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VARIABLES
In general for marijuana to have effects the user must cooperate with it and facilitate the effects. He must learn to allow himself to respond. There are some persons whose response to marijuana is almost unnoticeable; their consciousness seems not to change. These may be persons who have fears about and strong defenses against losing control, and elements of their feeling, thoughts, or action which threaten their control are strongly rejected. Such personality systems are endangered by marijuana effects and often maintain their structure against these effects. Sometimes they will respond, but what effects are occurring will be blocked from their conscious awareness. The most noticeable effect is often time distortion, indicated by long silences and broken often by a comment that nothing is happening.
The effect of the physical and interpersonal setting on the response to marijuana is strong and usually controls the tone of the experience. The basic fact is that the individual creates the reaction, not the drug. If the person feels under pressure, then the drug will enhance his feeling of stress, and the effect will depend on how the person can deal with the stimulus. If he feels energetic, the drug will enhance his willingness to be active. Some persons become less self- conscious, others more self-conscious. Some move physically, others sit quietly. Some talk, others are silent. Users of marijuana are as individual as they are. For this reason, one must expect different effects to occur from different times and varying physical and interpersonal surroundings. For some the effect is quite different when smoked alone than with other persons, probably because social situations elicit different personality elements and present various pressures.
These variable factors should be noted in considering research and investigation of the effects of marijuana. The plant probably does everything anybody has claimed for it, but only in a situation which enables it to do whatever is claimed for it. One highly respectable philosopher and author, who has explored a variety of chemicals, says that marijuana will take a person as far as LSD. To which I would add, especially if you can go as far as LSD on it. This is not tautologous, for it cannot be said of coffee or orange juice; even if you are ready, coffee will not take you there.
There are further effects of marijuana which relate to complex structures of association, learning, values, intra-personality communication, interpersonal perception, and consciousness. It is difficult to separate the awareness of these effects from the effects of the awareness. It seems best to stop at this point, having discussed what seems verbalizable at present.
Given facilitating conditions, the effects I have described will develop. Sensations are enhanced and clarified: sight, hearing, taste, touch. Time perception changes. Attention becomes more unified, and moves more into preconscious material and the state of pure awareness. The many broad processes of association, such as social meanings, memory images, expectancies, and plans are reduced in number and relevance. Inhibitions and suppressions relax, allowing emotions, thoughts, fantasies, and memories to How more freely. The development and strength of these effects will depend on the individual, the times he has used marijuana, how he has used marijuana, and the environment.
(1) See "Time and the Unconscious" by Marie Bonaparte (1940) for speculation on this problem from the framework of psychoanalysis.
(2) This is the behavior structure described insightfully in Plans and the Structure of Behavior, by George Miller, Eugene Galanter, and Karl Pribram (1960).
(3) An excellent discussion of this and other relations of language to perception is in Semantics and Communication, by John C. Condon (1966, Chapter 3).
(4) Accounts of such experiences can be found in The Drug Experience (Ebin, 61).
(5) Julian B. Rotter (I955) discusses this process in "The Role of the Psychological Situation in Determining the Direction of Human Behavior."
(6) By preconscious processes, I mean a state of mental functioning which goes on outside of conscious attention. Lawrence Kubie describes this foggy territory in Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process ( 1961 ) .
(7) This kind of recall can be obtained by electrical stimulation of the brain. See Wilder Penfield and Larnar Roberts' book Speech and Brain Mechanisms (1959), Chapter 3. |
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