I believe that all movies will have images of a strategically placed can of diet coke or beer instead of a joint.
Drug dealers (even Philip Morris) are typically not willing to pay to place their product. (Perhaps Moira could address this better.)
I've known lots of male and female pot smokers. So I would have to guess that the entertainment industry simply does not often feel that a joint conveys the correct image for a woman.
Isn't there a tv show on these days with a suburban mother pot dealer? Does she not smoke?
The female characters in That 70s Show smoked grass.
And everybody in Six Feet Under smoked up. Women at least as much as men.
In the few episodes of Weeds that I've seen, she doesn't smoke.
I'd submit Jackie Brown as an example of female pot-smoking, but I think that is supposed to elicit the "women should not smoke!" reaction.
I had a woman pot-dealer Deadhead landlady once. A very ordinary person who watched lots of TV and was obsessed with her house and two large dogs. She'd get stoned and scrub down the walls at midnight, against doctor's orders because she had tendonitis.
Are female stoners as annoying as male stoners?
Isn't Giselle Bundchen a stoner? It seems to me that if they test snowboarders, they should test supermodels too. Whole fashion lines could be disqualified with a couple of dirty urine samples. People would get serious about the drug problem then.
I've known approximately equal numbers of male and female pot smokers. However, you can kind of roughly predict which women haven't smoked pot, based on how prissy they are. And prissiness correlates with staking one's identity around femininity.
Prissiness is sort of the female version of macho. Gender taken to obnoxious heights. Prissiness conflicts with pot-smoking, where as macho-ness is kind of orthogonal to pot-smoking.
How does potsmoking correlate with gooberness?
However, you can kind of roughly predict which women haven't smoked pot, based on how prissy they are.
I'd bet that 75 percent of Unfoggeders have smoked pot.
On the other hand, it is really difficult to figure out who has tried heroin.
Re: the actual article, gravity bongs are definitely gendered. Pot-smoking as a sport only appeals to men, in my experience.
How does potsmoking correlate with gooberness?
Nearly perfect. I'm a fortunate exception.
Let me clarify:
Prissiness -> probably never smoked pot.
Never smoked pot -/> prissy.
Don't go getting your panties up in a bunch because you think I called you prissy, Aunt Sissy.
Off the top of my head, I'd posit a reluctance to present women as vulnerable due to being in altered states, with less self-control and so on. I know that contradicts the overwhelming desire to depict women as vulnerable to, even helpless before, power. Tied to the railroad tracks, so to speak.
Women acting with abandon is too scary.
16: But you see depictions of women drinking all the time.
Don't go getting your panties up in a bunch
I've never really understood how this expression came to be.
(And, I have it on good word that Emerson likes his undergarments like his relationships.)
For the record, Weeds is a fantastic show. But she rarely smokes.
Yeah, but how drunk do they get? I'm not saying it never happens, or that a certain treatment can't be titilating—I'm using that double-vision and projecting necessary to try to figure out television, not speaking for myself.
Mrs. Madrigal in Tales of the City shared her crop with the girls, of course.
I had a woman pot-dealer Deadhead landlady once
Anna Madrigal?
Back in my grass dealing days, most of my best customers were girls.
I've never really gotten what people mean by "prissy", since it's used as a sort of abstract-yet-gendered pejorative...perhaps this is because I am prissy, I suppose. Is is the same as "straight-laced"? Is it "can't relax"? Is it "neurotic"? Is it "doesn't like dirty jokes"? Or "doesn't like to say mean things, construing mean things super-broadly?" How does it relate to femininity? Like, can men be prissy? Is this a word that is implicitly applicable only to women and less-macho gay men?
See, it's really difficult for me to speculate about women-who-have-not-smoked-pot of my acquaintance since I'm not clear on the term.
Isn't this a function of the way the media presents women, combined with the relatively few pot smokers (or smokers, period) that you see in th media. I tend to think of pot-smoking in the media as a way to signal slackerness, which is sort of a variant frat-boy ness. And there aren't a lot of female frat-boy movies.
My anecdata are well out of date, but I'd say that in circles where it is smoked, it is smoked by all, with equal enjoyment.
Back in my grass dealing days, most of my best customers were girls.
Well, of course. Money is only one of the benefits of being a dealer.
Yeah, but how drunk do they get?
The prissy women in Knocked Up all drink, and get sloppy drunk, and it's consistent with their character. None of them would smoke pot, though. (Although probably Katherine Heigl's character would try it.) The pothead girl is grubby and sloppy twenty-four-sev-three-sixty-five.
I've never really gotten what people mean by "prissy",
Someone who doesn't like to eat food that 'tastes like animal'.
I'm clean, copper.
Nobody talks, everybody walks.
Someone who doesn't like to eat food that 'tastes like animal'.
Nah, you just caught a bunch of hippies by casting that net.
26 gets it right. It's about the self-image of the markets to which things are marketed.
As far as I can tell there has been one female frat-boy movie in recent memory, "The Sweetest Thing". Is there any drug intake in that?
I never really noticed any women on the Wire smoking just pot.
25: Seriously to 'prissy', I'd read it as a feminized version of 'tightass', applicable to straight men only when being used as a feminizing insult.
30: The female pothead character in Knocked Up is really interesting. Somehow, even while surrounded by that extremely-high and extremely-sloppy group, she seems higher and sloppier than all the rest.
Maybe this was supposed to be a joke directed against the bearded guy she was dating more than her (he can only get a really pathetic girl!), but even so it fell into pot-smoking gender stereotypes.
And they all got high in The Breakfast Club. Even the very prissy Claire.
Seriously to 'prissy', I'd read it as a feminized version of 'tightass', applicable to straight men only when being used as a feminizing insult.
To be fair, it's probably a feminizing insult when applied to women, as well. (I don't think that contradicts what you've said. I just think that it's always pejorative.)
OT: Insty is shocked at our botly misbehavior.
29: You would think so, but I was way too stoned at the time to have my game on. I never did get much play out of it. One of the great disappointments of my life.
39: Oh, yeah, it's always an insult. To women, the message is that they're neurotic in a gender appropriate manner: girls are supposed to be prissy and that's why they're no fun. To men, the message is that they're neurotic and gender-inappropriate.
"Prissy" means something like "excessively daintily fastidious." In this fallen world, I certainly count as a priss about some things, although in a different, better world, I would be a paragon of the virtues of civilized and well-mannered society.
I've only dated women who smoke pot.
37: She wasn't pathetic at all, but hilarious. I'm the squarest Lego in the box, but I liked her more than any of the other characters.
In this fallen world, I certainly count as a priss about some things, although in a different, better world, I would be a paragon of the virtues of civilized and well-mannered society.
Prissier words were never spoken.
43: And rather than breakfasting, we would all photosynthesize.
I certainly count as a priss about some things,
Ya think?
excessively daintily fastidious
Ogged, how often do you get a manicure?
It's not the smoking, it's the munchies that are unladylike for mass media audiences.
IIRC, Wynona Ryder smokes from a beer can bong (off camera) in Reality Bites
Then there's Molly Ringwald and Ally Sheedy in The Breakfast Club, but that's going back almost 25 years.
The Brenda Blethyn character in Saving Grace grows pot, but I can't remember if she ever tokes up.
Actually, now that I think about it, prissiness among guys is pretty common, and a pretty common target of jokes. It's really about discomfort with non-formally correct behavior.
Oh, I was serious. I just assumed.... I am sorry.
On "prissy": the prissiest thing in the world is drinking from a soda can using a straw.
45: Really? Odd. I guess my impression was colored by the mostly negative encounters I've had with the women who date potheads of the extreme Knocked Up-variety.
the prissiest thing in the world is drinking from a soda can using a straw.
Soda hurts my tummy.
How does Giselle Bundchen deal with the munchies?
I have a friend who's 66-68 years old who has been smoking pot almost every day since about 1960. He does have a moderate lung problem -- his doctor told him that it would help if he cleaned his pipe once or twice a year (true story). He's always been working, solvent, and out of jail, and he owns his home and raised 2 nice kids. He's an economic underachiever by upper-middle-class standards, but he and his kids always lived well.
On "prissy": the prissiest thing in the world is drinking from a soda can using a straw.
Its prissier if its a diet soda can. Specifically, Diet Pepsi.
Just because I've reverted to lurker status so I can better serve the people of the Great State of North Carolina, don't think I'm not taking names.
Sigh. You're right. I'm not taking names. I'm just square about the Mary Jane.
I'm just square about the Mary Jane.
well, you are from the state that allows suits for alienation of affections.
Who snitched out my underwear status? What happened to the sanctity of off-blog communications?
I'd want to see some data on the supposed gendering of marijuana. I think the most you can say is that there's a certain stock male stoner-type in movies that doesn't have a strict female equivalent. But there are plenty of female pot-smokers in movies; pretty much any time a reasonably hip group of thirtysomething friends is shown together, for instance.
13: Pot-smoking as a sport only appeals to men, in my experience.
There are women on Earth undreamed-of in your philosophy, destroyer.
42: That's kind of why I'm a little uncomfortable with the term. If you think someone is excessively fastidious or fussy, or is Ogged or something, it seems a bit easier to just say so. It just seems like one of those "you're not doing what I want and so there's something wrong with you because a normal person would want to do what normal people like me want to do" words.
Add the eponymous Annie Hall to the list of female potsmokers in the movies.
I've only dated women who smoke pot.
At this point, I don't think I could date someone who didn't smoke. But I'm a pretty serious stoner.
Most of the stoner groups I remember were about 2-1 men, with some non-smoking women. However, stoner couples tended to disappear from the groups and then reappear individually after breaking up.
66.1: From the article: "In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that adult males were 50 percent more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month than females. (Alcohol use showed only a 12 percent difference.)"
In "Eyes Wide Shut" Nicole Kidman's character takes a toke or two, and if my fading memory serves, even initiates said activities. Her character was neither pothead nor prissy.
In other news, adult males were fifty percent more likely to answer drug polls honestly. (wait, that math isnt correct.)
I wonder if Unfogged will make it into eoJ's "E: True Hollywood Story" episode.
71: I hate it when someone ruins anecdotes with data. That's as bad as Armsmasher's spoilsport "Mexican polka" debunking.
It just seems like one of those "you're not doing what I want and so there's something wrong with you because a normal person would want to do what normal people like me want to do" words.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
I'm not sure if "prissy" is quite the right word for this phenomenon, but Europeans seem to get a good laugh over Americans who smoke dope but won't touch cigarettes. The two vices comprise a nearly an identical set over there.
The reluctance to mix tobacco and pot gives rise to the well-known morphological difference between the European spliff (macho) and the American joint (prissy).
67: There has been much cranky discussion on this point here in the past -- Ogged put up a post on how to properly denigrate things like aerobics classes and crocheting, given that calling them 'gay' could be misinterpreted as homophobic, and things went downhill from there.
71: Data is good, but I meant "in film." (Am I moving the goalposts, you're quite fairly wondering? No, really, that's what I meant, honest!) Although I actually didn't realize the gender gap was that stark in practice. I guess I must hang out with a bunch of big stoners.
I know (American) people who smoke spliffs. Although they usually say it's to "cover up the smell," which is pretty prissy.
Knecht, in my travels I have encountered an alternative school of thought that maintains grass is only cut with tobacco when the source is poor or expensive, tobacco being considered a far inferior product.
67: If you have no complaints with "fussy," you shouldn't have any with "prissy," there's not a hairsbreadth of difference between them.
Pot is mostly hated because of its association with DFH, even though a lot of mainstream people are stoners. After my generation dies off there will probably be a readjustment of law.
I have a theory that alcohol and the work ethic are mutually supporting, whereas pot and the work ethic are not. The most developed nations in the world (Germany, England, Holland, Scandinavia, France, the US, Australia, Canada, even Japan) are boozer nations, and this has been true for centuries. Abstinent peoples like white Southerners and Muslims are less productive.
The stoners I've known best were productive but not ambitious and less consumerist.
Ogged put up a post on how to properly denigrate things like aerobics classes and crocheting, given that calling them 'gay' could be misinterpreted as homophobic, and things went downhill from there.
There really should be a way to mock a guy for being overly fastidious or prissy without implying that homosexuality is a bad thing. One of our friends regularly mocks himself for his fastidiousness. We want to mock him too, but it doesnt feel right. Why should fastidiousness be off-limits from mocking?!?!?!?
"and things went downhill from there" s/b "and it's been bananas and buttercups ever since"
Putting tobacco in pot is like putting Sprite in a '97 Barolo.
80: DS double-crosses me on the data question. He's still on his high horse.
When I went to Amsterdam, the coffee shop proprietors all rolled their eyes when we asked for a pipe. But I don't want some half-ass spliff, thanks. You have to smoke like 3 to get a good buzz, and even then, you're edgy from smoking the tobacco too quickly.
The reluctance to mix tobacco and pot gives rise to the well-known morphological difference between the European spliff (macho) and the American joint (prissy).
It is indeed true that on a trip to Amsterdam (aged 18) my friend and I did enjoy rolling absurdly oversized 'spliffs' as a quasi-intentional piss-take of the American college students sitting next to us. Dumb, dumb, dumb. But we did have mad rolling skills.
the prissiest thing in the world is drinking from a soda can using a straw.
But it's better for your teeth when you do it that way!
Abstinent peoples like white Southerners
?
DS double-crosses me
Trust no-one, JE. The law of Unfogged is the law of the jungle.
Jesse Helms obviously got to the Dutch. If they're going to smoke weed, require them to smoke our fine legal Carolina tobacco too!
There are no coincidences.
But it's better for your teeth when you do it that way!
If you're concerned about the health of your teeth, how you drink your soda probably isn't the best thing to worry about.
Europeans put tobacco in joints because they are used to smoking solids rather than grass. It's a hard habit to get out of.
92: Not that none of them drink, but, e.g., Southern Baptist teetotalism is a real phenomenon. That's where you still get dry counties, mostly, isn't it?
More teetotallers in the South than anywhere. You hang around with a bad crowd.
My son's first band in HS was called "Splift". The sax player could only play one note, but he also could play no-hands.
92: Yeah, not really that much abstinence going on down here.
Dry counties in the South and dry towns in Massachusetts.
It's true that there's a strong tradition of teetotalism in the South, but there's also an equally strong tradition of alcoholism (moonshine, mint juleps, etc.). In fact, the one may be largely a reaction to the other.
Obviously Southern teetotallers aren't people anyone here would ever meet. Last time I went through Utah I only met drunks.
Southern Baptist teetotalism is a real phenomenon
But less widespread than it might seem. My grandparents in Alabama don't drink, but they were certainly the only ones at my wedding with their glasses turned over.
99: So great. I like to think of you as an apostle of sin, Apo. Sure, many have heard your message, but there are more to reach.
More teetotallers in the South than anywhere.
Still not that many, though. They don't generally smoke pot, either.
The data on reefer by gender: real differences in self-reported use, but much less pronounced amongst the youngsters
(link)
# As in prior years, males were more likely in 2005 to report current illicit drug use than females (10.2 vs. 6.1 percent, respectively). Males were about twice as likely to use marijuana as females (8.2 vs. 4.0 percent). However, the rates of nonmedical use of prescription-type psychotherapeutics were similar for both males (2.8 percent) and females (2.5 percent).
# Among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of current illicit drug use was similar for boys (10.1 percent) and girls (9.7 percent). While boys aged 12 to 17 had a higher rate of marijuana use than girls (7.5 vs. 6.2 percent), the rate for nonmedical use of prescription-type psychotherapeutics was similar for boys and girls (3.1 and 3.6 percent, respectively).
# Past month marijuana use declined from 2002 to 2005 for both male youths (9.1 to 7.5 percent) and female youths (7.2 to 6.2 percent)
Weeds feels a little genderized, in that I don't remember as many female customers as male, but I think it may be part of the the "competent woman/women in a male world" theme.
Serious committed stoners seem to be mostly male in movies, but casual smokers seem pretty balanced to me. I watch a lot of indie "women's movies" and urban-sophisticate stuff on cable, tho.
84: Abstinent peoples like white Southerners and Muslims are less productive.
WTF, Emerson, are the Southerners you know all Methodists or something?
The teetotallers in the South drag the productive drunk workers down. Free-riders. They talk about "religious freedom", but everyone else pays the price.
I lived for two and a half years in a dry county in Texas. All this meant was that there was a huge strip of liquor stores on the county line. Amusingly, the liquor store owners in the next county and the Baptist church ladies in Lubbock county formed a powerful coalition to keep the county dry.
Among youths aged 12 to 17, the rate of current illicit drug use was similar for boys (10.1 percent) and girls (9.7 percent).
Generation Awesomer!
In German-settle areas beer is practically part of the religion. Some Lutherans are dry, I guess.
Emerson's crazy theory doesn't account for Mormons (very productive but totally sober) or Latin Americans (um, yeah).
So 10% of the general population has smoked pot, but about 90% of Unfogged has.
Mormons are outliers. Not part of the data set. Parasites on the work of centuries of hard-working drunks.
Drunkenness is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.
113: It's not uncommon for Mormons to treat it as a sort of "stages of life" thing, getting crazily hammered as often as possible during the high-school years and then cleaning up for the church. Many of the craziest kids I knew in HS were Mormon.
Parasites on the work of centuries of hard-working drunks.
This, however, great.
114: That 10% is people who have used it in the past month. I believe a very high proportion (perhaps 90%) of people have used pot at least once in their lives.
Dr Ms Manners:
As far as "prissiness" is concerned, would "he/she acts as if he/she had a telephone pole stuck up his/her ass" be an acceptable substitute, or would it be considered sexist, gendered, or homophobic?
Straight-laced, judgemental, moralistic
Dr Ms Manners
Frau Doktor Professor Ms Manners!
114: I suspect that 90% of the general population, or at least those under 60, merely didn't inhale. Those older would have had little access during the halcyon days of their youth.
But it's better for your teeth when you do it that way!
Or you can alternate sips of soda with sips of water. (Which is what I do on the rare occasions I drink soda.)
10% of the general population has smoked pot
10% of the general population of you mom, maybe. Sources?
Addendum to 123:
For my own part, I abstain. Still, I would put the number at 40-50%.
10% of the general population of you mom, maybe. Sources?
Apparently I misread baa's stats upthread, you priss.
Wait, John, are you for or against drunkenness and productivity? At first it sounded like you were positing it as the unpleasant alternative to pot-smoking and happiness, but now I'm not so sure.
Re: the prissiness discussions, and much else.
This blog wouldn't exist, or wouldn't be the place that brings us back, without Ogged's relentless impulse to generalize from his impressions and feelings. This despite the fact that we all, including him are aware of the contingency of these feelings and impressions. The desire to engage in general discussion is widespread, common to us all, and Ogged's style is magically disinhibiting.
I've had a series of discussions with my wife about this, because she takes no pleasure in general topics or discussions. She wants specifics always; what we do here is like chalk squeaking on a blackboard to her, she just can't stand it.
Her imagination, her desire for speculation and trying things out, for thought experiments, is channeled largely through fiction, which she reads assiduously. Mine isn't, it much prefers this.
40% of the U.S. population has tried it at least once, according to the Feds.
My experience in a pot-rich state suggests that the Stranger piece and LB's supposition are both true. Among smokers I know, men outnumber women, but not nearly to the extent that they do on TV. It breaks down further (again, IME): seriously dedicated potheads tend to be male; the gender gap widens with age.
Reefer generally seems to be less common now compared to say, 20 years ago. It used to be that you'd think, hey, I've run out, and it would magically appear. Now you have to actually make arrangements and wait. Having to wait for pot: just another sign that society is in decline.
That is, generalizing from Ogged's impressions and feelings.
More teetotallers in the South than anywhere
As the old joke goes:
Q: You know why you always take two southern baptists with you when you go fishing?
A: If you take just one, he'll drink all your beer
When I started working a 40-hour week I quit smoking and increased my drinking. I now regret the choice. Smoking made it hard for me to keep a schedule and be active after work.
Re: the actual article, gravity bongs are definitely gendered. Pot-smoking as a sport only appeals to men, in my experience.
I points the fingerbone of scorn. my best (female) friend in high school had one of those electric bongs run by the aquarium engine thing, with a rubber mask. and mm, sweet gravity bongs in the pool behind big houses in chevy chase.
also, people in europe have gotten used to mixing hash with tobacco (as alluded to above). all well and good, but if they had an ounce of the Killa Kind from up in BC they wouldn't be fucking around like that. sometimes in NYC with these crazy puerto rican/brooklyn guys my friend knew from HS we used to smoke blunts (like those nasty cherry-flavored ones), studded with sticky bud nuggets, little crack rocks, and a light dusting of dope. mostly because it was humorous, but it would get you damn wasted. I knew white trash people from west virgina who would smoke similar blunts minus the heroin but plus PCP. they were all fucking nuts. basically they need to make more movies about the mysterious alameida and it'll all balance out. and there's an (AOTW) happy ending!
Add the eponymous Annie Hall to the list of female potsmokers in the movies.
Also the Jennifer Aniston character in "Friends With Money". Although she is depicted as a depressed loser.
Well, Mrs. I-don't-pay can bite me.
Generalization is wonderful, except when people screw it up with data.
Alameida is the outlier of the uiniverse. Eject her from the data set immediately.
I get scientific result quicker and more efficiently than anyone.
my best (female) friend in high school had one of those electric bongs run by the aquarium engine thing, with a rubber mask.
A vaporizer? I could see that being enjoyed by both sexes. I was thinking of the shitty gravity bongs (the plastic soda bottle in the kitchen sink, etc.) that are genuinely painful. I've seen girls use them, of course, but only the men create them, out of a combination of masochism and the competitive impulse to be the highest.
Or you can alternate sips of soda with sips of water. (Which is what I do on the rare occasions I drink soda.)
I'm not sure that solves the prissiness problem.
electric bongs run by the aquarium engine thing
I had one of those in college.
shitty gravity bongs [...] that are genuinely painful
Priss.
I note that no one has mentioned the factor that marijuana use is technically illegal. I think that in your lowest-common-denominator movie or TV show, the average sympathetic male character can be shown casually breaking a law without us thinking "Oh he broke a law!", but this is only true for sympathetic female characters if they are total badasses.
For the record, Weeds is a fantastic show.
By the end of last season, I decided that Weeds is not at all a fantastic show, but in fact a terrible show. There is nothing likeable about a single character on the show. That isn't always a bad thing, but Mary Louise Parker's character had clearly, by the end of Season 2, become detestable, and I am sure that wasn't the intent.
She's still pretty damn milf, though...
My retired neighbors have a college- or mid-20's-aged kid who is secretly a stoner. I was out on my back deck having a cigarette once and saw him sneak out onto their screened porch, toke mightily and then press his face against the screen to try to exhale all the smoke away from the domicile proper. Every now and then haR and I will be outside and smell it waft over and giggle. He thinks he's so sly, but he's really very terrible about it.
A week or so ago he had some enormous night out on the town with about two dozen friends. Prior to loading the Hummer limo with coolers and departing amidst hoots and hollers, they piled into his parents back yard for the warm-up beer. At the same time that I smelled a powerful, powerful cloud wash through the gap between our homes and out towards the street - I was sitting on the front porch that time - there was a 30's-ish couple out for an evening stroll passing in front of my house. A few moments after I nearly choked on the fumes (the smell of it in close proximity or very strong gives me a splitting, moody headache) I saw the woman in the 30's-ish couple stop mid-stride, throw her head back and inhale deeply. It was like she'd never breathed air before, like she'd held her breath her whole life waiting for that one moment. She stood there, eyes closed, savoring it for long seconds while her male companion watched her, then took the rest of that step and kept going like nothing had happened.
I had to cover my face with both hands to keep from cackling aloud.
That isn't always a bad thing, but Mary Louise Parker's character had clearly, by the end of Season 2, become detestable, and I am sure that wasn't the intent.
I agree, having never seen the show, but having read this.
137: I've seen girls use them, of course, but only the men create them,
Again, so not true.
133: we used to smoke blunts (like those nasty cherry-flavored ones), studded with sticky bud nuggets, little crack rocks, and a light dusting of dope.
Next level. I've heard of snowcaps, but man oh man.
I knew white trash people from west virgina who would smoke similar blunts minus the heroin but plus PCP.
Further anecdotals for my case that the American South and Canadian Maritimes are the same place.
But sometimes you don't want to get completely wasted immediately. Sometimes you have to go to work straight after.
Off the top of my head, most if not all of the anti-drug spots that run around here are about teenage males and pot. And most pothead characters are male. The cynical part of me is saying it's because it's hard to glam up smoking pot, where as the heroin-chic or cocaine-thin girl can be dolled up as hot.
Re - prissiness : drug use
If a woman's online personal ad makes a big deal about being drug abstinent, or that drug use is totally verbotten, I don't care what else she has going for her, she's a definite pass. Not because of any deep rooted desire to have a toking partner, or because I'm chronic, but simply because of the (limited) worldview I think such people have.
145 - sorry, got distracted - that was a bit of an unfinished comment, in response to the eoJ/apo contention that a hash/tobacco spliff is not worth having.
The smell of it in close proximity or very strong gives me a splitting, moody headache.
Prissy? I think so.
Allergies are just the physical manifestation of prissiness. Asthma too.
re: 148
Also, you don't always want to get totally monged immediately. An evening of slowly getting wasted is good.
Furthermore, really good hash or a spliff with really strong buds in, can get you as wasted as anything else. To the point where I, personally, prefer to avoid 'em. Being a definite light-weight these days.
a hash/tobacco spliff
Hash barely exists down here.
re: 152
Where I grew up it's the standard thing. Grass is more popular now, I think, but for years and years it was largely hash. In many varied forms. Soapbar, slate, 'paki black', red seal, gold seal, temple balls, etc.
Or you can alternate sips of soda with sips of water.
Careful with the one-upmanship here. We don't want this thread to descend into prissing match.
The American South and Canadian Maritimes are the same place
Specifically, West Virginia and New Brunswick are the same place. Among other similarities, they lead their respective countries in number of people employed as truck drivers per capita. (Hopefully they are not the same people smoking the PCP-laced joints).
The Deep South is actually Alberta.
I've got Little Feat's version on for this thread:
Don't bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Don't bogart that joint my friend
Pass it over to me
Roll another one
Just like the other one
You've been holding on to it
And I sure will like a hit
...
Roll another one
Just like the other one
That one's burned to the end
Come on and be a real friend
Hash barely exists down here.
Far more common than grass here.
Lightweight here too these days. Also - the children!
Your children are lightweights too? It just takes practice.
156: I thought Texas was Alberta.
Apo's already got his youngest on the stuff.
Hash barely exists down here
The first time I smoked hash, I was about 16. My buddy and I had scored some from an acquaintance, but we had no idea how much you need to smoke to get a buzz (stuff was a lot cheaper in those days, BTW). So naturally, we broke off a piece about the size of a marble and smoked it all. The stuff sneaks up on you, as they say.
Oh, and did I mention I was at school when this happened (hiding out in the restroom under the opposing-team bleachers)?
My son reports that the weed today is so strong that you don't need much at all. Putting it in a spliff would allow you to prolong the experience in an enjoyable social way.
re: 158
Although I was a pretty hardcore smoker in my late teens, I've mostly stopped enjoying it.
Particularly when friends started turning up with serious skunk, and I hadn't smoked for say, 6 months. A person might find themselves walking the streets at, say, 6am. Totally paranoid and shaky and i) needing to sleep but ii) totally unable to.
I think the last time I smoked was New Year. Which was, admittedly, very pleasant.
All of the serious stoners I knew years back who've continued their smoking habit have turned into wankers, mostly. Self-involved credulous fools.
I totally do not understand the prejudice against wankers.
157: A friend of mine who teaches English in Saudi Arabia told me the other night that grass is the one recreational drug that is impossible to obtain there.
Apo's already got his youngest on the stuff.
No, the youngest is a girl.
Someone else may have already linked this, but apparently women do indeed smoke pot.
re: Apo's already got his youngest on the stuff.
I started smoking with my parents when I was about 16. I'd already been smoking for a while and hadn't told them. They found out when one of my mother's friends, who I'd begun sort of seeing, passed me a spliff in front of them. Interesting silence for a few moments.
160: Pretty much Texas sans the guns, from what I can gather. And with a bit more healthcare.
Back when I lived in Shanghai, a certain highly-placed official (well, really just some American associated a US government enterprise of some sort) told me about pot (I think it was pot; it's been a long time since this conversation. But I'm sure it wasn't heroin.) coming in by diplomatic bag, because then you didn't have to mess with the local dealers or run risks with enforcement. As unpleasant, entitled and theatrical a set of upper-middle class losers as I've ever run across, those embassy-and-company people, although a little mary jane via diplomatic bag would, if anything, have helped.
Back when I lived in Shanghai... is a great way to begin a sentence.
143:The Lance Mannion review was very good. I am a huge fan of Weeds, I suppose for the very reasons y'all detest it. I assumed from the beginning that Nancy was going to end up like Al Pacino in Scarface, machine-gunning the world, with a giggle, a moue, and an attitude of "why is the world so mean to a nice normal person like me?"
But maybe Nancy is more aware and reflective than that, I do sometimes think she knows what is going on, but is more consistently "on" than the others. I have also always seen a feminist edge to Weeds, Nancy was a hausfrau who didn't think she had skills or talents other than fake vulnerability and "feminine wiles", or was only comfortable in that role. But Nancy is a sociopath, and likes being a sociopath.
Fucking hilarious. I don't understand why people who liked Deadwood or Sopranos or the Wire don't like Weeds.
169: My mother has recently taken up smoking again, we think. There has been some discussion of how amusing it would be to smoke with her, but upon consideration, it would be far too weird. My family (myself included) is incredibly neurotic about substance use, though.
It makes me curious about how adult, child-raising pot-smokers deal with their kids when they start smoking, since I can't generalize from my own case.
I like Weeds. We just got Showtime in order to see the 3rd season.
173: It took more than one man to change her name to Shanghai Frowner.
re: 175
In my case, it was much the same as drinking. Perfectly acceptable, but up to me to be responsible. Sitting about the house all day smoking would have been ... strongly discouraged.
Texas is part of the Deep South.
This surprises me. I'd have thought that the western border of the Deep South ran somewhere between Houston and Dallas.
Texas shares some characteristics with the Deep South (like voting habits), but it's really its own category. You'd never mistake it for Alabama.
Houston is south of Dallas (both physically and culturally), but I'd say the strongest contribution to the hybrid culture of Texas is Southern, and specifically the sort of Deep Southern comes from a history of intensive plantation agriculture and widespread slavery.
As I understand it Texas makes up a separate category of states, known as "Texas", which includes Oklahoma and the western 90% of Texas. With the part closest to Arkansas and Louisiana being more similar to Arkansas.
You'd never mistake it for Alabama.
True. Alabama is quite pleasant.
182: Pretty much. Texas is a big, diverse state with several regions, and the ones that border other states are more like those states in most ways then they are like each other. So East Texas is like Louisiana, North Texas is like Oklahoma and Arkansas, West Texas is like New Mexico, South Texas is like Old Mexico. The Hill Country in the middle has its own distinctive character.
The government certainly thinks that girls smoke pot.
The biggest pothead I know is female and had parents who smoked. They told her to wait until she was eighteen (didn't work) and not to smoke in the house.
Texas is Texas, period.
... remember the Alamo.
Michael Lind ("Made in Texas") says that E. Texas is plantation Southern and dominates the rest of the state in every way. Best book I've ever read about Dubya.
According to Lind, the Texas planters never changed, got into oil and the exploitation of Latin America, and through Dubya are working on bringing their vision to the rest of America: mainly, the split between a wealthy, entitled, amoral elite and a disenfranchised, propertyless, minimally educated underclass.
As I understand it Texas makes up a separate category of states, known as "Texas", which includes Oklahoma and the western 90% of Texas.
This is as I've always imagined it. With limited experience -- I've been to Texas only a couple of times, and never to the Deep South -- I'd draw the Deep South border from somewhere around Shreveport around Houston to somewhere around Corpus Christi, leaving the rest of Texas proudly identified just as 'Texas,' as the inhabitants never tire of reminding you.
Whatever. Y'all are just jealous, and feeling all inferior. It's ok.
Texas has Roky Erickson, the Butthole Surfers, and Bob to compensate for the fascism, etc.
187: Yeah, in that way Alberta isn't Texas. Our oilmen are mostly mutated cattle ranchers. If you want to compare it to an American state, Alberta really is Montana plus an oil-boom economy and minus the guns.
I mostly just want to keep people from thinking Texas is part of the West. It is mostly it's own thing, but it's more Southern than anything else.
Oh yeah, it was Kevin Drum re-reading Youngblood Hawke, fer crissake, and remarking on NYC's woeful inadequacy in terms of Tex-Mex restaurants. Thread got almost as long as the one about Les Paul Guitars.
I was eating $5 Chicken Mole in the late sixties, could find it 100 places in Dallas. NYC still doesn't know what a taco is, so I hear.
shivbunny thought that Texas would be just like Alberta and that he'd fit right in, and then he realized a) 100 degree plus temperatures b) poisonous snakes c) dry counties and d) Texans.
Properly defined, The West barely exists and is almost uninhabited. Mormonland isn't really Western, neither is Hispanicland,and neither is the West coast.
Almost but not quite uninhabited. It's where my family is from.
OK, so that's like 3-5 people.
No, it's a pretty big family. Southerners.
re: 164
Did anyone else 'round here love pot as a teenager/undergrad and gradually let it go in their early/mid twenties for psychological reasons? I started to feel increasingly anxious, paranoid, and generally weird while stoned in my last year of college, and gave it up altogether in my first year of grad school.
Of course, a prissy new missus had something to do with it as well.
Everyone on Entourage (save Ari) smokes. Freaks and Geeks featured pot-smokers of both genders. Quality work (i.e. not this season of Entourage, or last one either, really) written by quality stoners is more likely to pass the bud regardless of what you've got in your pants.
149: Sure, say it all you want, but I'll be thinking daggers at you as I sip from my two-source straw so that I can have Evian and Diet Sprite in equal measures. The rest of the garden club will mildly faux-curse your name for years.
East Texas is like Louisiana
East Texas is most definitely not like western Louisiana. East Texas is densely populated, from Orange straight through to Beaumont and Houston; western Louisiana is Lafayette, Lake Charles, and vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast stretches of boggy nothingness.
Yeah, that's true; the difference in population density is really noticeable when you cross the border. The landscape's pretty similar, though.
Bless your heart, you prissy fellow.
202: For me it was somewhat like that. Holding a regular 40 hour job was the main thing. I never consciously decided to quit, it just got harder and harder to schedule and I wasn't very determined to do it.
The paradox was laying careful plans to sit around for 6 hours or more doing approximately nothing.
Not sure if anyone has brought this up, but Brotherhood on Showtime is almost the complete opposite of this phenomenon: almost every female character drinks, smokes pot, snorts coke, or some combination thereof, while all the men are (Irish!) teetotalers.
(Also, tuning in at comment 205, I have no idea how this thread went from talking about pot to talking about tacos. Somehow that seems right.)
197:I guess I didn't tell anybody, but this spring in one of my dog-running areas...I like to let them go off-leash...I had a rattler strike at me. It missed, I backed off slow, and we came to an understanding.
Kinda neat, cept I was far enough out in the boonies that help was pretty much unavailable, even with my cellphone, so if bit, dead or legless Bob. I walk thru the tallgrass really loudly now, the snakes don't want me. More scared of the black widows, and Jesus, the ticks. Lots of Deet.
Dogs got another skunk yesterday, that's three this year in maybe twenty trips. Nature they can handle, it's the beer bottles and cans that cause expensive trips to the vet.
Coming late to it, but I love the idea that the Maritimes are the South. That explains a great deal. They are also New England, as it used to be.
I was raised by Maritimers in an alien land, Ontario, then Ohio. So my relation to the background resembles AWB's to hers. My parents alienation, sense of being different from their surroundings was absorbed by me, and I became aware of the differences of minority feeling, even if those differences might seem trivial or invisible to others.
202: Love pot to this day, and I'm in my early thirties. But I've never been a chronic and don't really understand the paranoia thing that a lot of people talk about. I've had paranoia-making drugs but MJ's never been one of them.
a prissy new missus had something to do with it as well.
New missuses are twice as prissy as second missuses.
Potsmokers are all alike, but everyone quits smoking in a different way.
212 What with the Africadian history, there's even a certain echoing of the race dynamics. I knew a playwright once who contended (through a character in one of her plays) that Trurow, Nova Scotia was "worse than Alabama."
Truro
I'm really tickled by this, it explains a hell of a lot.
I'm in the embarrassingly Clintonian position of having smoked off and on, but not really being certain that I ever actually got stoned, rather than just getting giggly from the circumstances. I attribute this to never having smoked tobacco much, so the inhaling thing is not a skill I've built up.
My dad, from Amherst and Springhill, was the most black-friendly white man I knew growing up. He had a genuine looseness and banter that I never saw him show in any other context. There was no condescension, it was much more like release. It wasn't until I met white Southerners in Grad School that I encountered anything like it, and there there was often a fear and barrier even so my father never suggested.
Will, I'm as square as they come. I've never smoked pot--unless you count walking past the fumes at the annual pro legalization festival on Boston Common. That should be immediately obvious to any members of the unfoggedariat who have ever met me.
I do very rarely get drunk on hard liquor, but mostly I'm a pretty temperate drinker. I just think that my brain chemistry is weird enough that it's best not to mess with non-prescription drugs--even legal OTC stuff.
217: The worst place in the US, to my knowledge, is the Pine Ridge Reservation. It's just a hellhole. I've had several black friends who grew up in LA, AR, and MS, and they had a life down there. Pine Ridge is just hell.
220: Yeah, I notice that odd congruence between Maritimers and Southerners too.
222: The Rez (or edge thereof) pretty much anywhere is often black-unfriendly. In other contexts there's a common-interests thing that goes on and everybody's a bro, but in that context a weird pecking order dynamic kicks in. (OTOH despite that, I'm not aware of Natives anywhere rioting against Black settlements.)
BG can join me in the square corner! I'd probably put 'no drugs' in a personal ad, too. Alcohol, however, is totally fine though I'm just too old and tired these days to drink heavily. It's all, "woo, let's go out and party" balanced by "or I could sip a glass of wine and take a nap."
BG is always striving to be in the top 25 percent, sitting in the front of the class, as far from Emerson and DS as possible.
It wasn't until I met white Southerners in Grad School that I encountered anything like it, and there there was often a fear and barrier even so my father never suggested.
Huzzah for white Southerns in grad school...wait, what?
Despite my Deadhead days, I was never a pot smoker.
I was also not a drinker in college.
174
I don't understand why people who liked Deadwood or Sopranos or the Wire don't like Weeds.
I guess it's because I disagree that Parker's character is supposed to be perceived as the sociopath she is. I'd have a better appreciation of it if I didn't think this was unintentional.
I also strongly disagree that there is a feminist edge to Weeds - more the opposite, really. Parker's character, rather than being the feminist embodiment of "you can do anything, girl!", is a failure who can *only* get by with her feminine wiles and manipulations.
I attribute this to never having smoked tobacco much, so the inhaling thing is not a skill I've built up.
Having asthma as a kid gave me lots of practice with inhalers/nebulizers, so my inhaling skills are top-notch.
202: I'm only 18 but I smoke very infrequently now for those reasons. Getting high just brings me into a weird, inner place that is not very happy, primarily by making me emotionally paranoid and cynical. This undoubtedly has to do with my current social/psychological state than anything else; if I become a more easygoing and contented person in the future, I'll probably do it more often.
BG can join me in the square corner! I'd probably put 'no drugs' in a personal ad, too. Alcohol, however, is totally fine though I'm just too old and tired these days to drink heavily. It's all, "woo, let's go out and party" balanced by "or I could sip a glass of wine and take a nap."
That's totally me as well. Probably a good thing, as I've got hobbies that aren't really compatible with that stuff.
231: I found that as I became more emotionally stable and contented I wanted less and less of any substance. Also, frankly, pot made me into a befuddled, slack-jawed idiot. At least now I'm not slack-jawed. That said, if I were king tomorrow it would be legal before breakfast was finished.
re:137's gravity bongs: only the men create them, out of a combination of masochism and the competitive impulse to be the highest:
You're neglecting teenage boys' propensity to make cool stuff. I once made a double chambered bong that outputted to a gravity bong with a valve. I was pretty pleased with myself.
Also, 202 is pretty much the standard trajectory.
Getting high just brings me into a weird, inner place that is not very happy, primarily by making me emotionally paranoid and cynical. This undoubtedly has to do with my current social/psychological state than anything else;
What foolishmortal said. It affects a lot of people this way. Quite possibly not due to your psychological state.
235: I neglected because the home-made gravity bongs I've seen weren't very cool. Two liter soda bottle with the bottom cut off, almost placed in the toilet bowl before a few of us objected? Nah, not very cool. Neither is the plastic bag taped to a twenty ounce soda bottle.
Yours, though, sounds like something to be proud of.
if I were king tomorrow [marijuana] would be legal before breakfast was finished.
Same here. I just don't have any particular interest in smoking it myself.
The only drug I'd be personally wary of legalizing is crystal meth, but it is my personal--unscientifically substantiated, mind you--belief that crystal meth only ever caught on, because cocaine is so expensive. And cocaine is only as expensive as it is, because it's illegal.
Somehow in the 8 or so social gatherings in which I've encountered marijuana, there's been no gravity bongs, no bongs of any kind, no hookahs, no spliffs, not even joints. Just a pipe. I'm surprised at all these stories people have.
I thought that hookahs were for tobacco. A hookah place just opened up near me. They're trying to serve food too, but they have to be careful because of teh license issues.
240: I attended a Middle Eastern street fair once. All the hookah places had moved their hookahs outside, and I asked one very-blazed looking dude what he put in his hookahs. "Weed, man, what the fuck else?"
Normally, though, you're right.
Can I tell you people how frustrating it was to not be able to comment all day while a thread about weed was, uh, sparking up? Now if only I had the motivation to catch up with it.
238: My rule would be that pot became legal, acid and X by prescription, everything else pretty much stays the same. As I believe I've said previously, cokeheads could all go rot in the world's yappiest, most self-important prison for all I care.
I have no interest in doing any of the above-mentioned substances at this point in my life and have trouble imagining a circumstance in which I would. This isn't some big superiority thing, though. The one intoxicant I still allow myself - alcohol - I must also police pretty closely as it does far worse things to me when taken in excess than anything else ever has. I'm under no delusion of health or fitness or good judgement.
There's plenty of them for sale in my neighborhood grocery store. My son's just beginning to notice the absurdities of paraphernalia as an object of mirth.
I don't see it happening, what with the difficulty of planning a day free for it and the whole breaking the law thing, but I'd totally do acid again if it were legal and I could make the logistics work. That was seriously fun.
Damn if I have time to read this thread, but Reality Bites comes to mind.
239:Some of us preferred crystal, for the same amount of money spent, I don't know $500 on a weekend, for reasons I guess I don't need to go into.
228:This could be as long as a Sopranos argument, but yeah I think the sociopathology is intended by the writers, and signaled constantly. I kinda understood the show before it even started, because I knew Parker, who would rarely be anybody's victim or anybody's sweetheart.
I'll be in the corner with BG and gswift shooting things, climbing things, and then going clothes shopping!
I think I just missed the window for all the fun stuff like pot due to my sheltered upbringing and then I never rebelled. But I think it should be legal because there's no particular reason it shouldn't be.
245: You never really got stoned, but you've done acid? Interesting.
251: I think she tried repeatedly to get stoned but wasn't able to inhale properly.
That happened to me the first, oh, ten times I tried too.
There's probably enough information for a rule of thumb on what the chances are that your point will have been made somewhere on a long, unread thread. It's got to be over 90% at 200 comments; it's not as if we tend to have radically different views or experiences.
252: Kinda. I'm not really sure what the issue was -- poor inhaling technique, or an idiosyncratic lack of reaction to THC. Probably the first. But I've never really gotten stoned so's I'd notice.
The rule in 253 does not apply to alameida, yoyo, John Emerson, or bob mcmanus.
247:to continue just a little, that is a place where Mannion goes wrong. "Bubbly" is completely inapproriate for Mary-Louise Parker. "Wry" & "sardonic" are closer, and she may be a limited actress in that she almost always has an edge, a dark side, an ironic distance. From her early appearance in Longtime Companion
Or not so limited, because Angels in America may not fit this description.
I once made a double chambered bong that outputted to a gravity bong with a valve
A chem major friend in school made a three-part bong with, IIRC, a vinegar chamber, a bicarb-of-soda-solution chamber, and an ice-water chamber. What came out of it, you could hardly call smoke, and it beguiled novices into getting far too stoned.
If I didn't have to drive to Tacoma in a few minutes, I'd tell the story of the hash-producing operation I visited near the Khyber Pass. Maybe later, if I get a chance.
I once made a double chambered bong that outputted to a gravity bong with a valve. I was pretty pleased with myself.
I attempted to make a 12 chambered, 8 tubed valve-equipped hookah out of 2 liter OK soda bottles, but between the time I made it and the time the epoxy would have cured, we had a massive party and somebody kicked it over. Ah, the tribulations of youth.
You have to persevere to accomplish anything. Intoxicants are no different. I didn't like beer the first few times I drank it, but I kept at it. Prissy people just make excuses to quit. That's unconscionable.
254; It's been my experience that it takes a couple doses in semi-rapid succession to kick in. But, brains are funny things, it could be you're immune. I'm unaffected by any of the more serious drugs myself.
If that was Reed, it reminds me of the Chem majors I knew there.
Reed produces top chem majors. One of the best depts. in the school.
Do not party with organic chemists at MIT unless you really, really know what you're doing. Those people are truly on the cutting edge.
I haven't "traded war stories" (as we called it in rehab) on this thread because, I don't know why. Most of y'all know I'm 25 years sober. Unless you count tobacco, caffeine, and sugar, which I do. Oh, and maybe even protein.
Alcohol wasn't much of a sacrifice, I never really liked it. The hard drugs woulda killed me fast, and I got me some liver damage.
As far as pot goes, I know what I want. I want a pound of sense, and I want to sit down & smoke it, and then get another. A joint or a moderate evening doesn't interest me much.
In a way, it ain't so hard to stay clean. But I will die a drugfiend.
I've never thought of it as "war." In 25 years, perhaps.
mcmanus, you can't live without protein. The Refined sugar, I'll grant you, but protein? Come on.
I wish I could kick this goddamn oxygen habit. It's really keeping me back.
264:Just a term of art or something, I don't why they called it that. It was against the rules, and mostly personal history was not allowed. You'd have to ask the shrinks.
265:Bg, when I am into the weightlifting and Atkinsy, there is a kinda high in a high-protein diet. It's hard to explain. It is probably a good thing, if understood and not done in excess.
The dogs run more when I give them table scraps.
Interesting term, and Bob's use may be conventional in rehab. There is a sense that war stories involve conflict, uncertainty and danger. Lawyers use the term for the stories they tell one another, and all those elements are present. Properly told, there's often something homely anchoring the story, some need to pee or embarassment about torn clothing, which obsesses the teller-as-narrator, so that the "reveal" has more impact. All of that could easily make it into a drug story.
269: like the time _________ discovered the near impossibility of using a port-a-potty while wearing a jumpsuit, horrified to realize that, in the contortions required to undresss and dress hygienically, they'd dropped their ecstasy down the hole? The site of those little white pills perched neatly atop an enormous tower of shit, within easy reach if they were willing to lean over and reach into the depths was, I'm told, quite extravagantly depressing.
I'm not an addict. It's just like my body has developed this massive oxygen deficiency.
OT: This article is nice to read. Especially coming from a magazine like Time.
I'm not an addict. It's just like my body has developed this massive oxygen deficiency.
Congratulate me. I am 45 seconds sober.
I'm not sure if i'd legalize coke.
On the one hand, everyone who does it turns into a raging asshole. On the other hand, i only do hallucinogens/pot/booze. Which only accentuate my personality. I think stims might balance me out and just make me normal. I don't know why i want to do things that heighten my personality, instead of balancing it.
My son asked me the other day if I'd ever smoked any. Without thinking I said "no" and laughed.
"Really?" he pressed, eager to trip me up, "not even one joint? Even my Health teacher admitted she'd had some!" (I didn't even know he knew the word joint. Why do teachers these days have to be so cool?)
Having started by saying no I felt obliged to keep the story going, but I can see it's going to turn out badly.
I successfully corrupted almost all my girlfriends who had never gotten stoned before. There was sometimes a conflict in that pot makes some women ragingly sexual while it makes me want to lie around and listen to music or watch movies. Sometimes while philosophizing. Sex only occasionally comes into it.
Hallucinogens make pot look like beer. There are profound experiences to be had on mushrooms and acid. It's possible the world would be significantly improved by having everyone take them once.
We need an Unfogged meetup where people get stoned with Yoyo and Tweety, or possibly take shrooms. I have a feeling that would be great.
There are profound experiences to be had on mushrooms and acid.
I remember wandering around a park convinced that I had just figured out not one, but several profound things, and if only I had remembered a pen my life would be changed forever. By the next morning, I couldn't even recall general details.
Did it have anything to do with erasing a tape?
I forget my pot profundities the next morning, but hallucinogens sometimes do seem to have a more lasting effect. Not on anything you can say, but on how you see.
Nitrous is the ne plus ultra of figuring everything out and then immediately forgetting it. I finally figured out that it basically turns your brain off, and as it gradually turns back on, any idiotic thing strikes you as deeply profound.
There was sometimes a conflict in that pot makes some women ragingly sexual while it makes me want to lie around and listen to music or watch movies. Sometimes while philosophizing. Sex only occasionally comes into it.
My GF has only been ragingly sexual twice, once when we hadn't seen each other for 6 weeks and the other (even more so) while on pot. It doesn't seem to happen everytime she's high on pot, though.
Maybe that was the only time she inhaled fully.
Nitrous can be fucking scary. I once lost the ability to understand language for thirty seconds. And when it came back, it was someone listening to South Park in the other room.
There's a profound drug experience for you.
I tend to think that hallucinogens can have a therapeutic effect. I've known things on mushrooms that I still haven't emotionally accepted. I remember them just fine, as I did at the time. Then, they were upsetting. Now, they are comforting, and as far as I can tell, true. How all that works, I do not know. I'm just glad I took them when I did.
Hallucinogens fuel creativity. I firmly believe people become smarter when they take acid.
Oh, and nitrous doesn't count. The only conclusion I can recall under nitrous was this,"A statement can be either true or false. Or null. There must exist a counterpart to null! All existence constitutes the opposite of null." Bullshit at its purest.
But you were grooving on it, is the point. You were *feeling* the nullness of null and the fact that existence really, like, intensely exists.
The only conclusion I can recall under nitrous is "MORE NITROUS!"
286 was me. Specifically, it was me the night I hung out with all of those hippies without my Secret Service.
One would think the Secret Service just dressed up as hippies, concealing their little ear radios in their tangled hippie locks.
When you're talking about nitrous, you really mean nitrous while on acid, right?
One would think the Secret Service just dressed up as hippies, concealing their little ear radios in their tangled hippie locks.
There were never any hippies. It was all just the Secret Service all along, in the year 70 AD.
Philip K. Dick and I are spiritual brethren. I'm sure he would pull a dead religion out of his ass to explain that one, if he were here.
Something "fades," "escapes"; and the feeling of insight is changed into an intense one of bewilderment, puzzle, confusion, astonishment. I know no more singular sensation than this intense bewilderment, with nothing left to be bewildered at save the bewilderment itself.
William James, Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide
Oh god, I totally miss acid.
I firmly believe people become smarter when they take acid.
And I firmly believe the reverse. There's a reason that Brave New World is a good book, but Island is toilet paper. My observation is that what people (inc. me) become when they take acid, is stoned.
2 things about acid:1) I have this old 1-vol encyclopedia lying around, and the LSD article says something like:"As far as long term damages from sustained LSD usage are concerned, the drug appears to be self-limiting, beacuse users report that familiarity breeds contempt." 2)The anecdote from Alpert/Ram Dass about the guru who took 600 mics, and was outwardly unaffected.
Toward the end of my acid days, I was having to work my ass off to achieve an emotional/psychological state so that the experience was interesting or useful. "Ho-hum, walls melting, over there's God, music's getting longer. Far out. Yawn."
294: not in a way that is communicable to the outside world, clearly. But the internal revelations can be quite powerful, if you don't get all goofy about them.
I do agree that acid is self-limiting. You get to a point and it just seems sort of complicated and not worth the time. Oh, maybe once every few years. But you can be confident the weirdness is still around, even if you're not embedded in it quite so thoroughly.
I forgot to list mushrooms in my policy platform for future supreme rulership. I would legalize them with the same act legalizing ye olde marihuana. I've never known anyone who had a bad time with 'shrooms. Personally, I've never felt more at home in my body and on the earth than I did when I was doing 'shrooms. I think they're more suited to voluntary self-medication than LSD.
That said, I think LSD has powerful therapeutic potential. I think in the right circumstances it could definitely be used for all that Leary-esque reimprinting stuff. I'm sure there's a dystopian novel in that somewhere but it was my experience that while any then-perceived insights were largely bullshit the next day there was a lingering and lifelong (thus far, a decade later) shift in how I viewed the world, my openness to new ideas, new experience, new ways of thinking about things. Having the walls of habit torn forcibly down, the bandages ripped off in a single go, was a good thing to experience and learn to accept through repeated exposure.
Mushrooms taught me that I was OK and LSD taught me that the world was OK even when I didn't understand it. Hokey and earnest, I'm sure, but very true and very valued lessons.
Of course, I had a friend with a previous diagnosis that was then-untreated (and unknown to the rest of us) whose acid use triggered a breakdown and months and years of bad times. Thus, the prescriptions. It's powerful medicine and I think leaving it completely OTC legal would be like encouraging people to perform their own triple bypass surgeries.
I am curious about the dosages involved in these stories.
It seems I did not take enough to experience these effects; but then, at its height I remember feeling a tinge of danger, so perhaps that was for the best.
I've never known anyone who had a bad time with 'shrooms.
Yes, you do. I've never had any bad times whatsoever on acid, and while I didn't have any full-blown mushroom freakouts, I've been waaaay higher than I wanted to be a couple of times and spent the coming down period being incredibly relieved that I could once again get to the end of a sentence in my head without forgetting the beginning of the sentence.
Self-limiting acid: "My son liked it, but one of his immediate reactions was "Please don't make me do it again". He didn't mean "never again", he just wanted to rest up for awhile.
299: Well, dang. That stinks!
298: With LSD my dosages were always on the low end. It affected me pretty strongly. I was never willing to go beyond two hits at once. With 'shrooms I was always willing to crank the dose higher than was probably wise on the grounds that, hey, it's only going to last four hours. Through bizarre coincidence most of my 'shroom experiences were of the 'we have a ton and we need to get rid of them' variety in which we took enough for several other people to get off.
Any of this was ten years ago, though, or more, so it is always possible that the mind exaggerates the memory.
That is a curious turn of phrase.
If had the out-of-control high experience on mushrooms a couple of times, but if the bad acid trips I've had described to me were being in any way close to accurately recounted, it's not nearly in the same league. I like 'shrooms occasionally but won't touch acid for that very reason.
Mushrooms always gave me a really bad stomachache.
Acid I loved. The thought of doing it with a bunch of strangers though, President Carter, is not appealing. No one wants The Fear.
Hashish is ever so good for my libido (doubly so, heh, as it makes me want to go to bed early) - must get some more soon ...
The key with mushrooms and the stomach ache, IME, was to brew them with very strong Earl Grey and drink the tea rather than eating the mushrooms. I learned this partying with chem majors from a university other than my own, deep in the woods of Virginia. They really, really knew how to do it up right.
The one time I took acid I took a tab, felt great. A few hours after taking it, was totally experiencing trippiness -- mild auditory and visual hallucinations, time stretching etc -- and everything was hilariously funny and full of joy.
Then, because I was enjoying it so much, took another. About an hour later I was hiding every knife in the house so I wouldn't be able to kill myself later [which seemed logical to me at the time] and literally sobbing in pain, I felt so bad.
So yeah, it's not nice. I decided I don't like drugs where I can't control how it's going to feel.
Dosages:
Erowid has much more drug info than you will ever want.
Around 1970 the typical LSD dose was 250-300 mics; there was good synth mesc around, 250-300 mg. Recreational dosages of 100 mics were around and I hear are the most common these days:fancy colors but not glued to your chair. Who knows about shrooms:eat one, see what it does, or hell, eat ten. Buttons are pretty disgusting.
500 mics is a lot, an experience. I did 1000 twice. I also spent two weeks in the 70s doubling down and staying high, once with acid, once with shrooms.
Hmm. I've never felt out of control on acid, and there were times in my life (most people call these times "college") where I did it often and in large quantities. And the self-limiting thing is true. I feel like I've gotten just about everything profound there is to get out of LSD, and any further use would be purely recreational. I don't, however, have the free time to devote to that recreation any longer.
The craziest high I've experienced was as part of a medical study, when I got ketamine by the IV route. I'd never really experienced anything like that before, and certainly not since. Not that I recommend shooting anything into your veins, but if you can get licensed medical personnel to administer it and monitor you, well. Holy moly.
302: Yes, I required him to do it.
Based on having read PiHKAL as a teenager, I got the impression that MDMA had a lot of the introspective, theraputic kind of potential described in 297 and seemed kind of interesting. I never got around to experiencing any altered states besides drunkenness, though, and I suspect the era of opportunity has passed.
I've read that acid depletes a transmitter, receptor, or blocker (yeah, that's pretty unclear), so that increased or repeated doses don't have an additive effect. There was supposedly a guy who did it every day for a month, but only had the strong effects the first day because his body didn't have a chance to recharge.
Treat as rumor, obvs.
MDMA had a lot of the introspective, therapeutic kind of potential
It does. I honestly believe that everybody should experience it at least once.
310: Some people have the trick of riding with the high; I'm told it's usually when some part of you is fighting it that acid trips turn bad. I'm reasonably good at rolling with things on mushrooms but I've never been tempted to try my luck with LSD.
(Of course it probably helps that the first person who ever tried to convince me of the merits of the drug was the twitchiest, most unreliable fucker I knew delivering the worst sell job of his life. "Did you know, yeah, like, the American military developed it as a weapon? You've gotta try it!")
There are people who do ketamine recreationally, and they all seem to have the most appalling bad-trip stories, in such large amounts I don't understand why they do it. I'd guess the controlled environment is essential.
I used to know a guy who had all the technical abilities, supplies, and apparatus necessary to make ecstacy. He was a perfectionist, and knowing him as I did, I would have trusted his work. He was a near-Aspergers and he felt that ecstacy made it possible for him to relate to people and the world in an entirely new and better way.
The one ngredient that was hard to get was sassafras oil, which I think is a controlled substance now, or at least a monitored one. It's also the defining ingredient in root beer. I'd imagine that there's a lot of paranoia among the makers of gourmet root beer these days.
I tried ketamine (or what I was told was ketamine) in a club once, from a friend of a friend. Didn't do a thing to me, but I did have to essentially carry my then-boyfriend home -- he got very frightened and unable to cope, or to move much.
311: "No dessert for you, young man, until you've dropped all eight tabs."
he got very frightened and unable to cope, or to move much
Yeah, see, it's these. "I had a panic attacks and was effectively paralyzed for hours on end. Gotta get me more of that." I just don't get it.
As a teenager, I spent a while in what we called the 1000 mic club, meaning that was the nominal min dose.
313 isn't very correct. I once spent most of 6 months on acid, mostly on 12 or 18 hour cycles (trip, sleep, wake up, eat, trip). Interspersed with other drugs a bit, but mostly acid. By which I mean, pretty much daily use (and something, daily). You have to up the dose a bit (it isn't purely additive, but it doesn't really fall off hard ... about the most I ever did was probably 2000 mic or less)
It taught me some interesting things (315 --- yes it's very possible to ride with incredibly `bad' trips (which makes them not bad trips I guess) but I guess this has a lot to do with your psychology). The worst trips I had were not because of bad thing in halucinations, but things like this: Once I spent about 2 hours stuck on a city bench because I was halucinating a forest but could still here the traffic. I knew there was traffic nearby but couldn't see it, so couldn't move.
The six months wasn't the beginning of my using acid, but it was basicllay the end. For what it's worth, I couldn't talk very well afterward. For a month or so, I had a lot of trouble finding words. It took about 6 more months to completely re-align, I think (but how would I know). I can't say I regret the experience, but afterward I really didn't have any need for deep halucinations.
John Emerson, pater familias. I'm looking forward to his son's shockingly candid tell-all biography. The booze, the pills, the powder... it'll be like Mackenzie Phillips or something.
321: At least your college money wasn't entirely wasted.
I was younger than that (15 or 16). Conveniently funded by selling same.
For what it's worth, I couldn't talk very well afterward.
Dude. Yeah. Wow.
325: It was very strange; I didn't notice conceptual problems, it was more that I was always searching for words. But words like `the', sometimes.
There's a scene in "9 to 5" where the three women from the office all get together to puff the magic dragon.