6. The Social Drug

A friend with weed is a friend indeed.

        —a smoker in Wisconsin

I get high with a little help from my friends.

        —John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Socializing

One of the most interesting phenomena reported by marijuana smokers is the "contact high." This occurs when a smoker gets high—or higher—merely by being in the presence of other people who are smoking. Some smokers believe this is due to the amount of smoke in the air, which may lead even the nonsmoker to get slightly high. Others are convinced that the contact high has less to do with physical than with social causes. Howard Becker, the sociologist, offers an explanation of how the process might work:

When you're high, there's a characteristic way that you talk, which has to do with not remembering anything that's just happened. Now suppose you're in a group of stoned people, and you're not stoned. They're all talking, and in order to participate, you have to talk that way or else you can't communicate. If you're used to being high, and accustomed to that style of talking, you can move into it easily, without even noticing what's happening. And if you find yourself talking that way, then in turn you're going to feel high by the association. Unconsciously, you figure that you're talking that way because you're high, so you figure that you must really be high.[1]

    Smokers have mixed feelings about socializing when they are stoned. Among friends, marijuana loosens inhibitions, allowing people to be freer and more relaxed with each other. Among strangers, many people prefer not to light up, finding that various kinds of polite social chitchat are difficult when they are high. Judy used to be reluctant to get high at cocktail parties but gradually learned to adapt:

I now feel more secure with myself while I'm stoned, and I'm also more comfortable being in the minority, or even being the only one who is stoned. Many of Murray's friends from work like to drink at parties, and I used to feel too inhibited to be the only one smoking, which in turn increased my isolation from everybody else. Now, I toke up before going to these parties, and I can always find a comfortable niche for myself. I don't care as much whether I'm accepted, which, paradoxically, eases my sense of fitting in.

    Mark, however, finds that marijuana makes him nervous at parties where most people are drinking. It makes him more sensitive to other people's moods and to their remarks, and he takes offense more easily than usual:

In addition, grass increases my imagination, so that I might read a lot into a few words or a look. Sometimes I'm right, but very often I find myself interpreting something that was not intended at all. I would rather smoke than drink with a group of friends, but in a roomful of strangers, I'd just as soon use alcohol to relax. Grass may have other effects.

    To the extent that socializing is built around conversation, smoking may be useful in freeing associations and in helping the user focus in on what somebody else is trying to say. Martha finds that getting high helps at parties whether or not the other people are stoned:

After a joint or two, I find myself paying more attention to what the other person is really saying, rather than hearing only the words he uses in trying to get his point across. By keeping track of his mannerisms and his tone of voice in a more concentrated way than usual, I can more fully understand his point, and can respond more directly than normal.

    A Pittsburgh dentist maintains that marijuana facilitates real conversation when he is with his friends. "I read somewhere that the national average of real conversation, not counting household stuff, the weather, and things like that, is less than half an hour a week. Every time we get stoned, we surpass the national average."
    But conversation is not the only measure of group interaction, as this fifty-seven-year-old teacher observes:

I think the greatest moment when a group of people are high is when no one wants to talk, but each person just listens to the music and thinks his own thoughts. No one intrudes, questions or criticizes, and yet the rapport between these people is still there, ready to show itself again at the first spoken word.

    But another woman complains that "you can never get a group of stoned people to decide to do anything. It's like everyone is on a different level."
    Naturally, whether a stoned person will feel comfortable in a group depends on who is in that group and what he thinks the other people feel toward him. It's a good example of the importance of set and setting, as this Iowa man explains:

If the high people are in the minority, and I'm high, I might get a little paranoid, believing that I probably appear as stoned as I feel, and that this will have an adverse effect on people's impressions of me. Sometimes when this happens I wish my clothes matched the wallpaper so that I could just stand there and never be noticed.
    I've learned to be careful about what state of mind I'm in while socializing. Sometimes I get high; at other times I might stay straight, but may bring along a joint just in case. At still other times, I won't even bring anything with me.

    For a different kind of person, marijuana can be very helpful in an otherwise awkward social situation. Judy and Murray recently attended the wedding of a friend, which they might have found distasteful and boring:

If we hadn't been stoned, we might easily have gotten caught up in our disdain for the ostentatiousness of the party. Instead, we stopped being so judgmental, and relaxed, and got a huge kick out of it, enjoying the food and the dancing, and even ducking out twice to listen to the World Series on the car radio.