[420 Girl]

Washington, D.C - I never would have made it this far in graduate school without the aid of marijuana.

Perhaps the title of this column made some people think it would be a cautionary tale. On the contrary, I think my pot smoking has helped smooth out the roughness of a Ph.D. program. And frankly, I think the disturbing issue with a younger generation of graduate students is that they don't toke up enough. Instead many indulge in things far worse, both for them physically and for the humanities.

On one level, marijuana is simply fun, of course. However, it has other worthwhile properties for the abject doctoral student. To begin with, it's probably the only drug that rewards you for using it. Sure, if you smoke cheap pesticide-laden stuff, you'll probably feel crummy the next morning. But if you buy something decent, you'll probably be good to go after a cup of coffee. I've often been at my most productive the day after I've indulged.

I'm an insomniac who averages four to five hours of sleep a night. The best way to deal with a sleeping problem is with regular exercise. But it's nice to have a secret weapon to knock me out on days when I can't make it to the gym. I'm certainly better off than peers who have flirted with Xanax addictions, or who waste their stipends on genuinely worthless stuff like Ambien or Lunesta.

Some might accuse me of minimizing the danger of a substance that is, after all, illegal. But it ain't her*in or coca*ne. You'll never hear rumors that an actor's heart stopped or an actress got scary-thin because he or she was smoking too much pot. For that matter, it ain't alcohol, which is far worse for one's body and mind.

Of course I'm not arguing that one should smoke out every day. In The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Aunt Polly commands Tom to whitewash a fence. Pretending to enjoy it, Tom is able to unload the job on a friend with surprising ease. The narrator then remarks: "If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."

If you feel obliged to get wasted every time you're stressed, then smoking will become a part of Work, and will increase your dissatisfaction with graduate school. But if you use the substance judiciously, marijuana can remind you that "intellectual labor" is really a form of Play, and infinitely preferable to most of the jobs your peers are drudging through.

Hence, I accept Paul Bowles's basic distinction between an alcohol-drinking culture and a cannabis-smoking culture, with the latter encouraging inwardness and creativity. It probably comes as no surprise that I'm a graduate student in the humanities. Literature departments are still influenced by the legacy of Romantic poets and their latter-day heirs, the Beats, who used drugs to imagine alternatives to mainstream society.


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