Pot Tripping

4. Pot Tripping
One thing I would recommend to all marijuana users who are attempting to use this drug as a tool for self-exploration – my experience shows that we regular smokers smoke much more than we need to, and often at the wrong places.
For marijuana to be of any effective use in the attempts of self-exploration, we must decide first – is it a social drug, or a private drug? A thing which makes parties more fun, or a thing which aides one in personal reflection? It is of course both, and I believe, that neither forms of taking it should be completely eclipsed by the other. A marijuana smoker for whom the weed is a permanent companion of the day, but who is never alone with himself, who is always talking, or watching TV, or fiddling with the computer – a smoker like this is a frozen soul, which has forgotten itself, a person which has become a machine for eating, watching, shitting, and talking. He wastes his weed, his personal energy, and his mind, and sooner or later the abyss he creates with a lifestyle like this, will catch up. He, who, on the other hand, only uses it alone, rarely, when there is no one else present, either does not trust himself, of what he might do when other people are present, or he doesn’t have close friends. Both versions are sad.
On one hand marijuana helps one to function outside the rules of the official mind script. On the other hand – all everyday drugs: alcohol, sugar, tea, coffee, tobacco, marijuana – do to some extent ‘cloud’ – distorting what little access we have to the universe with our five senses. Meaning – dope can open the mind, only if it used in a certain way, and you are aware of its fundamental limitations. If it is used in an aware way – a tiny glimpse of reality may be caught – or at least the unreality will become more obvious; yet if it used unthinkingly, it simply makes the day more colorful, intense and confused, you are still in the same mind prison, but have for an hour coloured a part of the prison wall with crayons. Good for you. Still better than just rotting away while going through the motions of life and spending all mental energy on brainwashing yourself into buying the act.

Many smokers of marijuana are not aware at all of the full potency of this drug. Do an experiment – choose two days in which you are free from most social responsibilities – and stop everything. Stop marijuana and/or alcohol, and/or cigarettes, and/or coffee… For these two days just drink water. With honey, or lemon, or whatever – just make sure its something completely harmless for your perceptions. These two days should be hell – but if you have an eye for the hidden, you will notice what is hiding behind the withdrawal symptoms - all the negative emotions which you repress by your drugs. You’ll be depressed as shit. And after these two days of detox pass, in the evening of the second day – smoke dope, best of all – alone with yourself. And after you get high, after the marijuana trip unfolds, you will experience a slightly different ‘drug trip’, you may experience yourself in a way which frightens you, you will want to control it, you will want to take some other drug, like a cigarette or a beer or a coke, to help you. And if you don’t do this – if you remain calm, have trust in yourself, remember to breath, to keep the muscles relaxed, and listen honestly to what is going on inside you – and it should be pretty noisy and weird there – if you experience the whole marijuana trip in a clean, clear form, without interfering with it – then you will know why marijuana is not only a great toy, but also an instrument, an efficient tool. Of course you don’t necessarily have to experience an intense and frightening trip – you may simply relax for the first time in years, or achieve mini-enlightenment, or regain a feeling of the body, feel it as an extension of you, not as a container. The point is – the trip will be weird and fruitful.

Social Drug
I believe marijuana to be the perfect drug, for a pleasant time with one’s close friends. It enables one to relax in a manner which is otherwise almost unachievable for us toxic nervous 21st century hysterics. The authentically conscious mind is present to a very small extent in our life, most of the things we experience and do, are products from the outside, social psychic mechanisms, which have become part of us. We perform roles, play games, take our cues of how the situation is developing from the scripts within our minds. At most times we are not really individuals – rather we are possessed – by outside spirits and demons – by the mental programs, which have developed through the years inside our minds. Smoking pot with friends can help a lot to open the mind, to stop following the script, to stop playing roles, to oust at least for a time the outside forces which possess you, to let down the guard. Isn’t that what close friends and loved ones are for? To have someone, in front of whom you do not follow the scripts, to have someone to whom you do not have to lie, when both have let down their guards. When relaxation, and trust which needs no proof are in the house, the party is perfect – it charges you up with energy, instead of sucking you dry. You have created a temporary mini-society, in which humans communicate with humans, not animals with animals or robots with robots.
If, on the other hand, you are stoned all day long, in situations in which you can not be truly relaxed – out on crowded streets, in school, at work, whatever may be the reason – you are wasting yourself. Marijuana is a drug which opens the mind. What is the point of opening your mind – and become therefore very sensitive to outside influence – and then use all available psychic energy, to stay ‘adequate’ in an environment which does not allow you to fully relax and enjoy the high to its fullest extent? To take a drug which helps break down the wall of defenses, and then put yourself into a situation in which you are forced to stay ‘alert’ and ‘defended’?
Some people think it’s very ‘manly’ to be able to control your high. But why want to control high? That’s not a high. That’s just a buzzed low. If you want to ‘stay in control’, if you want to continue to live by the rules of the official reality – pot is not your best choice. Get a prescription for happy pills. They are legal, and they make you ‘calm’ and ‘happy’, without any ‘loss of control’, you are still in the official reality, but with the pain and fear it generates being blocked from your mind. Its people like that – who smoke dope mainly to prove to themselves how cool they are, how well they control themselves – that can’t take magic mushrooms or LSD. Because the bigger hallucinogenic trips aren’t toys – they are truly powerful and the usual little ego games just don’t work. Those who take these more powerful drugs, thinking that this is just another possibility to show off, to prove something to someone, are wasting their time and money, as well as their psychic energy. They will either realize at the very beginning that this isn’t a game and that an enormously powerful trip is coming, and will use all available ego power to completely or partially stop it from unfolding, thus denying themselves the experience which they thought they wanted; or the trip will unfold, beyond their control, and they will be in for horrible hours, in which their hidden fears, confusions, lies, pain, etc., will rise from the mental basement into which they had been foolishly and arrogantly locked up. A glorious relaxed trip with a strong hallucinogenic can only happen if you are aware of what will follow, like ‘my present personality will be altered for a number of hours. I do it out of choice, I will not fight it or try to analyze it while its there’, and best be with a few close friends who have your 100% trust. But back to the point – grass is a perfect social drug, as long as you’re sure that the authorities won’t be coming.

Private Drug
A minor psychedelic like marijuana is all of the sudden not so minor, if you are alone and are trying to enjoy to the full extent the force of the trip, instead of spending it on TV watching, PC game playing, reading, or jerking off. As the trip sets in, thoughts begin to race, forgotten memories come up, emotions are partially freed, tremors in the body may appear, the five senses are magnified. It’s like enlightenment or madness, but weaker, and only for a couple of hours. Certainly, if you are only doing this to prove something to someone, you’ll probably be eating shit to hell and back[1], but if you are genuinely, earnestly trying to shake off the outside programs which have shaped you and your life – after the trip is over you will have learnt and experienced more stuff than you would in years of ‘normal life’. Or maybe ever.
When you are alone with yourself, stoned, bad stuff is sure to emerge – visions, fantasies, fears, weaknesses, ugliness – this bad stuff did not come from the drug. The drug is not a cartridge of information. The information is already inside you. Explore it, even though emotional pain is inevitable, so that you may control it instead of it controlling you.
Of course, one can also spend the force of the trip on listening to music, watching TV, reading a book or jerking off. In all occasions the drug will provide a fuller and more detailed enjoyment of whatever is being enjoyed. Or a fuller and more detailed boredom at what turns out to be a boring loss of time.

When I am high, and when my friends are high – we sometimes manage to regain the innocent eye of the child. Everything is interesting – watching ants crawling on the ground, trees move from the wind, a pedestrian walking past, a commercial poster, the sound of the city (or meadow) in general. Of course this only happens if you are stoned AND relaxed. Marijuana helps you become like a child, which is earnestly interested in the world around it, before this child is twisted and deformed by the social forces around it. Before it becomes one broken mechanical doll in a civilization of broken mechanical dolls. I believe the ‘infantile’ effect of marijuana should not be fought, but used.

In short: marijuana is like a microscope – you can use it to bang on a table to make music, you can use it to reflect sunbeams into people’s faces, or you can use it to investigate the structure of the world. Your choice.
[1] And if it is a strong psychedelic that you take to show off – there may be no coming back from hell.