[This is Part 5 in the Mutinyblogging series - previous posts here, here, here, and here]
"You know, in their silliest moments, the Three Stooges never reached this level of indignity"
- Tom Servo
Recently in Vienna, Antonio Maria Costa, the UN's Drug Czar, reminded us what the old court jesters of Europe now do in the modern world:
"I attended the meeting of the Drug Alliance [DPA] in New Orleans last December, 1200 participants, 1000 lunatics, 200 good people to talk to. The other ones obviously on drugs."
As an individual who is obviously on drugs, I'm amazed at how the people who are obviously not on drugs think they understand the effects of pot better than the people who actually use it.
However, in an effort to close that knowledge gap, a groundbreaking experiment was recently undertaken in the UK, where a brave reporter by the name of Nicky Taylor risked life and limb to get on a level playing field with us potheads. I give her credit for her curiosity, but I feel compelled to explain how she reached this level of indignity:
SUPERSKUNK ME
What Happened When One Woman Smoked Dope Daily for a Month for a BBC Documentary
Just a few puffs on a rolled-up cigarette containing "skunk" - a strong form of cannabis - was all it took to strip Nicky Taylor of all her capabilities and to induce a terrifying combination of paranoia, fear and anxiety.
As the drug took effect, she was rendered incapable of doing anything save look anxiously around her and try to calm her trembling hands.
But Nicky is not just another of the millions of Britons who smoke cannabis regularly. She chose to experiment with the drug as part of a BBC documentary in which she investigated just how damaging smoking different forms of the drug can be - with herself as a guinea pig.
Despite what Mr. Costa desperately wants to believe, not all drug law reformers are on drugs. But even though I'm someone who does fit Costa's profile, I certainly don't feel like a liability to the reform movement. I think I'm just one of the many examples of why pot prohibition is so ridiculous. I smoke pot and it hasn't ruined my life. I tried it in college, found I liked it, started smoking a bit too much in my mid 20s, cut back, and now smoke when I find time between my job, my marriage, my house, and my blogging. I'm pretty much the equivalent of the guy who sips on a glass of scotch a couple nights a week. It hasn't made me lazy. It hasn't made me stupid. It hasn't made me run over a little girl on a bicycle after getting fast food. And it hasn't made me think that everyone in the world should smoke it either.
"Here at the underpants testing ground"
- Mike Nelson
If Nicky Taylor were an average young woman trying pot for the first time, and had a bad experience with it, she'd likely never do it again, or at least wait a while before trying it again. And in fact, Taylor had tried it over 20 years ago and didn't do it again:
"I felt absolutely terrified," recalls Nicky, a divorced mother-of-three, thinking back to her first experience just over a month ago.
"Paranoia set in, and I felt as if I was having a panic attack. At one point, I was simply too frightened to get out of my chair.
"I had a feeling the drug had unlocked some sort of paranoia in my head that would never go away again - I suddenly felt everyone hated me. Without doubt, that was one of the worst moments of my life."
It has been well over 20 years since Nicky first smoked cannabis, which she tried as a student.
But for this investigation she has spent the past month in Amsterdam, where she smoked around a joint of cannabis - which two years ago was downgraded from a class B to a class C drug in Britain - every day.
Controversially, she also allowed herself to be injected with pure THC ( tetrahydrocannabinol ), the active ingredient in cannabis.
Her aim was to discover the true effect cannabis had on her mind and body - and conversely on the millions of Britons who now smoke it regularly.
But now, this intrepid reporter did something that no human being has ever done: smoke pot for the first time in many years, hate it, then do it every night for the next month, including injecting it. In the end, she tells us how dangerous and scary pot is. It's as if Neil Armstrong's first words on the moon were to tell us that we need our umbrellas.
While some will question Nicky's wisdom in committing herself to such an experiment when she is a mother of three young children, there is little doubt that her experiences are both enlightening and cautionary to anyone who might think cannabis is harmless.
At one point during her investigation, scientific tests proved that, thanks to the drug, she had developed a level of psychosis well above that seen in individuals with schizophrenia.
It is estimated that 15 million people in the UK have tried cannabis, and up to 5 million smoke it on a regular basis.
In the UK, cannabis use has increased 1,000 per cent since the Seventies, and according to a recent Unicef report, the UK has the third highest rate of young people smoking cannabis in the Western world.
Yet there is now considerable medical evidence that cannabis causes psychosis. It has also been linked to schizophrenia, and is believed to be behind a string of violent murders.
Once you've stopped laughing at the thought of homicidal potheads, let's have a quick recap here. Since cannabis use has increased 1,000% since the Seventies and cannabis causes psychosis, obviously, there's been a 1,000% increase in the incidence of psychosis since the 70s, right? Wait a second, there hasn't? Hmmm, OK, then the claim that there is "now considerable medical evidence that cannabis causes psychosis" is complete bullshit.
"How dare you insult my knowledge of ancient dentistry"
- Mike Nelson
The relationship between marijuana and psychosis is one of the most common causes of hysteria out there. While marijuana can't actually cause psychosis or schizophrenia, it can certainly exacerbate those problems. Most of the people who have problems with marijuana are those who use it to self medicate for a mental illness. The overwhelming majority of people in this world, however, don't have mental illnesses. That's why marijuana often appears to "cause" psychosis even though the number of people with mental illnesses does not rise at the same pace.
Even mild short-term use can result in depression and sleep disturbances.
"As a mother, I wanted to find out what is in store for my children if they ever try cannabis," says Nicky, who lives in Kidderminster with her children Freya, nine, Millie, eight, and Harry, six.
"Also, there is no doubt that cannabis has got stronger - over the past few years, home-grown cannabis has been genetically altered so that it contains 10 to 15 per cent THC, whereas naturally-grown cannabis contains only 3 to 5 per cent.
"I wanted to know whether there is any truth to the claim made by dope smokers that you can smoke cannabis and carry on with life as normal. And I wanted to find out if the drug really does drive you into madness."
A smart person who was wondering this might have simply tried to find people who smoke marijuana and see if they are able to carry on with life as normal. But Nicky Taylor is evidently not a very smart person. Instead, she did the following:
To conduct her investigation, Nicky spent a month in Amsterdam, working part-time at a coffee shop that sells the drug.
Although she would not be allowed to smoke during her shift, she lit up every day after work.
This would be the equivalent of a middle aged woman who had never had a drink in her life working at a bar, then getting drunk every night after her shift for a month. Her experience might tell you a little bit about alcohol. But it would tell you a whole hell of a lot about that person. With that in mind, let's walk through the results of her grand experiment:
"The first time I smoked cannabis in Amsterdam it contained one of the strongest forms of 'skunk' on sale, and the result was absolutely horrendous," says Nicky.
"At that moment, I felt like pulling the plug on the investigation, packing my bags and heading home to my children, who'd stayed in the UK with my mother. I ended up having a row with my cameraman, too, because I was so irrational and paranoid.
And as I've mentioned before, the fact that she didn't follow through on her plug-pulling is a big reason why the internets have been abuzz with people laughing about her experiment. Someone who has a bad experience with a mind-altering drug doesn't keep doing it. That's why there are nearly 100 million people in the United States who have tried marijuana, but only about 25 million who use it regularly - because large numbers of the people who try it think it sucks and don't do it again.
"You know, if we pretend we know what's going on, this is actually kind of exciting"
- Crow T. Robot
One of the best ways to understand the silliness of marijuana prohibition is to recognize the parallels between pot and alcohol. Both are recreational drugs. Both are consumed by millions of people, young and old. And both cause people to do stupid things when consumed in larger quantities. But there are some differences. For instance, alcohol can kill you, but marijuana is illegal. As we go through this next part, I want to highlight the parallels that should have been more obvious to Ms. Taylor during this experiment.
"It all felt a world away from the feeling of harmless giddiness I'd remembered having from smoking it a little as a student. It hit me that I could be risking my sanity - and it didn't feel worth it."
However, waking the next morning, Nicky's paranoia had dissipated and she decided to carry on. That is not to say she didn't feel any physical and mental after-effects of the drug.
"Although the paranoia had gone, I was left dazed and my mind seemed to be operating much more slowly than it usually does," says Nicky. "I had no motivation and just wanted to go back to bed. I had no idea how anyone could get stoned at night and then function properly the next day."
Over the following week, Nicky smoked different varieties of cannabis on a daily basis. While she did not encounter the same level of paranoia again, her ability to work was nonetheless compromised by the drug's effects.
And, obviously, if someone who never drank alcohol got drunk every night, they'd also have a good chance of being de-motivated and sluggish in the mornings. There's a little secret, though, that people who use both alcohol and marijuana employ in order to avoid this outcome: they consume less. It works beautifully.
"At one point, I went to interview the man who runs Amsterdam's hemp museum after smoking cannabis," says Nicky. "I wanted to appear professional - as any reporter from the BBC would. But this proved to be next to impossible. I was giggly and could hardly keep my mind on what he was saying.
Would a BBC reporter appear professional if they'd shown up to interview someone after having several pints of beer? What was the point of that?
"Embarrassingly, my attention suddenly wandered to a pile of guinea pig bedding which was sitting in the corner of his office, clearly intended for someone's pet.
"I rushed over to it and kept picking it up. I felt as if I'd just discovered the Holy Grail, but the poor man clearly thought I was incredibly odd. He was obviously uncomfortable in my presence, and I was clearly unable to be professional while on the drug."
No shit. When the person who runs a hemp museum is uncomfortable by your presence, it's not because you're stoned, it's because you're a nitwit.
To find out how much her concentration had been compromised, Nicky set herself the task of assembling a flat pack cabinet, first free from and then under the influence of cannabis.
Without having smoked the drug, she found the job straightforward. While stoned however, it was a different matter.
"I took only two puffs of cannabis, but was totally hopeless when it came to assembling the cabinet," she says. I felt so spaced out that I ended up passing out on the sofa with the cabinet still in bits around me. The drug totally destroyed my ability to think."
I should obviously point out again that someone who was just becoming familiar with alcohol intoxication would have a parallel experience after 2-3 beers, but there's more here. If it were me, I wouldn't have had any problem assembling that cabinet - especially if I'd previously assembled it sober. Hell, I wrote much of the Javascript code for these games under the influence. I'm not saying that every person can do that. I'm just saying that I can. And unlike Ms. Taylor, I don't operate from an assumption that marijuana affects everyone the same way.
"Relax, you're in your own room"
- Mike Nelson
As one would expect, a woman forcing herself to use mind-altering drugs even though she keeps having bad experiences with them ends with complete disaster:
Over the course of the four-week investigation, this "mental oblivion", as Nicky describes it, was to become a familiar feeling.
On a daily basis, depending on the strength of cannabis she had smoked, she either spiralled into depression and paranoia or simply passed out and had to go to bed.
"I noticed very quickly that the stronger the variety of cannabis, the more paranoia and depression I experienced," she says.
"Some nights, particularly after smoking 'skunk', which is high in THC, I couldn't sleep at all and would be pacing my room, becoming more and more paranoid and thinking everyone I'd met at the cafe, as well as the BBC crew, was talking about me.
It's often said that paranoia is a side-effect of pot. I'm not really sure if paranoia is the best word for it. It's more like intense self-reflection. Just as Taylor worried about her earlier actions, I often find myself under the influence and replaying a difficult or terrifying situation. This can manifest itself in a sort of hyperactive self-consciousness that can be overwhelming. When one is in public, it can be even worse. And it's why marijuana is often considered an anti-social drug.
But those same effects, the intense self-reflection, the hyperactive thought processes, can also be wonderful for a time when you want to set your mind on something and take it in far more fully than you ever could without. Just as it can elevate your fears, it can also intensify your joys. Again, I can't say that everyone feels this way about their own experience, but that's been mine. And I'm a very rational person who has experienced all of this and discovered that there's no danger to doing it in moderation. Obviously, just as with alcohol, I understand that sitting around and getting stoned all day is the path to a joyless, boring existence. The thought of that is as repulsive to me as it is for an occasional drinker to imagine being drunk at 10am every day.
"But even the weaker varieties rendered me completely useless. I'd often go to bed at 8pm and be totally crashed out until morning. I felt constantly groggy and unmotivated, I couldn't wake up in the mornings and I'd find myself longing to go back to bed all day.
"My motivation was reduced to zero and I felt totally slowed down.
"I'm a very active person, with a mind that normally works at a million miles an hour. I thrive on multi-tasking and getting through my daily 'To do' lists. Yet, with cannabis in my life, I reached the end of every day feeling frustrated that I'd achieved so little.
I'm still trying to figure out how someone who is supposedly so burdened by her daily tasks was able to just sit back in her chair, look up at the ceiling and think to herself, "Maybe I should spend a month in Amsterdam getting stoned every night."
"By the end of a month of smoking cannabis every day, I felt as if my mind had been turned into treacle and nothing made much sense to me any more.
"Even basic things like trying to send emails or talk to people on the phone became a real effort of will and brain power. There is no way I could carry on with the life I lead now, looking after my children, at the same time as smoking cannabis, even if it was just occasionally."
If Nicky's mind seemed to be getting smaller, her waistline was expanding. Over the course of her investigation, she gained half a stone, due to the drug's tendency to bring on cravings for junk food.
"Cannabis triggers a chemical surge in the brain which stimulates the appetite, and in particular makes you crave sweet and salty snacks while you are stoned," says Nicky.
So, pot really makes you hungry? Thank god we got to the bottom of that mystery.
"I could easily get through a couple of packets of biscuits and a huge bag of crisps, and the result was I quickly gained weight.
"I usually go running every day, but the effect of the drug on my lungs meant this was no longer possible either, because cannabis compromises lung function three times as much as ordinary cigarettes.
"And I not only felt groggy - I looked groggy, too. I woke up every morning with puffy eyes and sallow skin. It was as though the drug had destroyed my ability to refresh my body as well as my mind."
Sounds like a hangover.
Once again, Taylor did something that no human being would ever do - unless they had a hair-brained idea for a column (or a movie). Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me showed what happens when a person eats McDonald's every day. He had adverse affects from it - no shit! But anyone who'd even propose making fast food illegal would correctly be seen as a lunatic. Why does it seem so acceptable to some that this woman's experiment passes as a rationale for this drug's illegality?
I don't know whether Nicky Taylor was told that she had to assume this level of willful ignorance as she undertook this experiment. Maybe she truly believed in all the silly things that she's been told over the years about this drug. There's been no shortage of propaganda out there to convince the general public that people like me can't exist - so much so that Taylor's belief in it could certainly be genuine. But however she convinced herself to achieve this level of unbridled idiocy, her biggest mistake was not realizing that while she thought she was exploring the world of marijuana, she never left her own room.
"So in the future, there's absolutely no shame?"
- Crow T. Robot
To better understand why what Taylor did here was such a huge debacle, think about roller coasters for a second. Let's say that you've never ridden a roller coaster before, but you decide you're going to find out what roller coasters are like by riding one every day for a month. And let's say that on the first day, you ride the roller coaster and it scares the living piss out of you. How do you think you're going to feel for the next 24 hours knowing that you have to ride the next roller coaster? You'd be dreading it.
Now, think about how bad the dread would be if you were told that you would be riding increasingly more intense roller coasters, even ones that people don't normally ride on, as a way to determine the effects of roller coasters on people. That would likely drive you nuts out of fear.
Now, forget the roller coasters, and go back to doing the same thing with a mind-altering drug that makes your brain intensify both your joys and your fears. The fact that Nicky Taylor went completely loco during this experiment should not be a surprise to anyone. In fact, any scientist who didn't postulate that this would happen might be better off finding a different line of work.
Once back in the UK, Nicky visited the Institute of Psychiatry, where, for the final stage of her investigation, she took part in a unique experiment.
Scientists there are interested in the effect of the ratio between the drug's two main components - THC and cannabanoid - and the levels of psychosis induced in the user, and are undertaking trials in which volunteers are injected with both pure THC and THC mixed with cannabanoid.
Nicky agreed to do this, too, and following each injection, she underwent a series of psychological tests designed to assess her state of mind.
Even though injecting the drug means it reaches the bloodstream more quickly than if it's smoked, the results were shocking.
"With the mixture of THC and cannabanoid - which is roughly equivalent to the sort of 'grass' people smoked in the Sixties, I felt very giggly and silly," says Nicky.
"I felt groggy afterwards and wouldn't want to feel that way all the time, but there wasn't anything too troubling about the experience.
"The psychological tests indicated that while I was flippant and had lost any sense of care and responsibility, I had not become psychotic."
As someone who wasn't even born until after the days of Woodstock, I can't attest to the difference between the marijuana back then and what exists today. I can imagine that with advancing knowledge of cross-breeding and hydroponics that more potent forms of the plant are far more regularly grown today. But all that really means is that people who don't want to get too stoned just smoke less.
Discussing the difference in potency between strains of marijuana usually ignores the fact that the same differences exist with alcohol. Vodka and whiskey are much more potent forms of alcohol than beer and wine. Trying to drink the same volume of vodka and whiskey as you would of beer will not lead to happy times. Why people don't understand that the same thing is true for marijuana is beyond my comprehension.
However, Nicky's experience with pure THC - more akin to the strong "skunk" favoured by cannabis users today - was far more sinister.
Within minutes of receiving the injection, she was overcome by morbid thoughts.
"I was suddenly gripped by the idea that the scientists conducting the experiment were characters from a horror film who were somehow out to get me," she says.
"I later found myself fantasising about jumping out of a window and crawling away somewhere that I would never be found. I was increasingly agitated and convinced they were trying to trick me in everything they said to me."
Most alarmingly, she also took a test, in the form of a series of questions about her state of mind, in which a score of four points and above indicates significant psychosis of the level seen in people with schizophrenia - she scored 14.
"I couldn't believe it when I saw my result - it was terrifying to think I was experiencing greater psychosis than someone with schizophrenia," says Nicky.
"It proved without doubt that the drug was playing havoc with my mind, and inducing a psychotic state that I would never have reached without it.
Um, no, Ms. Taylor. The drug wasn't playing havoc with your mind. This idiotic experiment was. The reason you thought that the scientists were characters from a horror film was because, in the depths of this complete nonsense, your stoned, sub-conscious mind tapped into an eerily apt analogy. You felt like you were being tricked and you felt the need to run away because you'd allowed yourself to become a guinea pig for an experiment gone horribly awry. As you were under the influence of levels of THC that probably could have put Tommy Chong to sleep, your mind actually had a moment of clarity where you saw this bullshit for what it was. And the drug still got blamed.
Pathetic.
"I was reassured that once the effect of the drug had worn off after a few hours, I would return to normal, but it might be a different case for individuals with a family history of mental illness."
With her investigation now behind her, Nicky is adamant that she will never touch cannabis again. Thankfully, she appears not to have experienced any long-term effects from using the drug.
"I do feel extremely worried for my children's future and will certainly do all I can to ensure that they stay away from the drug," says Nicky.
"Until now, I hadn't really considered cannabis had that much more effect than a bottle of wine might do, but now I know that's far from the truth.
"The drug took me to some dark and frightening places, to which I hope I never return."
Today is 4/20. Ten years ago, that meant nothing. Today it's a full-blown holiday with celebrations at college campuses, in backyards, and in private hangouts across the country and beyond. Since the early days after alcohol prohibition, when Harry Anslinger started referring to cannabis by the Mexican term 'marijuana' and calling it 'the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind,' people who use this drug recreationally have been as misunderstood as the drug itself. Today, the millions of us misunderstood people have responded with our own culture, including a holiday to celebrate how our willingness to question this mountain of bullshit led to an end we certainly don't regret.
We are lawyers, scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers, and just about any other walk of life you can imagine. We continue to be regarded as criminals by both major political parties, being arrested to the tune of 800,000 per year in what our politicians refer to as a "war." In some ways, we parallel political prisoners, people whose lifestyle is deemed criminal over the psychoactive plant that ties us together in the same way that political parties have often been deemed criminal over the radical idea that bound them together. Yet we still have far too many among us whose apathy is uncalled for under these circumstances. The wealthier and more privileged among us often have far too little sympathy for the less fortunate who become victims of the war.
Today is a day when we can celebrate the strength of this movement, but it should also be a day to remember that we continue to fight for legitimacy. And we can look forward to a day when the perceptions of this drug finally line up with its reality; when governments can no longer count on the media to print complete bullshit in support of a prohibition that makes no sense; and when idiots like Nicky Taylor are the ones who are expected to feel shame, and not us.