Thinking and Insights

The effect of marijuana on thinking and mental performance is, not surprisingly, a controversial subject. Some experts and a few smokers believe that cannabis has a detrimental effect on cognitive functioning, but many users insist that the opposite is true, that being high can actually enhance the range and clarity of their thoughts. Indeed, in the Boston University study, Weil and Zinberg found that, after they had smoked, regular users actually improved their scores on two of the tests measuring cognitive skills.
    Most smokers agree that stoned thinking is different from regular thinking. More than half of Tart's sample reported that, stoned, they were sometimes able to think through a problem without some of the usual intermediate steps required to solve it.[11] One smoker has compared stoned thinking to the moves of the knight on a chess-board, as opposed to the direct moves of the rook or bishop.[12]
    In The Natural Mind, Andrew Weil points to three characteristics that mark stoned thinking: first, an acceptance of the intuitive as well as the rational intellectual functions; second, the acceptance of the ambivalent nature of things, and a tolerance for contradictions and inconsistencies. The third characteristic of stoned thinking, according to Weil, is the "experience of infinity in its positive aspects," although this last effect is more likely to occur with the psychedelic drugs than with marijuana.[13]
    Weil contrasts stoned thinking with straight thinking, which, he says, depends upon the intellect and the senses, and their perception of reality. Straight thinking relies on rules, appearances, outward forms, a tendency to see the differences between things rather than their similarities, and finally, a tendency toward negative thinking, including doubt, pessimism, and even despair. Bureaucracies are the incarnation of straight thinking taken to its logical extreme, preoccupied with rules and adhering to such concepts as "we've always done it this way," or its converse, "that simply can't be done."[14]
    For its part, stoned thinking consistently requires a sense of humor to deal with the inevitable distortions that follow in its wake. Karl and Martha speak of a process they call an alternition, which occurs, they say, when an initial fact about a person, place or event is misunderstood, resulting in various incorrect conclusions. While alternitions do not necessarily occur more often with marijuana, they are frequent enough that most smokers are familiar with them.
    For example, Martha recalls when a group of friends came over to their house, and she overheard somebody calling Karl "Pumpkin," which was her nickname for him. Somehow, being stoned, the group got the idea that "Pumpkin" was the name of the cat, and they spent half an hour trying to understand why. On another occasion, Karl was at a party and was under the impression that the man on his left was a psychiatrist. Throughout the entire evening, the man remained silent, pensively pulling at his beard. Karl became increasingly anxious about what the man was thinking. His anxiety was relieved when, as the party was ending, the man suddenly turned to him—and tried to sell him insurance.
    Murray and Judy experienced a different kind of alternition one evening in a Boston restaurant. They were both stoned, and as the waiter handed them the menu, Judy automatically handed him her coat, thinking for a moment that he was a butler. A few moments later, another waiter walked by and brushed against Murray, who suddenly whirled around to confront his attacker. These incidents were isolated and momentary, but they required some quick adjustment. "I felt like I was at some fancy dinner," recalls Judy, "while my husband evidently thought he was in combat."
    A more common effect of marijuana on the mind is that users find ideas flowing more easily when they are stoned. David elaborates:

When I'm high, the ideas just keep on coming. Sometimes I wonder whether marijuana actually creates these ideas—or whether, perhaps, it functions more like a magnet, drawing together the various iron filings of thought from different parts of my mind (and perhaps elsewhere) and bringing them together at the same time and place. If this were true, though, it would mean that there is only a finite number of ideas within us, and with marijuana they are simply used up more quickly; I thought of this idea, in fact, when I was stoned.