On Being Stoned

[Wilbur]

On Being Stoned
Charles T. Tart, Ph. D.
Chapter 1. Marijuana

ONE OF THE MOST persistent and unusual aspects of human behavior, observable in all cultures and through all of history, is man's dissatisfaction with his ordinary state of consciousness and the consequent development of innumerable methods for altering it. Our normal pattern of thought and feeling, useful in many ways, never seems to be enough for some people.
The reasons for this search for better states of consciousness are many, ranging from desires for greater knowledge to religious, hedonistic, and power motives. The belief that our ordinary state of consciousness is of only utilitarian value and not suitable for insights into basic questions about the meaning of life has been one of the most important motives. Some men have been successful in achieving higher states of consciousness; others have failed. Techniques have been innumerable: religious ceremonies, meditation, hypnosis, self-hypnosis, asceticism, fasting, dancing, yoga exercises, and drugs, to name a few. Some of the men who have succeeded in altering their state of consciousness, such as the Buddha, are revered by hundreds of millions of people. Others have been outcasts of society or considered insane because their views were too different from those of their contemporaries. Still others have gone truly insane in the course of their search.
Our scientific understanding of altered states of consciousness is minuscule in comparison with what we do not know and the importance of these states. (For a survey of the scientific literature on them, see Tart, 1969.)
Drugs have been an important means of inducing altered states of consciousness throughout history. Cultures have embraced or rejected this means. Proponents have touted it as the shortcut to enlightenment, while critics, both ordinary men and those considered spiritual giants, have called it an escape, a pseudo-enlightenment.
Our culture today is one of the most drug-oriented cultures in history; we go by the millions to our doctor (or our dealer) for pills to pep us up, calm us down, wake us up, put us to sleep, relax our tensions, make us forget, or enlighten us. As a whole our cultural attitudes toward drugs are irrational to the point of absurdity. We mightily praise some drugs whose detrimental effects are enormous and well known, such as alcohol, and condemn other drugs about which we know very little. Scientific knowledge about drugs has generally been of little consequence in affecting social attitudes and usage.
This book is an attempt to broaden our knowledge about one of the most widely used and poorly understood drugs in our culture today, marijuana.

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