Skipping Towards Gomorrah (17 page)

When discussing pot and productivity, at some point it has to be acknowledged that pot smokers make easily verifiable contributions to our legitimate economy. First, most of us are employed, we pay taxes, and we stay out of trouble. Pot smokers also support the small farms in places like Alabama, West Virginia, and Kentucky that grow and sell pot. Finally, let's not forget the snack food industry. According to PepsiCo's 2000 Annual Report, the company sold $1,782,000,000 worth of Doritos in the United States and Canada that year. You don't have to be high to eat a bag Doritos, I realize, but it helps. State and local governments take in tens of millions of dollars every year in Doritos-related sales tax, while the more than 45,000 people employed by PepsiCo to make and distribute Doritos pay income taxes to the federal government. It seems to me an appalling act of ingratitude for the federal government to use money collected from PepsiCo's employees to jail some of PepsiCo's best customers.

I'd like to take a moment here to reassure my mother. I don't hang out with a lot of dope smokers, Mom, nor do I see myself as a member of a dope-smoking underground, subculture, or community. I don't even like Doritos that much. I'm just a regular, working parent who smokes dope from time to time. I suppose I could have played it safe and found some other pot smoker to profile in this chapter, but I felt that it would be dishonest to write about pot smoking without coming clean about my own pot use. Furthermore, profiling myself was the slothful thing to do—I didn't have to leave the house to find a pot smoker, and I was always available for interviews.

Though I don't count myself a wild-eyed marijuana booster, I am, however, grateful to
High Times
readers and hemp wearers for ensuring the continued supply of dope in this country, and its constantly improving quality. Even so, you're never going to see me in a marijuana leaf T-shirt, Mom, I swear to God.

 

N
ow I'd like to go one step further and argue that pot not only doesn't have a negative impact on the productivity of the American worker, but that pot also makes it possible for the American worker—the pot-smoking ones, at least—to be as productive as we are.

While the workweek shrinks and vacation time grows for European workers, the amount of time Americans spend at work continues to grow (at least for those of us who have jobs). How do we do it? How do we work like crazy without going crazy? I think pot has a lot to do with it. It's a just hunch, I'll admit, and since I'm not a drug czar, I don't expect the things I say to be taken at face value. Unlike William J. Bennett, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, or our current drug czar, John Walters, I don't think every fool thing that pops into my head is God's revealed truth. So I'm eager for social scientists and researchers to look into my theory, and if they can prove that I'm wrong, I will do something very unlike a drug czar (or Bill O'Reilly) and
admit
that I'm wrong. Until someone provides me with proof, however, I will go on believing that smoking pot isn't a $100 billion-per-year threat to American productivity—indeed, pot is one of the chief pillars of American productivity.

Like other American workers, I've worked fifty-two weeks per year, year in, year out, for the last decade. Since 1991, I've worked ten- and twelve-hour days, nonstop. I work at work, I work at home, I work on weekends, I work at night, I work during my commute. When I have to travel for work, I work on planes, I work in hotel rooms, and I work in cafés, bars, and restaurants. (I'm typing these words in a coffee shop in Chicago filled with other people working on their laptops.) Work, work, work, all I do is work. There's no time in my life for restful, restorative sloth, no time to stare off into space or let my mind wander. I haven't been indolent since the first President George Bush was in office, and looking ahead, I don't see much downtime coming my way. How can I live without sloth and retain my sanity? How can I, like other American workers, be so ridiculously productive? How can I work this hard and without snapping and, for example, beating to death the man sitting next to me in this café yakking into his cell phone about his hair transplants and dinner reservations?

I smoke pot.

Research has shown—actual scientific
research,
not I'm-the-drug-czar-and-I-said-so fairy tales—that marijuana interferes with a pot smoker's ability to judge correctly the passage of time. The active ingredient in pot, THC, enters the bloodstream through the millions of alveoli in the lungs. THC mimics the actions of a naturally occurring neurotransmitter called anandamide, which binds with certain receptors in the brain, filling the gaps between synapses. The synapses affected by THC in the hippocampus, a thumb-shaped lobe under the pituitary gland,
interfere with the normal function of short-term memory
. In other words, pot slows stuff down—way, way down. The better the pot, the slower time seems to pass, and the potency of pot has greatly increased in the last twenty-five years. Thirty years ago, people were smoking
Cannabis sativa,
with a THC content of 0.5 to 2.0 percent. The pot we smoke now is
Cannabis indica,
which has a THC content of 8 to 10 percent. Why the switch? More potent pot facilitates smuggling and transportation; the stronger the stuff is, the less of it has to be moved from place to place, and the more you can charge for it. Potent pot is better for pot smokers, too, since we don't have to smoke as much to get high. (Smoking is bad for you, you know.) When you're high, five minutes feels like a lazy afternoon, and six hours feels like a week at the beach. The morning after one of my infrequent pot nights, I wake up feeling like I just got back from a week's vacation. I'm rested, content, and ready—ready to go back to work and kill myself. Pot gives me biannual, concentrated doses of restful, restorative, fattening sloth. Thanks to THC's ability to slow down the passage of time, pot is as close as many pot-smoking American workers ever get to a week off. Two nights high = two weeks off. Three nights = three weeks off. Four nights high and, hey,
you're the fucking president of France
.

I would estimate that millions of American workers (perhaps even as many as 100 billion) would love nothing more than a month of paid vacation or, at the very least, the two weeks' paid vacation they have coming to them. But no one gets a month off in George W. Bush's America—no one except George W. Bush. So overworked, underslothed Americans take a month off the only way they can get it: one puff at a time. Millions of Americans who can't get away from work physically get away pharmacologically. And if our political leaders want the American worker to remain the most productive on the planet, well, then perhaps it's time to can the guilt trips about our drug use and legalize pot.

 

M
y sister Laura is a drug-abuse counselor, and I don't doubt that she's a very good drug-abuse counselor. Laura is opposed to drug legalization, she says, because she's seen what drugs can do to people. I've pointed out to her on many occasions that drug-abuse counselors only see the bad things drugs do to people, since people who don't have a problem with drugs don't go (or get sent) to drug-abuse counselors. Nevertheless, my sister has an “issue,” as drug-abuse counselors like to say, with anyone advocating the use of any drug, even marijuana. My sister has helped a lot of people who have problems with drugs, and I think that's just swell. Really. People who are addicted to drugs—including nicotine and alcohol—need all the help they can get. The problem I have with my sister, though, is that I don't have a problem with drugs and yet my sister insists on trying to help me.

When the subject of my marijuana use comes up at family gatherings, she purses her lips and looks at me with pity in her eyes. “All drug use is abuse, Danny,” she usually says, slowly shaking her head.

“Not my drug use,” I usually respond. “I don't abuse drugs. I use them. Very occasionally, very responsibly.”

“That's what
all
addicts always say,” she serves. “They all say, ‘I don't
abuse,
I
use
.' And it's
always
a lie.”

“It may be a lie when an addict says it,” I volley, “but
I'm
not an addict, so it's
not
a lie when
I
say it.” (We
abuse
italics in my family; it's a bad habit we picked up from our
mother
.)

Whenever my sister starts to lose the argument about drug legalization, which she always does, she resorts to the I'm-a-drug-abuse-counselor look. She cocks her head to one side, pulls in her chin, purses her lips, and raises her eyebrows. The look says, “Suuuuuuuuure, Danny, you're not a drug addict.” I think my sister took three graduate-level seminars to master that sure-you're-not-a-drug-addict look. The look makes me defensive. (“I am
not
an addict! Mom! Tell Laura to
stop
calling me an addict!”) That's the whole point of the look: In the batty circular logic of American Twelve Step programs, defensively denying that you're an addict is rock-solid proof that you are, in fact, an addict. Insisting that you have a right to be defensive since you're defending yourself against a charge that isn't true just digs you in deeper. Denying something that isn't true only proves you're in denial, and all addicts are in denial until they admit they're addicts, at which point they're in recovery. Which is where my sister would like to see me.

My sister and I live thousands of miles away from each other, so for all she knows I lie around my house all day long with a needle in my arm, covered in my own excrement, and clean myself up only for the occasional family visit. When I describe to her the circumstances of my pot use—twice a year tops, at home, in bed—she accuses me of minimizing my problem in order to win the argument. If I came clean and told the whole family how much pot I really smoke, then everyone would know what my sister instinctively knows: I'm an addict.

But if I'm an addict, how come I'm able to hold on to my job, meet my various deadlines, and keep up with a strict personal hygiene regimen?

The last time we had this argument, my sister, under pressure from my mother (“Laura, would you
please
tell your brother he's
not
an addict!”), finally conceded that it was possible that I just might not be a drug addict.

“You're still
abusing
drugs,” she insisted, “which you get away with because you're what we call a
‘highly-functional'
drug abuser.”

Which brings us back to the kid in the Partnership for a Drug-Free America ad.

School, piano lessons, soccer practice, that boob of a mother—if that kid didn't have access to marijuana, I would be tempted to buy him a huge bag of pot myself. (The kid and his mother are, I realize, entirely fictional. And honestly, Officer, I would never buy a child a bag of pot. That would be wrong and illegal. And all the stuff in this chapter about me smoking pot? Made it up. Didn't happen. Never touched the stuff. Didn't lick those doorknobs either.) Not satisfied with working herself to death, that kid's parents are working him to death—and he's not alone. Our kids may not be making shoes in Nike sweatshops, but American kids have as little time for sloth as American parents. We march our kids from school to piano lessons to soccer practice to scheduled “play-dates” at the homes of vetted, screened, preapproved “friends.” The kid in the ad is as busy as his parents, with just as little time for sloth.

At the end of a day like that—school, piano lessons, soccer practice—that kid deserves a little sloth, doncha think? I'm not in favor of young people smoking pot; like beer, pot is for grown-ups. But if we're going to eliminate sloth from the lives of young people—if we're going to work our kids to death, too—who can blame them for taking sloth in concentrated doses? If this particular kid can get high and keep his grades up and make it to piano lessons and remember which end of the field to kick the soccer ball to and pull the wool over his mother's eyes, then he must be a “highly functional” pot smoker, just like I am.

No one wants to see young people using drugs, of course. I believe that pot, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, sex, and air travel are for adults only. I hate walking to my local coffee shop and seeing all the teenagers out front abusing the legal drugs in coffee and cigarettes. But if a kid is going to abuse a substance, however, he's much better off smoking pot than he is drinking beer or smoking cigarettes. Marijuana is less addictive than alcohol and nicotine (and caffeine), and the long-term health consequences of moderate pot use are infinitely less deadly. Fifty thousand people die in the United States every year from alcohol poisoning; four hundred thousand die every year from cigarette-related illnesses. Despite what the Partnership for a Drug-Free America would like us to believe, it's simply impossible to overdose on marijuana. According to
The Lancet,
a European medical journal, “the smoking of cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful to health. . . . It would be reasonable to judge cannabis as less of a threat than alcohol or cigarettes.”

Will kids who smoke dope become addicted to pot or other hard drugs? Most likely not. According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine, fewer than one in ten young marijuana smokers become regular users of the drug, and most who do become regular users voluntarily stop using marijuana in their thirties. While pot smoking isn't good for growing lungs and brains, it is clinically proven to reduce feelings of aggression, which is a serious problem among adolescent males in the United States. (Maybe if we called pot
Ritalin,
people would be more comfortable with it.) Personally, I would rather see a stressed-out teenage boy pick up a bong every once in a while than pick up a gun and shoot his parents, teachers, classmates, soccer coach, and piano teacher to death.