Everything Wrong with Today's Youth

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I am the founder of, and lone contributor to, a blog in which smoking weed is a primary focus (to put it lightly). It kind of goes without saying, I like to smoke marijuana.

Anyone who smokes weed often enough has been asked, usually condescendingly, some form of the following question:

• Why do you smoke weed?

The other day a friend asked a similar such question. I smoke weed every day, yet it had been quite a while since the last time I reflected on the actual reasons for my continued use. Since the questioner was respectful and seemed genuinely interested in my answer, I wanted to put some thought into it. When that failed, I promised I would compose a ridiculously thorough response in the form of an article for my blog. Enjoy.

Why I Smoke Weed – Six Reasonably Reasonable Reasons

1. Marijuana is healthier than alcohol.

That weed is less detrimental to our health than alcohol is something our bodies make very apparent. The only thing helping alcohol’s case in this regard is the fact you can’t smoke it. Obviously smoking anything is unhealthy, so understand that I’m not necessarily making the claim that smoking weed is healthier than drinking alcohol, although I do believe that to be the case. But for the sake of clarity, the only statement I’m putting forth as fact right here is that the consumption of marijuana through methods other than smoking is less detrimental to human health than the consumption of alcohol.

First of all, smoking weed rarely, if ever, results in uncontrollable projectile vomiting; drinking alcohol often does. How could our bodies make it any more clear than by literally forcing it out before having the chance to process it? The morning after consuming even a reasonable amount of alcohol involves painful symptoms in the form of a hangover. Comparably, minor lethargy is the worst symptom you’ll experience after a night of getting high on marijuana. But that’s just my own personal reasoning. A lot of factual data exists on the matter.

For instance, the Department of Justice published a report in 1988 which concludes that it is physically impossible to die from an overdose of marijuana. Not theoretically impossible, mind you. But in practice, it would require the consumption of roughly “1,500 pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response,” which is obviously not possible. On the other hand, a single handle of vodka has the potential to kill. The rest of the findings are quite remarkable, yet rarely are they remarked upon. The DoJ report includes some memorable statements, many of which essentially describe marijuana as a wonder-drug:

4. Nearly all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana is not such a substance. There is no record in the extensive medical literature describing a proven, documented cannabis-induced fatality.

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7. Drugs used in medicine are routinely given what is called an LD-50. The LD-50 rating indicates at what dosage fifty percent of test animals receiving a drug will die as a result of drug induced toxicity. A number of researchers have attempted to determine marijuana’s LD-50 rating in test animals, without success. Simply stated, researchers have been unable to give animals enough marijuana to induce death.

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15. In strict medical terms marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume. For example, eating ten raw potatoes can result in a toxic response. By comparison, it is physically impossible to eat enough marijuana to induce death.

16. Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care.

Kind of begs the question, why the fuck are people still being arrested for marijuana related charges? Why is medicinal marijuana not legal on a federal level 25 years after concluding it is basically a magical wonder-drug?

If all that’s not enough, alcohol use damages the brain. Despite contradictory propaganda, marijuana use has never been demonstrated to damage the brain. In fact, studies have only revealed a neuro-protective benefit of marijuana consumption. Kathleen Miles from The Huffington Post reported on a similar study a few months ago.

2. Smoking weed [accidentally] cured my recurring migraines.

This is a funny little story, actually. I started suffering from migraines on an irregular but frequent basis beginning at 11-years-old. I would get at least one a month, but at most three to five in a week. They fucking sucked. The side effects of the only drug I was ever prescribed were only slightly favorable to the migraine itself.

Not long thereafter, while still in high school, they stopped. I don’t even know how much time went by before I noticed. When I did, I chalked it up to a particularly nasty side-effect of puberty and didn’t put much further thought into it.

Fast forward to the summer after graduation. The lifeguarding job for which I was hired required a drug test. Accordingly, I decided to stop smoking weed for a month prior to taking the drug test. You see where I’m going with this. Couldn’t have been more than two weeks that passed before another migraine reared its ugly head. I still didn’t make the connection until a year or so later when I quit smoking for a month by my own volition (a.k.a. what us potheads call ‘tolerance breaks‘). This resulted in another migraine, and was accompanied by the realization that smoking marijuana has to be the reason I don’t get them anymore. Score one for weed!

Procon.org has a great webpage which cites a number of studies pertaining to marijuana’s effect on migraines.

3. Weed smokers are mostly good people.

Obviously this is a matter of personal taste.

For the most part, however, I genuinely like the vast majority of marijuana smokers I’ve met. While I learned the hard way in college that smoking weed doesn’t automatically make a person cool, I would say it’s nevertheless a reliable indicator. At the least, the ratio of people I meet vs. people I like is at misanthropic status compared to the alternative ratio for weed smokers. We tend to be more laid back and understanding. High-fives all around.

4. Marijuana has a positive effect on my temperament.

This is another positive aspect which is subjective in nature, but nevertheless seems rather universal. What I mean is, weed tends to have a calming effect on the smoker. Though, I must once again stress, for the sake of my younger readers, an individual’s affinity toward smoking marijuana is in no way, shape, or form inherently indicative of any qualities they possess – positive or negative.

Having said that, it’s my theory that a person must be some special kind of douche-bag to be capable of harboring negative thoughts and/or feelings while high on marijuana. Furthermore, at least in my experience, smoking weed has the effect of cultivating goodness in good people. Conversely, getting high probably acts similarly upon negative attributes of personality, such as selfishness, jealously, resentment, etc…

Bottom line, getting high on marijuana prevents me from taking things too seriously. Albeit, this doesn’t mean I would laugh in the face of a disastrous fire in the process of destroying my home; on the contrary, a ‘buzz kill’ is often a more sobering experience than sobriety itself.

To put it another way, weed doesn’t just help me to have a more lighthearted disposition, but rather it aides in the accurate evaluation of ever day occurrences, such that I don’t put too much thought on inconsequential events in my life (like an awkward social encounter, or something having to do with money). To me, getting high makes very apparent not merely what’s important on the fundamental human experience level, but also what’s important to me as an individual human navigating through that experience.

5. Marijuana makes food taste better.

Enough said.

6. Marijuana cures hangovers.

I don’t drink much anymore. But when I did, I went hard as a mother-fucker. And indeed, in my oft inebriated stupor, I fell prey, on a number of occasions, to the unwanted sexual advances of the older ladies.

“Why, James,” you’re likely wondering, “what does your history of traumatic bondage style sexual encounters with older women have anything to do with the reasons you smoke weed?”

Answer: Shit like that doesn’t happen when I’m high.

In fact, neither does any of the other embarrassing consequences which always seemed to befall me back in those days. Yet, marijuana was always there to take away the previous night’s residual pain.

I remember when I decided to stop drinking. It was, if my memory serves correct, the morning after urinating on the front door of the neighboring sorority house in college; which, if I must elaborate, involved like five of them deciding to leave through the house’s front door – midstream mind you – nailing me in the face in the process. Let’s just say I did not then proceed to act as though I hadn’t just been urinating – as though my dick wasn’t hanging out my front zipper, staring them in the face – and subsequently threaten to sue them for hitting me with the door… and just take my word for it that I was involved in no such highly specific chain of events.

Anyway, my point is, what did I do the next morning upon awaking in a hungover daze to the realization of what had unfolded the night before? I packed up a few gravity bong hits and made nice with the fine ladies I traumatized with my pissy behavior (so to speak) the night before. They love me now. :)

Okay, I’m not going to pretend you’re interested in any closing statements of mine, just as I’m not going to pretend I want to write them. However, I’m sure your fingers could use a good workout after all that reading. Why not share a reason or two you like getting blazed in the comment section below.

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Featured image credit: Wikimedia Commons user Bokske.