Love Notes: Cannabis

Visuals are usually where we first notice the change. Colors become brighter, or perhaps more pronounced. Maybe it’s not the colors, but something’s different. The world feels warmer, richer. The sun was never brighter; the night was never darker. When we’re sober, life looks like a digital photo. When we smoke, life looks like a Polaroid. Lines and borders become more defined; things stand out against their background, almost cartoonish in their definition. The world looks cel-shaded.

Time ceases to be a fluid event, and rather divides into instances unrelated to each other. We find it hard to link events or place them into context. As we walk up the stairs, we cease to remember how we got there, or why. Events are independent; we are what we’re doing. In a sense, we’re “in the moment.” At higher doses, time stutters and lags. When we look around, it seems like we’re skipping frames. Memories bubble up to the surface; we experience the sensation of being somewhere we’ve been, feeling a way we once felt. We’re reminded of places from our childhood, experiences from our past.

Pusher Man

Are you experiencing (a common list of symptoms that usually includes headaches and muscle soreness)? You may be at risk for (a condition we invented), a rare but serious condition affecting the (major organs). If you have (a condition we invented), (a drug we invented) may be able to help. Talk to your doctor about (a drug we invented) today.

Remind me again why we haven’t banned pharmaceutical advertising.

(For a quick overview, check out Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Health Care)

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Donald Byrd – Think Twice || 1974/Stepping into Tomorrow

The War on Drugs

I could write about the war on drugs. I could write about the flawed policy, the scare tactics and misinformation, the bad science, about how it’s a tremendous waste of time, money, resources, and human life.

But why bother, when a search will instantly turn up countless articles, studies, videos, interviews, and testimonials from scientists, historians, politicians, law enforcement, religious leaders and community figures, individuals and organizations who have researched the facts and come to a conclusion that the majority of the population already agrees with.

The thing is, at this point no one should have to write about the war on drugs. The debate is, from any intelligent standpoint, over. We should not be discussing whether or not it should be reformed, we should be discussing how it’s going to be reformed. And yet both debates are largely exempt from any formal political discussion. The disconnect between the will of the people and the stance of the government has never been larger than on this issue.

The war on drugs stands today as a testament both to the power of established authority to suppress truth, and to the power of truth to rise to the surface nonetheless. It is up to this generation, and those following it, to determine which of these forces will ultimately prevail on this issue.

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Paul Simon – How Can You Live In The Northeast || 2006/Surprise

Why Trip?

A human being is a part of a whole, called by us  “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-Albert Einstein

Ask most people if they’ve ever tripped, and they’ll say no. Shrooms, acid, mescaline – no, I’d never do that. I’d never trip. But tripping – hallucinating – is unavoidable. And not only is it unavoidable, it’s a daily occurrence; hallucinations are simply immaterial thoughts strong enough to seem material. Closed-eye-visuals (CEV’s), daydreams, and dreams are all forms of hallucination, and in a sense one could even go so far as to say that all thought manifesting itself in a sensory (audiological, visual, olfactory, etc.) manner is a mild hallucination. An example is thinking of a song – you can “hear” the melody in your head, even though it’s not physically playing. That’s hallucination – perceiving things that are not “there.”

And yet people are afraid to trip. Why? Though we hallucinate daily, our waking hallucinations stay “in the back of our head” – our outer sensory perception, though often dimmed, remains largely unaltered. And dreams, hallucinations which completely alter and replace our senses, are not a part of our “daily life.” It’s not something we experience in waking. When we wake we see things as they are, and when we sleep we experience hallucinations, but they’re cut off from the rest of the world – there’s the period of unconsciousness before and after they occur. And so we separate them from our reality, and live with a dualistic mindset, with the idea that hallucinations are somehow separate from “real life.”

October

Jesse was very high. He told her so; “I’m very high,” he said. Eva nodded her head. Eva was very high, too. Sometimes the leaves held to the trees until the start of November. Not this year; a dry spell had sent them down weeks early, and they lined the roadsides, oak-brown, spinning behind the car as Jesse drove past.  It was windy, and dry leaves skittered across the road with every gust.