2. The First Time

So grand a reward, so tiny a sin.
        — Indian proverb [1]

Slow Beginnings

The great majority of smokers speak easily and fondly of their initial experience with marijuana. A number of smokers spoke in terms of two first times: the first time they tried marijuana and the first time they actually got high. It turns out that a surprisingly large number of smokers—perhaps as many as half, perhaps even more—did not get high on their initial attempt. This curious fact is one of the few aspects of marijuana use that has attracted serious thought and attention, although even here there are still unanswered questions.
    The first marijuana experience is rarely ordinary and is seldom forgotten Commonly, the novice smoker either feels nothing unusual, or else becomes extremely stoned, experiencing dramatic and sometimes memorable effects that may never again be equaled in their intensity. Normally, if the first time is pleasant, there will be others in its wake. If there seem to be no effects at all, the novice may be discouraged. Some beginning smokers, however, are actually relieved when nothing happens; this sets them at ease, since they understand that at least no uncontrollable or frightening event is about to take place.
    In their 1968 study of the effects of marijuana, Weil and Zinberg found that "naive" users (subjects who had not tried marijuana prior to the study) did not become subjectively high in a neutral setting and showed only minor changes in measured physical responses to marijuana. One of the naive subjects, upon smoking marijuana for the first time and sensing that it wasn't the placebo, told the experimenters: "I have probably had something but it can't be marijuana because I would be more stoned than this."[2] In fact, the only one of nine naive subjects who did get high during his first attempt was the young man who during the preliminary interviews had shown the most eagerness to try marijuana. In a different study, Erich Goode found that among the respondents to his questionnaire, 41 percent said they did not get high the first time, and another 13 percent weren't sure whether they did or not.[3]
    Not everybody who tries marijuana shows a noticeable response or undergoes a change of consciousness. Some people appear to be completely resistant or immune to marijuana; they don't, as the Jamaicans say, "have the head for it." "It really does happen," says Norman Zinberg. "There are people who refuse to accept or submit to the experience, who just do not metabolize it. The experience is there, but what people do with it is enormously variable."
    It is not known whether or not the inability of some people to feel the effects of marijuana is determined physiologically. Many first-time smokers, consciously or not, simply refuse to let go; marijuana is a sufficiently subtle drug that the user must want to experience it. People who do not feel high after their first experience may well exhibit obvious physical effects, and laboratory studies have shown that volunteers may have red eyes, a dry mouth, and an increased heart rate without actually feeling anything different from their everyday, normal sense of reality.
    Back in 1953, which in terms of marijuana research was still the dark ages, Howard S. Becker, the sociologist, published an essay entitled "Becoming a Marihuana User"; it has long enjoyed the status of a classic, not only among marijuana researchers but in general sociology as well.[4] Becker's essay is important because it suggests a complete and compelling answer to the intriguing question of why so many marijuana smokers do not get high on their first attempt.
    Becker argues that this may be because most people have to learn to use marijuana, and he outlines a three-step process by which this education occurs. The first phase is merely mechanical and involves learning the technique of inhaling the smoke. A joint, after all, is not smoked like a cigarette; marijuana smoke is most effective when held in the lungs for as long as possible. This can be difficult, initially, for the smoker of tobacco cigarettes to master, and almost impossible for the nonsmoker. Mezz Mezzrow, a white jazz musician whose book Really the Blues tells a great deal about marijuana use among American musicians between the wars, recalls that even he, the most celebrated smoker of his era, failed to get high the first time he tried:

I didn't feel a thing and I told him so. "Do you know one thing?" he said. "You ain't even smokin' it right. You got to hold that muggle so that it barely touches your lips, see, then draw in air around it. Say tfff, tfff, only breathe in when you say it. Then don't blow it out right away, you got to give the stuff a chance."[5]

    Since Mezzrow's time, and especially during the 1970S, there have been several new developments in the technology of smoking paraphernalia that have made the task of inhaling the smoke considerably easier. The most popular alternative to the marijuana cigarette is a water-cooled pipe known as a bong, which originated in Thailand two centuries ago. The bong allows the user to inhale smoke that may be cooled by ice cubes or tempered by hot water, or even both at once. In addition, there is always the option of eating marijuana, especially in baked goods, but this is more talked about than done. Among veteran smokers, the hand-rolled joint still prevails.
    After the new user has mastered the proper smoking technique, he must move on to the second step in Becker's scheme, which is to perceive and experience the effects of the drug. That these effects may already be present in the novice smoker is irrelevant unless and until they have been identified and recognized. "The user must be able to point them out to himself and consciously connect them with his having smoked marijuana before he can have this experience," writes Becker. "Otherwise, regardless of the actual effect produced, he considers that the drug has no effect on him."[6]
    The new user's ability to make this connection depends, as Becker sees it, on his having "faith (developed from observations of users who do get high) that the drug actually will produce some new experience" and on his willingness to continue trying it until it does.[7] But many first-time smokers, unaware of the complexity of this seemingly simple process, lack the patience to wait for the new experience to manifest itself and, more important, lack the knowledge even that patience is required. And so, not having undergone any observable changes on the first or second attempt, many would-be smokers assume that there is nothing in it for them and wonder, in some cases, if there is anything there at all. Presumably, there are several million Americans who have tried marijuana without experiencing any effect and who therefore believe themselves, incorrectly, to be immune to it. Indeed, many probably suspect that the whole enterprise is something of a hoax.
    Becker's third and final step sounds at first a bit obvious: the user must learn to enjoy the effects he has just learned to recognize. Indeed, for all of the attendant pleasures described by its adherents, being high on marijuana is not intrinsically enjoyable for everyone, involving as it does the shock of another consciousness, frequent disorientation of time and space, occasional awareness of unconscious truths and processes that might easier be left unnoticed, and various physical discomforts such as hunger, fatigue, and dryness of the mouth. To many novice smokers, these annoyances may be more than enough to convince them that marijuana is considerably overrated.
    While Becker's article represents the most complete answer to the question of why so many first-time users fail to get high, the question is still open. In part, the answer may have to do with the uniqueness of marijuana, whose effects are not directly comparable to anything else in the life of the novice smoker. The most common point of reference, naturally, is alcohol, and the person familiar with that form of intoxication may try marijuana and wait in vain for a fairly concrete assault upon the senses, all the while remaining oblivious to the more subtle effects of cannabis.
    Another possibility, according to some researchers, is that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, is changed by an enzyme in the liver into the metabolite known as 11-hydroxy delta-9-THC; it is this metabolite, some scientists believe, rather than "raw" THC that causes the high. Since it is normally present in the body in only minute quantities, several smoking sessions may be required for the liver to start producing sufficient quantities to affect the user.