Everybody Must Get Stoned

California’s Prop 19, the initiative to regulate, control and tax cannabis, has on this election eve gotten me looking back into my part of the ‘60’s and thinking of my experience with the weed.

I was raised in a working class part of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where alcohol was the main intoxicant the father’s, and a few mothers, used to cope with stress and to escape from the reality of working pretty much without much to show for it other than a mortgage, tuition at a Catholic school for the large number of off-spring and new clothes for Easter Sunday Mass for each and every child.  The fathers would go down the block to Connors Bar at the corner.  It was a wondrous place for us kids:  as we were never allowed to go in there, we couldn’t help but conjure many tales about what went on there.  The interesting thing was that when we did start going to bars, at age 16, we could never go to Connors as the fathers were not to know we were drinking.  Of course they did and at various times a friend or two would be grounded for quite some time.   And when we were of the age when we could enter the sacred hall, well, heaven forbid we go anywhere where the “old men” went. And so as far as I know not a single friend from my home block ever went to Connors.

But before we started the bar hop we would go to our nearby school yard polishing off quart bottles of beer.  We were all of twelve years old when we chugged our first bottles.  Because I looked older than the rest I was selected to take the shopping list and the money and purchase the night’s sport, which I did with pleasure as this was taken by my friends as truly a respected and an honored thing to do.

So, my teen years in the early-mid 1960’s were spent soaking up the pleasures of cheap beer.  And even in my first college, a military school, the adult beverage continued to be beer.  Occasionally, an upper classman would circulate a shopping list for those who wished to participate and he, along with his cohorts, would go for a hero and beer run.  At the time I really wasn’t up for the academics.  Although there were aspects of the military side of the school I did like, I felt I was not yet ready for the advanced learning the college offered.  But my father disagreed and pressured me back into being a college kid again.

Attending my second college I took seriously the administrations of my Physical Education elders in respect of good health and while not exactly swearing off beer, and all other alcohol, I scaled back so much that for all purposes I had sworn an oath.  And then I changed majors to Theatre.  I was in love with radio broadcasting, but the school then did not have a mass media program and I figured that Theatre was close enough.  Besides, I didn’t want to go through the hassle of again changing schools.  And, as it turned out when I came back from summer vacation in 1969, going into my new major, I found some of my classmates had talked the school’s administration into a grant and the purchase of radio broadcast equipment.  Our radio station was born over the Fall semester, and combined with the smell of solder was the pungent aroma of cannabis. 

I recall no one going to classes stoned, although there were not a few of us who after our last class of the day were very happy to sprinkle, roll, lick and light.  Weekends featured parties of music, pumping out from our professional broadcast sound machine, wine out of jugs and pot out of, well, there were some rather unusual pipes along with the usual wrappers.

While I am sure there were not a few who scored their dope from other folks, I pretty much exclusively bought from this one guy who was always around the radio studios.  However, for the ease of sale I had to suffer his cutting the weed with either tobacco or oregano.  But, after a little wine, hey, who cared?  For floating on the chords of our music, with good friends at my shoulders, laughing at everything said and stumbles done, I felt for the first time in my life I belonged.  And this lasted the rest of the academic year.  I had to work summers to make tuition, so I took my leave of this nest of hippies for the hot loading docks of the sugar-house.

Returning to the college in September-that would be of 1970-changes were afoot:  I met the young lady who would eventually be my wife, and the wine and pot party attitude was gone replaced with the kind of cut-throat politics college clubs are noted for. Those hippie fellow travelers of mine had moved on through graduation, the draft or some other activity of unknown origin.  My guy was still there and I resumed our relationship, but it was different:  I just couldn’t stomach being taken advantage of.  And, it didn’t take too long before I left him and left the school for the work-a-day world of network broadcasting.

We have this friend who was quite willing to share anytime he had a good sample.  One evening a couple of years after I left school for the real world, he came over our basement apartment with some really fine grass he said was the strongest he had ever had.  We all sprinkled, rolled, licked and lit up.  I hadn’t had a joint since leaving so I was really wanting to test drive this varietal.  But we hadn't seen our friend in at least a year and we were as anxious to catch up.  Ah, even today I remember the great high, the undulating arms of the soft chair on which I was sitting, the wavy streaks of light circulating around the living room, the punctuated electric guitar riffs.  However the altered reality made concentrated conversation impossible.  In the end, I loved the high; I hated the interference.

From that time on I left marijuana alone, except for one ski trip my wife and I were on with friends and fellow travelers.  The slopes never looked snow white...

And now what to make of Prop 19?  From my point of view, the moderate social use of marijuana can create a conviviality among folks who agree to lightly indulge, and like coffee in our society it can become a bonding agent bringing separate individuals into solidarity one with each other.  Indeed, this moderate social use recommends the passage of Prop 19 as written.  But, I hesitate to give a full-throated support for Prop 19 as written because as written it says nothing about mental health services those who are compulsed to abuse weed will need. 

The one very important thing about the abuse of any substance, including cakes, candies, ice cream-and all things chocolate-is that it is not the substance-marijuana, or Triple Chocolate ice cream-which causes the abuse!  No, it is an underlying psychic disturbance which forces people to search for relieve in any thing available.  People so much in hurt will try anything to rid themselves of the pain even for just a little while.  Such is the first cause of substance abuse.  And an understanding of first causes recommends to me the passage of Prop 19 under the condition put into law that at least fifty-percent of the revenue collected through the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 be dedicated to mental health services which will place in treatment those whose first cause has led to abuse any substance, Oreo’s included.