Sebastian Marincolo's Blog: High Perspectives - Posts Tagged "joint"

They really make me nervous sometimes. And they seem to be everywhere. Frantically, they move around in circles, slaves to implemented passions – addicts, manipulated, betrayed, and in self-denial. At six in the morning, the first type of addicts run to get their daily fixes: the classic workaholics.They swarm out of their houses to go and work like maniacs. Some are craving for more power, suppressing the veridical feeling of having slowly turned into corporate marionettes. Others work excessively to satisfy their shopping addiction and buy whatever they have been told makes them more valuable people. Most of them are multiple drug addicts with a long history of abuse: millions are addicted to several caffeine-shots in the morning and afternoon, they need their drug sugar and its instant hit almost hourly, and many of them are additionally addicted to nicotine and the dozens of other psychoactive chemicals in cigarettes which giving them a short high and fighting their inherent depression only for a few minutes before the craving starts all over again. A growing number of people is addicted to alcohol or other depressants, sleeping pills, stimulants like amphetamines or alkaloid like cocaine, pain relievers, or are psychologically dependent on a selective seratonin, noradrenaline or dopamine re-uptake inhibitors or various other new antidepressants. And that is only be the beginning of a much longer list of substance addicts.

A more recent class of addicts are what I like to call the cybersociaholics – those unhealthily obsessed with abundant communication through a multitude of social networking tools. Compulsively, they check their three or four email accounts, then go to their facebook mailboxes and pin walls, chat a little while they constantly look up and respond to their sms'es, viber, or what's app messages on their smart phones, then maybe an occasional glance at their LinkedIn
Naturally, the myriads of cybersocioholics are only a subgroup of the larger group of the internetaholics, just like the cyberpornaholics, cyberpokeraholics, and other cybergameaholics. If their internet activities would not be so compulsively restricted to satisfying their respective addictions, they might stumble over Kimberly Young's website netaddiction.com, which offers treatment services in the categories "Cyberporn/Cybersex, Online Affairs, Online Gambling, Online Gaming, Compulsive Surfing, ebay Addiction."
Other addicts are sticking to a more old school addiction for television or computer games. On TV or in the movie theater they watch action movies or war movies, car races, or wrestling to kick up their adrenaline levels like nothing else in their safe and streamlined 'real' lives does anymore – and so they spend half of the time in simulated virtual realities. They belong to the larger class of virtuaholics, which includes everyone addicted to the ever-growing virtual world, a safe and controllable refuge helping them to escape from reality.Wiiholics are the blessed ones in the group of virtuaholics: to outsiders, they may look ridiculous jerking their limbs around in a weird way, but the industry actually made a nice little concession to their human nature encouraging them to actually move a bit while perceptually hooked up to their virtual reality, whereas the other virtuaholics are usually sitting frozen like dummies, perceptually hooked to screens showing strangely impoverished glowing colors. Most of them seem to have lost touch with their bodies after suppressing the feeling of a self-inflicted paralysis for years. Yet, their bodies come out of a long evolutionary process which predestinated them to run, hunt, and fight, so now they are all starting to feel uncomfortable and become addicted to Ritalin for their attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome. Their doctors are usually part of a "health system" generating money on turning people into prescription drug addicts rather than really improving their health. And so they hand out prescriptions for all kinds of tranquilizers and sleep inducing drugs to force their bodies to keep quiet even after a virtual day in subconscious paralysis on stylish wheelchair. This health system is only a part of a a whole industry that nourishes and satisfies the addictions of its consumers – re-enforced addictions are magnificent money making machines.

Sometimes I feel like I need a break from all these addictions and obsessions around me. I fly to Portugal to play at the Bar do Peixe Ultimate Frisbee beach tournament, chase a plastic disk all day long, breathe fresh air and jump in cool atlantic water. In the evening, I sit down on top of a sand dune of the magnificent Meco Beach, light up a joint, and watch the sunset. The marijuana high takes me in the here-and-now, and my mind frees itself from the daily hustle, needs and plans. I breathe. Time is slowing down. I focus on the immediacy of my experience and feel my deliciously tired body, the warm wind in my face, and smell the salty scent of Atlantic water. In this expanded space, I begin to feel free as if standing on a tower, looking down on my life. My high enables me to perceive patterns in my life and in the lives of others, including our routines, addictions, and obsessions. Vivid memories come up and I can relive long past episodes. Marijuana helps to transport me back into my past.

With my enhanced episodic memory, I mind-race through past experiences, I can see personal developments, stand outside my routines and addictions and identify them as such. And yes, certainly, I realize that many of the addictions like cybersociaholism or virtuaholism described above are my own. But now my mind is flying, and my attention doesn't seem to be drawn away by the usual forces. I feel free like a bird and escape from my addictions. The marijuana high helps to break the routines, interferes with my addictions, helps me to step outside of the box, to make conscious decisions on my future behavior, and to get sudden insights. Associations come quickly. I make up new notions, like "cybersociaholism", based on my enhanced ability for pattern recognition during a high.
Don't get me wrong: surely, the fact that marijuana can be used as an antidote for other addictions does not mean that it cannot be addictive itself for some. Marijuana may be generally much less addictive and less toxic than other legal drugs like alcohol or tobacco, and the addiction may only be psychological, but even "only" a psychological addiction can be destructive for some. So, well, there is a risk of addiction, even if it is comparatively low. But there is also a risk of getting unhealthily addicted to sex, car driving, or social networking, too – that does not mean that all these activities bring us harm and have to be prohibited. All these activities can bring us great advantages, if we know how to make good use of them – and I, like so many others, certainly make good use of marijuana.
Recently I was talking to a middle-aged man at a party and mentioned my marijuana use. He looked at me with this typically controlled, yet still visible "Oh-my-God-a-drug-addict!"- expression and then he said, fully convinced of himself: "I am not using drugs." I couldn't help smiling looking at the cigarette in his left hand, in which he was also holding a glass of Vodka Red Bull. All in all, this guy was holding a cigarette which contains dozens of psychoactive drugs and a drink combining sugar, alcohol, and nicotine, and yet he still was absolutely clueless. Advertising and decades of disinformation campaigns have successfully managed to convinced him and so many others that there is "alcohol, tobacco, and drugs"- presupposing that the former two are something else than psychoactive drugs.
For a few long seconds, I just smiled at him and the many psychoactive drugs in his hand. He still did not get it. And then I had this idea. I would just write an essay. This essay. And the next time a workaholic, alcohol-, sugar-, and caffeine addicted cybersociaholic, virtuaholic, gameaholic or pornaholic would react to my marijuana use that way, I could just hand him something to think about.And, yes, admittedly, when I wrote the essay I was still a little high.