HEALTH | CULTURE | LIFE
Why I’m Skeptical of the Marijuana Industry
Microdosing is the safer route, even though it’s not as good for the industry’s bottom line.
I have a love-hate relationship with marijuana.
First came hate, then came love, then came love-hate, which I suppose at this point is more akin to a detached indifference to the whole thing.
No doubt, I believe there are medical benefits to marijuana. I’ve experienced enough of these benefits myself (more on this later).
At the same time, however, I have found my relationship with the drug to be in complete contrast with how THC’s vocal advocates have talked about it.
I’ve been experimenting on-and-off with THC for a few years now, and have collected what I regard to be a valuable set of experiences for understanding the pros and cons of the drug, as well as the various ways our capitalist society (and a weed culture that oftentimes denies any downsides) tries to paint a rose-colored image of what should be properly understood as a psychoactive substance that will have wildly different physiological effects on anyone who uses it.
A psychoactive substance that should be approached, at first, slowly and with caution.
To be fair, a more balanced view of weed is emerging, so perhaps I’m late to the rodeo on this one. But hopefully, my experiences can help someone else struggling to figure what place THC should have — if any — in their lives.
To make a long story short, I’ve come to the conclusion that the far safer and more responsible way to experiment with any substance is to microdose one’s way up to the effective minimum dose that will provide the pros while limiting the cons.
This means taking bare-minimal amounts until that point where you feel “just a tinge” of the drug’s effects — not altogether unlike the buzzed/tipsy feeling one gets from alcohol — and then having the self-restraint to call it quits and see how this minimum dose affects you before upping the ante.
More often than not, it’s enough to get most of the pros without the cons, which is good news for consumers looking to save money, bad news for producers looking for profits and industry growth.
People often dive in headfirst, however, and go right for the high the drug provides without having figured out how they’re personally going to respond to the substance on a physiological level.
And this, I suppose, is where I have beef with weed culture, which for better or worse is quickly becoming subsumed into the larger capitalist culture that characterizes the United States.
We should be skeptical of the approach society takes toward anything that can be turned for a profit — this includes marijuana. There is always too much of a good thing, and in my view, moderation is key.
If fast food companies want you to eat more fast food, then the same is true of dispensaries — it’s better for them if you smoke way more weed than you need to so that you keep going back to spend more on THC.
This is problematic for a number of reasons.
Perhaps the most important one is that THC interacts with a particular physiological pathway — the endocannabinoid system — that we know relatively little about, save that it’s involved in a whole bunch of important bodily functions.
As with any system in the human body, the endocannabinoid system is always trying to maintain homeostasis. But when we consume high doses of THC on a daily basis, we are preventing that system from returning to its “normal” state where it can most efficiently carry out its necessary functions.
This isn’t to say that THC is bad.
Like all pharmacological questions, it’s a question of dose.
More specifically, how much is actually needed to derive benefits while minimizing downsides.
Unfortunately, this is not a conversation that too many THC-heads are interested in.
This is partly understandable.
There’s been such a huge struggle to get this drug legalized (which it should be) that any talk of its potential risks immediately makes people think you are a part of the opposition, that you are just keen to lock people up for years of their life for marijuana possession (which is no doubt, an absurd injustice).
Now, this may come as a bit of a cliche, but as an aspiring writer, I’ve often entertained the wishful notion (however misguided) that psychoactive drugs could act as a sort of “cheat code” that would unlock my hidden creative potential so that I could excel at my chosen craft.
To be sure, both LSD and weed have helped me think about things.
A lot of things.
This is why I’ve kept going back to these two drugs over the past few years. They deserve some credit in helping me see the world a different way, and by extension gaining the confidence I need to go out and try to make my creative mark.
But I have found them to be no substitute for a genuine commitment to self-discipline, practice, and the regular day-in-day-out grind that is necessary to improve any skill.
I’ve experimented a lot with THC because I have found that — when it affects me positively — my inner critic shuts down and I’m able to be more creative and spontaneous.
That’s great for trying to think outside the box.
The problem, however, is that I really do lose focus. My thoughts become more incoherent, and this makes me question the sanity of my own beliefs.
Perhaps unsurprisingly to anyone with common sense, this is a problem that completely disappears when I reduce the dosage of weed.
But what is surprising is how little THC I actually need to experience all of the pros — reduced inhibitions/self-consciousness, more creative spontaneity, etc. — without any of the cons — paranoia and anxiety out the wazoo.
Because here is what always happens to me when I blaze up and get super high, and why I’ve had a hard time figuring out what a healthy relationship to the substance means for me.
At the beginning of the trip, I’m filled with positive emotion — almost manic, even. I feel like I’m on top of the world, that my potential is unbounded, that I’m some sort of secret creative genius, and that it’s only a matter of time before I reveal myself to the world.
I have a whole bunch of interesting and unique thoughts which I frantically jot down in a notebook, hoping to turn into blog posts later.
And then…
An inevitable crash happens. Positivity reverses into negativity, and I find myself spiraling down into a black hole.
My thoughts start making less and less sense. My ego begins to collapse, and rather than feeling on top of the world, I feel crushed beneath it, like an ant getting stomped on by a child who’s a little too happy to be stomping on ants.
As I come out of the high, I look back over all these apparent “insights” I’ve had while intoxicated, and they seem absolutely insane.
No joke — insane.
I have often questioned what the difference is between myself — when I’m high and pacing around my apartment, talking to myself — and homeless people I often see on the street doing the exact same thing. But that’s an observation that deserves a post of its own.
Whatever meaning I was having while experiencing my “insights” evaporates, and I’m left wondering if I’m simply a madman with delusions of grandeur that the weed brings out.
I wonder if — should anyone have heard/seen recordings of me while high-talking — I’d have been strapped into a straightjacket and thrown into a mental asylum for the rest of my life.
And so I’ve been caught in a tug-of-war with marijuana.
On the one hand, I love the feelings it gives me — the true danger of any drug that can become an addiction and an escape from reality.
On the other hand, I know that thoughts I have about the feelings it brings up in me aren’t necessarily true, and I have to take great care not to act on what I experience while high.
One may wonder why I’ve repeated this cycle so much throughout the years.
It’s because I was clinging to the positives of weed — that it unlocks my own spontaneity by reducing my inhibitions, therefore helping me feel more creative (at least when I’m alone, when I’m around others it’s a different story)— while ignoring or making excuses for the downsides — that such feelings are always counterbalanced by the inevitable crash and feelings of worthlessness and apparent insanity.
What I’ve learned, however (and through much self-control in learning how to restrain my weed habits back down to… well, basically once a week) is that my problems arose from simply smoking too much weed.
The thing is, I wasn’t even smoking that much. I was taking one or two hits out of a pipe, and not even big ones at that. This is a dose that most people would consider a normal dose to get “high” so as to experience the fullest effects of weed.
Seasoned THC-heads would call me “baby lungs.” And they wouldn’t be wrong.
When I finally experimented with taking smaller and smaller hits, I discovered that less than half of what I was smoking was still enough to get me high and that if I didn’t want to experience the positive-negative-polarity reversals, then I needed to smoke maybe 10% of what I formerly was, which is just enough to lighten me up but without really altering my “headspace.”
We’re talking a little tiny bit of green in the pipe, and nothing more. It’s gone almost as soon as the flame touches it.
This is good news for my wallet, bad news for the dispensary’s bottom line. And this is why I’ve become a bit more skeptical about all the hype surrounding THC.
Make no mistake, it’s still a psychoactive drug, one that is best approached in cautious, small steps.
Maybe that’s true in your experience, maybe it isn’t.
I’m not here to offer prescriptive absolutes.
Trust yourself before you trust me.
But it’s always a good rule of thumb to question consumption habits in a society in which the desire for profit still drives consumption.
And this is even more true when it comes to our bodies and what we put in them — including our little green friend.