I’m no prude, my poison is alcohol. I drink in moderation and you’ll never catch me being a staggering drunk or acting stupid because I do so responsibly and never allow myself to get to that state of mind.
However, pot is gaining more and more in legal status and therefore social acceptance is sure to follow, I guess.
I realize it’s a (my) cultural bias to view someone holding a snifter of cognac as something sophisticated while the same person trying to light a bong and going through the comic antics of holding a lung full of smoke as just looking ridiculously juvenile. So yes, if you’re standing there trying to get high on pot, I’m judging you like the Jeff Spicolli looking character you are in my mind’s eye. I’m sorry, but there it is. I said it.
So cases of extreme abuse of either substance aside (nobody likes a sloppy drunk/stoner), is it fair to say that as a rule, having a drink (whatever the venue) is far more accepted socially than standing there blowing a spliff? And will it remain so because smoking pot is just inherently silly looking behaviour?
These things are inherently arbitrary. Not that long ago (hell, in some circles still) smoking a fine cigar was/is considered the height of sophistication (often going together with that snifter of cogniac you mentioned). Smoking is smoking, and I don’t see why smoking pot is any sillier than smoking a cigar (even if, unlike Clinton, you have to inhale with the former ).
Sure, stoners are silly and juvenile … because the stuff was illegal and associated with teenagers and outcast-culture. Imagine if your image of alcohol-users was formed by teens in park-parties.
The social acceptance of alcohol, and rejection of pot, is a direct result of the fact that alcohol is legal and pot is not. It has nothing to do with the way you look while smoking. Cigarette smoking, which looks remarkably similar to smoking a joint, was considered to be cool and sophisticated for decades, and is only now losing some of its glamour because of increasingly harsh anti-smoking laws. Had Prohibition been a success, and remained the law, while pot smoking gained acceptance, we would be talking about how silly and juvenile alcohol drinkers look, and how smoking pot makes you look sophisticated. If the trend toward legalization of pot continues, eventually it will have a much more positive social connotation.
This is all just IMO/IME… but with a rum and coke, I know exactly what’s going to happen, and exactly when I’ve consumed that much. It’s never an accident when I get wasted on alcohol. Smoking pot is a very different matter. I can never be sure where I’m going to end up, I can’t be 100% exactly how much smoke has gotten in my lungs. Even if somebody tells me what the strain is, I have no way of predicting exactly what it’s going to do to me. I don’t worry too much about getting wasted as OD is not a concern.
Perhaps legalization will bring some very pure, standardized product that can have predictable effects. I wouldn’t buy it though.
So, long story short, I think accidentally getting hammered unfortunately is something that just goes along with toking up.
I don’t think it’s inherently silly-looking, it’s just what you’re used to. I don’t smoke but it doesn’t look silly to me. It doesn’t look like anything to me.
I don’t like to get high, whether or not it’s on booze or pot, BUT I do, occasionally, like a glass of wine with a good steak or have a drink of Single Malt Scotch (The Balvenie!) or, in the summer, on a really humid evening, sit on the porch and drink a Dos Equis. I can have one drink and still think clearly. (What’s the old joke, “One drink is all right, two is too many, three is not enough.”) Maybe once every 5 years I’ll leave sobriety on vacation or some house party. But I think 90% of the times I’ve been drunk in my life occurred over a two month period during my freshmen year of college. (Then Dean Wormer scolded me with, "Fat, Drunk and Stupid is no way to go through life, son.)
Years ago, in college, if it was really good dope, I’d get high on just 2 or 3 hits, so pot just serves no purpose to me.
I call that efficiency. What’s wrong with getting high easily and quickly, and how does it serve no purpose?
HMS Irruncible’s experience is also counter to mine. When I used to drink, it was not easy to predict what the effects would be. There were a lot of variables: how much I’d had to eat, how tired or alert I was when I started, whether I’d been drinking the night before, how potent the alcohol or the mixture was. Plus, and this brings me back to Bellhorn, drinking alcohol is cumulative. It takes time to consume even one drink (I was never into chugging or slamming), and often the more I drank, the more I wanted to drink. It was easy to cross the line, and difficult to see it approaching, or know when/how far I’d gone over it.
Conversely, when I smoke cannabis that is legally purchased at a dispensary, I know what I’m getting. I stick to sativas, which make me energetic but not paranoid. If for some reason I do get a reaction I didn’t expect, I know how to compensate for it. And best of all, a couple of hits and I’m set. I don’t have to keep puffing, the way I used to keep sipping, waiting for it to kick in. Once I’m as high as I care to get, I know I’ll get less intoxicated as time goes on, not more. Coming down doesn’t bring me down. And there’s no hangover.
Anyway, it’s not the seventies any more, or even the early nineties. Smoking up doesn’t have to be the focus of the evening. I don’t have a pipe in my hand all night, the way I used to have a glass in my hand. Some people don’t even know I’ve been smoking if they haven’t seen me doing it, so I don’t “look like” anything. Except happy.
I full understand your point of view. I think you have an apples and oranges thing going on.
You picture a grown up with some alcohol and stupid children with some weed. You could paint the same picture of 3 drunk teenagers trying to run a beer bong…ie
Pour in three beers in the funnel, hold it up, one of them sticks the hose in their mouth, open the valve, beer spurts out from their mouth and nose all over the floor, all three collapse in a heap of giggles.
Meanwhile a doctor or lawyer arrives home from work, changes clothes, walks the dog and sits on the back porch, quietly smoking a joint and enjoying a glass of iced tea thinking about how good those steaks are gonna taste with a small buzz and a nice case of the munchies.
At least in my circle of friends you have this switched around. I’ll be 55 next month. I socialize with people 30 - 70 who prefer cannabis to ethanol, or at least treat the two as equals.
Someone who “over indulges” in cannabis (let’s assume it’s possible) falls asleep on my couch; possibly with a pizza crust in his shirt pocket and his hand in his pants. Someone who over indulges in ethanol pukes on my couch, loses consciousness, and potentially winds up in the ER or morgue.
I’m all for legalization, but I can’t stand the smell of pot- so *if *I ever partake, the marijuana will likely have to be an ingredient in, say, a brownie. If I’m eating a brownie, I don’t care whether I look juvenile or not- 'cause, hey, brownie. Give me some Blue Bell vanilla bean icecream and you can call me a child all you want.
Also counter to my experience. In fact, I’ve got a formula that never fails: pot hits = beer squared. 1 hit = pretty much nothing, 2 hits = 4 beers(a bit impaired), 3 hits = 9 beers(screwed up, maybe a bit difficult to walk); 4 hits = 16 beers (blackouts, no attention span, no brain power at all, really. Can’t even operate the Cheetos). Notable difference: As kayaker points out, no vomiting with pot.
My circle of friends is mostly young financial and medical professionals. Alcohol and weed are common place at social gatherings. I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw a bong. The most common method by which weed is smoked is with a bowl. If I hung out with pizza delivery drivers and career fast food workers would bongs be more prevalent? Maybe. There might be something of a division between “adult” and “juvenile” weed smokers when it comes to preferred delivery method.
As has been said, it might be comparable to college kids shotgunning beers and using beer bongs vs. older people preferring to sip on a nice cocktail. The goal of the first is simply to get as messed up as possible in a short period of time.
I feel like I’ve been completely out of touch with pot smokers. You’re a much more erudite lot than I previously gave you credit for. Also, I hear that you don’t mind sharing so that speaks well of you too.
I posted this thread based on the news images of people lined up outside of Colorado’s newly legalized pot stores and thought to myself… hmmm… that is NOT my demographic group. There didn’t appear to be a single lawyer, financier or doctor among them.
If the low end pot smoker is the Jeff Spicolli looking character, the low end alcohol drinker is the toothless unwashed bum. Much lower on the scale. Look around you. See the average person in your socio-economic group? That’s what the average pot smoker AND the average drinker in that group looks like.
Think smoking pot looks ridiculous? Yeah, I think ‘wine tastings’ look ridiculous. Looks pretty damned crude to me to be spitting out perfectly good wine in front of other people. If someone spat on the sidewalk, you’d think they were low class. But here we are, with dressed up hoity-toities spitting out wine in front of each other. What next, wine and cheese parties with a vomit bucket on the side so you can keep going?
).
I call that efficiency. What’s wrong with getting high easily and quickly, and how does it serve no purpose?