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  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • 1. An Overview of
  • The First Time
  • Because our Puritan-based society has traditionally been uneasy
  • Addiction and
  • At the same time, marijuana is an attractive activity for
  • Strategies of Smokers
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  • 14. Looking Ahead:
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  • The Moment of Awareness
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  • On the other hand, I very often have magnificent creative
  • 2. A Denver high school
  • I don't know if you're interested, but the reason I started
  • Friends

    Although today's smokers are more likely to use marijuana when they are alone than was previously the case, friends are still an important part of the smoking experience. Marijuana, as we have seen, often facilitates intimate exchanges, and many, maybe most, smokers prefer to share that kind of experience with people who are important to them. Claire, the radio announcer, explains:

    When I'm stoned with a very good friend, we just sit there and watch messages bounce back and forth between us, like neutrons. It happens rapidly, and we can feel it in an almost physical way.
        I often get onto a higher plane of communication with good friends when we smoke together. It almost seems as if we're experiencing mental telepathy, with communication going on so rapidly. And the closer the friend, the more this is likely to occur.


        Another advantage of smoking with good friends is that the user is more apt to relax and let go, which makes the high more fulfilling. "When other people think you are very stoned," Claire observes, "and when they are actually happy to see you that way, the whole experience is enhanced."
        Although much has been said and written about how marijuana creates a brotherhood of its own, smoking is by now so widespread that the old image of a group of friends sitting around in a tight circle passing a joint is outdated. More often, in a social situation, marijuana is just there, although David says he always pays attention to who supplies the goods. "It's like who brings the football when you're kids. The guy who brings the dope—and it's usually a guy—tends to be either somebody that everybody likes or else a complete jerk who is trying to get people to like him."
        Some smokers actually have two sets of friends: those with whom they smoke frequently, and others, with whom marijuana is irrelevant. Sometimes, in the case of heavier users, marijuana may define friendship groups, as a
    Chicago college student explains:

    Dope has chosen my friends. Those "high class" people who are straight care more about being popular and rich, and since I would rather smoke pot than be like them, I choose to associate with people who do smoke, or who at least are cool about it. Most of them are fine folks who aren't hung up on pot. When I'm with them, I like myself better, and I feel more sure of who I am, because I don't have to pretend. Most of the guys I go out with are smokers, but if they rely on it too much or are real heads, then I'm not interested.


        The distinctions this woman makes better describe a previous era than the contemporary scene, where the gap between smokers and nonsmokers is less pronounced than it once was. But there are still circumstances in which smoking becomes a problem among friends. A
    New York editor who smokes only rarely does not care to be in a group of smokers, because he finds them "boring and self-indulgent. I just don't like to be in their presence," he says, "even though I may like them individually." The sword cuts both ways. For example, even though Judy smokes only on weekends, she prefers to spend her social time with fellow-smokers:

    We went out to eat a while ago at a very exciting restaurant together with a couple that Murray knows from work. They don't smoke, so we didn't either. The evening was very nice, but I didn't have a good time because nobody was really loose or relaxed, as we are on dope. At this point, I wouldn't consider such an elegant dinner engagement without smoking first. I also think the fact that we haven't pursued a friendship with this couple may be related to the fact that they don't smoke—which to me implies they are probably too inhibited to be really close.


        For the woman who lives with her husband on a farm in
    Maine, there are not many options. Both are in their fifties, and most of their friends in the area do not smoke. "They know that we do," she says, "but we don't believe in doing it in front of them." Most of her friends do enjoy drinking, however, and if she thinks they will be receptive, she may suggest that they try marijuana instead of alcohol. But she is careful not to push the case too hard. Even in the big cities, marijuana crusaders are an unpopular group.
        In fact, many of the users who do crusade on behalf of the drug are people over forty-five who smoke marijuana as a conscious substitute for alcohol; their goal is to get some of their friends to do the same. Curiously, there appears to be less advocacy and less proselytizing among younger smokers who assume, correctly, that anybody in their peer group who has had the least interest in trying marijuana has already had ample opportunity to do so.
        Carol, the psychiatric nurse, has one friendship whose main topic of discussion has to do with Carol's smoking:

    She's always saying that it's rotting my brain and all the rest, or that I shouldn't need it. I say to her, "There's a lot of things in life you don't need, but you want to do them anyway. And why should you not have something you like just because you don't need it?"


        Steve, a car salesman, and his wife are daily smokers. He doesn't like to limit his social contacts to other smokers, but he finds it difficult for most of his nonsmoking friends to break through their own conceptions of why he smokes:

    It's a real problem, because people know we smoke a lot, and that we're generally high in the evenings. But they have trouble understanding that without laying their own trip on it. For some people, getting high becomes an end in itself, and they don't realize that for us, it's not a goal, but a process. We do pretty much what other people do—go to movies, visit friends, watch television, talk, and so forth. It's just that we do it stoned. It's a way of doing something.


        Claire, on the other hand, began smoking recently enough that she can still remember clearly what it was like to be on the other side. Her opinion of marijuana users was hardly flattering:

    Before I started smoking, I used to spend a lot of time with people who were stoned. I remember once being at a party where I overheard a conversation; a group of people were talking and laughing hysterically, and they thought they were being so clever and so funny. They were talking about the world being divided into happiness pits and sadness pits, and things like that.
        I didn't want to be disdainful, but I knew they were talking nonsense, even though they seemed to think it had real meaning. But now that I also smoke, I realize that they were communicating —on that special plane you use when you're stoned: fast, visual, symbolic. Often, though, what you're saying makes little sense to somebody who isn't also stoned, who may well think you're just being silly and pretentious.


       

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