Beth Amberg is a 24-year-old Ivy League college graduate. She helps her parents move from her childhood home, and learns that relationships, not geography, comprise the movable feast.

To consume THC is to embark on a new perceptual pathway, to temporarily redirect the very nature of experience. When high, I can let my mind cavort: dull worries evaporate, and wonderousness ensues. Being high tends to cast a focus on the present moment, but in my experience, it can also reactivate dormant memories. One of the many ways marijuana enhances my life is in its animation of my memory, and in my subsequent understandings about life and personal history.

Last year, when I was 23, my parents moved out of my childhood home and city. I hadn’t lived there since before college, but the move saddened me nonetheless. I sensed that parts of my past would disappear forever, that a significant component of my history was being uprooted.

My brother and I spent a final five days in the house last spring. For the first two days, during which I didn’t smoke marijuana, my nostalgia trickled with melancholy. I lingered on the notion of an ending, a symbolic terminus to an idealized youth. My vision was snagged in the past, while thoughts of an uncertain future intimidated me.

On the third evening, my brother and I shared a joint on the rooftop, and suddenly my world sprang back to life. After only a few puffs, I realized I had been caught up in notions that didn’t even pertain to the realm of experience; I had been trying to over-contextualize life’s natural flow. My brother and I relaxed on the roof, listening to old tapes and recalling childhood memories from the embarrassing to the sublime. We laughed until we were gasping, reveling in memory and togetherness. Smoking pot vivified our retrospection and abolished my previous gloom. Suddenly my house and neighborhood returned to me in full: they weren’t symbols of loss, but settings for a multitude of rich recollections that would stay with me forever.

In our rooms that evening, my brother and I sorted through personal artifacts, culling out what we wanted to keep: cartoons we’d drawn together, waggish songs we wrote, letters, photographs, special books, and stuffed animals. While normally we would have plowed through the clean-up job, being high prompted us to linger over evocative objects. Distractions, normally avoided, were welcome and intriguing. Whatever I’m doing, marijuana draws out my interest in the sundry details. And it heightens my appreciation of what means the most to me, whether it’s friendships, music, nature, or my own history.

I didn’t smoke the following day, but I retained the insight I gained through marijuana, and it helped me make the most of my time. Even long after its effects wore off, I felt more inclined to value the present moment as strongly as I cherished the memories. By bringing me to the moment, marijuana helped my present and past reinforce each other, granting a sense of continuity to replace the morose paradigm of time slipping away from me. I sensed how lucky I was to have a close, supportive family, and how little their location really mattered.

On my fifth and final day at home, I used marijuana leaves to make a pot of tea: a tea of pot. I heated it slowly with heavy cream, to absorb the cannabinoids, and drank two cupfuls. The first effects began to tinge my perception in the late afternoon, as I played with the two dogs in the living room. My world began to soar as I danced in a blur of jowls and tails and squeaky toys. I noticed that the dogs’ indoor movements were constrained, even in their bouncy elation. I could sense their need to roam outdoors, a primal longing beneath the domestication. So I look them on a walk, my final experience of the neighborhood.

The THC put a spring in my step and gave me new ultra-vivid impressions of the streets I’d always known. When you spend enough time in a place, you stop seeing it; it’s standard and expected. But marijuana can reawaken the senses, offering new frameworks for old subjects. I saw the neighborhood alternately as an artistic tableau, a wellspring of childhood memories, a channeling of human initiative into nature, and a quiet, communal, tree-filled collective of kindred souls. It’s easier to feel at peace when I can step outside the dull concerns of money, time management, and material goods, concerns that all too often overtake me.

The more the special tea seeped into me, the more attuned I became to details all around: the iridescent three-quarters moon with its blurred shadow-arc, the layered fractal view up a leafless tree trunk, the lithe synchronicity of the dogs’ gaits, the dwindling light casting deepening shadows in the cobblestones. These final impressions made for a gratifying goodbye.

Finally, late that night I drank the rest of the enchanted tea. In my bedroom I reread old journals and writings, letting my thoughts delve into retrospection from a wider, wiser perspective. Then, still sailing on my high, I wrote a new journal entry, part of which follows. (I can’t say the writing is very well structured, but I think it conveys some of the illumination I felt that night.)

Perceptions are heightened tonight, my mind unencumbered and slippery. I’m still so close to the wonder and sensations of the past. My thoughts are swimmy-silvery fountains of assorted memories, the novelty-generator of marijuana turning its freshness backwards into history. My past selves have awoken: their experiences aren’t distant; they happen again as I read and remember. The shimmering glaze on memory has opened up and let me back in for the night.

This is something I can take with me: a final, felt experience of a place that’s bound up in me. These parts of me don’t have to die; they’re not rooted to anything material. They’ll return in dreams, and shared recollections, and at unexpected moments. There is such richness in life’s progress, in the recognition of time’s punctuated flux. We live in the grip of such a future-based paradigm; it’s often hard to appreciate the wholeness of a life. The infinite in the moment, the accumulation of nows that make a lifespan. There’s such serenity in timelessness.

The future doesn’t really scare me now. This animated nostalgia is like a promise that life has almost always been good, and can continue to be. I’m not chained to the past, any more than I’m chained to the ethereal resonance of this music, or the walls of this house, or any of life’s other fleeting gifts. I can have a strong relationship with my past, a deep appreciation of the moment, and assurance for the future.

What a way to celebrate life! From marijuana I’ve gained recognition and greater understanding of the things I value most. Experiencing a distinctive mental state every so often helps me put the rest of my life in perspective. Marijuana encourages me to paint, to read, to hike, to make love, to fully appreciate life and all its rich components. I have to smirk when I hear propagandistic slogans such as “users are losers” or “drug use is life abuse”, for in my experience, pot has only been life-affirming, mentally invigorating, and far more benign than such socially sanctioned drugs as alcohol or nicotine. I can only hope that enough others will come to realize this so that within my lifetime marijuana use will no longer be considered a crime.

The author is a 22-year-old senior majoring in Sociology at the University of North Carolina. He remembers the benefits of marijuana for the treatment of terminal cancer in his father, and the healing of a family separation.

As I sit to write this, tears come to my eyes. I am 22 years old and already I am looking back and seeing the choices I have taken and the positions I now face.

I am preparing to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a degree in sociology. I was able to attend the university because of my wrestling abilities, but during my junior year I decided to pursue higher education and thus quit the team. With this newfound freedom I joined Carolina NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) and my mind was opened. I now serve as president of the organization and hope to achieve full legalization before I graduate. But this is only the present, and all presents have a past, that “big bang” that starts everything in motion.

My “big bang” happened in the fall of 1985. My father pleaded with me to stay and live with him. At the age of seven, I stood face to face with the man I feared, loved, respected, admired, and sometimes hated and told him that I wanted to live with mommy – that if I must choose between the two people who gave me life, showed me love and nature, gave me good food and discipline, made me feel whole, and whom I loved consciously and unconsciously – mom had my vote.

Perhaps this would have been erased in a child’s mind in the coming years, but things did not let me forget.

Six years later while living in Wilmington, NC with my mom, we got the bad news. My father had been diagnosed with colon cancer. My mother decided it best that they remarry and he come to live with us. Within a month my father underwent a colostomy and was living with us. Being a senior in high school, I had a toddler’s mind when it came to cancer. I was about to get a crash course.

It started with the surgery. I held my father’s hand as the doctors shaved his abdomen and private areas. I watched in silence. While waiting, mom told me what was happening. They were going to cut a hole in his stomach and stick a tube in to drain his waste out into a bag that rested on his belly, creating a foul smell and immense embarrassment for him and me. Next they were going to take a skin graft and sew up his rectal area, which would prevent draining. From this procedure alone, infection, rashes, and more surgeries followed.

Oh, and then there was the matter of the cancer. The next month between chemotherapy sessions, my father was going in for more surgeries and other complications arising from the colostomy. All this time I had to readjust to living with two parents again and caring for someone I loved who could barely make it to the sink to throw up.

I had started using marihuana when I was in the 9th grade. A senior teammate introduced me to it and to all the effects it had on your mind. He told me about memories and time, visions and prophecies. I guess he forgot to mention its effects on the sick and dying. I found this out for myself when mom asked me to buy a bag of marihuana from a schoolmate. This was the biggest shock of my life. My mom told me that one of my father’s doctors had suggested it. She told me that it would improve his appetite and mood and would relieve some of the pain. My whole life I had been taught that like all other drugs, marihuana was bad. That’s all. No benefits whatsoever. I had discovered the social effects of marihuana through laughter, insight, and racial harmony, but now this drug would bring relief to my father, who was suffering so much.

Mom baked a quarter ounce bag in a pan of brownies. The very first time my father ate them the cramps were reduced. He was able to release from the fetal position and lie in bed erect. Instead of wrestling with the pain, he looked at us and told us what was on his mind. He told us his fears and worries, his joys and inspirations. We laughed and cried. And after we had talked for the first time as a family in six years, we ate dinner. The marihuana had given my father his appetite back.

As the days slipped by, mom and I started getting high with my father. This plant not only helped my father’s pain, but it released the tension in the air so we were able to communicate as a normal family. It’s amazing how cancer will silence the strong and dismay the heart. By using marihuana, mom and I were able to enjoy time with my father in his final days. We were able to get out of our cloud of funk that came with the cancer. We were able to heal. My father passed away in the summer of 1993, my senior year of high school. Of course his memory runs deeper than any marihuana brownie he ate, but those memories would not have been so clear without it.

To get one year to catch up and reminisce was not enough, but it was all I was given. Through all the pain we suffered, the rays of light came through due to marihuana.

By seeing what marihuana can do to help the terminally ill, I feel a twisting in my stomach that gets tighter with every DARE commercial and anti-drug reference. How have we, the most industrialized, educated, and powerful nation in the world, thrown out a remedy that is so desperately needed by millions? The thought that someone is lying in bed with cancer and praying for relief but would not even think of a plant to ease their suffering. By lying to the world, we are all the worse. And when I and the others re-educate the world on marihuana’s benefits, we will not be the better. We will have suffered immensely, emotionally, physically, and consciously, but from this we will rebuild and carry on.

Dr. Byrne has, on and off, explored the role of cannabis in enhancing consciousness and enriching experience since his late teenage years. After attending a top five medical school, he came to San Francisco to undergo residency training at UCSF and currently lives and practices medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a successful part-time researcher, he has published in prominent journals and has frequently presented his work at national meetings. (Jon Byrne is a pseudonym).

“Marijuana unlocks the ability of my mind to think in new and creative ways, takes me to new heights of ecstasy in the appreciation of music and art, and provides a catalyst for the exploration and deepening of my relationships with others. When marijuana prohibition is ended and the experience of marijuana becomes more free and open, I believe that our culture and society will benefit more from the creative ways of thinking and the more intimate ways of interacting with others that are encouraged by the use of marijuana.”

I have used marijuana occasionally since my late teenage years. I have never been a frequent user, typically getting high perhaps 4-6 times a year, and sometimes going for as long as a couple of years at a time without using marijuana. This is mainly because marijuana is illicit and hence difficult to acquire, and I tend not to put much effort into getting a hold of it. However, from time to time I do hear that a friend of mine has access to it, and I acquire some for personal use.

Having experienced the world of medicine in several different regions of the country, I have learned that the sphere of physicians is no exception to the rule that marijuana use is pervasive in American society. Those who have used the plant for various reasons prior to entering medical school often continue to reap the benefits of marijuana during and beyond their medical training, and of course some are ‘turned on’ by friends and colleagues after becoming a physician. The degree of secrecy regarding marijuana use by physicians varies by the intensity with which the war on drug users is conducted in one’s area of the country. In the San Francisco Bay area, it is quite refreshing to see how things are relatively open. Rather than being a closely held secret, as it might be for a physician in Alabama, physician friends and colleagues often open up to one another relatively easily regarding the fact that they use marijuana. This fairly relaxed and open attitude towards marijuana pervades much of society in this region. I have noticed however, that openness regarding one’s marijuana use tends to respect the medical hierarchy, as do many other social interactions among physicians. Physicians are typically more willing to discuss personal marijuana use with others of similar rank; and are more likely to consider the subject taboo when speaking with those obviously higher or lower than oneself in the medical hierarchy.

I personally use marijuana for a number of reasons. Marijuana unlocks and opens up parts of my mind and psychology that I otherwise would not be aware of, and encourages me to think in new and untested ways. Sensory stimulation, in the form of music, food, sex, and the like, becomes more vivid and pleasurable. The combination of new patterns of thought with more vivid sensory stimulation leads to an enhanced appreciation of art. I sometimes get high and spend my time simply enjoying the experience of listening to music or browsing a collection of artistic works.

Friendships and relationships, especially those involving sexual and romantic intimacy, can be developed and deepened by the use of marijuana with others. Marijuana tends to cause introspection, and by altering one’s habits of thought, yields new perspectives on who one is and how one works psychologically. Hence, marijuana serves as an effective catalyst for understanding oneself and others, and discussing and developing one’s relationships with other people. The pleasure and wonder of sexual intimacy is increased, and as a result the bond between lovers can be strengthened. Marijuana enhances both the physical and psychological aspects of sexual activity. As one becomes more aware of and sensitive to deeper aspects of one’s psychological self, these can be brought out during lovemaking and used to enhance intimacy, understanding, and ecstasy.

I most frequently use marijuana alone, and under such conditions it often stimulates me to develop ideas, particularly about religious, sexual, and political issues. When high, I often sit at my computer, typing my ideas and thoughts into a word processing file, and I browse the web regarding ideas that interest me. Each file is interesting to read afterwards, showing what I was thinking about and how my thoughts progressed during the high.

The state of being high involves a large increase in the spontaneous generation of new ideas and concepts, and the appreciation of associations that one would not ordinarily have noticed. This occurs both as a result of altered patterns of thought, as well as due to the heightened appreciation of sensory stimulation that marijuana offers. Marijuana inebriation has both pluses and minuses when it comes to creative productivity. During the actual high, my short term memory is lessened compared to when I am sober, and the productivity of my high can be impaired by “association overload,” whereby I am flooded with new ideas and associations, driving out the old ones, before the old ones can be effectively processed and developed. I think the most productive way of using marijuana involves occasionally getting high, perhaps once a month or so, recording one’s thoughts and ideas while high, then working through them later when sober. The sober self has the focused purpose as well as the concentration, memory, and discipline to work through the new ideas and associations and make them into something substantial. As Edison said, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I believe marijuana is fantastic for the inspiration part, but for me, much of the perspiration part will take place while sober.

Overall, I believe that the use of marijuana has contributed to my life in a number of ways. Marijuana unlocks the ability of my mind to think in new and creative ways, takes me to new heights of ecstasy in the appreciation of music and art, and provides a catalyst for the exploration and deepening of my relationships with others. When marijuana prohibition is ended and the experience of marijuana becomes more free and open, I believe that our culture and society will benefit more from the creative ways of thinking and the more intimate ways of interacting with others that are encouraged by the use of marijuana.

After serving for 23 years in the U.S. Intelligence Community, Brian now works as an Information Technology consultant. Observing that cannabis is useful an an anti-indoctrination agent, he provides one reason for the polarization of views concerning control of this plant. He also confronts and resolves death anxiety, as reported by other users, and notes the relative safety of cannabis use compared to more easily abused substances.

“It was wonder, after all, that brought me to marijuana in the first place. After hearing about what it supposedly did, I really wondered if any of it could possibly be true. Why were they trying to scare me? I was brought to marijuana by wonder, and have found that marijuana is indeed a ‘wonder’ drug.”

My introduction to marijuana came in the fall of 1972. It was part of the natural development of my education about illegal drugs. You see, after I learned about drugs and what they supposedly did, I couldn’t wait to get high. So in the fall of 1972 I got the chance to try marijuana and I certainly was not disappointed with its effects.

The first time I smoked it was to “experiment,” but every time I’ve smoked it over the thirty plus years since then I did it because it gets me high, and I like being high. But it has also done a lot of other good things in my world besides just being a great way to intoxicate myself, and I believe it has helped make me a much better person than I may have been without it.

Marijuana lets me see the world differently. Thanks to being under its influence, dormant parts of my brain came alive. It woke me up to some of the highest reaches of my mind, as well as to its depths. Under its influence, I first experienced the true meaning of “infinite being,” both as an exercise in contemplating the idea of a personal existence beyond death and in the sense of meeting “God.” The opposite end of the spectrum brought me not to the depths of despair we are all supposed to sink to as marijuana “addicts,” but to the depths of being human, to the place where one experiences the true brotherhood of every one of us, and the profound sense induced by comprehending the connectedness of all things. Marijuana provides a way for us to free our minds.

For me, marijuana is a tool to help me keep open the boxes into which other people are constantly attempting to cram us. I think of it as a counter-indoctrination agent. Obviously that aspect of marijuana must be what fuels some people’s hatred of this simple, valuable, and powerful little plant. Even in appearance, marijuana is different. In essence, that is what marijuana is all about: difference. It allows me to see everything about our world differently. It is the ultimate armor against blind obedience and conformity. If “God” created the plants, he seems to have purposely made this one especially obvious to us by coating it with “sugar.” It is different, we are different. We need variety in life, not conformity.

Marijuana has also been tremendously important to me in my spiritual growth. It served as an important set of training wheels for the entheogens I have since encountered; and it remains an express train past the distractions of the everyday world when I need time for contemplation. I think of marijuana as a great way to unlock the mind and allow it to do what it does free of the constrictions placed on it by conventional thinking. It helps us learn that everything we are taught to accept on the basis of authority alone is a prime candidate for further investigation.

Marijuana kept open my capacity for wonder. I am quite curious by nature and constantly seek to see, to learn, to know, to do, and to understand as much as I can about everything. It was wonder, after all, that brought me to marijuana in the first place. After hearing about what it supposedly did, I really wondered if any of it could possibly be true. Why were they trying to scare me? I was brought to marijuana by wonder, and have found that marijuana is indeed a “wonder” drug.

Like many other people, I gave up on organized religion long ago, and describe myself instead as a spiritual person. Marijuana really does open the path to greater awareness and apparently even personal experience of the “is,” the all-knowing all powerful cosmic super consciousness that bears labels like “God” “Jehovah” or “Allah.” The most overwhelming experience of my life was brought to me courtesy of some hashish I decided to eat one day. I was 21 years old at the time and serving in the Air Force at a small base in West Germany.

I had been reading as much philosophy as I could digest over the past year or so before that, and had studied to at least some extent several religious systems. I just couldn’t accept the whole Almighty scary guy above the clouds thing, and I was appalled by the notion of a supposedly “supreme” creature thinking I needed to be tortured for eternity simply because the brain he made for me caused me to question the stories told on his behalf. But death in and of itself seemed to demand some serious attention, especially that part about turning off the lights for the last time.

So I found myself that summer day in 1978 contemplating death at a friend’s apartment, several hours after having eaten about two grams of hash. We were sitting around listening to music, drinking beer and smoking even more hash – a typical weekend day. I began to think about my own death, rather than death in general and confronted myself with a serious question: Was I afraid to die? I hadn’t really thought about it much before, but upon examination and debate decided that I really wasn’t afraid at all. I was certain that there was no eternal damnation awaiting me on the other side, and was resolved that it was perfectly fine if there were no afterlife at all.

Because I smoke marijuana, I have a really huge incentive for speaking up against those who are attempting to hold us accountable to them for smoking this simple plant. I swore an oath to defend America back in 1976, and have never stopped honoring that commitment. I spent 23 years working directly on behalf of America and her citizens as a productive member of our intelligence services. During that period, I was forced to live a double life: not because I was like the traitors who were selling the secrets I was exposed to, but because I did things to myself that some people think jail would be a good way to cure.

Being a risk taker by nature, I have tried every drug I ever had the opportunity to experience. I learned a whole lot more about drugs from direct personal experience than I ever could from reading prohibitionist propaganda. I find that marijuana is hands down my favorite drug. I can control the dosing rate and effects very easily. It causes only minor problems if I get “too stoned.” It wears off quickly and there is no residual physical or mental after effects. No hangover like alcohol, no burnout like coke and speed, no fuzz brain like Quaaludes. No painful withdrawal leading me to seek fixes. No needles or blood. No liver damage, nasal perforations or collapsed veins. No need to keep increasing the dose. Regardless of what they want us to believe, one small bowl shared between 2 or 3 people gets me just as ripped every time. And it’s been that way for over 30 years.

Synonymous is a teacher residing in the Pacific Northwest. This essay is a rare view into third-generation familial use of marijuana in a moderate, supportive, respectful setting. It provides a true counterpoint to reflexive conservative views on the issues of parental guidance, while offering suggestions for proper and controlled employment of what is described as the “breath of God.”

My family is afforded a unique set of circumstances that permit us to use cannabis with relative impunity. For a period of over 20 years, we two parents and our children have maintained an ongoing relationship with the form of cannabis known as marijuana. We regard it as a powerful medicine capable of healing our bodies, illuminating our minds, and raising our spirits. We recognize it as a spiritual sacrament, a part of our family religious practice and experience. For us, marijuana is a gift for which we are thankful and that we handle thoughtfully and respectfully.

While growing up our children were given the opportunity to learn about marijuana in a positive and wholesome setting from adults experienced in its use and knowledgeable about its characteristics, both positive and negative. Accordingly, we established and maintained a respect for the healing properties of marijuana. Each individual family member has been free to choose his or her own path regarding religious, medicinal, or recreational use of marijuana; and varied patterns have been chosen and followed. Personal use of marijuana has ranged from light to an appropriately moderate level, as discussed and agreed upon by the participants. Excessive or frivolous use is frowned upon and regarded as inappropriate for such an important and meaningful gift. Also, we recognize that marijuana use is a private family matter that cannot be openly discussed outside of the family or a small circle of like-minded friends because of potential problems from an external society that is generally uninformed or misinformed about these matters. Out teenage children were free to make their own individual decisions about sharing marijuana with their peers under appropriate and safe circumstances. This tended to occur primarily with friends who have similar views concerning marijuana. In many cases, these were children whose parents are friends of our entire family and share the same general experience with and feelings about marijuana.

Within our family, we learned together of the healing properties of cannabis; and we felt its reflected spiritual vibrations. When a child showed an interest, he or she was permitted to take a puff on a joint or a pipe. In this way, their curiosity was satisfied and they accepted our behavior as natural and good. They also observed the calm and loving demeanor that tends to be manifested by those partaking of the marijuana. Whenever a child wished to participate more fully, which usually occurred in the early teenage years, he or she was permitted to do so with proper guidance. Then, as they grew up, each child formed his or her own patterns of use. Some of their closest friends have been children of our friends who use marijuana. A natural bonding accompanies the sharing of marijuana, whether with a stranger at a rock concert of a life-long friend or a parent or a sibling. Also, within our family, marijuana-sharing has been a form of therapy. It has facilitated open and honest discussion that led to understanding, healing, and growth.

Our motivations for using cannabis have generally blended together as far as various aspects of positive and respectful use are concerned. While much of our sharing of the smoke appears to be casual and recreational, this description is inadequate. A toke on a joint is often accompanied by a gesture or a thought or feeling of gratitude for the gift of the healing herb. The reduction of physical or mental stress due to the marijuana’s effects may call forth a prayer of thanksgiving. An atmosphere of respect is observed by all of the participants. For most family members, this sharing occurs most typically after school or work. If a special dinner is being served and a group has gathered, a joint or pipe may be passed around for appetite enhancement and heightened enjoyment of the food.

As far as our teenagers were concerned, there was a general understanding that it was not cool to go to school stoned. This was never really an issue since they had the freedom and opportunity to have this experience at home among family members and friends. Many teenagers who abuse marijuana by getting high in inappropriate circumstances (including situations where they may be apprehended) do so because it is their only opportunity. They must do it in secrecy and hidden from their parents, and this colors what can be a rewarding and uplifting experience under the right conditions.

Within our family, we recognize the potential for misuse or even abuse of marijuana. We know that it can lead to surrendering inhibitions in unfavorable circumstances. This is a form of losing control, something that may occur with novices who have no understanding or guidelines concerning this powerful and holy medicine. There are settings in which the use of marijuana may cause discomfort among others; this is one of a variety of ways of giving the use of marijuana a bad reputation. Many users often learn about such things by trial and error, often strongly influenced by what their peers or mentors do and say. So, here again, serious proponents of marijuana as medicine or sacrament must take their guiding role seriously and set positive examples. This has proved to be a manageable and worthwhile goal both within our family and within our extended family of pot smokers.

Smoking a joint is our usual means for getting high; although some family members and friends prefer bongs or various types of pipes. Eating it (in brownies or cookies, for example), or mixing it into tea involve more preparations and planning; and a longer time is required before feeling the effects. Many pot smokers would actually prefer not to smoke from the standpoint of health issues. But there is an inclination to rationalize this by observing that only a relatively small amount of smoke is inhaled. With high quality sinsemilla, many veteran smokers will take only one to three “hits” on any one occasion; and they will limit the number of times they smoke to once or twice in the course of an evening. From my experience, it is really a waste of marijuana to smoke while you are already stoned and think that you can get higher and higher by smoking more and more. I believe this is in the mind of the individual more than the reality of the effects of the marijuana. Being high is an art; and experienced users know how to utilize their thoughts and mold the experience in the most affirmative and enjoyable ways. The “breath of God”, as some describe the holy smoke, is a powerful force with positive potentials. And, as with any powerful forces, it is best utilized and realized in positive ways through respect and appreciation.

Pete Brady is a 41-year-old writer, photographer, and music therapist living in California. He primarily uses cannabis to alleviate symptoms of spinal cord deterioration and chronic depression, but also finds that cannabis positively affects his abilities as a musician.

I have been a musician, singer and composer since childhood. I use my musical skills in a variety of ways, some of which I classify as music therapy. I earned a Master’s Degree in music therapy in 1996.

Marijuana has been helpful to my musical creativity. Before I began using marijuana, my musical output was formulaic and linear, following the rules laid down in music and voice lessons. I rarely felt emotionally connected to my music, and was unable to compose original compositions that reflected inner emotional states or concepts.

On an interpersonal level, my pre-pot persona was conformist, rational, and emotionally blocked. I was not a touchy-feely kind of guy. I rarely cried, maintained a hardy demeanor, and never conceived of myself having a career in the healing arts. My interactions with people were facile, utilitarian and guarded.

After a back injury, failed surgery, and chronic pain caused me to use marijuana medicinally beginning in 1992, I saw my personality and musical creativity change radically. The marijuana high made me introspective, and I used it to catalogue my strengths, weaknesses and traits. The drug was a revealer, not an escape mechanism; it helped me see who I was and what I needed to be. Marijuana also helped me get in touch with emotions- from pure joy to pure despair – that I had been suppressing. As my heart and head changed, my music also changed. I had long heard from musicians that marijuana made them feel more creative, but I had also heard some musicians say that the feeling was a phantom, that they only thought they performed better while stoned.

I decided to do some tests. I made digital recordings of formula compositions in identical situations while completely free of any drug effects and while stoned on a dose-measured amount of marijuana. I did original music concerts in standardized conditions, performing to the best of my ability while intoxicated on marijuana and while not intoxicated. (Please note: when I say, “not intoxicated,” I mean I did not ingest marijuana for at least four days prior to the session). I wrote my subjective observations about the difference between playing while high versus when not intoxicated. I compared recordings, listening for nuances of difference. I also allowed others to listen to and compare the recordings.

My research showed that when I was stoned, I was far more likely to take “chances” with my music. I experimented with novel chord structures and lead lines, stacked instruments in unlikely combinations, detuned instruments, varied rhythms and pacing, and added sound effects. Vocally, my stoned performances were a revelation. My voice was far more expressive and evocative. My range was extended, and I was more willing to take chances with phrasing and word usage. While unstoned, I tended to sing in a very predictable ballad-blues style, with much of my phrasing borrowed from other singers who’d had an influence on me. When high, it seemed that new voices came out, and that these voices were the product of a truer breath flow that involved total diaphragm breathing rather than constricted throat breathing that I sometimes tensed into during unstoned performances.

Lyrically, my marijuana-inspired songs took on a metaphorical and poetic life that was very different from the lyrics I penned while unstoned. Before marijuana, my songs tended to be literalist, somewhat sappy ballads, kind of like a “New Age” Barry Manilow. While stoned, my lyrics resembled literature, with heavy use of imagery, story-telling, and fictionalized voices, scenarios and characters. I want to emphasize that I am not describing these differences from a stoned point of view. It’s true that I find listening to music stoned more fun than listening to it unstoned, but I made a point of evaluating my music when my brain was not enhanced by marijuana. I asked people who never use marijuana to evaluate my music. They agreed that the stoned performances were more adventurous, less inhibited, more interesting and eccentric.

Some final caveats. Cannabis was not uniformly beneficial for all my musical talents. I make more “mistakes” while stoned, and often forget my own songs. My hands at times freeze up or are hard to control, with critical dexterity and motor skills impaired. Lyrically, I noticed that if I had created a chorus, I often forgot it before the end of the song, necessitating the creation of a new chorus while I stalled for time, trying to recall the old one!

I also noticed that my vocal production was very strong during the initial phase of my high, but that after about an hour, I tended to tire earlier than when unstoned. My pitch dropped at least half an octave if not more. This was not intentional. When stoned, I had a harder time hitting high notes. I have no idea why. Using cannabis to enhance musical creativity is a complex adventure that I have to carefully monitor and manage. So far, the benefits of cannabis far outweigh the negatives. I wish that cannabis did not irritate my throat, for example, but I can tolerate that irritation because cannabis makes my songs sparkle. My goal is to eventually achieve that sparkle without cannabis, but am always grateful to the universe and mother nature for marijuana, which helped open my heart and mind, allowing me to make transformative music for people I care about.

Kevin Nelson is 32 years old and works in the fields of Earth Education, wilderness leadership, environmentally responsible homebuilding, and ecological textiles. He lives in Washington state where he divides his free time between playing music and freelance writing. Using the herb as a catalyst for spiritual reflection, he remembers that at a moments notice, yet so frequently forgotten, we may be conscious of the “glorious beauty of the world.”

Describing why I smoke marijuana presents an interesting challenge, like trying to articulate the content of a slippery dream in the morning light. There is an ineffable quality to this noble plant that has captivated my mind throughout life as it has captivated hundreds of millions of minds for the past 12,000 years of human history. It reminds me of a line by Robin Williamson – “Whatever you think, it’s more than that.” Nevertheless, I’m game for an attempt at describing why this plant has proven to be so personally beneficial.

Like most powerful experiences available to human beings, how we define our relationship to the experience is key to what we will get out of it. I had the great fortune of not trying cannabis for the first time until I was 18-years-old. My psyche had the opportunity to develop mostly unencumbered by chemical influences. My only experience with altered states prior to this time was with alcohol intoxication – a kind of numb, excitable giddiness that teenagers seem to find so appealing. Alcohol made me act less inhibited, somewhat reckless and, in retrospect, generally foolish. The high school I attended was influenced heavily by a focus on sports and fashion. In my final year there I began taking an interest in a group of friends with intellectual, questioning minds, with more fascinating and artistic interests than keg parties and pep rallies. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that many in this group smoked marijuana, albeit with a low-key discretion due to the generally negative attitudes about marijuana prevalent at the school.

This was my first curiosity – why would extraordinarily intelligent and creative people smoke cannabis when we were taught in health class that it was so dangerous, deleterious, and immoral? I couldn’t resist knowing the answer. Just before graduation I tried marijuana for the first time, cooked into brownies – I ate four.

In retrospect I consumed a quantity of marijuana that potentiated its mild psychedelic qualities. What I discovered was astonishing. All the colors and sounds of that warm May day seemed more saturated. The present moment took on an extra dimension as my mind cascaded with thoughts that poured out in phrases and filled every moment with humor and insight. What was happening? I was basking in some kind of previously unknown but instantly likable euphoric glow, and I felt as though I was getting acquainted with myself and maybe my very existence for the first time. Or was it the second time? Had I ever considered my ‘existence’ before? It was hilarious and profound, exotic yet familiar, with a paradoxical but somehow obviously logical quality to it. The most shocking conclusion I drew from the experience was that despite general societal disapproval (and its harsh illegality)…I really liked it.

Being the disciplined, overly deliberate person that I am, I didn’t try it again for another 4 months. I needed to consider what I’d learned from the first time. But upon trying it again, and enjoying it again, I found myself completing the transition from hanging out with an athletic drinking crowd to a more intellectual smoking crowd.

My circle of friends enjoyed marijuana as a creativity enhancer. We would get together and smoke, and go for hikes, as well as draw, paint, play music (I learned how to play a musical instrument during this time), discover philosophy, or just collapse in fits of hysterical laughter. It felt like an incredibly safe, fertile, adventurous, expansive time. It was as though I’d hit a switch that made life seem more tangible, real, precious. My association with marijuana was solidified then as being a catalyst for aesthetic and spiritual reflection. For example, though I’d always been fascinated by the night sky, looking at the stars while high filled me with a kind of awe I’d never experienced before – the wonder of a human being facing the present, eternal, dynamic cosmos. I wasn’t seeing anything that wasn’t there before, or seen before. On the contrary, it was this feeling of connection to the race of humanity that preceded me, looking up at the stars with similar awe, that brought such an indescribable warmth to this reverie. I was seeing and feeling reality through a greater bandwidth. Marijuana didn’t filter the world; it unfiltered the world.

Artistic pursuits went from being perceived as an entertaining adjunct to culture, to being indivisible from the definition of culture. Suddenly art and music represented humanity’s highest aspirations and deepest traumas. Everything became more profound, and everything became lighter at the same time.

I believed that if more people smoked marijuana and drank less alcohol (or no alcohol), the world would experience a kind of renaissance of peaceful artistic and philosophical pursuits.

In other words, typical idealistic tendencies that the media and politicians love to hate about the 1960s. The only difference was that this was the 1980s. My friends and I used to laugh about the self-righteous Baby Boomers who smoked marijuana like peaceful spirits in the Sixties, probably enjoying similar revelations, then grew up to become the most vicious drug warriors of all time, destroying the lives of millions of people the world over. I guess one thing that’s changed is that no one laughs about that anymore. Well, that’s the past, what about the present? How would I describe my current relationship to cannabis? After all, following the Boomers’ example, shouldn’t I confess my past use, profess an infinite contempt for the plant, and beg forgiveness? In a word, no.

These days, when I smoke a small amount of marijuana, my body feels both relaxed and enlivened, active and content. My mind and my body feel quenched inside a visionary moment with a warm glow of serenity. It feels like a kind of cerebral sexuality, like a sixth or seventh sense, suddenly come animate. I feel like a spiritual animal.

I often feel like exercising – hiking or biking – while high, and when I do I can feel my blood pumping, my lungs expanding, my muscles contracting and releasing. I feel the current state of my body’s functioning and I am inspired to improve that state.

When I smoke and go for a long bike ride I often think in musical thoughts. I’ll hear a dynamic, building rhythmic complexity as I’m climbing a hill, and an exultant vocal crescendo as I speed down the other side. It’s as though the plant is narrating the experience of the moment. Hypnotic themes match the changing scenery and sometimes reprise when the course reaches full circle. The challenge and discipline, of course, is then to try to translate that ephemeral inspiration into a fully realized musical form. When playing guitar and writing music, marijuana reveals itself to be what I consider a ‘creational’ drug. A sudden sense of newness and musical unpredictability foster what I call ‘the illusion of randomness’ necessary to facilitate creativity. Chords and song structures beg to stretch out and reflect the dynamic quality of the world. On many occasions I’ve been able to apply sections of what I’ve ‘heard’ in these exercise sessions and build songs around them.

Listening to music while high can be an extremely pleasurable experience. Music simply sounds more profound in altered states in a way that is difficult to convey to people skeptical of transcendental experiences. A musical piece may sound both deconstructed into its primary instrumental components, yet synergized in a way that expresses its deepest meanings and flow. Lyrics may suddenly be revealed as inane and trite, or deeply expressive and pregnant with meaning.

Drug warriors revile the sense of time alteration brought on by cannabis and distort this characteristic in an attempt to frighten people. But upon smoking slightly larger amounts of the plant, this experience of time expansion feels wholly human.

Time slows down. First minutes, then seconds begin to expand, taking on a depth beyond common comprehension. Focusing on the subtle character of these moments as they unfold, the slippery origins of thoughts may reveal themselves within the dynamic flow of a continuous present. My mind shifts from micro-analyzing to macro-analyzing the wide range of emotions, feelings, considerations, and free imaginings.

These observations are available for our examination in every waking moment of every day, but we take them for granted like the air we breathe, like the glorious beauty of the world, like the fact that we’re on a planet spinning through an infinite universe. It’s unnoticed.

I realize that a lot of people smoke and do not hear music this way, nor are they inspired to exercise, philosophize, or aggrandize the world. This brings me to an important point. The quality of an individual’s cannabis experience is dictated strongly, perhaps wholly, by one’s surroundings, companions, and personal intentions – it is essential to be completely honest about your reasons for using this plant. And if you are going to smoke with others, it is important that you feel safe in the environment, and comfortable being yourself in their presence.

Secondary characteristics that certainly help the cause are having the highest-quality organically-grown cannabis flowers available and smoking through a water pipe which cools the smoke, filters extraneous particulate matter, and concentrates the experience. Potent marijuana allows you to smoke far less to achieve the desired effects – less smoke = less wear and tear on the body. Water-cooled pipes, as well, are easier on the lungs and better for the mind. Appropriate technology.

Ultimately, though, the key with marijuana, and with sexuality for that matter, is to approach the experience with mindfulness and an open heart. Our society both sells and denies sexuality at the same time because we are attracted to and repelled by that which cannot be controlled. Similarly, we glorify the great works of art and music inspired by marijuana and other psychedelics (ex. Beatles, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Willie Nelson, ad infinitum…) while casting aspersions on the catalyst that helped inspire that art into existence. Opening the social dialogue regarding sacred plants could expand a much-needed sense of empathy among the human community. Marijuana prohibition has been one of the greatest frauds of the 20th Century. Let us hope that the new century ahead will see an end to this sad chapter in history. Because, for an adult, using marijuana with mindfulness seems to me as much a natural part of the human experience as thinking, feeling, breathing, music, sexuality, laughter, or other forms of prayer.

The author is a second-year graduate student in 20th century U.S. history. Overcoming the terror of recognizing his mortality, the author confronts his panic attacks and makes peace with the transformations of existence.

I am a male graduate student, twenty-four years old, at a major public university in the Pacific Northwest. I am an alumnus of a small, highly regarded, academically demanding liberal arts college. I initially tried marijuana when I was a junior in high school, although, as is common, I didn’t experience much of an effect the first several times I smoked it. I did not begin smoking it regularly, and did not eat it at all, until after I began college, when I was seventeen. That same year, I was lucky enough to be able to join a group of people in a beautiful natural setting, where older, experienced folk gave us a supportive introduction to LSD. This essay has mostly to do with marijuana, but I will have occasion to mention the other psychedelic drugs again later.

Starting with my first true marijuana high, I began to experience a number of benefits. I find the herb to be uplifting – sometimes relaxing and sometimes invigorating. I usually smoke or eat it with groups of friends, and among us it is a boon to conviviality. I also enjoy doing it alone on occasion, though. In general, I prefer to avoid making unnecessary rules around its use, and play things most of the time by ear. I have asthma. While being around tobacco smoke can irritate my lungs, marijuana (even when I smoke it) can often provide me, during the period of its acute effects, with relief from bronchiospasm and the associated anxiety at least as great as that afforded by the prescription drugs I also take. This notwithstanding, I do not now conceive of marijuana’s role in my life as a patient does that of a medication. I do support the laws enacted by citizens of increasingly more states in order to permit the medical use of marijuana, whose unquestioned legality was so cruelly abrogated in 1937. I have worked on such a campaign myself.

Marijuana enhances the sensations of sex for me. While sex plays an important, positive part in my life, however, I rarely if ever use marijuana with the sole purpose of spicing up a sexual encounter. Marijuana also heightens my appreciation for the beauties of nature. I do not generally find my highs as soporific as some commentators make theirs out to be. I have been a hiker all my life, and I love to use marijuana in the wilderness and go for a nice long walk. I often take a stroll after getting high in the city, too. When I do so there, I seem to notice the non-human lifeforms all around (the plants, in particular) more than I do when I have not used marijuana.

Marijuana is great for museums, as well. On trips to Europe, especially, I have enjoyed ingesting it before going in to see works of art, as well as such things as anthropological dioramas. Music, too, is richer and more engrossing when I am high. This is so whether I am listening to a recording or at a concert. Marijuana does not typically induce agoraphobia in me. Rather, the crowd dynamics become even more a part of the show when I go out to see a band after having used it.

While marijuana does change my perception of external stimuli (usually for the better), it also has aesthetic aspects all its own. In part, I love to use marijuana for the same reason that I love to eat roast lamb or steamed broccoli or ripe mangos, or to drink heavily hopped beer or strong black coffee or fruit smoothies. These are some of my favorite biological products, and it feels purely glorious to merge myself with them. One of the many problems our culture has with marijuana is that both sides of the debate have invested it with such weighty moral significance that it’s hard to appreciate its purely material qualities anymore. The simple animal physical pleasures cannot be neglected, however.

We so impoverish ourselves when we draw overly distinct boundaries between human and other forms of life, or between our bodies and the rest of the universe. Sensually opening ourselves to food or drink or smoke, acknowledging our permeability, is a way out of the neuroses this false division engenders. Living (solipsistically) on the inside, it can feel like our bodies are semi-permanent objects that hold their shape and change only slowly. Marijuana reminds me that a vast river of molecules is constantly flowing through my body, with ingestion and excretion ensuring that little but the form persists. This deep feeling of connection has much to do with the most important change that the use of marijuana has helped to bring about in my life.

As my parents can attest, from a relatively young age I had a distinct awareness of mortality and a mounting horror of illness and death. It may have had its start with my hospitalization for an asthma attack when I was five. At any rate, this fear reached its peak during the summer after my freshman year of college, when I suffered a spasm of hypochondria and visited a succession of doctors, convinced I was dying of one imaginary disease after another. My world seemed to be spinning out of control, and try as my relatives and friends might, I refused to accept their assurances that everything was going to be fine.

My concrete concerns were laid to rest after a talk with my longtime family physician, who assured me that what I actually had was “medical students’ disease,” acquired by reading too many books on illness. Once the temporary relief this gave me had worn off, though, I came to realize that the underlying cause of my literally pathological obsession was my fear of death. I could not stand the strain of living with this recurrent panic, so I resolved to root it out. After nearly six years of talking with my loved ones about death, reading spiritually and scientifically oriented books about it, and taking plenty of solitary time to think it through, I experienced a series of epiphanies, which reached its peak earlier this year. My mortal terror has now melted away. The chief tangible catalysts in this process have been psychedelic drugs. I have now had valuable experiences with LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and tincture of peyote, but I have mainly used marijuana.

One day when I was fourteen or so, I was standing in the shower when the thought of my own death as the beginning of personal nonexistence hit me with overpowering force. Then and there, I had the first of what was to become a long series of panic attacks, which often left me shouting out loud in an attempt to prove I was still here. No fear I had ever felt was as awful as the terror that came to me when I contemplated how easily all my thoughts and memories would be destroyed. And psychedelics, in general such a beneficial presence in my life, seemed to multiply this terror tenfold.

Going for a long period without using these drugs did not end the recurrent panic attacks, whose onset had in any case antedated my drug experience by over three years. I eventually decided that I had to look within myself, to come to grips with my fear. I wrote down the Bene Gesserit Litany against Fear, from Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, on a piece of paper. “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” I was copying from memory, so I got some of the words wrong, but I had the sense. I carried the paper around with me in my wallet, and waited.

As I have explained, it took a while for things to change. There was no single cathartic event that broke down the walls inside me. The key, however, seemed to lie in thinking through my own death and not letting the thought send me into a panic. Once I could do that straight, it was time to try it while high, when it all seemed so much more real, so much worse. Again and again, I was overwhelmed, and ran to my friends begging them to tell me that I was all right, that I wasn’t dying.

Eventually, though, with practice, I was able to relax. I didn’t ask for it to come to me, but when I got high and the fear of death showed up, I didn’t freak out quite as much. One day it was there and I said, “Okay, so what if I die? Right now?” And nothing happened. I had thought the unthinkable and I was still there. That wasn’t the end there and then; I had to come back to that point several times. But thanks to my friends’ and family’s patience with me, and my own slowly developing courage, death gradually stopped tapping me on the shoulder. On the infrequent occasions that I do have panic attacks anymore, I surrender to them, and remember to breathe, and when they find I am not willing to give them the excitement of a struggle, they melt back into my consciousness, and are gone.

Marijuana and the other psychedelics provided me with an opportunity to experience that most intimate activity, my thinking, differently, without losing touch with the values and facts I had learned from my life to date. What I gained thereby was the mental analogue of depth perception. I was able to step outside my ego, which left to its own devices had blindly clung to life as though life were not itself characterized by ceaseless flux. I experienced a profound sense of dissolved boundaries akin to the one I described earlier with regard to the body – only this time, the boundaries were those supposedly rigid ones between “life” and “death.” I now feel that the world is a living entity in its own right, of which no part – that is to say, none of us – is truly created or destroyed, only transformed one into another throughout time. I am constantly amazed by the multiplicity of benefits that marijuana, within a larger context of education, experience, and dialogue, has brought to my life. I don’t even have to use marijuana very often in order to realize these benefits. Though I will generally smoke it or eat it when it is set before me by a generous friend, the constraints of Prohibition (primarily the financial ones) keep my use slightly less frequent than it will probably be when the laws change.

The ramifications of these laws also, unfortunately, keep me from being willing to use my name in this account. Still, I want the world to know that I do use marijuana. I am not afraid to say that to the people I meet. I am not afraid to say that I am glad the cannabis plant shares the Earth with us. I am not afraid to tell all who read my words that I am committed to working ceaselessly for the reform of laws and attitudes that infantilize my fellow adult citizens of free countries. These laws do so much more harm than marijuana itself could ever be conceived to do. They do it in an attempt to keep others from choosing for themselves whether to join me in its use – an attempt that is ultimately futile.

The author, who has reviewed for the International Journal of Drug Policy, is also the host of the Psychedelic Library web site(www.psychedelic-library.org). Noting the merits of practice with both music and the use of cannabis, he examines the cognitive mechanisms underlying the origins of jazz, while introducing us to the past times of Louis Armstrong and Mezz Mezzrow. We learn of the marihuana-using jazz musician round up of 1947 by the Bureau of Narcotics, both humorous and disturbing. In this cogent discourse on the origins of improvisation in jazz, he proposes that practiced, purposeful use of cannabis may provide a form of training in creative thinking that can be applied across many artistic and scientific fields.

One of the more remarkable effects noticed in the state of consciousness brought on by marijuana use is a greatly enhanced appreciation of music. The effect seems to be almost universal, and does not seem to fade with experience in the use of marijuana, as do certain other effects typically noticed by novice users. Curiously, such perception of enhancement does not seem to make excessive demands that the music to be appreciated be good, bad, or indifferent, although many persons originally interested only in pop music, for example, have suddenly found during a marijuana session that more “serious” music has quite unexpectedly become interesting in a way both surprising and profound. Conversely, a few who had previously rejected pop music as crude and trivial have come to appreciate it more through marijuana consciousness.

The resulting musical empathy is also quite durable, not requiring further marijuana sessions for its (at least partial) preservation, and so the net effect seems to be one of “opening up” a person to something he had merely ignored or overlooked. The enhanced appreciation is thus legitimized as something essential and “real” and not merely a “drug effect,” something “artificial” that wears off with the waning of the changed conscious state. Marijuana consciousness thus seems to be a state in which at least a few of one’s prejudices and predispositions may be temporarily suspended so that something long-ignored for whatever reason can be seen afresh, as if for the first time. And so it would seem that the marijuana experience can provide a kind of training that may subsequently help enlarge and enrich one’s outlook in desirable and entirely voluntary ways.

Musicians (as well as other artists) have also testified not only to enhanced appreciation of music and art in general through the use of marijuana, but in addition some have insisted that these altered states of consciousness are useful and valuable to augment their creativity, although research verifying such claims is hard to accomplish in any meaningful or decisive way. Although it may also be somewhat speculative to say, it would seem that creativity would surely be boosted by an enhanced appreciation and a partial suspension of preconceptions, no matter what the stimulus.

Of course, as with so many things in life, practice makes perfect, or if not perfect, more nearly so. Thus it is with listening to music, and certainly with the making of music – a life-long process of practice – but more than a few puritanical minds will be bent out of shape by my suggestion, nay, my insistence, that the principle applies to the use of marijuana as well! It has long been obvious to me that many of the best minds of our time suffer from a ridiculous and self-imposed handicap by ignoring or even actively rejecting a great aid to thinking and creativity: the altered states of consciousness provided by marijuana and other age-old plant substances so revered by our forbears. They are tools both powerful and benign, both fickle and of great utility, and above all they require some considerable practice in order to use them in a way commensurate with their potential. Thus much of the research (on creativity, for example) which has used the substances on subjects who have not had long opportunity to practice with the resulting states of consciousness is rendered of limited value, and it won’t be until these age-old aids to thinking and perception become once again widely used that we will begin to know their true usefulness. If they were universally revered by our tribal ancestors, and played an important role in the social and psychological evolution of our species as some researchers suspect, we may find them of even more value in a time when our technological powers have advanced maximally, but our moral sense of how to control great power for the common good has advanced little, if at all, since the bronze age.

As one who might have become a musician (had I practiced more!), and for whom music remains an irreplaceable source of inspiration, pleasure, consolation and communication, and also as one who has over the years had considerable practice in the use of the altered states of consciousness provided by marijuana and other such substances, I offer the following speculation about the nature of marijuana consciousness, its possible cognitive mechanisms, and music. The entire theory, if I may be allowed to call it that, has resulted from personal introspection about music and altered states and a selective use of technical knowledge gleaned from several sources. Study of relevant scientific material, due to its complex nature, has of course been done from the perspective of normal consciousness, but my evaluation of learned material has always involved considerable cross-examination from normal to altered states and back again. The speculative nature of what follows will certainly be seized upon by the puritanical as evidence that altered states of consciousness quite obviously lead to complete nonsense, but even altered states are no sure-fire remedy for narrow-mindedness.

Thanks to Prohibition, there has been insufficient serious research concerning the cognitive mechanisms and brain structures involved in the altered states of consciousness produced by marijuana and other such substances, and even research on the neurocognitive and psychological foundations of music, art and creativity has been frequently considered a study of the superfluous. Music and art for us moderns, unlike for our aboriginal ancestors, is seen as mere decoration, “entertainment,” an activity of leisure and play (indeed, music is played), and our scientific institutions thus seem to believe that the study of such phenomena are of less importance than more “serious” studies. But from what limited scientific investigation as has been accomplished, it seems that both the making and perception of music involves the use of areas in the right hemisphere of the brain analogous to the speech and language comprehension areas of the left hemisphere – notably the famous Broca and Wernicke brain areas – and that these analogous right-brain areas might function similarly to the language centers of the left in the production, reading, and perception if not appreciation of music. Indeed, music seen as a linear symbolization comprised of sequential interrelated unitary elements describing a durational and holonomic conception seems an analogous phenomenon to language in many important ways. One may even surmise that music-making was very much a “language” for our earliest ancestors at a time when spoken descriptive language was merely in its most rudimentary and primitive state.

Now another of the most noticed effects of marijuana consciousness, and this effect is pronounced and very typical, is some change in the way we use short-term memory. Prohibitionists and others who mistrust not only marijuana consciousness but apparently even the idea that changed consciousness is something worthy of scientific study have seized on the short-term memory effect in their attempts to discredit marijuana use and strike terror into the hearts of marijuana users by implying that some kind of “permanent damage” must surely be happening when, in the middle of a sentence for instance, one forgets entirely what one was saying! But as all marijuana users know, if at this point one simply relaxes a bit, sure enough, the memory soon is re-established, indicating that what has happened is not a loss of short-term memory or a damaging of the brain structures mediating it, but a different manner of using it: perhaps we merely lose track of trains of ideas that are quite normally being recorded in short-term memory because our perceptions require far more attention than normally, i.e., our consciousness is heavily involved with other matters than mere utilitarian attention to continuity of logical or linguistic thought processes, our experience is so interesting and attention-consuming that we ignore, not lose, short-term memories. Indeed, the kind of short-term memory which scientists now study may be essentially a linguistic one, and other types of short-term memory, as yet unrecognized, may exist: they may be concerned with a more holonomic, rather than serially organized, linguistic way of contacting recent experience.

If this ignoring, or losing track of the mostly linguistic aspect of short-term memory is so universal, and the theory of music making and recognition being mediated by right-hemisphere areas analogous to those language-mediating areas of the left is valid, what happens to a musician when he plays music while under the influence of marijuana? Does he likewise forget what tune he is playing? Presumably if marijuana affects the language centers of the left hemisphere, even indirectly, it must similarly affect morphologically analogous structures of the right hemisphere. If marijuana consciousness does indeed affect a musician’s perceptions and performance in some such way, how might that affect his music? And if a group or class of musicians who made a practice of using marijuana were so affected, how might that affect their collective concept of music and the way their music form developed? These might seem questions for research that in such a utilitarian age as our own will never be addressed. Yet perhaps the history of music already provides some hints.

The history of 20th Century music is a history, in one sense, of a bifurcation of music into two distinct ways of music-making. The long tradition of Western music has emphasized the importance of music composition and the notation of such compositions as opposed to the subsequent performance of these written compositions. The role of the composer and the performer are distinctly separate, and it is the composer, especially for orchestral works, who is considered to have done the lion’s share of creating. The performer may “interpret” a written work of music with changes to tempo, dynamics, and general feeling, but any excess is considered bad form. All this of course has its parallel in language in the writing and reading of books. In our collective modern view, the greatest things that have been said are those written in stone, or at least in great books, and extemporaneous speech, as moving as it may be, is again, more often like entertainment than philosophy. When a piece of music has been composed, and when a linguistic expression has been written down, we seem automatically to attach more importance to it.

In the early decades of the 20th century however, the diverse influences in America, particularly of African origin, led to a form of music in which the performer himself took over the role of the composer to a significant extent, and jazz music became a form in which improvisation became the central aspect of the music, the performer himself spontaneously composing much of the ongoing structure of a piece being performed, guided by various conventions such as the repetition of a chord sequence, or the structuring of a solo line within a modal form, or other experimental structure. But in each case, it was the solo that became the central aspect of a piece, and the improvisation of a solo was (and is) expected to be unique, different in at least some ways than the performer’s previous solos on the same tune or theme. The jazz solo expresses something new every time, something relevant to the current emotional and intellectual state of the musician-as-composer, and his interaction with his audience. The jazz solo became not only the central aspect of this music form, but came to resemble more and more the musical equivalent of an ancient linguistic form, story-telling, in which a performer takes an eternal theme and embellishes it for the present moment, for the benefit of his listeners, to make the universal history and mythology of the tribe manifest in the present and informative of current interests and concerns.

Was this 20th Century musical development merely a throwback to primitive forms by uneducated and underprivileged musicians who rejected Western traditions in music? Hardly. The great jazz musicians routinely know much about the traditions and technical structure of composed music to an extent that classical musicians envy. And the technical virtuosity of many jazz musicians often surpasses all normal requirements of the Western tradition:

“There are many other instruments besides the trumpet which jazz musicians have made do the impossible. And they can play, for hours on end, technical, involved, difficult, educated lines that have melodic sense. They are all virtuosi. The same goes for string bass. The same goes for saxophone, although it is not used much in symphony. But anything Milhaud has done in classical music, McPherson and Bird, alone, do with ease as well as human warmth and beauty. Tommy Dorsey, for example, raised the range of the trombone two octaves. Britt Woodman raised it three. And take Jimmy Knepper. One of his solos was taken off a record of mine and written out for classical trombone in my ballet. The trombone player could barely play it. He said it was one of the most technical exercises he had ever attempted to play! And he was just playing the notes – not the embellishments or the sound that Jimmy was getting.” (Charles Mingus, from the liner notes to his jazz album Let My Children Hear Music, Columbia KC 31039.)

In the 1930s and 1940s, the very period in which improvisation in jazz was becoming the central creative aspect of the music, jazz musicians almost universally enjoyed marijuana, and we have many personal attestations and historical documents to prove the case. One particularly rollicking book about the epoch, and the wild times and great music that resulted, is Mezz Mezzrow’s Really the Blues, and Mezz was himself not only a great jazzman, but famous for the excellent quality marijuana he seemed always to have a large supply of! A reading of personal reflections about the use of marijuana by jazzmen of the time indicates that the herb was often used as a stimulus to creativity, at least for practice sessions, many such as Louis Armstrong praising its effects highly. The widespread use of marijuana by jazz musicians of the time is even revealed by the campaign of Harry Anslinger and his Bureau of Narcotics to demonize marijuana, and one of the reasons ol’ Harry thought important was that the “evil weed” was being used by jazz musicians. At one point he issued a directive to all his field agents, as related in the following story from a speech by Charles Whitebread, Professor of Law, USC Law School:

After national marijuana prohibition was passed, Commissioner Anslinger found out, or got reports, that certain people were violating the national marijuana prohibition and using marijuana and, unfortunately for them, they fell into an identifiable occupational group. Who were flouting the marijuana prohibition? Jazz musicians. And so, in 1947, Commissioner Anslinger sent out a letter, I quote it verbatim, “Dear Agent So-and-so, Please prepare all cases in your jurisdiction involving musicians in violation of the marijuana laws. We will have a great national round-up arrest of all such persons on a single day. I will let you know what day.” [From The History of the Non-Medical Use of Drugs in the United States by Charles Whitebread. A Speech to the California Judges Association 1995 annual conference].

Is it possible to attach some correlation between the cognitive effects of marijuana we are now becoming scientifically aware of and the development of creative jazz forms of the 1930s and 1940s? To return to my previous question, if high on marijuana does a performing musician “lose track” of the composition he is playing much as one might lose track of the thread of a conversation under marijuana influence?

In fact, experienced marijuana users who are well aware of the “short-term memory effect” become quite adept at counteracting it; in all probability extensive practice with marijuana consciousness allows the user to not only counteract such effects but use them in positive ways. A temporary and momentary “forgetting” of the limiting structures of either an ongoing conversation, or of a musical piece, when such an effect has been practiced with, might well be just the right influence to bring improvisation to the fore, both in music and conversation or writing. It is my view, therefore, that the cumulative and long term practiced use of marijuana by virtuosi jazz musicians was a certain and positive factor in the evolution of the music towards improvisation as its central and most creative aspect.

Now my experience with music indicates that it would of course be silly to say that jazz musicians of the 1930s were literally forgetting what tune they were playing, and through such constant forgetfulness arose a great musical innovation! But as with the practiced user of marijuana who learns to counteract the short-term memory effect and use it to advantage, I would more realistically propose that a similar thing was happening collectively and incrementally within the fairly small community of jazz musicians of the time, a community more like a family than a world-wide diversity of people and schools as it has become today. The jazz community of the time constantly practiced together, brainstormed together, performed together, and smoked marijuana together. As a cumulative effect, it is my contention that the practiced use of marijuana provides a training that assists the improvisational, creative frame of mind much as other kinds of study or training shape abilities and perfect talents. It is not that marijuana consciousness itself “produces” ideas that are creative, or that valuable ideas come from the experience or during it, but that cumulatively, over time, the kind of perception and thinking initiated by marijuana leads one to be generally more open to alternative and perhaps adventurous ways of seeing things which enrich normal consciousness. Normal consciousness, as we all admit, is limited in often involuntary, invisible ways by our times, customs, prejudices, by the necessary ignorances we must cultivate to cope with modern life. Marijuana very probably contributed to, or was used as a tool to facilitate the jazz revolution in music, and might be similarly used to facilitate important advances in any other area of human interest where creativity and adventurous thinking is important. The understanding of human consciousness and the nature of altered states of consciousness comes immediately to mind!

And as for literally forgetting what piece one is playing, biographies of great musicians often tell of experiences when they were required to bluff it through with some extemporaneous inventions. The great French jazz pianist Martial Solal tells of such a concert he gave in his youth. It was to qualify for a prize and at the climax of the classical piece he was playing his mind went blank, but his forced improvisation was so good that the judges didn’t even detect his bluff! It was at that point, he says, that he decided that jazz rather than classical music was to be his future.

So perhaps jazz musicians literally did often encounter some short-term memory effects, and had often to “bluff” it. With virtuoso musicians, such bluffing is unlikely to fall into something less than proficiency, and from what experienced users of marijuana all say, the “bluffing” seems to result in an unprecedented creativity: in a sort of Zen way, what comes out of the virtuoso when he abandons his calculated intentions is not nonsense but often his finest creation! If a mere plant can assist the forgetfulness which is the germ of spontaneous creativity, the greatest minds of our time surely ARE missing the boat by rejecting not only its use but by assisting to prevent others from doing so. They thus prove once again that even genius is capable of the narrowness thought characteristic of the uneducated.

The author of this piece was, when he wrote it in the late 1990’s, a 23-year-old graduate student and artist at a large university in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. He encounters the ocean of mind, first tentatively entering the realm, then embracing its many teachings.

I was twenty years old when I first smoked marijuana. I figured that I had already beaten the statistical odds, that I had jumped over the top of the bell curve, so there would be little harm if I took the plunge. The seed for my long-standing interest in drugs and non-ordinary states was planted early in my life, when I became a fan of Pink Floyd. I read volumes and volumes of literature about this band, particular information related to their enigmatic and tragic founder, Syd Barrett. He was, in the parlance of the day, an “acid casualty.” Reading about Pink Floyd I was exposed to a great deal of writing concerning LSD and other psychedelic substances. As a youngster I was especially intrigued that one could ingest a minuscule amount of some simple chemical and have perception and cognition change so dramatically. Years went by and my interests became deeper and broader. When I encountered the writings of Terence McKenna, I simply knew this was the “path” (well, at least part of it) for me. Although to be frank, the thought of “altering my consciousness” was pretty frightening, there was still something drawing me towards psychedelics.

A very understanding friend of mine promised to help me out, but only with a slight qualification. He would procure some LSD for me, but only if I smoked marijuana first. He was NOT trying to push the drug on me. As he explained it, psychedelic states were almost unimaginable for those lacking the experience, but doubly so if one had never before chemically altered their consciousness via any means. The more I thought about it, the more sense his conditions made. I must qualify this by stating that throughout my youth, ingesting marijuana was not something I ever desired to do. Once, when I was in Tangier, Morocco, a young boy walked up to me and said “hashish?” I shot the boy a dirty look and he quickly scuttled away. For much of my life I probably equated it with snorting coke or shooting heroin. It seemed tacky, dangerous, and I just wasn’t interested. After openly discussing marijuana with my friend, as well as others who actively smoked it, and after reading some non-political literature on the matter (such as that of Dr. Grinspoon) I realized my perception of marijuana was slightly askew, that this was not just another “demon drug,” but a relatively safe plant, if used properly. So, one night I drove over to my friend’s house with a pillow and a change of clothes, and we smoked marijuana.

Nothing happened that night. I was told to expect this, so I grudgingly accepted my friend’s offer to try it again. Well, there was no mistaking it this time around. Needless to say, my second experience with marijuana got me high for the first time in my life, and I experienced it as a beautiful sensation, touching on the magical. I felt as though I was melting into not only whatever object I happened to be touching, but the environment as well. We were listening to the Harmonic Chant of David Hykes & The Harmonic Choir, and as I melted into the seemingly eternal flights of melody, I felt as though I had transcended time. It was amazing. The next morning I felt great, and we spent the day walking around the Mall in Washington, DC (sober), visiting many of the museums of the Smithsonian.

For the next year or so, I used marijuana approximately once a month, perhaps less. I still abstained from alcohol and tobacco, and I had yet to take the plunge with psychedelics. “Turning on” with marijuana made me hyper-aware of the different brain states I could potentially experience with different chemicals, and I realized I was still not ready for psychedelics. Eventually a time came when I felt ready to immerse myself in the ocean of mind, and when my first psychedelic experience was over with I graciously thanked my friend for his wisdom.

Over the years I’ve used marijuana, different patterns have come and gone. At times I would smoke it two or three times a month. At other times maybe once every two or three months. There were periods of three to four months during which I simply didn’t smoke it. Period. I’ve had such a rich variety of experiences with marijuana that I could never fully describe them all.

Marijuana opened me up to the realm of the mind, of deeply experiencing and exploring the dimensions of consciousness available to me. In that regard, it has, with differing degrees of directness, led me into explorations of transpersonal psychology, mysticism, Sufism, shamanism, bodywork, and a host of other experiential/philosophical pursuits. When I got over the novelty of being stoned, I soon explored its effects more fully. I was amazed at what I found. Initially I would explore internal imagery, sharpening my visualization skills. Sometimes I would concentrate on feeling music more deeply. Other times I would simply think about the emotional and intellectual reactions of certain people to certain phenomena, particularly those reactions I found difficult to understand. Whilst stoned, I found it easier to put myself in the place of others. I could understand how people might believe any number of seemingly “irrational” or dense, impenetrable ideas. Marijuana opened me up to the existence of so many different views of the world, views I need not share to fathom and empathize with. I worked with my own feelings of sensuality/sexuality. I explored techniques of focusing my mind. I would meditate (in the Western, pre-Buddhist use of the word) upon religious/spiritual matters, clarifying things that seemed to make little to no sense in “sober” states of mind. How might this work? I don’t know, but I have one idea that I often espouse. Our normal state of awareness is good for certain tasks, not for others. For example, one typically does not produce works of art in the same state of awareness that we use when driving about in our cars; an artist is instead focused inward, and on the outward projection of his/her internal state. In much the same way, such an internally-oriented state would be of little value in a sexual experience, in which humans exchange energy, moving and flowing together in a state of emotional and physical sympathy. What I find marijuana does is to shift the loci of my attention away from the mundane experiences and concerns that I, as an often automaton-like human, find myself dwelling on a moment-to-moment or daily basis. Instead, my mind is centered on matters that touch more on the extraordinary, those topics and experiences that are perhaps better left unexplored while driving along I-95 or working out my finances for the year. Those that view all of this as simply drug-induced illusions are sadly blind.

The greatest thing to come out of all of this is that I found these “stoned” experiences aren’t as state-dependent as I initially believed. In the wake of my introduction and exploration of “stoned-mind awareness” I find that my appreciation for sensuality, aesthetics, and philosophy in “normal waking consciousness” (to quote James) has deepened greatly, almost to the point that I feel that the pre-drugs “me” was noticeably worse-off.

Some may wonder how my skills of empathy could possibly be improved by “smoking dope.” Let me give you one recent example. For a period of a few months I found myself dwelling on religion-oriented topics, both stoned and otherwise. One night, in the midst of a marijuana-induced reverie, I got to thinking about the real person we call Jesus. These days, we think of him as some ethereal figure in some far off land shrouded in the historical mists of time. Just as then, people still believe that he was the Messiah, that he was the savior of mankind, that “in the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, the Word was God,” and that Jesus was, quite literally, the “Word made flesh.” I found myself imagining that at one time in history, this Jesus character was a living, breathing human like myself. Intellectually, I already knew this, but I increasingly felt as though I might be capable of fathoming what his disciples and apostles felt. His followers were in his presence, they looked into his eyes and heard his words and believed that they were looking at God. It was only in this state of consciousness that I could truly imagine what it might have been like to be in the presence of the this man and truly believe, and by extension, possibly experience what so many people on Earth experience during moments of great religious feeling and devotion. While I don’t subscribe to the tenets of Christianity proper, I have come to understand how real it can all seem for people, and just how little such experiences are taken into account by those skeptics and atheists who argue against what they see as irrational beliefs. In this case, being stoned allowed my mind to circumvent its ordinarily non-religious bent, and if only for a few moments, come to know what the truly religious feel. As a consequence, I now offer this story (at least the aspect of Jesus as a man, and people looking into his eyes and believing in him) to people perplexed by religious belief in general, or Christianity in specific.

I hope this hasn’t been too lengthy. I could write for days about marijuana, but I don’t want to seem like a “drug preacher” or a “dope fiend.” I hope it is apparent that marijuana has played a major role in my personal and intellectual development in the last few years, and this role has been nothing but positive (I now vaporize it, rather than smoke it, so I no longer ingest any carcinogens!). I thank God (or whatever force, conscious or not, responsible for existence) for the plant-human interaction known as marijuana intoxication.