant-growing equipment and raided their homes. The first Bush administration also worked hard to persuade Alaska to recriminalize marihuana possession and succeeded in 1990. That same year Congress passed a bill calling for federal transportation funds to be withheld from states refusing to enact a six-month suspension of the automobile licenses of people convicted of marijuana possession.

It is important to remember that these increasingly harsh government measures (and the growing hysteria of anti-marijuana citizens’ groups) did not reflect any new knowledge about the dangers of this drug. The more than a third of a century since the publication of the first edition of Marihuana Reconsidered has produced remarkably little laboratory, sociological, or epidemiological evidence of serious health or social problems caused by marijuana.

The present attitude of the government and anti-marijuana crusaders bears the same relationship to reality that the film Reefer Madness bore in 1936. But the dissonance is even more striking now, because we know so much more. Since 1971 millions of dollars have been spent by the National Institute of Drug Abuse to study the dangers of cannabis. This vast research enterprise has completely failed to provide a scientific basis for prohibition. Although evidence against the alleged toxicity continues to accumulate, the federal government persists in escalating its war on marijuana use, and to justify this policy it continues to distort, stretch, and truncate research findings to an extent worthy of Procrustes. One of the prices of the present level of enforcement is the growing number of annual marijuana arrests (872,000 in 2007), with enormous collateral costs.

In 1971 I pointed out in Marihuana Reconsidered that since cannabis had been used by so many people all over the world for thousands of years with so little evidence of significant toxic effects, the discovery of some previously unknown serious health hazard was unlikely. I suggested that the emphasis in cannabis research should be shifted to its potential both as a medicine and as a tool to advance our understanding of brain function. Although few government resources have been committed to either of these fields, there have been compelling developments in both.

In 1990 researchers discovered the first of two receptors in the brain stimulated by tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). This exciting discovery implied that the body produces its own version of cannabinoids for one or more useful purposes. The first of the cannabinod-like neurotransmitters was identified in 1992 and named anandamide (ananda is the Sanskrit word for bliss). Cannabinod receptor sites occur not only in the lower brain but also in the cerebral cortex, where higher thinking takes place, and in the hippocampus, which is a locus of memory.

These discoveries raise some interesting questions. Could the distribution of anandamide receptor sites in the higher brain explain why so many marijuana users claim that the drug enhances some mental activities, including insight, creativity and fluidity of associations? Do these receptor sites play a role in marijuana’s capacity to alter the subjective experience of time? What about the subtle enhancement of perception and the capacity to experience the physical world with some of the freshness and excitement of childhood? Today there is a large research enterprise focusing on what is now called the endocannabinoid system, promoting an increased understanding of how the brain functions and the remarkable diversity of mental and physical capacities catalyzed by cannabis.

When I first began to study marijuana in 1967, I naïvely believed that its only use was as a recreational drug. I soon came to understand that it also had a second important utility, as a medicine, and I published (along with James B. Bakalar) Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine. Just as penicillin, after its discovery as an antibiotic in 1941, was soon hailed as a wonder drug because of its limited toxicity, its versatility in treating a number of different kinds of symptoms and syndromes, and its limited cost, we believe that marijuana, for the same three reasons, will eventually be hailed as a wonder medicine. Over the last decade and a half I have come to believe that there is a third category of marijuana use –enhancement. The three categories are to some degree overlapping.

The use of cannabis as a recreational drug is well known. Recognition of its usefulness as medicine has been growing rapidly over the last decade and a half, so much so that pharmaceutical companies are now investing large sums of money in their attempts to develop patentable cannabinoid-analogs that they hope will compete profitably with herbal marihuana (presently the medicinal cannabis gold standard), which, as a plant, cannot be patented.

Because most of marijuana’s powers of enhancement
are not as immediately available as its capacities for fun and medicine, this third category is the least recognized and most underappreciated. While some facets of this capacity, like the lifting of mood and the enhancement of appetite and sexual experience are obvious to almost everyone who has succeeded in getting high, its more portentous expressions may provide deep insights which have led to significant life-changing personal growth.

Locating and exploring this category of the usefulness of marijuana requires more familiarity with the cannabis psychoactive experience than casual use provides, and some learning may be required. The learning involves exploring one’s own stoned mental possibilities and capacities, and knowing something of what other people have achieved.

As with the other two major categories of cannabis experience, there appears to be, as evidenced by these essays, a great variety of cannabis catalyzed enhancement experiences. Some are so subtle that it is understandable that some nonusers may be skeptical or consider these claims illusionary, just as many continue to believe the same about the medical claims and demand “double-blind controlled” studies to prove the countless anecdote-driven claims of the many medicinal uses of cannabis. And just as the patient with multiple sclerosis, for example, who gets better relief for muscle spasm and pain will not wait for controlled studies to affirm his or her experience that marijuana is more useful and safer than the conventional medicines used to treat these symptoms, users who find cannabis useful to their creative capacities, for example, will not wait for some sort of good housekeeping seal of approval.

This blog is meant to supplement the essays (Read) in an attempt to convey the fullness of the concept of this kind of enhancement and the richness of its potential.

Marijuana! There are many images that this word brings to mind. The most common image is of people sitting around doing “nothing,” people looking as if they are in a trance or just out of it. The image is that of a person spacing out.

What does this spacing out mean, though?

I have found through my personal experiences that what I am thinking about when spacing out is very focused. The focus that is involved is unlike any other I have experienced. Usually when asked what one is doing, a person who is stoned will answer “spacing out,” yet this is not an accurate description. More often than not they are thinking in-depth about something very personal if not down right strange.

Spacing out is the generic term that a marijuana smoker uses to describe deep focus on a thought. What that thought is has little to do with marijuana and much to do with the individual’s beliefs.

When I space out, I gain a deeper insight into what I’m thinking about. The focus that is involved makes me think of the ancient Greek Philosophers, men who sat around and thought about the world without the distractions of our modern society. Did these men space out? I don’t know the answer to that but what I do know is I have had many an insight into the world when spacing out.

I find spacing out is the ability to focus on one idea to the point at which even other people are no longer heard. I have found this type of focus in only one other place, religious meditation. Unlike religious meditation though, spacing out has no preconceived purpose, such as prayer for the sick or reciting a Mantra to find inner peace. The purpose that a person spacing out has is one of a spontaneous nature. I find that what I choose to surround myself with guides me when I space out. The structure of these thoughts is as ordered and complete as the person who is thinking.

Marijuana has allowed me to get a degree in Philosophy. Because of marijuana I was able to space out on questions ranging from the nature of causality to the meaning of the word “is.” This spacing out on such subjects allowed me to follow one line of thinking to a logical conclusion. Spacing out on the premise, and if one has trained one’s mind to be logical, thank you Mr. Spock, the conclusions fall right in place. Spacing out gives me the ability to conclude a line of thinking only given a few underlying facts. With this as my learning tool, I easily passed classes that others called difficult, Metaphysics, 19th century philosophy, Phenomenology, etc… I didn’t even take notes! Now I don’t want you to think marijuana made me smarter than the others in my class but it did make/allow me focus on the subjects.

So the next time you ask someone what he or she is doing and they answer “spacing out,” know that they were engrossed in thought. Know also that the thought was particular to them and you may never understand when you ask them to explain that thought. Know that when spacing out one is still interested in the world but interested in their thought of how what they are spacing out on influences their world, if at all.

One-eighth ounce of bud

500-milliliters of olive oil

Chop bud into a fine powder. Mix with about a tablespoon of olive oil. Cook in microwave in several 20-second intervals until marijuana is browned. Funnel mixture into the bottle with the rest of the oil and shake. Makes 500 milliliters. Serve with a dropper. Serving size may vary according to the quality of the bud and sensitivity of the user. I use about three to six drops. That is all!

After twenty years of abstinence from marijuana, I got stoned at several parties when a pipe was passed around. I found I really liked getting high, but I had limited tolerance for the smoke, the short-term memory loss, and the party atmosphere. So, I bought a little bud from a friend, and in the comfort of my own home, began experimentation with the subtle effects of very low doses.

The onset of a low-dose high is barely perceptible. But at some point I always notice the usual benefits: heightened appreciation of sights and sounds, reduced anxiety, increased attentiveness, more enjoyment of the present moment, and more willingness to do routine chores. I have also noticed, when I take it before bed, my dreams are more colorful, sensual and richly symbolic. The high is strongest after about an hour and lingers for four hours or more.

With such low doses, I have not noticed memory loss. In fact, I was surprised to find that, in at least one setting, my short-term memory was noticeably improved. In the bakery, I struggled with an ongoing tendency to forget the quantities. I had to go back to check the recipe repeatedly. But on a low-dose high, my concentration was right on task. The numbers stuck in my mind the first time with ease.

When high, I tend to like being sociable. But often, after the initial high is over, I have a burst of creative energy and enjoy prolonged periods of intense focused solitude. Some of my best creative writing comes to me during the post-high phase.

My sensitivity to low doses may have to do with regular yoga meditation practice, and except for moderate use of alcohol, avoidance of all other intoxicants. For best results in sensing the subtle effects, I do not use cannabis and alcohol together. This contribution was written while high, and revised post-high.

Happy memories!

Cannabis plays on your fears. Essentially it amplifies your fears, and makes you aware of fears that you didn’t originally know you had.

About two years ago when I was 22, I began harvesting cannabis and became a regular smoker, and my original perception of the drug changed. My life was good at the time, and I was a more positive person than I was when I was 16. Cannabis allowed me to relax, sleep well and cure my problem drinking. I gave away alcohol for a non-addictive alternative that didn’t have all the social, physical and mental negatives that I associated with my drinking problem.

Smoking still bought up my fears, but in a constructive way. As a regular smoker of cannabis, I had to deal with my fears and overcome them to enjoy the drug. I used smoke cannabis before doing something that would make me fearful, and this would allow me to deconstruct my fears. Then, when I was in the same situation again but not under the influence of THC, I found myself full of confidence in situations I would normally feel uncomfortable in.

Spiritually, cannabis has made me a healthier, happier person.

I do believe however that cannabis has and can make me isolated. I feel I risk legal ramifications for smoking in public (especially because I grow cannabis for myself in my own home.) This is not my fear or paranoia, but rather a restriction placed on me by my government. If cannabis were legal, society would view my actions differently, too. People ignorant about cannabis are quick to point out all the harmful things about the drug, and don’t realize there is a positive side to the story.

I’m 24 now and still grow and enjoy cannabis more everyday. I don’t believe that it is a drug for everyone, but for some it can be a very positive experience. I don’t have any friends who smoke cannabis regularly, and don’t smoke it socially, but rather I smoke it as a daily medicine for my mind, body and spirit.

It’s interesting to note that during this time my studies improved. I found myself more engaged and intrigued during class. I even improved from a B in math class to an A from first semester. Not to say that it’s a direct correlation, but the math that we were doing second semester was harder, of course. So to say that it had no effect on my studies is silly.

I also owe pot the glory of realizing just how stupid the church and religion is. I am now an active Buddhist. This all started one day after I had sat down and passed a hitter around for about 3 hours with my smoking pals. I then had to go to church for my Wednesday night confirmation class. It was that night when I discovered just how little sense the church and religion made. I won’t go into my specifics reasoning to save you the boredom of reading it, and for those of you who know little about Catholicism. Ever since then, I have regarded church as a waste of my time. Instead, I actively engage in meditation because I firmly believe that life is about enjoyment, freedom, and finding of self.

I feel that marijuana has helped me find aspects of myself that I would never have stumbled across without it. I am a more humble sort of person. I enjoy nearly every activity now, and my views on life are greatly geared to the improvement of myself. I never smoke cigarettes, or do any other drugs that have been proven to be severely hazardous. I only drink occasionally, and very moderately. I’m a guy who will have only 1-2 beers at a party. I don’t believe in bringing out your id, as Freud would say, but rather enjoy the flavor, like beer was intended. I know too many families that have been wrecked by alcohol.

My mother knows I am a user of marijuana. She doesn’t encourage it, but she doesn’t condemn it, either. She knows I smoke it occasionally (1-2 times per week), and is very supportive of me and my schooling. I am currently enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse for computer science and physics.

I hope that marijuana will someday be legal in the U.S , or I’m afraid I will seek to live else, because I can not stand to live in a society that more or less would rather destroy itself than improve itself.

This mentality continued until I went away to college, where I embraced the culture wholeheartedly. Smoking pot did not make me mentally unstable; in fact it did just the opposite. I became more relaxed, less tense, and my always looming anxiety about nearly everything dissipated. The people I met and the close friendships I forged through becoming a pot smoker I value dearly. These people, unlike my previous “friends” who thought nothing of screwing me over for their own purposes, accepted me and become some of my best friends. I have found that pot smokers are generally a very tolerant and sympathetic group of people. This is not even mentioning the beyond wonderful times I had with them at school smoking.

Due to a bad experience early in the school year, my depression worsened. I had little desire to do anything, least of all attend classes. My days consisted of sleeping and nights were tinged with insomnia. In January, during possibly one of the lowest period of my life, I met a group of people who changed my life. I began to smoke pot on a regular basis with them, first socially in the evenings, and soon I started in the mornings before classes. I noticed that I could pay rapt attention in classes that normally caused my mind to wonder. I took all of my finals extremely high, and the ideas that flowed from my pen were astounding. I wrote many school papers after smoking; I liked to do this. Connections between ideas suddenly became clear to me; it was amazing. Philosophy, a class that I had previously struggled with, I now understood clearly. Reading philosophers dissertations was a mind blowing experience, as I could really understand the ideas presented whereas before I was completely lost.

I have gained a newfound appreciation for life through smoking. It is not a destructive drug, as alcohol and others have been for me. I have never once craved pot, or done anything drastically stupid under its influence. The main reason I enjoy smoking is because I know that even though I am high, I will not do anything to embarrass myself or get into dangerous situations. I can maintain total control, emotionally and otherwise.

Unfortunately, I now live at home with my mother for the summer, and she is adamantly against use of any kind of mind altering substances. I attribute this to ignorance and misinformation. Pot is just the opposite of a destructive drug; I wholeheartedly believe that smoking expands one’s consciousness and allows people to gain a better knowledge of themselves and those around them. I hope that more people begin to realize this and help themselves as I did.

Unfortunately, my real identity must remain anonymous. As will the 3-8 times per day marijuana habit I maintain. I use it both medically, and peculiarly, as an aid to initiating outside-the-box concepts and ideas within the three companies in which I am a partner.

Medically, I have Crohns Disease, and appetite stimulation and cramp suppression are frequently acknowledged medical benefits. I use it successfully in this way and have done so for the past three years.

I am unusual in that I channel the effects of marijuana so as to: (1) remove myself from daily stress and (2) allow unfocused thoughts to flow through my mind until an intuitive concept emerges. Sometimes this may be a “seeing the company’s future” idea, while other times, simply a new plan or perceptive business twist.

One partner refers to me as “Radar” and another as “the idea guy.” Yet my telecommunication partners know nothing. Were they to drug test me, my expulsion and stock divestiture would occur immediately. Fortunately, I would be supervising any drug testing program, so this is not really a concern.

But my job as “idea guy” does seem to keep me married to pot usage. Too much smoking causes me physical, emotional and mental problems; but too little leaves me mired in day to day concerns and unable to call forth truly innovative, groundbreaking ideas, the kind that justify my position as a partner.

So while I cannot advocate the drug taker’s lifestyle; it is only through daily usage that results are achieved. And as a smoker, this advantage may come at a price to the lungs. But if the correct delivery system were used (like a vaporizer), daily usage for artists, scientists and others who survive through constant perspicacity, might not only be without complication, it might yield a new Einstein.

Remember, truth is stranger than fiction.

Thanks for the Forum.

I have witnessed parents and teachers lacking compassion and understanding, yelling at children, pointing fingers at them and acting in a confrontational manner. I believe that, because I regularly relax with a pipe with a small mulled bud, I understand more about the children I teach. I can see the other side to every argument. My mind is not a closed vault anymore. I have noticed that when I enjoy my evening departure from tension, I am able to think deeply and fairly, and develop a truly human approach to my teaching job.

During the school day, I remember the evening musings and I am able to deal well with tense situations. I am able to ask insightful questions of teachers and students which helps to ease confrontational situations very quickly, and I encourage individuals to consider each other’s position in the manner they generally have not tried before.

As far as my health is concerned, as I have been one of those unfortunate ones who have had to deal with pain on a regular basis and have suffered side effects from prescription medication, the delicate green leaf has given me constant relief. I will continue to enjoy the highs with knowledge that my memory and awareness of life are only heightened by its use.