reefer madness

Well, it's been about a month now since I've given up the marijuana, and I must say I'm a little disappointed.

Firstly, I'd like to dispel a myth or two.

There's little or no indication that pot is addictive in any real sense. By that, I mean "physically addictive"; let's be honest, one can become emotionally dependent on all sorts of things. Just because cannabis is an illegal drug doesn't mean that you need to take the potential for dependency any more or less seriously than, for instance, gambling addiction, internet addiction, or sex addiction. People just love to be told that they have a clinical excuse to downplay their own self-discipline and responsibility...but we're not talking about something like heroin or alcohol or nicotine, things that actually alter your body chemistry so that withdrawal is a harrowing and even potentially life-threatening experience. Giving up pot is pretty much the same as going on a diet- if anything, maybe a little easier.

Sure, you can expect to be a bit cranky. If you've smoked more or less every day for several years, like I have, you're going to be more short-tempered than usual, and you may have some trouble sleeping for a week or so. Luckily, I'm already fairly accustomed to recurring bouts of being a little short-tempered and having trouble sleeping...and, honestly, I didn't notice a big boost in these traits after I stopped.

I did notice a short-term boost in my energy level, but it happened to coincide with the manic peak of my mood cycle anyway, so I can't really say how much truly had to do with quitting. For a while, I thought that I felt noticeably more clear-headed; now, I'm not so sure. I feel pretty much like I've always felt. Whatever chemicals my brain may be producing have a much more significant effect on my mood than a few daily hits from the bong.

I do have less patience for watching crappy TV, sitting through lame films, and playing mindless video games. Again, however, these inclinations were becoming more and more obvious even before I stopped smoking. On one hand, you may say that being able to be engrossed in superficial and disposable entertainment is a worthwhile sacrifice...but there's so much of it; we have a plethora of options for readily-available mainstream-to-middlebrow crap. Maybe I'm just a snob at heart...one who was able, for a little while, to counter my aesthetic elitism with generous doses of cannabis. A crutch, sure...but a crutch that made it possible to live and have some fun in this ghastly consumer-oriented, media-overloaded culture of immediate gratification and diminishing rewards and expectations.

But it just wasn't fun anymore. And after it stopped being fun, it started becoming a worry. After all, I was definitely fitting the profile of a chronic pothead...unemployed, no ambition, snacking on junk food and napping frequently. I'd always told myself that marijuana was really no big deal, that it may as well be decriminalized, that lots of people could smoke plenty of pot without endangering their professional, social, or emotional lives at all. I still completely agree with those points; I'm just no longer sure that I'm one of the ones that can comfortably handle it. I had trouble with discipline and responsibility long before I became a pothead. Whether smoking exacerbated those traits or not, it probably wasn't helping me overcome them. Whether it made my emotional state and social skills more precarious or not, I've now removed it as a possible complication.

I don't even miss it, much. During the first few days I'd get a little bored and listless, and I wished I had the brief distraction that a hit or two would provide. There have been a few times when my wife would blaze up and it made me slightly sad to think that this was going to make us drift even further apart. I'm by no means encouraging her to quit; for one thing, she doesn't quite have my difficulty in keeping a job, or being entertained by semi-mindless crap...and (selfishly, I admit) I can't even imagine how uncomfortable my home life might be if she didn't have the weed to help her chill out and enjoy herself a little.

During the first week or so, I tried drinking a little more to soften the blow...not much at all, just a bottle of beer, or two at most, on a given day. For better or worse, I remembered pretty quickly that I didn't really care for the taste or the feeling...and let's face it, it takes more than one bottle of beer to have much of an effect on a 200+ pound dude like me. I'm not really one of those many guys who can enjoy getting a little buzz from drinking at night, a few days a week- and it's not really a good option, economically or otherwise. Aside from some scattered incidences of binge drinking in my distant past, I've managed to avoid the alcoholism that turns up fairly frequently in my family tree. No need to consciously pursue it, after all.

Perhaps the sheer duration of my pot-smoking period has had significant long-term effects on my personality and psychology. I'm sure there are professionals who would claim yes or no to that, with comparable certainty either way. Perhaps a month is still too short a time to observe any real changes. I know that I didn't wake up the next morning, get a job, and discover ambition and dreams that had too long lain fallow. The novelty of not smoking was itself a nice change, but now that it has passed, I don't feel significantly different.

I may still become an aging loser, but at least I won't have to worry about being an aging pothead loser. At the very least, I won't provide another dubious statistic for the increasingly ludicrous War on Drugs. The "professional" potheads will probably be happy that I'm no longer contributing to the stereotype...and my fellow anti-capitalists will approve of the fact that I'll probably never buy another console video game or bag of Cheetos again. Maybe some of my less open-minded loved ones will be happy that I've renounced the demon weed. But, all in all, nearly everybody will likely continue not to give a shit one way or the other.