Copyright © 1995 by Mark Hertsgaard, ISBN: 0-385-31517-1 

(p191)  Although their music was always the basis of the Beatles’ mass appeal, what made them larger-than- life figures – what made them matter so much to so many people – went well beyond beautiful lyric and melody. Calling them “an abstraction, like Christmas,” Derek Taylor once observed that the Beatles “represented hope, optimism, wit, lack of pretension, [the idea] that anyone can do it, provided they have the will to do it. They just seemed unstoppable.” By virtue of their own example, the Beatles gave people faith in their ability to change themselves and the world around them: you could do it, because they had done it. After starting out as four seemingly average lads from a backwater town in Northern England, they had become a worldwide sensation, but along the way they had also made themselves into more creative, empathic, and interesting individuals. Their dizzying rise to fame and fortune may have been difficult for the average person to identify with, but their search for truth and personal growth was not. As Lennon sang in 1967, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.”

When the Beatles first burst upon the global stage in 1964, they did not appear much interested in the larger world or deeper questions of life, but they soon became very interested. Asked during a press conference at the height of Beatlemania to define success, for example, all four (192) replied in unison, “Money.” The threat of nuclear war, on the other hand, provoked only such self-absorbed banalities as Lennon’s remark that “now that we’ve made it, it would be a pity to get bombed.” Within a few years, however, the Beatles had evolved into leading figures of the 1960s counterculture, extolling a philosophy of love, peace, spiritual exploration, and social change. “For a while we thought we were having some influence,” recalled George Harrison, “and the idea was to show that we, by being rich and famous and having all these experiences, had realized that there was a greater thing to be got out of life – and what’s the point of having that on your own? You want all your friends and everybody else to do it, too.”

The crucial catalyst for the Beatles’ transformation from lovable moptops to high-minded rebels was their involvement with consciousness- raising drugs, specifically marijuana and LSD. No one liked fun more than the Beatles, but for them drugs were not simply about having a good time. Marijuana and LSD were also and more profoundly tools of knowledge, a means of gaining access to higher truths about themselves and the world. Indeed, it was above all the “desire to find out,” as Harrison later put it, that lay beneath their involvement not only with mind-expanding drugs but with Eastern philosophy as well. In their own ways, each of the Beatles had resisted received wisdom ever since their days as defiant young rock ‘n’ rollers back in Liverpool; the wonder is that their rise to superstardom did not extinguish their natural curiosity and independence of thought. They remained seekers, and their quest for enlightenment, despite moments of stumbling and naiveté, spurred countless others to stretch the limits of their own horizons.

It was marijuana that came first and triggered “the U-turn,” as McCartney put it, in the Beatles’ attitude toward life. Of course, as far as “drugs” in general were concerned, the Beatles had been heavy consumers for years, beginning with their swilling of beer and popping of pills in Hamburg. But after Bob Dylan introduced them to the green goddess of marijuana in August 1964, “we dropped drink, simple as that,” said Lennon.

The magic moment took place in the privacy of a New York hotel room during the Beatles’ first tour of the United States. It was the first (193) time the Beatles and Dylan had met one another, and it turned out to be a very amusing and enjoyable evening. Like many novice pot smokers, the Beatles simply couldn’t stop giggling. For his part, Dylan was surprised to learn that the Fab Four had never smoked pot before. After all, he’d heard them sing about it, hadn’t he? What about those lines in “I Want to Hold Your Hand” about “I get high, I get high, I get high”? Dylan’s error was understandable; the Beatles’ voicing of “I can’t hide” did sound a lot like “I get high.” In any case, once Dylan turned them on, the Beatles started getting high every chance they got. “We’ve got a lot to thank him for,” Lennon later acknowledged.

By the spring of 1965, when they were shooting the movie Help!, the Beatles were smoking marijuana on a daily basis. It offered them welcome relief from the all-engulfing pressures of Beatlemania – they were “in our own world” when smoking grass, John recalled – and it made them laugh even more than usual with one another; indeed, “Let’s have a laugh” reportedly became their code phrase for stealing away for a quick smoke. But the larger significance of their embrace of marijuana was that it further stimulated their already prodigious creativity, and it made them think, really think, for the first time in their lives. With their physical senses heightened and their mental faculties unlocked, they experienced reality in a fuller, more vivid way, which in turn yielded fresh realizations about what kinds of art were possible and what kind of life was desirable. “It was a move away from accepted values and you thought it out for yourself rather than just accept it,” said McCartney.

If marijuana left the Beatles feeling, in Derek Taylor’s phrase, “taller and broader of mind,” psychedelic drugs took that taller, broader mind to places it would never forget. “It was like opening the door, really, and before you didn’t even know there was a door there. It just opened up this whole other consciousness,” George Harrison explained, adding, “I had such an overwhelming feeling of well-being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass. It was like gaining hundreds of years of experience within twelve hours. It changed me, and there was no way back to what I was before.”

Harrison cited 1966 as the year LSD came into the Beatles’ lives, but in fact all four Beatles except Paul had taken acid at least once by (194) the time they started recording Rubber Soul in October 1965. John and George had the first experience, though not of their own volition. They and their wives were having dinner one night with their dentist when the dentist secretly drugged the coffee. Not knowing what to expect from LSD, the four guests naturally felt frightened when its effects began to kick in. They fled to a London discotheque, screaming, laughing, hallucinating, and eventually drove back to George’s house, which looked to Lennon like a giant submarine. “It was just terrifying, but it was fantastic,” John said afterward.

Sometime later (the date of the dentist encounter has never been fixed), John and George took LSD again, but under far more hospitable circumstances, and this time joined by Ringo. It was August 1965 and the Beatles were renting a house in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Benedict Canyon during a few days off from their second American tour. The acid was supplied by actor Peter Fonda, and although Fonda’s comments about death (recounted in “She Said, She Said“) unsettled Lennon, John later recalled the scene in idyllic terms: “The sun was shining and the girls were dancing and the whole thing was beautiful and Sixties.” Paul, however, stayed straight that day, despite heavy pressure from his bandmates to join in.

Indeed, another twenty months would pass before the cautious McCartney investigated LSD firsthand, on March 21, 1967. By this time the Beatles had completed their first acid-soaked album, Revolver, and had nearly finished Sgt Pepper. Although they frequently smoked marijuana in the studio, the Beatles never dropped acid while working, except on this one occasion, when John took some by mistake. After announcing that he felt ill, John was taken up to the open, railingless roof of Abbey Road Studios by George Martin to get some air. When Paul and George Harrison, who knew why John felt odd, learned where he was, they dashed up to retrieve him and Paul drove him home. In the car, Paul asked if John had any more LSD, and soon the two partners were tripping together.

Years later, Paul said he took acid that night mainly to keep John company, but in the immediate aftermath of the event he spoke far more exuberantly about what he had experienced. He and John had taken “this fantastic thing,” he told Derek Taylor, after which they sat (195) staring “into each other’s eyes . . . and then saying, ‘I know, man,’ and then laughing.” Publicly, Paul declared that LSD had “opened my eyes. It made me a better, more honest, more tolerant member of society.” Pete Shotton, who, like McCartney, had long resisted Lennon’s urgings of LSD, nevertheless offered a similar view of the drug’s effect on John. LSD “brought enthusiasm back into his life,” wrote Shotton. “. . . It also served to smooth away some of the rough edges of his personality, virtually curing him of his arrogance and paranoia.” It was because of reactions like these that Derek Taylor later said, “We felt liberated by the experience of taking LSD, and that’s why it’s hard to see it lumped together with addictive drugs and other things. I think if you were doing it all the time it would be a madhouse. You couldn’t raise children or hold a job. . . . [But for exposing one to] other verities, other structures than the usual, I think it was very helpful.”

For four individuals as creatively inclined as the Beatles, it was only natural that the personal growth sparked by marijuana and LSD would affect their art. “It started to find its way into everything we did, really,” Paul said of the Beatles’ experiences with drugs. “It colored our perceptions. I think we started to realize there wasn’t as many frontiers we’d thought there were. And we realized we could break barriers. The Beatles’ first musical reference to marijuana came a mere six weeks after their hotel room encounter with Dylan, when John and Paul inserted the line “turns me on” into the song “She’s A Woman,” recorded on October 8, 1964. It was another year before the next hints – John’s imitation of a pot smoker on the background vocals of “Girl” on Rubber Soul and his song about a “Day Tripper.” But to take only the direct mentions of drugs in the Beatles’ music misses the point, and not simply because outsiders often surmised drug allusions when the Beatles didn’t intend them. The Beatles had too light an artistic touch to reduce their songs to any one gimmick, be it a drug, a new musical instrument, or a clever studio trick; the influence of LSD and marijuana on their art was more subtle than that.

The drugs “didn’t write the music,” Lennon once said. I write the music in the circumstances in which I’m in, whether it’s on acid or in the water.” What marijuana and LSD did was to change the sensibility that the Beatles brought to their music. “We found out very early (196) that if you play it stoned or derelict in any way it was really shitty music, so we would have the experiences and then bring that into the music later,” explained Ringo. The first stirrings of an alternate awareness were evident on the Help! Album, where songs like the title track and John’s “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away” foreshadowed the gr eater depth and meaning that would characterize the Beatles’ work in years to come. On Rubber Soul, probably the single most marijuana- flavored album, the songs became more consistently sophisticated and the Beatles began to articulate the cheerful, humanistic sensibility that became a central element of the 1960s zeitgeist. “The Word” in particular on Rubber Soul was later identified as a product of the “marijuana period” by John, who said it was “about – gettin’ smart . . . the love and peace thing.” Revolver, of course, was the first psychedelically inclined album, as much in its sounds as its subject matter. And then came Sgt Pepper; the biggest barrier-breaker of them all.

Despite the ever more obvious indications that the Beatles, like generations of artists before them, were lubricating their natural creativity with mind-altering substances, the world at large remained blissfully ignorant of their transformation until Sgt Pepper. Indeed, George Martin himself, though he knew the Beatles smoked pot, “had no idea they were also into LSD.” The first whiff of controversy came on May 19, 1967, thirteen days before Pepper was released, when the BBC banned its classic song, “A Day in the Life,” from the public airwaves on the grounds that it might promote drug-taking. But the fact that the Beatles themselves took drugs remained largely unknown for another month, until Paul disclosed, in reply to a reporter’s question, that yes, he had taken LSD and was not ashamed of it. The uproar was immediate, and it only intensified when John, George, and Brian Epstein, in reply to further press inquiries, said that they, too, had taken acid to positive effect. (Indeed, John and at least one other Beatle were tripping – or “flying,” as John put it – during the photo session for the Sgt Pepper album cover.)

It was difficult to make a convincing argument that drugs had ruined the Beatles’ lives, for they had just issued an album of breathtaking genius, widely recognized as the most impressive achievement in popular (197) music for many years. Indeed, the period of the Beatles’ heaviest drug use coincided with the three albums that may well be their finest: Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt Pepper. Nevertheless, the sense of shock and betrayal felt by the Establishment that had previously celebrated the Beatles was palpable, and the ensuing counterattack extended from news media vilification to police harassment. In separate incidents, both John and George were arrested months later for possessing illegal drugs. Each protested that the drugs supposedly found in his house did not belong to him, and there is reason to believe their claims; the arresting officer, London police sergeant Norman Pilcher, was later sentenced to six years in prison for planting evidence on suspects in other cases. Amidst all the criticism, the Beatles nevertheless stood by their beliefs. When leading figures from the British arts and entertainment world placed a full-page advertisement in the Times of London on July 24, 1967, calling the laws against marijuana “immoral in principle and unworkable in practice,” the Beatles both signed the petition and guaranteed its costs.

Yet, exactly one month later, the Beatles shocked the world anew by announcing that they were now giving up drugs. Their image remained under a cloud, however, for their announcement came in the context of a newfound enthusiasm for the spiritual teachings of an Indian guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; in the eyes of many, the Beatles had merely replaced one set of weird beliefs for another. The following February, the Beatles made a much publicized journey to the Maharishi’s meditation center in India and came away doubting that he was as holy as they first thought. But while they distanced themselves from the messenger, they did not discard the message. In their view, mind-expanding drugs and spiritual practice were simply different paths to the same goal of higher consciousness; neither was an answer in itself. Drugs and meditation could “open a few doors,” said McCartney, but it was up to you to walk through them: “You get the answers yourself.” Distinguishing themselves from the passive, socially unengaged stance of some sixties hippies, Lennon and Harrison, previously the two heaviest drug-users in the Beatles, argued that “worshiping” a drug was wrong, just as withdrawing from society was selfish and irresponsible. “It’s not drop out, it’s drop in and change it,” (198) said John. George added, “It’s drop out of the old established way ofth ought . . . [and] drop in with this changed concept of life and try to influence . . . people.”

“In a way we’d turned out to be a “Trojan Horse,” John later said of the Beatles. “The Fab Four moved right to the top and then sang about drugs and sex and then I got more and more into the heavy stuff and that’s when they started dropping us.” The first “heavy stuff” to cause trouble had been John’s remark that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” First mentioned in a long profile article in the London Evening Standard on March 4, 1966, the remark occasioned no particular comment until it was quoted out of context in an American teen magazine some five months later. On factual grounds, Lennon’s observation was quite possibly true, but the outrage it provoked among Christian fundamentalists led to boycotts and public burnings of Beatles records in some parts of the American southern Bible Belt, as well as death threats against the Beatles themselves. At a press conference in Chicago on August 11, on the eve of the Beatles’ third American tour, as hostile reporters insisted that he apologize, John tried to explain that he had been misinterpreted. He pointed out that he had not said that the Beatles were “greater or better” than Jesus, only more popular. “I believe that what people call a God is something in all of us,” he said. “I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.” The reporters deafly continued to demand an apology. Finally Lennon said, “If that will make you happy, then okay, I’m sorry.” Yet minutes later, Lennon delved into more “heavy stuff” by coming out against the Vietnam War, the hot-button issue of the 1960s.

Close friends Derek Taylor and Pete Shotton later cited 1966 as the year that the Beatles, and John most of all, took a sudden new interest in political issues – another consequence, it seems, of the growth in awareness stimulated by their use of marijuana and LSD – and this new awareness was followed by a desire to change their behavior accordingly. According to John, the Beatles had opposed the Vietnam War privately for some time, but manager Epstein had dissuaded them from speaking out on such a controversial issue. However, John and George in particular had grown impatient with silence – “The continual awareness of what (199) was going on made me feel ashamed I wasn’t saying anything,” said John – and they duly warned Epstein prior to the 1966 tour that, in John’s words, “When they ask next time, we’re going to say that we don’t like that war and we think they should get right out.” This the group did, and not just once. Moreover, they went beyond condemnation of the war to a critique of the larger social and economic structures that lay behind it. In April 1968, when Lennon blasted the Vietnam War as “another piece of the insane scene,” his interviewer asked what he thought should be done about “the Establishment.” “Change it,” John replied, “and not replace it with another set of Harris tweed suits. Change it completely.” He was honest enough to add, “But how do you do that, we don’t know.”

Of course, the most powerful weapon at the Beatles’ disposal was their music. George later explained, “We felt obviously that Vietnam was wrong – I think any war is wrong, for that matter – and in some of our lyrics we expressed those feelings and tried to be the counterculture, to try and wake up as many people as we could to the fact that you don’t have to fight. You can call a halt to war and you can have a laugh and dress up silly, and that’s what that period was all about. . . . It was all part of our retaliation against the evil that was taking place and still is taking place.” With the exception of Lennon’s song “Revolution,” the Beatles were never as outspokenly topical as, say, Dylan in his early years.

Nevertheless, their music was by no means without political implications and effect. Precisely because the messages of their songs were stated less explicitly, the Beatles were able to reach people who would not have responded to more overt forms of address. They did not sing about racism, war, and injustice directly, but there was no doubt how they felt about such issues; the sensibility that permeated their music rejected such barbarisms. The outstanding example was Sgt Pepper, an album praised by the American radical activist Abbie Hoffman as ”Beethoven coming to the supermarket! . . . It summed up so much of what we were saying politically, culturally, artistically, expressing our inner feelings and our view of the world in a way that was so revolutionary.”

“They had, and conveyed, a realization that the world and human consciousness had to change,” poet Allen Ginsberg said of the Beatles. But that was only part of their significance. The essence of the Beatles’ (200) message was not simply that the world had to change, but, more importantly, that it could change. There is nothing particularly original about thinking that things should be different; as John pointed out in “Revolution,” “We all want to change the world.” The truly radical first step is believing it can actually happen. In their public statements and their music, usually subtly and implicitly, the Beatles proclaimed that it was indeed possible to break the old patterns and forge a kinder, more peaceful reality, that it was important to care not just about the war in Vietnam but about other manifestations of evil, and that it was important to try to do something. It was up to you – which is to say, all of us – to make changes, and you could do it. That message resonated deeply and powerfully in the mass psyche, for it put people in closer touch with their higher selves and made them feel part of a larger project of human renewal. The Beatles, in short, brought out the best in people, which is a large part of why so many people cared, and still care, so passionately about them.

The Beatles’ evolution into cultural radicals – their use of drugs, their adoption of long hair and colorful clothing, their dissent from the official policies of the day, their promotion of an alternative worldview – made them heroes to some and outlaws to others, but above all it made them socially relevant in a way few artists ever manage to be. The individual Beatles would later deny having been the architects of a vast sea change in social attitudes that occurred during the 1960s, claiming they were simply swept along by a larger momentum. “Maybe the Beatles were in the crow’s nest shouting ‘Land Ho!’ or something like that, but we were all in the same damn boat,” exclaimed Lennon. But part of their genius as artists was to be in touch with the spirit of their age, to give voice to the underlying, inchoate human yearnings of their time and place.

The Beatles, Yoko Ono once said, “were like mediums. They weren’t conscious of all they were saying but it was coming through them.” Or, as George Martin put it, “The great thing about the Beatles is that they were of their time. Their timing was right. They didn’t choose it, someone else chose it for them, but their timing was right and they left their mark in history because of that. I think they expressed the mood of the people and their own generation.”

Notes

Page 191: Derek Taylor’s “an abstraction like Christmas” quote comes from a video interview he gave years after the Beatles disbanded, contained on a reel of privately collected footage that was viewed by the author. The Beatles’ press conference remarks about success and nuclear war are reported on page 58 of Miles’s Beatles: In Their Own Words.

Page 192: George Harrison’s “For a while we thought we were having some influence” quote is found on page 136 of Derek Taylor’s It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. His the “desire to find out” quote is from an interview in the October 22, 1987, issue of Rolling Stone.

Page 192: McCartney’s “U-turn” remark is found on page 50 of his 1989-90 World Tour program, where he also describes how pot led the Beatles to abandon drink and pills. Lennon’s comment about drink is found on page 82 of Lennon Remembers by Jann Wenner. Dylan’s confusion about the actual lyrics of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is noted by McCartney in his World Your Program. His recollection is reinforced by Ray Coleman’s Lennon: The Definitive  Biography, page 343, where Coleman recalls a 1964 interview he did with Dylan in which Dylan expressed  astonishment that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was not a drug song and the Beatles not marijuana smokers. The story of the meeting during which Dylan got the Beatles high for the first time is told most expansively in Brown and Gaines The Love You Make: An Insider’s Story of the Beatles, pages 143-44, though it must be noted that neither of the authors claims to have been present that night, nor do they cite specific sources for the detailed descriptions and specific dialogue they present in the book. However, central elements of their story are supported by Lennon’s remarks on page 52 of Rolling Stone’s book The Ballad of John and Yoko, which also contains his “We’ve got a lot to thank him for” quote.

Page 193: The daily smoking habits of the Beatles during Help!, and the reshooting this sometimes made necessary, are recounted by Lennon on page 149 of the Playboy Interviews, which also contains his “in our own world” quote. The “Let’s have a laugh” code phrase is qualified in the text with the word “reportedly” because it is not based on a direct statement by one of the Beatles but on the account in The Love You Make. McCartney’s “It was a move away from accepted values” quote is from page 50 of the World Tour Program and is supported from a quote from George Harrison, found in the October 22, 1987, issue of Rolling Stone, saying that before acid and marijuana, the Beatles were always rushing around too much to have time to think about what was happening to them. Derek Taylor’s “taller and broader of mind” quote is found on page 88 of his book It was Twenty Years Ago Today. Harrison’s “It was like opening the door” quote is from the November 5, 1987, issue of Rolling Stone, which also includes his citation of 1966 as the year of LSD for the Beatles.

Page 194: Lennon has offered the fullest description of the night with the LSD-dispensing dentist, found on pages 73-75 of Lennon Remembers, and the fact that the acid was given to them without their knowledge is supported by Harrison on page 120 of Miles’s The Beatles: In Their Own Words. The description of the second LSD trip, in Los Angeles, is based on the Lennon recollection just cited, as well as Peter Fonda’s comments on pages 217-18 of The Ballad of John and Yoko and Lennon’s 1980 comments in the Playboy Interviews. The fact that McCartney declined to take LSD that day is supported both by the Lennon recollections and by an interview of McCartney in the September 11, 1986, Rolling Stone. That McCartney took his first acid trip with Lennon after took it by mistake one night in the studio is based on the McCartney interview just cited. The actual date and the other details reported are found in a variety of sources, including that interview, Lennon’s comments on page 76 of Lennon Remembers, George Martin’s memories, as reported on pages 206-07 of his book All You Need is Ears, Hunter Davies’s eyewitness account on pages 270-71 of his The Beatles, and page 104 of Mark Lewisohn’s Recording Sessions.

Page 194: McCartney’s “this fantastic thing” quote is found on page 21 of Taylor’s It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. His “opened my eyes” quote is reported on page 136 of Shotton’s book John Lennon In My Life, page 118 of which contains Shotton’s “brought enthusiasm back” quote. Extremist that he was, Lennon later went too far with LSD, taking it so often that its benefits were lost on him and the battering of his ego became intolerable. He therefore stopped taking acid sometime in the summer of 1967, only to return to it one weekend the following spring under the guidance of Derek Taylor, who assured Lennon of the many reasons he had to believe in himself. The story is told on pages 77-78 of Lennon Remembers and on pages 322-23 of Coleman’s Lennon. Lennon, as quoted on pages 116-19 of Beatles: In Their Own Words, later credited Taylor for helping him shed the depression that had been haunting him and recover the confidence he had lost in himself, a process reinforced, he said, by the arrival of Yoko Ono in his life. The spring 1968 date is based on deduction on Lennon’s reference to Ono, with whom he became lovers sometime in May 1968 (probably on May 19, reports Lewisohn on page 283 of his The Complete Beatles Chronicle), and on Taylor’s own recollections, as found on pages 62-63 of his book As Time Goes By. Taylor’s “We felt liberated” quote is found on the video documentary The Compleat Beatles.

Page 195: McCartney’s “It started to find its way” quote is from page 88 of Taylor’s It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. That “She’s A Woman” contained the Beatles’ first direct musical reference to drugs is based on Lennon’s comment on page 147 of the Lennon Interviews and the lack of any such supporting information regarding any previous Beatles song. Subsequent references to drugs are, in this book, cited in the order of their appearance. Lennon’s “didn’t write the music” quote is found on page 78 of Lennon Remembers. Page 195: Ringo’s “we found out very early” quote is from page 110 of George Martin’s book The Summer of Love. Lennon’s “gettin’ smart . . . the love-and-peace-thing” quote is found on page 173 of the Playboy Interviews. George Martin’s “had no idea they were also into LSD” quote is found on page 207 of his book (with Jeremy Hornsby) All You Need Is Ears.

Page 196: The BBC banning order and McCartney’s LSD admission are noted on page 255-56 of Lewisohn’s Chronicle. McCartney’s lack of shame is supported by his quote that acid “opened my eyes,” as reported on page 136 of Shotton’s book John Lennon In My Life. Before long, however, in the face of the onslaught of media and political criticism, McCartney spoke differently. He never disavowed LSD, but he blamed the media for making too much of his statement.  HYPERLINK “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUbGmVacCcc”In a testy exchange with an English television reporter, recounted on page 116 of Taylor’s It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, McCartney denied trying to spread the word about LSD, saying it was the media itself that was doing so. Asked if he didn’t have a responsibility as a public figure for what he said, Paul replied, “I mean that you are spreading this now at this moment. This is going into all the homes in Britain, and I’d rather it didn’t. You’re asking me the question, you want me to be honest, I’ll be honest. But it’s you who have got the responsibility not to spread this now.” (Taylor’s account is also the source regarding the subsequent admissions by John, George, and Brian Epstein). That two of the Beatles were “flying” during the Sgt Pepper photo session was revealed by John during an interview contained in unreleased video footage from the early 1970’s which was viewed by the author. With a smirk at the camera, John divulged that two of the Beatles were flying and two weren’t during the session. Although the second flying Beatle might have been Paul or Ringo, it seems most likely that it was George, since George was the one who did the most LSD during this period and Paul in particular would have been unlikely to take LSD during such an important photo session. The stories of John’s and George’s drug arrests are told on pages 288-91 and 308-10 of Peter Brown’s The Love You Make, and, in John’s case, pages 458-59 of Coleman’s Lennon, and in George’s, pages 62-65 of Geoffrey Giuliano’s Dark Horse. The latter source provides the information about Sergeant Pilcher.

Page 197: The ad in the Times of London is described on pages 78-79 of ibid., as well as page 117 of It Was Twenty Years Ago Today. The Beatles’ renunciation of drugs is described in their own words on pages 32 and 36 of Beatles: In Their Own Words and cited as well on page 243 of The Love You Make, which also described their relationship with the Maharishi on pages 239-44, and on page 703 of Coleman’s Lennon. McCartney’s “open a few doors” quote, and the remarks by John and George in the same paragraph, are found on page 115 and page 37, respectively, of Beatles: In Their Own Words.

Page 198: Lennon’s “Trojan Horse” quote is on page 123 of ibid. The story of Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” remark is based on pages 404-09 of Coleman’s Lennon, pages 212-13 of Lewisohn’s Chronicle, pages 191-94 of Brown’s The Love You Make, and pages 28 and 32 of Beatles: In Their Own Words. Coleman and Brown also report on John’s subsequent Vietnam remarks.

Page 198: The observations about the Beatles becoming newly interested in social and political issues in 1966 are found on page 164 of Taylor’s It Was Twenty Years Ago Today and page 117 of Shotton’s John Lennon In My Life. Lennon’s explanation of the Beatles speaking out on Vietnam is found on page 123 of Beatles: In Their Own Words. Among many other statements by the Beatles against the war were those made on August 23, 1966, by all four, as documented on page 17 of Jon Wiener’s Come Together; in January 1967 by Paul, as noted on page 164 of Taylor’s book; and in April 1968 by John, as noted on pages 73-74 of Wiener’s book, the latter of which contains his statement about the Establishment.

Page 199: Harrison’s “We felt obviously that Vietnam was wrong” quote is found on page 150 of Taylor’s book, page 165 of which reports Abbie Hoffman’s “Beethoven coming to the supermarket!” quote, and page 24 of which notes Ginsberg’s “They had, and conveyed” quote.

Page 200: Lennon’s “Maybe the Beatles were in the crow’s nest” quote is from page 78 of the Playboy Interviews, as is Ono’s “mediums” quote. Supporting Lennon’s remark are statements Harrison made in his interview in the November 5, 1987, Rolling Stone. Martin’s “The great thing about the Beatles” quote is from the video documentary The Compleat Beatles.

This account was written a number of years ago, when I was around twenty or twenty-one years old.  To this day it is one of the few times marijuana has carried me into a distinctly introspective, meditative state in which I feel as though I am my thoughts, floating about on a mental plane and completely oblivious to my physical presence.  Since then, I have experienced and learned a lot more, but I have decided to keep this account un-embellished, simply because it depicts the reflections that affected me so deeply at those moments in time.  To elaborate further, to add newer thoughts and ideas to the reflections, would, I think, take away from the feel and integrity of the account.

—

At around one o’clock this morning I smoked half a straight-green joint and then sat by my computer, listening to music (mainly Elliott Smith) and thinking relatively normal thoughts. After some time, in which I mostly just stared at the computer screen, listened to the music, and fiddled with things (not unusual, judging from my previous experiences of being stoned), I found myself sinking into a trance-like state of introspection and philosophical reflection. Without realizing it, my blinks grew longer and longer, until my eyes remained completely closed; this did not bring about sleep, however, but rather served to block out direct visual stimuli, allowing my mind, brain, mental faculty (whichever you choose to call it) to fall deeper into this euphoric, deeply-thoughtful state, unimpeded. Once or twice I snapped out of this state and found myself again staring blankly at the computer screen, wondering what it was that had left me feeling so deeply affected. My short-term memory was extremely inhibited, hence why I could not recall much of what I was thinking about when my eyes had been closed. However, when I did snap out of this state, I was immediately enticed back into it by the profound feelings of existential insight which had remained in my memory as residue. These feelings were so intense and inflicted such an impact on me that, despite their vagueness and the fear they aroused, I was inexorably drawn back to them.

I cannot recall how long I was in this state for, although I can recall—albeit with a high degree of ambiguity—the content of my thoughts. The magnitude of the ideas I was enquiring into, combined with the near-complete loss of short-term memory function, created an inner chaos which makes the thoughts themselves difficult to recollect.

What I did salvage was this:

I imagined myself, eyes closed, sitting on a chair in front of my computer. I then zoomed out of this picture, imagining the house around me.  After this, I imagined the city, the earth, and so forth. Eventually, I arrived at complete incomprehension; for there was no answer to space in the picture I had created. I thought of one thing next to another, next to another, until there was no more room for things.  But this could not suffice, for it failed to answer the question of space and the extent of space. If the world is energy, I thought, then all things are in flux within…within what? I thought. Within what?

One of the occasions in which I snapped out of this reflective trance, I noticed the amazing apprehension I felt when I considered returning to the introspective state. It was, in fact, more than apprehension; it was a kind of existential anxiety. To attempt to comprehend all things was not only fruitless, but had created the feeling of dread described extensively throughout philosophical/existential literature. What am I?  If there is a world out there which cannot be comprehended or explained—which, at the time, seemed the only answer—then how can one deal with existing in it? Then came the question of existence.

Why do I exist? Why does anything exist? As I sat, almost catatonic, thinking so deeply about these existential issues that I was barely aware of being at all, I asked these questions. In a way, they can be re-directed; it can simply be asked, why does existence exist? What exactly is it to be something?; for aren’t we simply a number of intricate processes, all happening at once and hence all working together to form what people call an “I”? But each little process is nothing; I had created a schema in my mind which stated this. I could look at my arm and know blood was pumping through the veins within it—but how could this have anything to do with me? The notion of awareness threw me into consternation.

Any teleological explanation to life ceased to exist for me at this time. The word “purpose” meant nothing at all, for there was no such notion that seemed plausible. Again, I thought of every thing in existence, even contemplating those which humans are not aware of, of those things beyond space which are yet to be found, and they all contributed to the despair I felt at being a living thing, let alone one as complicated as a human being.

The idea of a divine architect crossed my mind at one point. But, I thought, if there were a divine architect, then what have they made, and how could they possibly have made all things? The idea of there being both “all things” as well as a “divine architect” could not logically coalesce in my reasoning. For how can “all things” be created, when at no point in time do “all things” exist? Furthermore, how could a creator create something with no bounds (which, at this time in my thought, seemed to be the case). If the realm of existence in its entirety is not boundless, then what is beyond its bounds? The answer was a question, and the question made no sense.

I became aware that the only way to attempt to explain such things was through contradictory statements. Yet my thoughts wandered on, visiting the confronting realms of death, of everyday life, of love and loss. The extent to which my mind was able to roam free cannot be adequately conveyed through writing. It is to be noted, also, that this was one of the few times I have been able to confront such disturbing concepts without falling into an anxious state, or a state of outright fear preventing me from addressing the matters at all. Usually, my being would have it that I react with fright and pain—ultimately, with mental immobility, as if to ward off the incomprehensible demons of intellect. But this time I faced them with respectful awe, still feeling the horror and absolute fear but able to see past them to the ideas at hand. To accept the situation.

Part of the success of this introspection and deep thought, I believe, is to be attributed to the lack of awareness I felt. When one is so immersed in ontological and metaphysical thought, when the eyes are closed and the body unmoving, it is easier to reflect on one’s existential state without distraction. I could see myself, in that chair, with the glow of the screen on my face; but more than this, I could envision all of the things around me, extending far off into the celestial sphere and beyond. These things were, of course, ever-changing and never could I see an holistic, stable picture of existence; the earth was a mere bubble of life within a system of things that I could only touch upon, which awed me to the point of heartache.

Obviously, the substance I had taken probably contributed to my state; but attributing the experience to it and it alone is insufficient, and to bring it into question is to create another train of thought which can be and has been discussed extensively elsewhere. The underlying theme of the state I experienced was one of human reflection, and reflection on human reflection. Why, as a species, we are able to do this is an everlasting enquiry; it leads to the same pinnacle of mystery that all other paths lead to. One cannot see this peak, however, as it is veiled by clouds. Deep reflection upon this reveals the true magnitude of the human situation.

Dear Dr. Grinspoon,

I would very much like to thank you for your contribution to the ongoing success of my wife’s breast cancer treatments. I will spare you all the details but, suffice it to say, she has been fighting a battle with stage IV, metastatic, breast cancer since 1995. She is currently under the care of the good folks at Dana-Farber and is participating in a phase I clinical trial.

For the last two years she has been constantly nauseous as a side effect of the clinical trial and after seeing an interview you participated in on television, along with the encouragement of the staff at Dana-Farber and my constant peer pressure, she has found your insight to be true. Cannabia has helped her to be able to feel less nauseous, have more appetite and seems to help somewhat with the neuropathy she experiences from past treatments. It works within minutes!

Having been a federal law enforcement officer in my youth I know first hand the Government’s opinion of the drug. I now find myself campaigning to get the State of New Hampshire to come to more reasonable terms with the issue.

With that having been said, I would like to contribute to your quest for more information about the plant’s use.

I am male, in my fifties, live in New Hampshire and am a licensed professional.

I have had an ongoing affinity for marijuana since high school and can give you the following information based on my experiences:

Just to give you some background, I have tried other illicit drugs in the past. My first drug was alcohol. Tobacco was a close second. When I was still in my teens, I had to have a serious operation and, it being before the days of the morphine pump, I ended up with an addiction that gave me some insight to the pitfalls of narcotics. As a result, I follow(ed) the mantra “everything in moderation”. I experimented with other drugs as well. I shied away from opiates but was somewhat enlightened with LSD. Barbiturates put me to sleep and amphetamines would help when I needed to stay awake. I realized that they all had limited and specific uses and gave them up some thirty years ago accept when guided by my physician (I’ll admit, she doesn’t prescribe LSD very often though :¬). Psilocybin mushrooms were of the same class as LSD and I outgrew their use as well. Cocaine was popular but I was aware of its addictive properties early on and keep it at a safe distance.

I prefer marijuana to alcohol. It helps me relax and I use it in the same manner that I would alcohol with less “intoxicating” effect. The combination of the two drugs has some kind of synergy and I try to avoid using the two together when I do use them. I would likely reduce my use of alcohol to almost nothing more than a glass of wine with supper if marijuana was more readily accepted.

My consumption level has gone down over the years. I would attribute this to the higher quality of the herb that is available today. I would hazard a guess that an ounce of it will last me some six to eight months. I can enjoy it at any time of the day so long as it does not coincide with my work, political interaction or complicated tasks. I find it makes me more gregarious. It makes me more responsive to humor. I discovered that it helps me to meditate. Several years ago I began to use this therapy and as a result I have been able to reduce my dependence on high blood pressure medication. My high blood pressure has always been a direct result of stress. It also helps to relieve the effects of anxiety, pain and depression. (I just wish it worked for gout!)

Complex math problems and detail oriented tasks are more likely to take longer and as a result I shy away from its use when I expect to have to concentrate on them. On the other hand, when working on tedious or creative tasks I find it to be more appropriate. It allows me to think freely yet remain on task.

Contrary to popular belief, I find it allows me to concentrate when driving long distances and I find that I am a more defensive and careful driver as a result. That, I expect, will be a difficult concept for some people to accept. Also contrary to popular belief, I find it inspiring or motivating. I am less likely to be found sitting on the couch and will tackle those menial tasks or do some personal research while using the herb.

I can’t concentrate when reading a long book while using it. My thoughts tend to wander and I sub-vocalize when doing so but, I find I can concentrate better on projects that require multi tasking. Go figure! I can often be found on the weekends working on a hobby, watching TV (with the sound turned off) and listening to classical music all at the same time.

In the seventies, I was nonplussed by the misinformation of both the authorities and my parents about the ill effects of drug use. When I discovered, by trying pot, that they were wrong I was left with the impression that they were purposely lying to me and as a result I continued experimenting with the other drugs I mentioned.

I feel that we need to take a careful look at how we teach our children about the use of all drugs in our culture. To this day I mistrust the authorities who decry the use of marijuana for legitimate purposes and will continue to vote accordingly. If they are so uninformed about a simple plant how can they be on track with other issues?

I am now committed to help get the issue resolved and hope to see marijuana legalized, if not in general, at least for those individuals who can benefit from it medically.

Thank you for affording me the opportunity to impart my feelings about marijuana.

Sincerely,

Ed Arthur

I am an 18 year old with Asperger’s syndrome. Throughout High School I had flirted with Cannabis, trying it a couple of times, but I had never really gotten much out of it. I was unable to feel emotionally connected to people, unable to realize that other people had emotions, unable to show my emotions, and completely unable to escape my own head. I was an extremely unlikeable person, who because of the Asperger’s, was just always looking down on and insulting anyone, simply because I could not grasp that other people were capable of having emotions and being insecure. I was unlikeable, and I was too stuck in my head to even understand that. I was miserable in high school because I did not understand why I was unlikeable, I didn’t understand that my actions had consequences; I couldn’t put my behavior into context.

Over the course of the last semester, I began to very frequently use cannabis, as it helped to alleviate the social anxiety I constantly had to live with. Since I’ve begun to use Cannabis, I have been able to think about my behavior and it’s context for the first time. I’ve been able to learn to read body language and social cues on a scale I’ve never been able to before. I’ve been able to converse with people without constantly thinking and analyzing and worrying about everything I say and do. Most of all, I’ve learned to feel empathy. I’ve learned that being emotional isn’t a weakness. I’ve learned that my behavior has consequences on both me and the people around me. I’ve learned to value relationships, family, and humanity. I’ve learned that I don’t need to be so angry and cruel all the time. I’ve learned that I don’t always need to try to make everyone as miserable as me. Every single emotional breakthrough and behavioral realization has been made while on cannabis. Every single one of them. I’ve cried from happiness more in the past month as I’ve gotten to this point than I have at any point in my life.

Thank you Dr. Grinspoon for all the work you have done. Without you, I’m not sure I would be in the same place today. I cry thinking of how I used to be, and how I may still be that way if it wasn’t for Cannabis. Thank you so much for your service to the world. You have truly saved my life, and the lives of every family member who ever had the tough responsibility of caring for me.

Thank you for clearing up the facts about a plant that has given me a life I wouldn’t have had otherwise,

-Anonymous

PS. If you post this on your website, please remove my name. I hope to one day join you in the Cannabis research field, but until then, I hope that you will keep fighting for what is right.

Shortly after my father died (when I was 35) I began to experience anxiety attacks. Episodes of slight nervousness gradually progressed to occasional full-blown debilitation. A couple of episodes were severe enough that I found I had to lie down because of the feeling of impending doom.

Although I had occasionally enjoyed cannabis since my mid-twenties, I started to use marijuana on a more regular basis as I found it helped to ease the occurrence and severity of my anxiety symptoms.

Not strictly for the immediate `high` effect, but as much for the residual benefits that seem to keep me ‘protected’ as long as I ‘top up my tank’ by consuming marijuana every once in a while. It is apparent to me that marijuana has a lingering effect, in that periods of prolonged abstinence result in the anxious symptoms gradually re-appearing. I have not suffered another anxiety episode since I began regular use.

Research tells me that marijuana has been as effective as could be expected from a successful course of conventional pharmaceutical treatment, minus any of the very-real (and sometimes dangerous) side effects that accompany virtually any ‘conventional’ treatment: weight gain, `blunted` emotions, not to mention the rare but occasional compelling need to end one’s own existence.

Noting that this is factually one of the most safe substances one can consume, negative ‘side-effects’ (for me) consist of an occasional (transitory) increase in anxiety when consuming too much. This is easily avoided by paying attention to the amount I consume, and is to me, a small price to pay in light of the overall benefit. Episodes where I have ‘over-indulged’ and have become slightly uncomfortable are usually followed by an extra-mellow rebound effect, and the ‘anxiety-threshold’ seems to be reset to a higher level the next time.

Some of the physical changes that I have experienced since I began using cannabis are that I have been able to quit smoking, am eating a healthier diet and exercise regularly. As a result, I have lost approximately 30 pounds. My blood pressure and lipid profiles are the best they have been since my teenage years. In short, I am approaching the best shape of my life.

Another benefit is that as with many people raised in our alcohol-tolerant (promoting?) society, I used to drink to excess. Now 3 drinks is a big night for me – I no longer enjoy (nor seek) that ‘trashed’ feeling.

Spiritually, I find that cannabis helps to reveal things as they really are, and sometimes allows you to see things from a different perspective. Mulling something over after a toke is almost like consulting with a more imaginative version of yourself!

I never ‘need’ cannabis and have never experience a ‘craving’, like I used to for a cigarette. Basically, I have found that it is like a nice craft beer or a rich piece chocolate – a virtually harmless pleasure put on earth for us to use and enjoy.

Like many enthusiasts, I have also found that it is a great ‘enhancer’ for virtually any activity (with the possible exception of solving mathematical problems – do not toke and triangulate!). Writing is easier. Inspirational sometimes arrives faster than you can record them. Contemplative powers are enhanced.

A largely undiscussed benefit is an increased capacity for feelings of empathy towards other humans and creatures, as well as an openness to ideas and philosophies that may have once been dismissed out-of-hand.

It is almost impossible to engage in violent or excessively aggressive thoughts or behavior while under the influence, and there is a definite carry-over into ‘sober’ periods of life. Sleep is more restful, comes more quickly and is devoid of nightmares.

I realize that this runs counter a lot of information presented as fact in the usually hysterical portrayal of this substance by our government and that it may make a non-user question whether the deleterious effects have degraded my mental functioning. Not so.

What makes me so passionate on this issue? The nagging feeling that it is hypocritical to give tacit approval (by remaining silent) while cannabis and those who enjoy it are persecuted for choosing to use a substance which does not cause them harm, helps to relieve many conditions, and generally leaves the user a better person for having experienced it.

Meanwhile, the puritanical roots of our present-day society have promoted tobacco and alcohol use as the ‘acceptable’ vises. This paradox has resulted in more death and misery than is possible to quantify or comprehend, but it would not be much of a stretch to say that these two substances have killed as many people as have been killed in the history of warfare. Yet marijuana is shunned and criminalized.

Future generations will judge us harshly for perpetuating this hoax. I refuse to be complicit.

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!