Made a Decision
What About Pot?
Marijuana, also known as pot, weed, reefer, mary-ju-wanna, Mary Jane, dope, grass, head, doobie, bud, ganja, hashish, hash, bhang, burritos verdes, joy smoke, big pillows, and even in some circles as bambalachacha, has been around as an escape hatch for drunks for at least as long as has booze. People drugged on marijuana are said to be “high”, “stoned”, “out of it”, “whacked” or “off their face.”
What amuses me are the AA puppies who think old timers like me don’t know much about pot. We’re obviously too old to know pot isn’t a dangerous drug anymore. After all, it’s now even legal in many places, so it can’t be dangerous.
Alcohol, of course, is also legal and therefore also clearly not dangerous,
unless - of course - one is an alcoholic.
What about our "saintly" AA Founders - surely they didn’t know much about pot or other drugs?
Dr. Bob was a DOCTOR. He had the key to his own pharmacy and he used it all during his drinking days.
Bill W. thought dropping acid might just be the gateway to everyone having a spiritual experience - and he said so.
Often.
Read our AA literature.
Learn what they actually said about it.
Cocaine, believe it or not, has been used by people since the 1400s (some experts say even earlier). Heroin has been with us since the 1800s, ditto Morphine. But when AA began in 1935 no one was using them recreationally. Opium was smoked by a few Beatnik types.
Pot was generally only smoked by a few musicians, actors and comedians until Hippies like me took to it in a big way in the 1960s.
Today, if we choose, we have a smorgasbord of drugs to get high on, including alcohol, pot, nicotine, vaping, coke and crack, heroin, morphine, mescaline, PCB (angel dust), GHB (Georgia Home Boy/Grievious Bodily Harm), khat, kratom, psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, and other hallucinogens.
We also have benzos, fentanyl, ketamine, crystal/meth, ecstasy, roofies, and a plethora of over-the-counter medicines, steroids, synthetic cannabis, prescription opioids and street opioids of many flavours.
The debate continues over kava which some say is addictive, others say not, but we know for sure it causes liver damage. We also know alcoholics who use it seem to really, really like it a lot, which for me is reason enough to steer clear.
Regarding my own pot knowledge gleaned firsthand during the dinosaur age:
I once sold it under the place name of the town (Tucker) where I grew it because my stoner customers always called it: “Tucker Mind Fucker.” I also sold wild-gathered psilocybin (magic mushrooms).
I used to hide all my friends' pot and other drugs from the cops when it was decided that I - a married mother of four small children - appeared to be the most respectable and therefore least likely to be raided.
I kept a nice little stash of pot for nearly a year after I got sober “just in case” this sober gig got too difficult.
I did a lot more than just dance to the tune of “Shot Gun, shoot it for me right now …”
And there’s more (lots more) - but you get the idea.
As it happened, I didn’t smoke any of that first year stash of mine. An out-of-town speaker at my home group one evening began his talk by saying:
“Hi. I’m Tom, and I haven’t had a drink or a mind-altering chemical today …”
And I thought, “Nooooooooooo!!!”
Up until that moment I had never heard about “mind-altering chemicals” in an AA meeting, but I sure knew pot altered mine when I smoked it (or ate it). Tom went on to talk a lot about "other drugs" as part of his drinking story and I went home after the meeting and got rid of my stash.
I’d like to tell you I went home and flushed my bag of weed down the toilet, but I didn’t. I sold it instead in what was to be my last drug deal.
Our 11th A.A. Tradition states: “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.”
It does not say “... at the level of press, radio, films, television, the internet, our smartphones, or any form of social media.”
Why? Because many of these just hadn’t been invented yet.
When our founding members got sober, alcohol was the king of all the bad drugs and was the most available drug of the time. So our third AA Tradition reads: “The Only Requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking. Not: “The only requirement for AA membership is the desire to stop drinking, smoking pot, drugging, and otherwise engaging in risky mind-altering behavior of all kinds."
(I would personally like to see an AA Tradition based on our all using a little common sense over these kinds of things. Fortunately for all concerned I wasn't around when our traditions were written so they are not in the least bit snarky.)
AA approves and produces a lot of helpful brochures about our disease. One of them - The A.A. Member— Medications & Other Drugs - offers both information and personal experience of AA members.
You can look it up online by its title and get a PDF.
But here’s a little of wat it has to say:
From the earliest days of Alcoholics Anonymous it has been clear that many alcoholics have a tendency to become dependent on drugs other than alcohol. There have been tragic incidents of alcoholics who have struggled to achieve sobriety only to develop a serious problem with a different drug. Time and time again, A.A. members have described frightening and sobriety-threatening episodes that could be related to the misuse of medication or other drugs.
It is often true that these substances create dependence as devastating as dependence on alcohol. It is well known that many sedatives have an action in the body similar to the action of alcohol. When these drugs are used without medical supervision, dependence can readily develop.
Many A.A.s who have taken over-the-counter, nonprescription drugs have discovered the alcoholic’s tendency to misuse. Those A.A.s who have used street drugs, ranging from marijuana to heroin, have discovered the alcoholic’s tendency to become dependent on other drugs. The list goes on and will lengthen as new drugs are developed.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a program for alcoholics who seek freedom from alcohol. It is not a program aimed at drug addiction. However, some A.A. members have misused or abused drugs, often as a substitute for alcohol, in such a manner as to threaten the achievement and maintenance of sobriety. This has caused many A.A. members to be concerned with the misuse of drugs.
And from one of the many personal stories in the brochure you’ll find this:
I can see now that when I first came into A.A., the first thing I did was to start telling myself that I was different. “Maybe they can’t smoke grass, but I can.” “What do they know about drugs? They never use them.” And slowly, but surely, the pot pulled me back into the very pit of isolation I had seen briefly beyond.
Like the alcohol, which at first promised to end my isolation, but ultimately turned against me, marijuana led me back into a desolate landscape.
But today, I’m no different and I’m not alone. Today, I am grateful to be sober in A.A., and 19. I am grateful to the members of my group, who listened to me long enough for me to begin again.
Some people can have one or two drinks of booze in an evening and stop drinking. Some people can smoke pot the same way. They just mellow out and don’t need more than a few hits. These people are social drinkers and druggers.
These people are not alcoholics.
Scratch an alcoholic and you’ll find a drug addict. Ethanol, our liquid drug of choice, is found in varied amounts in every single alcoholic beverage, from lightweight wine spritzers to straight dark rum. So using any drug at all - smoking it, popping it, snorting it or shooting it - is the gateway back to eventually drinking it.
I have actually seen people who don't drink, but still smoke pot, pick up an AA sober chip in their "sober birthday" celebrations.
People who continue to get high on any kind of "mind altering chemical" are not sober.
Perhaps these poor souls are among those "constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves."
An alcoholic using drugs might not return to drinking right away, but has done so in every case I've known personally - other than one woman who, when her pot smoking got out of control, quit using it and bolted back to the safety of AA.
(She has since told me giving up pot was harder than giving up booze had been.)
Butch W., one of the best friends I’ve ever had, could never stop smoking pot.
He put together several three-year-sober totally clean and sober times, but eventually gave in and smoked a joint.
It was always pot that took him back to drinking and then to the heavier pharmaceuticals.
My still much-missed friend didn’t live long enough to see the arrival of this century. High on pot, and a mixture of other chemicals, he was at the wheel of the car crash that killed him on New Year’s Eve, 1999, just two city blocks from my house.
Butch W. was 52 years old.
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