Happy Trails George
"I think people should be allowed to do anything they want. We haven't tried that for a while. Maybe this time it'll work." George Carlin
"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist." George Carlin
"Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town." George Carlin
"The status quo sucks." George Carlin
"Think off-center." George Carlin
CARLIN: In my neighborhood - West 121st Street in New York, "white Harlem" - there were only two drugs: sma*k and marijuana. By the time I was 13, some friends and I were using marijuana fairly regularly. The Reefer Madness myth was still very strong then, but I'd been into jazz and those lyrics included so many casual references to pot that it was completely demystified for me. Her*in, forget it. In my neighborhood, I could see what her*in did firsthand and I was definitely afraid of that number.
PLAYBOY: How do you define fairly regular marijuana use?
CARLIN: Oh, I was a stonehead for 30 years. I'd wake up in the morning and if I couldn't decide whether I wanted to smoke a joint or not, I'd smoke a joint to figure it out. And I stayed high all day long. When people asked me, "Do you get high to go onstage?" I could never understand the question. I mean, I'd been high since eight that morning. Going onstage had nothing to do with it.
PLAYBOY: Are you still a stonehead?
CARLIN: To my surprise, my marijuana use has been tapering off steadily. As we speak, I haven't had a joint in two months.
PLAYBOY: You imply that this has been an unplanned withdrawal.
CARLIN: Completely. The enjoyment has been diminishing. Now, there's no question that it's sort of fun to get high. Let's say I had a little baggie lying around the office. I'd get up, come over here, fuck around, shuffle a few papers, and all the while I'd be thinking about the pot. I'd say to myself, "Well, whatever I'm going to do today, it's obviously going to be more fun if I have a hit or two." But I got to the point where taking those hits made me feel dumber than I'd felt before. I'd say to myself, "Man, you've been high for fucking 30 years and you don't want to be high anymore." [Laughs] I always have these little internal monologs. You'll get used to them . . . I simply decided that dope wasn't worth the ritual.
PLAYBOY: So you were one of those ritualistic dopers?
CARLIN: The ritual was very important to me: cleaning the pot, rolling the pot - I was never a pipe or bong man. That's California stuff. I was an Eastern roller. My daughter had to teach me to use a water pipe, and I'd still fuck it up every time. To me, smoking pot meant sitting with a newspaper on my legs, rolling the seeds down, pulling the twigs out, and finally producing a perfectly cylindrical, absolutely wonderful joint that you either locked at both ends or pinched off, or pinched at one end and left open at the other.
PLAYBOY: What was your technique?
CARLIN: We always locked in the East. I got to be a pincher later on.
PLAYBOY: Do you now find yourself lecturing others on the joys of sobriety?
CARLIN: No, never. I don't want anyone who reads this to think it's a message to him. It's not. This is merely an accounting of what I've done.
PLAYBOY: Would it be fair to say that you're not sorry about your 30 years as a pothead but you're glad they're over?
CARLIN: Exactly. Grass probably helped me as much as it hurt me. Especially as a performer. When you're high, it's easy to kid yourself about how clever certain mediocre pieces of material are. But, on the other hand, pot opens windows and doors that you may not be able to get through any other way. Being a very bound-up, Irish Catholic tight-assholed person, I've often thought that whatever negative effects pot had on me, it probably saved me from being an alcoholic and a complete fucking brainless idiot by the time I was 25. So I'd say pot has been a break-even proposition for me.
