I feel that I can write safely and openly about marijuana now. The police won’t get me (in NY), the devil won’t tempt me, my motivation won’t dwindle and my energy won’t fade. I’ve used this drug—this beautiful gift of nature—for about a decade now. It has treated my body very well, even if I’ve used it irresponsibly at times.
I feel as if I’m writing about a companion, it’s a bit weird. Do I need this companion in my life? No, I can survive just fine without it. Is my life made better and more colorful with this companion by my side? Undoubtedly.
Is this a companion for everyone? Not in the slightest. In this essay, I’ll outline the importance and potential impact of this plant, though many people will never—and some should never—experience that impact firsthand.
The gift of low tolerance
I started using marijuana in a social setting, which, in my case, means I started using it in high quantities. As I’ll discuss later, there’s a big difference between using marijuana socially versus personally.
As I look back upon our time together, I can see that for many years, whenever I was using the drug, I was using too much of it, too frequently. For example, if in an average joint I was consuming anywhere from 40-200mg of THC, the main psychoactive compound in marijuana, and if I was doing that amount at least once a day—frequently more—then that is too much and unnecessary for two reasons.
First, that is probably too frequent to smoke anything, as smoking is one of the most self-harmful habits. Second, I’ve found that my threshold for “getting high” is only about 5mg. After a certain dose of THC, I’m not sure I stand to benefit.
When you take a high dose of THC that frequently, you don’t find your minimum or even ideal tolerance level. You shoot right past it into a euphoria that can turn overwhelming, addicting, or both for many people. But what I’ve discovered recently about my tolerance is how low it is and how it can bottom out so quickly. I could consume over 40mg one day, not consume any the next, and then only consume 5mg the next day and get two solid high experiences. If I continued and only did 5mg the following day, that might be an even more intense high as my body regains its naturally low (thank goodness) sensitivity to psychoactive drugs.
For the majority of the rest of my days, I could see a low-dose, edible relationship with my companion. I only need a little marijuana to enjoy its presence greatly.
I find it a gift that my body is so naturally sensitive to this plant. The benefits, as I’ll discuss, are numerous, and if I only need minor exposure to reap these benefits, I’m one lucky human.
Smoking marijuana socially is one of the best human experiences, though, and the difference between that and personal use is what I’ll touch on next.
Social versus personal use
Before I give an overview of the benefits of taking marijuana, I want to acknowledge the potential negative effects of using this drug. I’ve rarely had “bad trips”, but I’ve definitely experienced the potential for marijuana to cause rather than alleviate anxiety. Other potential negative effects include paranoia, depression, and even vomiting. Two things are true: there are many health- and environment-related reasons not to use marijuana, and there are so many ways the drug can better your health and your environment.
Here’s a list of personal benefits of using marijuana in a healthy dose and frequency: increased energy and motivation, a feeling of warmth and comfort with the surrounding environment, a loving intensity you feel toward others, an appreciation and gratitude of and for both nature and human creation, a horniness and a carnal desire that is also very warm, and an increased inclination to be creative. With higher doses, you can meditate or meditate on some music or art, or you can get lost in a cloud of euphoria and go happily immobile. High doses can be generally cloudy affairs, but they can offer a bit of mental clarity in the long run, as I’ll discuss later.
When using marijuana alone, these benefits can either be turned inward or focused on an outward task or experience. Two great solo high experiences are cooking and eating. There’s the biological drive for sustenance, the desire and ability to be creative, and a feeling of warmth and fullness with your meal. As a sensory bonus, play music in the background.
Another great personal use example is exercise. Working out while high is channeling your increased energy and motivation into healthy stress on your body. Running, walking, stretching, doing calisthenics and playing sports are all great ways to maximize the use of marijuana when alone.
Socially is where marijuana’s benefits can take a billion different directions. A communal THC high is a celebration of life and company and an indulgence in humanity’s greatest inventions like communal meals and performative music.
A conversation high on marijuana is another of humanity’s great experiences. With everything seeming to have a humorous twist, any topic becomes open for ridicule, even those of weight and gravity, because in the end you’ll laugh it off and get it out.
A communal activity like sports or video games while high on marijuana is another good one. Competition turns ridiculous as you either turn it up to see how you match up against others or completely break it down and see what happens when you play on a giggly whim.
Consuming marijuana with other people leads everyone to a place with fewer boundaries, judgments, and preconceived notions. It takes participants to a more fluid place, together. The next time you are with those same people, your relationship is not the same because you took that journey into strange fluidity together, if only for a couple of hours.
The societal potential of marijuana
Besides the potential of mellowing your angry aunt or motivating your overly-cautious friend, marijuana has the ability to change lives and society itself. It’s a deep truth, but here is where I’ll dream a little.
First, there should be communal areas created with the intent of respecting and sharing the drug with others. I don’t mean bars where you swap the alcohol for weed. I’m imagining indoor/outdoor spaces with food and drink, music and art, nature and nurture, conversations and debates, and transportation to make sure people aren’t leaving these places high and getting behind any wheel. You would not be denied entry if you had no interest in consuming the drug, but you would enter the haze with the full knowledge that things will get psychoactive. Boundaries might be pushed, but it’s all in good, fun experimentation.
I would further define these communal areas by the prohibition of other drugs like alcohol or cocaine. Drugs come in families, and these spaces would include the family of drugs that not only lower inhibitions and stimulate the mind, but also widen the scope of possibility, as psychoactive drugs like psilocybin also do. If you want to sip and gab, go to a bar. If you want to smoke and do yoga or sunbathe or make guacamole, come to Marijuana Meadows. Or something like that.
On the topic of edible marijuana, I believe THC can and should be put in our foods more often. I don’t mean putting weed in your Big Mac so that people can get high at the drive-thru. I’m talking about the full commercialization of things like THC butter and oils, packaged so that we know that if I put X amount into this dish, everyone should get about Ymg of THC per serving. These products already exist, but I present two future scenarios of edible marijuana becoming more deeply integrated into our society.
In one scenario, many people could microdose THC in their food every day. It could be with one cup of coffee, for example, that a person gets their daily dose, like a vitamin. The goal is not to get high, but to reap the rewards of this compound slightly and slowly.
In a second scenario, meals with a higher dose of THC per serving could be scheduled at the end of the week, giving new meaning to Sunday dinner. These meals would be family rituals where the scope of conversation is unlocked by marijuana and we can experience communal joy, grief, or celebration in a more humorous, healing, and low-stakes manner.
Imagining marijuana in our food comes with important exceptions. First, and most obvious, THC is not for everyone, especially children. Second, testing would have to be reliable and accessible so that people would never receive a psychoactive dose without knowledge and consent. Third, we don’t yet have good enough research on the effects of microdosing THC, so taking it as in scenario one might amount to nothing. But edible marijuana is the safe alternative to smoking, so its potential for scaling with our food culture should be worth considering.
Finally, I believe marijuana can play a huge role in both physical and mental therapy. I can imagine therapy centers that use THC as an integral companion to one’s path to wellbeing. I can imagine an elderly man, in the care of a medical professional, taking his weekly THC dose before jumping in a pool or going through a strenuous stretching routine. I can imagine a young woman, in the care of a medical professional, taking her weekly THC dose before working through past trauma by writing, talking, or recounting experiences. The benefits of marijuana fit perfectly into the goals of therapy both for the body and the mind.
How marijuana changed my life
Personally and philosophically, I owe a lot to marijuana. That’s no understatement and there was no hesitation in claiming it. The plant and its psychoactive compounds have undoubtedly altered both my life’s trajectory and my outlook on life itself.
Speaking more concretely, marijuana has given me and allowed me to maintain relationships. In life, there are weed-smoking friends and non-weed-smoking friends. With weed-smoking friends, relationships seem to get supercharged as high conversations reveal passions, fears, and desires. With non-weed-smoking friends, marijuana has helped me maintain healthy relationships by providing a steady supply of patience, empathy, and questions. “How have you been?” is an underrated question, one that can lead to healing and one that marijuana makes so much easier to both earnestly pose and respond to.
Speaking more abstractly, marijuana presents you with a high that is quite like a great height from which you can potentially see a greater truth. It is like living in a forest and getting to climb the highest tree so that you can see the landscapes beyond the sheltered one in which you live. There have been many times when I have been high and felt compelled to watch videos on outer space, or the deep ocean, or ancient history, with an eagerness akin to finding buried treasure. YouTube rabbit holes can be very useful sometimes. Marijuana has taken my curious mind and guided it down winding paths of inquiry—or, more aptly, carried it over many mountains of questions.
Once in the midst—or mist—of a nice THC high, thoughts and actions can get cloudy and opaque. You might not know what you’re saying as the words spill out, or you might not know what you’re doing as you go in for a big hug. Marijuana is both the haze and the guide through it. The high might feel confusing, but the insight gained is clear.
I’ll use an example where marijuana has guided me to focus more on a truth or philosophical thought during my day-to-day life.
Getting high with this plant has made me much more socially aware of and focused on my relationship to the world and with other people. This is because, many times, I’ve found myself smoking, becoming highly concerned with how my inner world connects to my outer world, and turning to a nature documentary or philosophy. Afterwards, when I’m sober, I can look back and imagine myself, jaw open, staring at a screen, and giggle, but that glazed look comes from an earnest attempt to appreciate the world, brought on by marijuana. And the truths I’m left with are these: “You’re made of the same material, your bodies are closely related, you’re in many ways connected to past, present, and future, we’ve created such a wonderful, useful world…”
Now, during my sober day-to-day living, I feel that I appreciate the world more than many people do. Marijuana likes to remind you that the world is brutal and unforgiving, yet diverse and beautiful.
Sparking up with friends and family
There are few greater pleasures of human existence than sparking up a marijuana joint with a friend or family member. “The wheels come off the track” is a good phrase for the experience, except in a multitude of different ways.
One way is that conversation flows more like in a meandering river than in a straight tube.
Another way is that concerns blend together rather than get itemized and checked.
A third way is that truth and good vibes can come from any direction, any occurrence.
Smoking marijuana with your inner circle means your boundaries are broken and you share deeply with another human or talk widely about the people of the world.
With some important exceptions, I would highly recommend this experience to the average human, or to any space-faring species that has yet to try our earthly green gift.
Ma(’)s Espacio 