The First Time

Most marijuana smokers were introduced to marijuana by a friend, a teacher, a sibling, or a slightly more experienced companion. Others were first turned on at a party, on a date, or with a group of friends. None of the people in my sample reported using marijuana for the first time when they were alone, while Erich Goode found that only 3 percent of his respondents turned themselves on.[8]
    Although many people experience no effects at all, the opposite phenomenon is also common. Lenny recalls that he enjoyed his first smoking experience so much that he immediately bought two ounces, one of which he sold to a friend, thus becoming a user, a buyer, and a dealer all at once.
    When the first experience is good, it is often memorable. A salesman from Michigan recalls:

I was starting to feel different. A fog started to separate me from my two friends. Charlene wanted to go back, so we piled into my brother's car and started back along the dirt road. I felt unsteady at the wheel, and Dan asked if I needed help. I said no. I saw a car approaching and pulled over to the side. It took ages before the car passed us, and I felt so foolishly happy.
    We arrived back at the lake, and the water was peacefully beautiful. It felt as if this was the beauty and the peace I had always wanted. If I could express that beauty in words, I would be a poet.

    A more typical description of the first time is offered by a French instructor at a small southern college, who was introduced to marijuana in 1965, when he was a senior:

I was nervous at the beginning. There was still a lot of bad press about what dope could do to you, and my family background was pretty strict and conservative. But a lot of people I admired were smoking pot, so I wanted to try it.
    The first time I smoked, I became very nervous. I was also very open to suggestion; the friend who turned me on was himself nervous, and he reassured me a bit too much, which made me even more nervous.
    The first time I really got high there was some Mozart playing, and Mozart had never sounded that way to me before.

    This man's nervousness is typical; even the most casual marijuana smokers are nervous the first time they smoke. It may be for this reason, among others, that many male smokers develop a measure of bravado with regard to the drug.[9] But almost everybody admits to having felt some nervousness the first time, and a few smokers recall that they delayed their initial marijuana experience for as long as two or three years, until curiosity finally triumphed over fear. Surely these fears, which were especially common among smokers who started using marijuana during the 1960s, go a long way toward explaining why so many first-time users fail to get high.
    The existence of these fears makes sense. The marijuana experience takes place on a different level of reality than the one most people are familiar with, and the prospect of the change may well threaten the sense of control and stability of a person uneasy about letting go of normal, waking consciousness. Some smokers recall that during their first high, they developed a fear that they would undergo a permanent change and would never return to their "real" selves. Even those who are most eager to try marijuana usually cannot imagine realistically what it will be like, and fear follows easily on ignorance. "Everyone can feel the effects of grass," states A Child's Garden of Grass, long known as the unofficial Bible of marijuana users, "if they simply get over their fear of losing control."[10]
    For many smokers, especially during the 1960s, fears about marijuana, exacerbated by the mass media, had to be overcome and dealt with before the decision to smoke could be made with any degree of comfort. A former Radcliffe student recollects:

I had read all this stuff about grass—in Life and Time and that kind of magazine—and the writers would always be saying, "These poor children, on the road to heroin, thinking they are expanding their world but really on the road to losing themselves ... oh alas, alas, will no one stop this dire green menace?" And I started thinking: what if the jokers who wrote the articles are the ones who are wrong—since their inner worlds didn't seem exactly the more aware and expanded ones, from the way they wrote. And I also figured that something you smoked, instead of injecting, was unlikely to do anything dire the first time even if they were right. I was really too interested. I'd read Huxley and other people, too, and they didn't sound like they were doing drugs to escape from anything.[11]

    As marijuana use has increased, the fears of first-time users have diminished accordingly, as have reports of bad trips. Still, the scare tactics and hysterical reports of a previous era linger on, if only subliminally. After seeing the most famous of the marijuana scare films of the 1930S, revived periodically in college towns to the delight of stoned audiences, one student told me: "Even though everybody knows that Reefer Madness is propaganda and nonsense, a little of the fear stays with you."
    Accordingly, the most valuable function of the introducer is not so much to tell the novice what to do and how to smoke but rather to calm him down and assuage his fears, should that become necessary. These days, it seldom is. Occasionally, the introducer may also find himself providing a quick course in marijuana etiquette. A Boston actor tells of turning on an acquaintance who, as late as 1978, was completely unfamiliar with the world of marijuana:

It was a guy I didn't know too well. After we smoked he said to me, "What do I owe you?" He said he knew the stuff was expensive, and he seemed to think that if he didn't pay for it, the experience wasn't fully his own. I explained to him that dope is meant to be shared among friends, and I think he understood.