What I Learned From Alcohol: Smoke Marijuana

I was around eight years old when I drank my first beer. My grandpa popped open a frothy can, set it on the table in front of me, smiled at me and left the room. I remember feeling the cold, wet can against the palm of my hand as I wrapped my fingers around it. I don’t remember anything after that—it was a long time ago. My mom remembers though. She said forty-five minutes later a neighbor pulled his truck into the driveway with me sitting on the tailgate. Apparently he found me walking down the street taking my clothes off.

Later in life, in middle and high school, I used to nab alcohol from my parents stash. My parents went for an evening date or to a bible study and I saw them out the door. Mom shouted instructions from the car as dad impatiently reversed out the driveway. I smiled and nodded as I slowly closed the door. Ten minutes later I opened the cupboard doors hiding the alcohol. I didn’t know about how to fix a drink but I wanted to taste it all.

I sat on the floor taking swig after swig of different liquors. Whiskey, vodka and I don’t remember what else. I sometimes mixed vodka with orange juice because I thought I saw it in a movie. It never tasted good. I didn’t like the taste of any of it. Yet for years I did this. Explaining why I felt the need to do this is not a story for here, but it will suffice to say the rebellion and heartache leading me to drink thankfully vanished by the grace of my sweet God.

As an adult I always enjoy drinking. I advocate drinking to my piers and family members. I’m the individual wanting to go out drinking while the others want coffee at Starbucks. Needless to say: I have a lifelong love affair with alcohol.

However, lately I find myself more and more hostile toward alcohol. Tonight I’m eating with a couple friends and I find it hard to stay humble as I judgmentally watch one of my friends sip her martini. A few minutes earlier she judgmentally rolled her eyes at me for a comment made about marijuana and after that I look critically at her. I don’t understand how she can diss marijuana at the same time she gets tipsy on alcohol.

Looking back on the evening, I become more and more angry with the stigma on marijuana. My friend is so, so naive in her judgment. She is exactly the product the government, churches and other organizations want her to be. She bought the lie that stamped across the bud of the marijuana plant is “WICKED,” and a general wrongness is associated with it and anyone who utilizes it.

Society should not be the judge of truth. Society should pursue truth, but don’t be naive thinking society always gets it right. Be a creation of your god, not society. Let who you are be based off what you know is true from your experiences and your investigations and your truths from these things. Don’t let the debated, changing rules of society define you only because your brain receives more textbook input from them.

“They smoke? Oh they must be that kind of person. I would never to that. Break the law? For drugs? Oh my no.”

I have news for individuals saying such things: You probably break the law all the time and in case you didn’t know, the alcoholic beverage you’re sipping on is a drug, it’s just legal.

The material is different in this cartoon but the point is the same. By Dwayne Powell.

My friend drank alcohol before she was 21. She speeds unrepentantly. She even brags about speeding, saying she won’t stop and makes fun of people who don’t speed. This is puzzling to me, because obviously she has such high morals, and yet since speeding endangers not only her life but others lives. Twenty-three percent of drivers involved in fatal crashes were speeding.1 That meant over 11,000 deaths in speeding-related crashes in 2007 alone, and more than 82,000 speeding-related deaths between 2001-2007.2 There are no known deaths associated with marijuana use.

Hmm… I thought my friend was against doing illegal activities? It must only be certain ones in her head, issues cherry picked by society. You never see campaigns against speeding. You never see billboards and TV ads and church sermons against speeding. But you do about marijuana. So of course speeding is the lesser of two evils, because that’s what the society says in this day and age.

Aside from the illegal activities my friend does that puzzle me about her hostility toward weed, she is sipping on a martini. The law stamps a seal of approval on this substance and so she drinks it and sees nothing wrong with it, or else only briefly questions it. Don’t get me wrong, I used to love alcohol and I think martinis taste delicious, but is it worth the approximately 13,000 drunk-driving fatalities every year?3

Is it worth the girl who is slipped something in her drink at the bar? Is it worth all the girls taken advantage of because they are too drunk and tired to say no? Is it worth my friend saying at the end of the night, “Hey, will you watch me driving out of the parking lot to make sure I’m okay to drive?” (after dinner and martinis). Is it worth all the women beaten up by their angry, drunk husbands (two-thirds of victims of intimate partner violence reported alcohol was involved in the incident, and three out of four spouse victims reported alcohol was used by the offender)?4

Granted, there is always a group of people who act irresponsibly with whatever they are given, and I don’t believe the rest of society should baby them. However, the negative number of attributes associated with alcohol is so large the substance abuse cannot be ignored.

Let me tell you something, if those angry husbands were smoking marijuana instead of drinking alcohol, they would be too damn lazy to lay a finger on their wives. If marijuana was legal and alcohol illegal, if we had marijuana cafes instead of bars, people would be in too good a mood to break, steal and kill (4 of 10 offenders self-report using alcohol at the time of the crime—these are just the people admitting to it, not the actual number).5 So why do I want to support a substance that is such a prevalent part of most crime, heartache and death in society? I don’t.

I find it annoying when I can’t find any statistics correlating crime and marijuana use (other than the offenses of possession and dealing). I look and look and never find a credible report or statistics sheet proving marijuana does anything bad. I find crazy, government-run sites full of lies like this crime prevention site for New York: http://www.troopers.state.ny.us/crime_prevention/Drugs/Marijuana/. Notice there is no attribution of the data’s origins. These “facts” seem to have appeared out of thin air. In fact, there are studies to refute almost every claim made on this Web site.

I cannot find one report suggesting marijuana is a menace to society—or a menace at all. Granted, I don’t have access to all the necessary methods of research, but as far as my arms can reach there is no report to be found.

People often say, “Well marijuana is bad for your lungs. You should honor your body and not deliberately harm it.” Well you’re drinking alcohol! That kills the liver! No, not instantly, but over time it kills the liver. You eat burgers and fries and pizza and fried chicken all the time—that’s killing your heart! Don’t sit talking about honoring our bodies as you drink a beer and eat a Whopper. Most activities we participate in harm or potentially harm our body, people only become indignant about marijuana because of all the campaign ads against it making them believe it’s worse than other activities.

So I have decided to stop drinking for awhile. I have begun feeling guilty for every sip of alcohol I take. Why would I want to support this substance when I know there is another substance that can achieve the same atmosphere and has zero of the negative attributes of alcohol. Zero. Zero. Did I tell you it has ZERO of the negative attributes of alcohol?

There is not one known death associated with marijuana. I don’t have to worry about anyone driving drunk if we are smoking marijuana. I don’t have to worry about upchuck the following morning. I don’t have to worry about a hangover. I don’t have to worry about becoming physically addicted. I don’t have to worry about withdraws. I don’t have to miss out on a Friday or Saturday night because I’m passed out or even just tipsy and everything’s too blurry to remember.

Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful my grandpa gave me that cold beer when I was eight. Alcohol taught me to let Yahweh be the judge of people and their deeds, not society or I. Alcohol opened the door to a way of thinking that taught me to be independent and think for myself. Now I’m carrying that lesson onward into the realm of marijuana.

I believe so strongly in the message alcohol taught me, I’m not drinking anymore.

Sources and PDF versions of material:

1 National Center for Statistics and Analysis

2 U.S Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

3 U.S. Department of Justice

4 U.S. Department of Justice

5 U.S. Department of Justice

Web site with facts about alcohol:

http://www.marininstitute.org/alcohol_policy/violence.htm#2