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Marijuana decreases the strength of the automatic memory, expectancy, and anticipation processes; thus the perception of an experience is not surrounded by the usual multitude of past encounters, future possibilities, and potential uses. In contexts requiring action on the basis of expectations and plans, such as driving an automobile, they are available and often with more focused attention. Given a situation not requiring activity or decisions, the penumbra of response patterns, functions, and potentials surrounding experience decreases, and the immediate experience per se is perceived, rather than its position in a pattern of change. This decreases comparison of the present with the past, and again reduces the feeling of duration or passing of time. ("Passing of time" is a curious phrase, because time passing cannot be empirically observed. One may conclude the passage of time by observing changes in experience, but it is not really an inference either. What seems to be described is the mental reviewing of the preceding changes which led up to the present point. Re-running the succession in memory from some point up to the present gives the sensation of passing time. We are aware of events which are different from the ones we now experience but that are connected by physical changes in which we have participated (directly or through observation). This awareness may be "awareness of the passage of time."
In summary, under marijuana, the sense of time is distorted. First, because mental contents and awareness processes which are not connected to time needs or markers are strengthened. These include daydreams, fantasies, event memories, peak experiences, emotions, and the pure awareness state. Second, because goals, anticipations, and expectancies are decreased in prominence, reducing attention given to possible changes in the environment, which decreases awareness of future states. Third, memory of immediate past experience is decreased in strength, which reduces knowledge of change and moves attention to the present. If consciousness is completely passive, and non-time elements fill attention, then the experience seems timeless. If some consciousness processes and associations are maintained time will seem to have slowed, as attention moves among the various contents.
EXPECTANCIES
Both the intensification of sensory experience and the expansion of time are part of an increased attentiveness to immediate experience in contrast to memories of the past or plans for the future. Memories and plans are experienced but only as they arise out of the immediate content and needs of the person's internal and external experience; they do not automatically operate as in normal consciousness. Every action and potential action, in the normal state, is evaluated according to its consequences: what results will follow. Mental processes imagine as many consequences as they have experience to do so, both immediate and long range, testing these consequences against criteria or goals of valued states. The consequences which are most valued control the action. For example, if a person feels angry toward another he may want to insult him verbally. He mentally anticipates the possible consequences of this action, which may include the release and satisfaction of the anger, feelings of masculinity, enhanced self concept of strength, etc., on the positive side, and the anger or disapproval of the other person, loss of self control, fear of his own impulses, what his mother would think of the action, etc. on the negative side. Depending on the person's past experience, his needs and strengths of various values, the action will be taken, modified, or inhibited. Every action a person engages in is surrounded and extended mentally (consciously and unconsciously) by such expectancies, and every situation experienced by a person is responded to by anticipating its potential consequences and relating them to desirable and undesirable conditions. (Of course, the opposite of such action---its inhibition---is also subject to the same processes.) Some of this process is conscious, especially when the situation is new, unfamiliar, very important, or ambiguous, but most of the expectancy and anticipation process is done preconsciously. Normally persons are not aware of the activity which occurs to determine an action; expectancies have become incorporated into automatic responses.
The mind is efficient in making its activities automatic. First an action is consciously made in response to a need or situation. If it is successful (reinforced) it becomes habitual, and is taken automatically without the need of conscious attention, much as driving a car, sewing, tying your shoes, and smoking a cigarette are all composed of large blocks of now automatic actions which once had to be done with conscious attention at every point. Later only the major elements must be controlled with conscious attention, such as changing lanes when driving, searching for an ashtray, etc. How can an action be released without conscious attention? What must happen is that criteria for action and the particular action are connected by the conscious mind; then the process can be made automatically. When the criteria are fulfilled, then the action is made.(2) This suggests that there is some process or energy which releases action but which does not need conscious attention. Similarly, most of the expectancies around experiences are not conscious---only the more important ones or ones which are so complex as not to be automatically used.
Such expectancies and anticipations function to keep behavior consistent, goal directed, and reasonably integrated. They help avoid conflicts within the personality and with the environment, including other persons. They have obvious survival value and undoubtedly are reinforced by our society and our own needs. The function of reinforcement is clear: The reinforcement value of the projected consequences of an action come to affect our decision to take or not to take the action. These expectancies are responses to possible futures, and orient our actions to the future} not the present.
One of the major effects of marijuana is to decrease the strength of these expectancies and anticipations, on both conscious and preconscious levels. Thus in the high state the expectancy processes decrease their influence on behavior. Since these are always oriented to future states, they take attention away from perception of immediate experience and turn it to following imagined states. Thus when attention given to imagined states is reduced, the perception of the present experience will increase in strength or intensity, either because more energy is available for such awareness or because there are fewer processes to attend to, and present experience becomes relatively more predominant in the mental field. This enhancement of immediate experience is reflected in the effects of marijuana on sense data and time perception. Indeed, the decrease in expectancies, which are connected to goals, may be one of the reasons for the change in the awareness of time, since time is perceived in terms of changes, including changes in relation to a potential state of affairs. If the knowledge provided by expectancies is reduced, then the immediate experience will not be seen as a point in time with a future, but more as an event, per se.
The reduction in the strength of expectancies also contributes to the increase in intensity of sensory experience. Objects as well as situations and actions are surrounded by our potential responses to them, such as our past experiences with them, how we might use them, other forms they have taken, how they are made, their qualities in other sense modalities, etc. When we perceive an object, whether a fire in a fireplace, a photograph of a fire, a fire engine, or a fiery speaker, not only are we aware of the object, but also we have incorporated in our awareness these other elements which give structure and meaning to the sense data. Thus we know that the object is a bird cage or a rib cage, and we know its qualities, functions, and potentials. Usually these are keyed to our verbal response, our classification, but they are known non-verbally as well (e.g., we can have emotional responses or motor responses without verbal responses). |
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