Sir
I HAVE been following with special interest the discussion about the use or misuse of marijuana, since I used to have an intimate relationship with the drug.
Back in Oslo in 1966, I was among the first inhabitants of our capital to fall in love with the plant. Before then, only a few jazz musicians and the occasional sailor had an experience of it. We were about 20 to 30 pre-hippie youngsters who started smoking hashish-marijuana in the summer of 1966. Beside our common passion for getting stoned, we also had the same musical taste (pop and rock) and long hair, which was rather rare in Norway in those days. The first phase of my pot-smoking was sweeter than strawberry jelly. I had just finished college and was supposed to take a beginners course in psychology at university. However, the fun of getting high was much more preferable to listening to lectures about Pavlov's experiments with German Shepherds. Therefore, you would find me ever more often in the juicy green Castle Park than in the dusty lecture halls, doing just what The Small Faces (a London pop group) sung about in Itchyco Park:
What did you do there?
I got high
What did you touch there?
I touched the sky
This was our number one favourite record that summer. Second came The Animals, from Newcastle: It's my life and I do what I want, third Bob Dylan with his Rainy Day Woman: But I would not feel so all alone - Everybody must get stoned.
It was indeed a lovely summer in Castle Park, but soon came the winter, with its paranoia and its merciless consequences. I was arrested and jailed for seven months for bringing 20 grams of cannabis from Copenhagen to Oslo. So there I was, behind bars, only 21 but already a dangerous criminal, and a menace to society, according to papers and television.
After these seven months, followed 15 years of anxiety in which I misused everything from alcohol to heroin. I also paid frequent visits to different psychiatric clinics. In short, I had become a depressed, unproductive burden to myself, as well as to society.
I'm not saying that the answer to use or misuse of cannabis is to legalise it, since only a lucky few seem to remain able witted despite being dope-heads.
Those thinking that pot smoking is just a healthy way of getting stoned every now and then, are in my opinion living in an illusion that will mess them up sooner rather than later. Myself, I got lucky at 36 when I got in contact with Alcoholics Anonymous, where I met people who could really help me. Since then, (I am 58 now) I lived a sober and relatively productive existence, except for a painful relapse when I arrived in Bulgaria six years ago. At that time, you could buy morphine or any other addictive drugs in most pharmacies all over Bulgaria without a prescription from a doctor. I started buying codeine tablets, deluding myself into thinking that this time I could control my use of the drug. But, "once an addict always an addict" (an AA slogan) and after a few weeks, I was hooked like hell. Now it has become much stricter and you need a doctor's prescription for any stronger drugs, but I'm sure that many of Bulgaria's junkies started out in the pharmacies. I realise I am far from pot smoking now, but the reason for telling my own personal story is to show that strong punishment has hardly ever helped anyone in the rest of Europe to stop abusing drugs, so why should it be so in Bulgaria?
Norway is a prime example, there they have been practicing zero tolerance for almost 40 years, and yet the country is flooded with drugs of all sorts and the number of addicts is the highest in Europe, taking into account the country's low population. In 2001, 350 people died from overdoses in Oslo alone.
No, young people experimenting with drugs, even those who "only" smoke the mild marijuana deserve help, not punishment. Personally, I would recommend Narcotics Anonymous, if this organisation currently operates to assist people in Bulgaria. You'll find it in most big cities in Europe, and it's constantly growing. Its therapy groups are led by former addicts, completely free of charge, and with a philosophy not unlike some lines from another Bob Dylan song:
If you see your neighbour
Carrying something
Go help him with his load
And don't go mistaking paradise
For that home across the road.
- Geir Thomassen
Lovetch
I HAVE been following with special interest the discussion about the use or misuse of marijuana, since I used to have an intimate relationship with the drug.
Back in Oslo in 1966, I was among the first inhabitants of our capital to fall in love with the plant. Before then, only a few jazz musicians and the occasional sailor had an experience of it. We were about 20 to 30 pre-hippie youngsters who started smoking hashish-marijuana in the summer of 1966. Beside our common passion for getting stoned, we also had the same musical taste (pop and rock) and long hair, which was rather rare in Norway in those days. The first phase of my pot-smoking was sweeter than strawberry jelly. I had just finished college and was supposed to take a beginners course in psychology at university. However, the fun of getting high was much more preferable to listening to lectures about Pavlov's experiments with German Shepherds. Therefore, you would find me ever more often in the juicy green Castle Park than in the dusty lecture halls, doing just what The Small Faces (a London pop group) sung about in Itchyco Park:
What did you do there?
I got high
What did you touch there?
I touched the sky
This was our number one favourite record that summer. Second came The Animals, from Newcastle: It's my life and I do what I want, third Bob Dylan with his Rainy Day Woman: But I would not feel so all alone - Everybody must get stoned.
It was indeed a lovely summer in Castle Park, but soon came the winter, with its paranoia and its merciless consequences. I was arrested and jailed for seven months for bringing 20 grams of cannabis from Copenhagen to Oslo. So there I was, behind bars, only 21 but already a dangerous criminal, and a menace to society, according to papers and television.
After these seven months, followed 15 years of anxiety in which I misused everything from alcohol to heroin. I also paid frequent visits to different psychiatric clinics. In short, I had become a depressed, unproductive burden to myself, as well as to society.
I'm not saying that the answer to use or misuse of cannabis is to legalise it, since only a lucky few seem to remain able witted despite being dope-heads.
Those thinking that pot smoking is just a healthy way of getting stoned every now and then, are in my opinion living in an illusion that will mess them up sooner rather than later. Myself, I got lucky at 36 when I got in contact with Alcoholics Anonymous, where I met people who could really help me. Since then, (I am 58 now) I lived a sober and relatively productive existence, except for a painful relapse when I arrived in Bulgaria six years ago. At that time, you could buy morphine or any other addictive drugs in most pharmacies all over Bulgaria without a prescription from a doctor. I started buying codeine tablets, deluding myself into thinking that this time I could control my use of the drug. But, "once an addict always an addict" (an AA slogan) and after a few weeks, I was hooked like hell. Now it has become much stricter and you need a doctor's prescription for any stronger drugs, but I'm sure that many of Bulgaria's junkies started out in the pharmacies. I realise I am far from pot smoking now, but the reason for telling my own personal story is to show that strong punishment has hardly ever helped anyone in the rest of Europe to stop abusing drugs, so why should it be so in Bulgaria?
Norway is a prime example, there they have been practicing zero tolerance for almost 40 years, and yet the country is flooded with drugs of all sorts and the number of addicts is the highest in Europe, taking into account the country's low population. In 2001, 350 people died from overdoses in Oslo alone.
No, young people experimenting with drugs, even those who "only" smoke the mild marijuana deserve help, not punishment. Personally, I would recommend Narcotics Anonymous, if this organisation currently operates to assist people in Bulgaria. You'll find it in most big cities in Europe, and it's constantly growing. Its therapy groups are led by former addicts, completely free of charge, and with a philosophy not unlike some lines from another Bob Dylan song:
If you see your neighbour
Carrying something
Go help him with his load
And don't go mistaking paradise
For that home across the road.
- Geir Thomassen
Lovetch
