Sunday, February 22, 2009

Marijuana is not harmless

Pot smokers hang out with other pot smokers and vinos hang out with other vinos. Left- wingers hang out with other left-wingers and neo-Nazis hang out with other neo-Nazis. A society consists of many different communities, religious, political and social.

Marijuana is not habit forming like nicotine or cocaine but an confirmed pot smoker will still find it almost impossible to give up his pot. Why would he like to give up his pot? I mean, most doctors consider it to be fairly harmless. Well, one reason could be because pot makes it impossible to experience the now clearly. Pot smokers live their life in a haze. It is meaningless to practice meditation if you are stoned or if you have smoked marijuana the past days. Anyway, it is difficult to give up marijuana for someone who has been smoking for many years, whatever reason he may have. Why is that? What makes it so difficult?

I think one reason is that marijuana has a numbing effect on unpleasant emotions, another more important reason is that the pot smoker is loosing his pot smoker identity when he give up his beloved drug. He do not belong to a group anymore. He is expelled, or rather,he has expelled himself. He feels like a wolf without a pack or a bird without a cage. He feels lonely and miss his friends.

It is ,for the same reason, difficult for a neo-liberal to give up his neo-liberalism and for a Catholic to give up his Catholicism. It is difficult to give up cigarettes and it is difficult to give up racism or judgementalism. It is a matter of identity. It is a matter of giving up a mental construction or illusion. The question is: What do you have to give up?
What do you have to realize?