Similar to Stoner but actually about stoners

Are there any books as moving as “Stoner” that are actually about stoners? Something that shows a character get ruined by smoking too much weed/becoming a pothead. Something about the aimless mediocrity of a weed addict? Or even someone who uses it medically but has side effects and questions their usage? Apart from Infinite Jest I haven’t heard of or read anything that deals with marijuana addiction as something tragic rather than inherently hilarious. I’m having a hard time thinking of many realistic depictions of weed addiction in any medium. I’d love something like the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury but, you know, portraying the viewpoint of someone retarded from weed rather than just plain retarded.


I thought Infinite Jest was pretty realistic and balanced , even though you had stuff like people drooling ridiculous amounts during withdrawal it wasn’t like he suggested pot was bad for everybody all the time. Just that certain people can’t handle certain drugs and it’s really difficult to figure out why that is.

I often wonder how much of the deleterious impact weed has on one’s functioning is due to the drug itself versus anxiety and guilt about using it. I wonder if, say, DFW would still be alive and maybe even writing if he had changed his attitude from “weed=dangrous drug” to “self medicating with weed isn’t great for my writing but at least I’m alive.”
I’ve noticed that the people i know who have the biggest problems with smoking weed all come from very socially conservative families who basically threatened to disown them for their use. Meanwhile, even if addicted, the hippe-types I know from pothead families who either think it’s a panacea or at least something which shouldn’t be a source of shame all seem to be fine. Their lives might be mediocre and not going anywhere but they’re happy to smoke and play endless hours of COD.

I don’t think this necessarily has to do with intelligence; I think . I used to be a militant teetotaler as a teen so I guess I’ve always felt some residual guilt over “selling out” by using, and I think the sense of having crossed a Rubicon by smoking at all encouraged me to resign myself to addiction. Not to mention my dad calling me a drug addict the first time he found out I was using, even thouhg it wasn’t out of a control at the time.

Anyway, I think the internal conflict of “am I a loser because of weed or just because I’m a defective human being” is an interesting one. Pic very much related.

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books.google.com/books?id=mFP1Eax2ZNMC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=cocaine no more habit forming than potato chips&source=bl&ots=BlJNWYQQxD&sig=dF84lYgB1UZFc7cULU7dL4J_Wls&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAt8GF-L7NAhUI6WMKHVi6D-UQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=cocaine no more habit forming than potato chips&f=false
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

your diary desu

Chronic City by Johnathan Lethem

Like his other books, lots of strange pseudo-magical happenings with the characters fumbling about just trying to figure out 'what's going on' but in this case all the p.o.i. are basically just stoner buddies that are blazed out of their minds all the time. But they are all thoughtful interesting people with their own talents and weaknesses. Pot isn't presented as a hazard nor as a panacea. It's virtues are highlighted more often than not, but Lethem avoids tub-thumping. It is, in the end, just the thing that facilitates the friendship of these people.

Can't help you pal, but I really identify with

>I used to be a militant teetotaler as a teen so I guess I’ve always felt some residual guilt over “selling out” by using, and I think the sense of having crossed a Rubicon by smoking at all encouraged me to resign myself to addiction.

I'm clean now, but after first experimenting with getting drunk and high and seeing how much fun it was I felt the urge to both experiment with every other drug I could find, and to I guess make up for all the lost time I'd spent sober. It didn't help that my first exposure was during a particularly depressed point of my life. Eventually the lifestyle begun to really take its toll on me and I embraced sobriety again, but now I feel this immense guilt and shame at ever having bothered with all the drugs. I guess it isn't necessarily the drugs themselves, but rather the lifestyle of excess I adopted with regard to them, but the guilt and shame are potent nonetheless.


Again I can't really help you but I wanted to get that off my chest.

> I’d love something like the Benjy section of The Sound and the Fury but, you know, portraying the viewpoint of someone retarded from weed rather than just plain retarded.

Problem is, weed doesn't make you actually retarded, or at least only in certain areas.

I've smoked about 1g every day for two years of my life, and I deeply regret it. But I don't think it has made me retarded or even dumber, just dull. I may have a slightly worse memory as of right now, but it was never too good to begin with.

>I think the internal conflict of “am I a loser because of weed or just because I’m a defective human being” is an interesting one

It is quite obvious though that it's not the usage of weed or any "soft drugs" that trully matter for one's mentality.

It is your relation with those drugs that matter the most.

I actually want to write a short-story about this OP, I've gone through what you are going through and come out the other side. Maybe I have some good insight on the topic.

Problem is, it won't be written in english, if at all.

Literally Infinite Jest.

I've been interested too. Spending more time around people at college has shown me a hell of a lot of addictive behaviors I wouldn't even expect. All of my friends either smoke weed non-stop and can't have fun without being high on something or watch their lives slip away because they spend all their time inside playing games like League. It's shocking.

Literally mentioned literally in the OP.

I literally realized after posting, now feel like literal idiot.

sounds like you have control issues that aren't helped by smoking but that doesn't really have anything to do with it
if you didn't smoke would you be one of those people paranoid over their diet and eating clean?
also there's a huge segment of potheads who act like they're chill but have major anger issues

like first thing first stop thinking of smoking as "using", do you say man I hate that I'm using (caffeinated) tea?

and the answer to your last question is
both

lit'rally

Vineland

Or even Gravity's Rainbow, depending on how you read it.

He made it pretty obvious he's wondering abiut the answers to those questions as well, not accusing weed of being evil. And equating daily smoking to tea is definitely unfair, anyone can see that.

>Not to mention my dad calling me a drug addict the first time he found out I was using
been there man.

>stop thinking of smoking as "using", do you say man I hate that I'm using (caffeinated) tea?
thinking of weed like coffee has actually helped me a lot.
part of the issue with smoking weed is there are societal preconceptions of marijuana users, and for me, as someone raised by a law enforcement officer, it was hard for a long time to separate the truth of marijuana use from the negative stereotypes.

>daily smoking to tea is definitely unfair
maybe, but how is daily smoking any different from daily coffee consumption?
coffee consumption makes you a productive member of a capitalist society. that's the only reason coffee is condoned while marijuana is demonized.

I'm trying to think if I've ever met a girl this hung up over using weed...don't think I have. Is this like some sort of dude manifestation of a similar energy that drives eating disorders in women. Concerns about purity, bodily consumption and all that.
See also the ratios between male and female straight edge teens.

Absolutely not. I've tried both and you're talking out of your ass.
Coffee's effects are miniscule, hardly even noticeable unless you never drink caffeine. You literally just feel less tired, and maybe have to shit.
Weed puts you in a completely different mental state. You are content doing absolutely nothing, and I don't give a shit about this in some "capitalist" production sense, but in the sense that it turns you into a boring fucking person. Somebody that needs a cup of coffee to wake up and somebody that needs a bowl of weed to enjoy themselves are not comparable.

If this is an actual trend, which who knows, but I'd say its because the effects of marijuana tend to run counter to hegemonic masculinity.
Terrence McKenna wrote: "Because of its subliminally psychedelic effect, cannabis, when pursued as a lifestyle, places a person in intuitive contact with less goal-oriented and less competitive behavior patterns."
so if a western man, who's been taught to assert his ego through violence and competition by society, engages in frequent marijuana use, these behaviors are hollowed out, which threatens his identity. thus the neurosis.

>You are content doing absolutely nothing, and I don't give a shit about this in some "capitalist" production sense, but in the sense that it turns you into a boring fucking person
weed doesn't turn you into a boring piece of shit. you might already be a boring piece of shit, and weed brings that out of you, but weed doesn't necessarily make you "content doing absolutely nothing." I read more when stoned, exercise while stoned, socialize when stoned, clean when stoned...

Not very relevant to the larger conversation, but I think you underestimate the effect caffeine has on a lot of people. And there are mild to moderately severe (not compared to say heroin, but headaches interfering with your day etc) physical withdrawal effects for most regular consumers. Also you might be overestimating how strongly weed affects people, it differs.

Interesting. Masculinity sure is a trip.

If we're just giving out anecdotes, I can tell you that I watched my two best friends go from being athletes that loved being outside and hanging out with people to never leaving their room. Every single day they would come home from class, smoke, watch cartoons, and order pizza, and it fucked them up good. Both are now attempting to quit because they acknowledge that they were addicted and they hated how it affected their lives.
But I'd be willing to bet you also don't believe it's possible to be addicted to some harmless plant, right?

idk I'd bet depression plays a large role in situations like this, not saying it isn't also addiction since the two are almost usually comorbid
and maybe addiction is easier to admit (or even notice) and deal with for some people than depression

no, I 100% think people can be addicted to weed and probably am myself. it's really shitty that that's what weed did to your friends, and i feel for them. but again, for me it's akin to a caffeine addiction rather than a heroin addiction.

I wasn't using my personal experience as evidence for a larger trend in marijuana users, I was just trying to point out that there's a large variation within the "stoner" community (if that's even a fucking thing) so it's not true to say that weed "makes you a boring fucking person."

that's a really interesting point... Then again, women don't seem to be as obsessed with weed in general as men, preponderance of female budtenders in pot clinics aside (and aren't they there to appeal to the mostly male marketplace?)

I was diagnosed with OCD and that at first pot brought relief, probably too much relief. The incidence of addiction amongst regular users, is estimated at around 9%, and this is stuff that the U.S. government says. I imagine that some of those people are addicted because they're self-medicating for mental issues but there are probably some people who, for whatever reason, simply have a predisposition to , same way some people are wired to be addicted to video games or gambling or sex. Comorbidity makes a lot of sense but I think being a "pure" addict is also possible for potheads. And I'm sure there are some people whose depression is triggered or exacerbated by excessive use. THere are even people who get denationalization or derealization from smoking and it's hard to tell if it's triggering something or is just not compatible with their chemistry.

Cocaine isn't really "addicting" in the traditional sense either, just "severely habit-forming." There was a Scientific American article (can't find the original but it's cited in many places) where they compare craving cocaine to not being able to stop eating potato chips. The only drugs that are really considered addicting in the traditioanl sense, as far I can figure, are those with actual physical dependence as well as associated addictive behaviors. The most obvious "truly addicting" substances are probably those that can kill you with withdrawal: Benzos, Alcohol, barbiturates, opiates in very rare cases. On the other hand, not everything that causes physical dependence is considered addicting, antidepressants are one example, although I think "discontinuation syndrome" is merely doublespeak for "withdrawal." THere is definitely a political element to what people actually label "addicting."

books.google.com/books?id=mFP1Eax2ZNMC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=cocaine no more habit forming than potato chips&source=bl&ots=BlJNWYQQxD&sig=dF84lYgB1UZFc7cULU7dL4J_Wls&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAt8GF-L7NAhUI6WMKHVi6D-UQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=cocaine no more habit forming than potato chips&f=false

you seem like an overall p cool person.

*depersonalization, not denationalization

Thanks, I hope.

Yeah, it's quite absurd the notion that they would throw away their precious existence to play LoL. Dota2 is much better.

I thought a mental illness might be the underlying issue, but now I don't. I have friends who are currently struggling with weed consumption who are much better "psychologically" than I was when I quit it.

I think it has to do with self-control and self-consciousness, and the absence of guiding values.

To OP: if you are trying to quit, Meditate. Meditate hard, everyday. It's the best way out, tbqh.

Of the 5 biggest potheads I know, 4 are female, and interestingly, I've only ever heard the lone male express reservations about his mass pot-consumption and a desire to quit or at least cut down (even if he's never seriously acted on his reservations). The women seem content to smoke constantly every day, and actually express it as a purely positive habit.

this makes a lot of sense...thanks for sharing. I remember some speech I saw of McKenna's where he said people should smoke only once a week and treat it as a religious ritual. Certainly didn't seem to think that chronic use was a good idea. Also, what other Terrence McKenna stuff is worth reading and what's just crazy?

it's funny because he recommended cannabis as a ritual instead of a habit but he constantly smoked weed himself.
I've only read Food of the Gods which is interesting as an analysis of the relationship between drugs and civilization. I don't really buy the whole stoned ape theory, which takes up a lot of the beginning, but after that it's good.

Horrible explanation, tbqh. Meditation does the same thing but is infinitely more rewarding, without the neurosis part.

Well, the MC of Stephen King's Rage (written under the Richard Bachman pseudonym) fails to get hard after smoking pot.

You don't seem to have suffered many ill effects... why do you regret your usage?

I still use it from time to time, like once a week or something.

It's the daily use that is truly prejudicial. I felt much less "sharp" in every aspect of my life, disconnected from my feelings and sensations, like reality was always kinda veiled. After a while, you get in the habit of using weed for almost everything, to enhance the good and shut down the bad. I got the inexorable sense that I was slowly emptying what made me human in the first place, which to me is my self-consciousness. I didn't become a degenerate, and I didn't damage myself, but I became more hollow.

I regret it because it affected my writing. I don't think it was a physical damage which caused this, I see it rather as a cause of the mentioned "hollowing", and a huge period of absolute laziness.

I don't think using it sparingly is a bad thing, and I think trying can be very good. It was to me, I think I grew as a person after the first few times I smoked it. But the way you build your relation with it is what really matters in the end.

Like most things in life, I now realize.

This. I write better when im drunk or sober, but not when i'm high

I would say this is a delusion but I know several musicians who just get looser and groovier when they drink, even quite a bit, but become completeyl retarded and can't play in time when they're high. Even a guy I knew who was in one of the big five American orchestras...so in some ways can see how some functional alcoholics might be better off than if they were potheads. I guess it all come down to biochemical crapshoots and YMMV.