Alcohol vs. Pot

I looked at the title of this thread but have not read the whole thread because I'm half drunk and stoned.....so I'll just respond to the title "Alcohol versus Pot"......I have been doing field research on exactly this subject for many years...one night I smoke a lot of pot and note the effects....one night I drink a lot of alcohol and note the effects...every third night I smoke a lot of pot 'AND drink a lot of alcohol and note which effect wins out......I had a bunch of findings to report based on empirical evidence, but I forget all of it....and I have to pee.....

For what its worth,

Natalie and I were there at the beginnings of the Hippie Movement in San francisco. Lived in North Beach and consorted with the beatniks of the day. Hung out at City Lights and other now famous dives along the street. We lived in a fourth floor walkup with no electricity, but real gas lights. Leaning out our front window we could see Alcatraz. Nights were spent in coffee houses arguing philosophy and politics. During the day we tried to hustle enough money to pay the rent and buy a bit of food.

Though I was still a serious, practicing Buddhist, I was spending more time with old Wobblies, and beatnik creative types than I was in temple. Times were tough and we were very, very poor. Soup made of catsup and hot water, with crackers from take-out joints for substance. We were give a 25 pound bag of rice by some mob-connected guys I knew from working on the waterfront, and it was our unintended introduction to the micro-biotic diet. I still hate rice. To make ends meet, we shared our apartment with others who were living along the edge. The City decided that the image projected from the raggedy assed beatniks in North Beach wasn't good. To get us to move out so that the more lucrative topless joints (remember Carol Dodda?) could move in they took to beating us up in alleyways.

There was a log to drugs around; Lenny Bruce died of an overdose just up the street. Natalie went to get a hotplate from some people we knew who ran a saloon, and missed being busted by a couple of minutes. The night that the Crystal Palace closed, a person could get a good contact high just walking past the front door. We often hung out around the back doors of the jazz clubs so we could listen to the music without paying the cover charges demanded of the tourist squares. Oh my, the size of some of the joints those jazzmen could wipe out between sets! Even during those very early days crystal meth was pretty common, but acid was just beginning to be known. Billy boroughes' "Junky" was widely discussed, and letters from him praising the hallucinogenics of Meso-America were handed around. It was around that time that I first knew Alan Ginsberg.

Most of that scene broke up and folks began to scatter. Snyder went to Japan before we had a chance to meet. As it happens we eventually met years later in Long Beach and had a nice visit recalling old friends and comparing Buddhist doctrinal ideas. Natalie and I were too poor to beat it out of town, so we moved into a place up near Haight-Ashbury. We couldn't really afford it, but joined with several friends to form one of the first communes up there. These were all creative people, poets, painters, a novelist, and a couple musicians. Most were the products of the middle-class and had pretty good educations. We often sat up all night discussing stuff, and arguing about why the world was so screwed up. We were determined to opt out of the social structure with all of its rules and strictures. We were interested in freedom, FREEDOM. The individual could only realize their full potential by avoiding the controls that society lays down. Take anything from the society, and it owned you. It owned your time and pretty soon you would begin to adjust your thoughts and behavior to conform, and in conformance was slavery.

There was always a large bowl on the kitchen table. It was filled with pot and anyone was welcome to take what they wanted. Folks would come to the commune and put as much grass into the communal bowl as they took out. We drank cheap wine and smoked grass when we felt like it, and didn't when we had other things in mind. Drinking and drugs were there, always present, but they were no big deal. Speed was banned from the commune because people who took it tended to be crazy, and often dangerous. The commune was very communistic in that no one really owned very much in the way of personal property. Hell, most of us competed to see how much we could give away. A lot of people found our lifestyle attractive, and pretty soon we were swamped with strangers wandering in and out.

As time went on the strangers became stranger and stranger. We practically never got rid of a guy called Ziggy. Ziggy was an escaped convict from somewhere down South, had a bad heroin habit and slept on our front steps. Others who ended up living in the commune were almost as bad. At one point we had people living in our closets whose names we never learned. Acid began to become much more common, and DMT was everywhere. Out on the street you couldn't walk all the way to Golden Gate Park without having to fight off beggars and pushers. Little kids from Kansas began showing up, and they were the prey for the criminals and pimps who eventually outnumbered the hippies. Bus tours were being run so that tourists could gawk at the hippies colorful lifestyle. The old neighborhood was ground to death, and one after another of the original folks drifted away.

We drifted away. We moved down to Van Ness and our lives began to get better though we were still crushingly poor. Eventually we got together enough money to move to Mexico where living was cheap enough that I might be able to actually buy paint, canvas and brushes. We got as far as Los Angeles. Our families put the pressure on for us to get married and live "regular lives". We resisted for a little while, but Natalie was pregnant with our oldest son so we gave in and joined the square world.

I got a job with regular hours and regular pay. I actually enrolled so that my studies would result in certifiable degrees that could be translated into a better income. Thirty some odd years later I retired with all of perks and possessions that we so scorned when we were "Flower Power". Some of those folks we once knew are now dead, others are in prison, some are still hippies, but most went on as we did to become productive members of society. We wanted to change the world. We were idealistic. We were often foolish, and our efforts too often ended with negative results.

Those negative results weren't the fault of the drugs and booze we drank. Legalize pot, and I'll again keep a "welcoming bowl" in the entry way. Before I had to give up drinking because of diabetes, I had developed a great fondness for single-malt Islay Scotch. Damn, I wish I could go down to my bar and have a shot right now.

The faults are not in the substances, but in the way we use them or abuse them. No one should ever confuse being high on acid, or pot, or any other of the drugs that our society has so easily developed with the genuine Awakening experience that comes from seeking higher truths than we commonly encounter each day. Satisfaction from doing difficult things, from watching a child learn something new, beats a drunken stupor hollow. It is easy to get caught up in getting high, but when a persons life begins to revolve around intoxication they are in deep, deep trouble.

Really good post, Asherman.

"The Irony Of It All" by The Streets.

Hello, Hello. My names Terry and I'm a law abider
There's nothing I like more than getting fired up on beer
And when the weekends here I to exercise my right to get paralytic and fight
Good bloke fairly
But I get well leery when geezers look at me funny
Bounce 'em round like bunnies
I'm likely to cause mischief
Good clean grief you must believe and I ain't no thief.
Law abiding and all, all legal.
And who cares about my liver when it feels good
Wwhat you need is some real manhood.
Rasher Rasher Barney and Kasha putting peoples backs up.
Public disorder, I'll give you public disorder.
I down eight pints and run all over the place
Spit in the face of an officer
See if that bothers you cause I never broke a law in my life
Someday I'm gonna settle down with a wife
Come on lads lets have another fight

Eh hello. My names Tim and I'm a criminal,
In the eyes of society I need to be in jail
For the choice of herbs I inhale.
This ain't no wholesale operation
Just a few eighths and some Playstations my's vocation
I pose a threat to the nation
And down the station the police hold no patience
Let's talk space and time
I like to get deep sometimes and think about Einstein
And Carl Jung And old Kung Fu movies I like to see
Pass the hydrator please
Yeah I'm floating on thin air.
Going to Amsterdam in the New Year - top gear there
Cause I taker pride in my hobby
Home made bongs using my engineering degree
Dear Leaders, please legalise weed for these reasons.

Like I was saying to him.
I told him: "Top with me and you won't leave."
So I smacked him in the head and downed another Carling
Bada Bada Bing for the lad's night.
Mad fight, his face's a sad sight.
Vodka and Snake Bite.
Going on like a right geez, he's a twat,
Shouldn't have looked at me like that.
Anyway I'm an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I'd be on the front line with em.
Can't stand crime either them hooligans on heroin.
Drugs and criminals those thugs on the penny coloured will be the downfall of society
I've got all the anger pent up inside of me.

You know I don't see why I should be the criminal
How can something with no recorded fatalities be illegal
And how many deaths are there per year from alcohol
I just completed Gran Tourismo on the hardest setting
We pose no threat on my settee
Ooh the pizza's here will someone let him in please
"We didn't order chicken, Not a problem we'll pick it out
I doubt they meant to mess us about
After all we're all adults not louts."
As I was saying, we're friendly peaceful people
We're not the ones out there causing trouble.
We just sit in this hazy bubble with our quarters
Discussing how beautiful Gail Porter is.
MTV, BBC 2, Channel 4 is on until six in the morning.
Then at six in the morning the sun dawns and it's my bedtime.

Causing trouble, your stinking rabble
Boys saying I'm the lad who's spoiling it
You're on drugs it really bugs me when people try and tell me I'm a thug
Just for getting drunk
I like getting drunk
Cause I'm an upstanding citizen
If a war came along I'd be on the front line with em.

Now Terry you're repeating yourself
But that's okay drunk people can't help that.
A chemical reaction inside your brain causes you to forget what you're saying.

What. I know exactly what I'm saying
I'm perfectly sane
You stinking student lameo
Go get a job and stop robbing us of our taxes.

Err, well actually according to research
Government funding for further education pales in insignificance
When compared to how much they spend on repairing
Leery drunk people at the weekend
In casualty wards all over the land.

Why you cheeky little swine come here
I'm gonna batter you. Come here.

I love that song

I've changed my mind, I don't wish I was born 60 years ago.

I wish that I was born a thousand years ago
I wish that I'd sail the darkened seas
On a great big clipper ship
Going from this land here to that
In a sailor's suit and cap
Away from the big city
Where a man can not be free
Of all of the evils of this town
And of himself, and those around
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know
Heeeeeeeeeeeroin, be the death of me...

Whoops, sorry, I broke into song!

You're pretty funny sometimes

Asherman,

That was a great story - thanks for sharing!

Yes, it is one of the subjects I am most interested in, I'm simply off put by the sheer volume of blithering idiots who share this interest and diagnose within this inexact "science" inaccurately based on their meager understandings.

One of my students said it best once. He was a surgeon and was ridiculing the "soft" "science" of psychology. (PS he was a student in an English class, I had nothing medical to teach him).

"A man was beat by his father. Psychology might teach you that he'll beat his son, or that he'll become a passive and perhaps effeminate person. It won't teach you which it is."

In short, psychology can give insight. Too many psychologists think their studies give them the answers.

On the net, discussion of psychology is even more inclusive (due to the amateurs) and includes "I've read a book once", "I once had a class", "I used to go to a shrink" and even "I saw one on TV once."

The end result is even more answers where even mere insight should be questioned.

That's the long version of why I am not going into the psychology of pot right now. It would just be a stage for more amateur shrinks to work their craft. I don't need to throw my amateur shrinkage into the pot.

Psychology can be as scientific as, say, physics, as long as you approach it that way. If you employ rigorous scientific methods to studying human thought (as cognitive psychologists do) or behaviour (as behaviourists do/did), then you're practicing psychology as a science. When it comes to Freud, it really is a "soft science," and Humanistic psychologists even go one step further and deliberately reject any scientific principles and focus on just... well, making stuff up! Inventing theories without testing them.

But what your friend said, "Psychology might teach you that he'll beat his son, or that he'll become a passive and perhaps effeminate person," would be more accurate as "Freud might teach..." or "A psychoanalyst might teach..." Shrinks and psychoanalysis and defence mechanisms (which I think your friend was referring to?) are only a very small part of psychology now. Psychology is becoming much more scientific.

I've no qualm with psychology agrote, just with most of the people who practice whatever it is they practice in its name.

thanks, asherman.

m'kay

I know Diane, every age in history has its downsides. But 00's society seems so ruthless, so impersonal. It's all about the money it seems. I do not wish to become a hippie, smoke pot and live in a squat; I do wish people would be a little bit less focused on money, as it seems in Western society.

Rick,

I second your motion!

But part of what the so-called hippies were reacting to was what appeared to them to be a highly materialistic dominant society -- lawns, fancy kitchen appliances, big American cars. And it's not like the majority of people ducked out on that sort of consumption.

True. I'm not saying we should copy the hippies of the '60's. They pictured an utopia. One which could never exist. But personally, I do think certain values like respect to each other are being pushed away by society nowadays.

Just trying to say that those same values were pushed away by much of society then.

Certain values: yes. Though I do believe that other ideas have evolved because of the '60's (a lot of taboos were broken, like the taboos concerning sex and drugs); I praise the '60's for that. You can not blame the hippies though for the unrespectful society that occurred years later. Yes, they did spread the ideas you should do the things YOU liked. But this was in a positive way. Only when these ideas got mixed by conservative ideas (this is not an attempt to discredit conservative thinking though) did this 'way of thinking' evolve.

I learned this at school.

Blame my teacher if you like.

I am not a conservative but I think that is too easy a shot.
Asherman's post covers a lot of the territory. It's true I think of Asherman as a thoughtful conservative, now, from the posts I've read, and I am probably his opposite, but he described the sequence well.

Some of us weren't quite hippies. I for one was a little older and working when, from my point of view, the tide changed, around 1965, 1966. I never did drop out, but I have sympathy for your attraction to life being not all about money. Too much sympathy, I should have paid more attention to it earlier, if only to be able to subtract it as a concern.