Manifest

[friggs]

Hmm… kanske en samling med texter från olika typer av folk som röker? Det finns en kort liten text som jag länge har funderat på att översätta som finns att läsa på lester grinspoons (stavning) site. Texten är skriven av en äldre (70-80 årig) tant som berättar om sitt liv i korta drag och hur hon njuter av örten “..inte mycket, kanske en matsked blad per gång några gånger per veckan, inte mer…” och avslutar med att oroligt undra hur det skulle vara att sitta i kvinnofängelse.

Alla som röker är ju inte ungdomar trots allt….

[yogi]

Bra idé friggs! Lester Grinspoons sida där folk berättar om sitt personliga förhållande till vår älskade drog är suverän. Särskilt som det inte bara är 17-årig “stoners” som skriver hur ballt det är att röka…

Kolla in: http://www.marijuana-uses.com/read.html

[friggs]

Sidan jag tänkte på var http://www.rxmarihuana.com/excerpts.htm med texter ur hans bok “MARIHUANA: THE FORBIDDEN MEDICINE”:

MARIHUANA AND AGING

Largely by historical accident, marihuana in late twentieth-century America is regarded as exclusively a habit of the young. But it has not been so closely associated with youth at other times and places, including the United States in the nineteenth century, when cannabis was used mainly as a medicine. More than three decades have passed since marihuana first became popular in the United States, and members of the generation that learned to enjoy it then are moving toward old age. Many of them will probably discover that cannabis can ease the burdens of age as well as enhance the pleasures of youth. The people who tell their stories below may be pioneers. One such pioneer is Del Brebner who is 78:

In old age it often seems that everything is depressing. “Try not to get old,” I advise young checkout clerks while I’m fumbling old-lady-like for the grocery money. Sometimes I think I’m not really joking. I may make an offhand remark about the funeral of the week, but that’s no joke either. At seventy-eight you attend too many funerals. The daughter of an old friend calls and you know the instant you hear her voice that she is going to tell you that your old friend has succumbed. Of course I am reminded that I’m going to die in a minute. After all, my father died at seventy-nine.

I get an $8,000 bill from my dentist. I remember when dentist bills were around $20. My knees hurt. Why doesn’t my son call? Last night I trumped my partner’s ace. I’ve been playing pretty good bridge for sixty years! And I did that? Pension! Who wants a pension!

It is increasingly painful to observe political chicanery, corruption, and cynicism. Sophie, my best friend for seventy years, calls and we sputter together about these things. We send newspaper editorials and columns to each other. We despair of the world.

Oh, and I forget names I have known forever. The names of friends, writers, actors, names I used this morning. I hate myself. My husband hates me too, I guess. I listen to him muttering baby talk to the cat, and I crawl into myself and feel sorry for the lost woman I was.

In short, sometimes old age seems to present a daunting parade of gloomy displeasures and discomforts. And when all these natural burdens accumulate, help is hard to get. Well, it may be easy to get Prozac or lithium. Hard to get is what may be the best medicine — marihuana. I’m trying to exercise restraint, but this is an issue on which I am tempted to moralize and preach.

An occasional hit on a simple little dried leaf in a pipe or rolled into what looks like about a third of a tobacco cigarette takes me on a small but restorative ego trip. I enjoy this three or four times a week, using about a tablespoonful of the weed altogether. The quality of the pot varies, and so do the results, but almost invariably I achieve some release from the emotional and physical burdens of a “ripe old age.”

I have happy thoughts about the person whose funeral I attended recently. What fun we had together at the 1939 World’s Fair! What a good life she had! All those adorable grandchildren! My father died at seventy-nine, but my mother is one hundred and two years old, and anyway, if I die I won’t know it. And meanwhile I have this fabulous book to read, putting it aside now and then to prolong the pleasure. I dip up a handful of mixed nuts and munch contentedly, enjoying all those expensive bridges I paid for. My knees don’t hurt. They will, but right now I don’t have to go down any stairs, and anyway they’re not so bad. Look at all the people who need knee surgery and hip replacement. All I have is a little discomfort. I can handle it.

I call my five-hundred-month-old baby and we share a few jokes, some news. He keeps me on the phone, and we plan a weekend. He will bring some friends I particularly enjoy. So what if I trumped my partner’s ace? Don’t we all do that once in a while? I’ll do fine next time I play. That pension check is just dandy. It’s paying for my dentist, and I don’t have to put on tight shoes with heels and go to work in the morning. But boy, wasn’t I good? And couldn’t I do it now? (Thus speaks marihuana.)

Thank heaven I have Sophie to sputter with about political opportunism. We actually have a great time lashing out at our leaders. Yes, I forget names, but I almost always do well playing Famous Names, even against much younger people. And between us, my husband and I can usually come up with a name we are looking for. Hey! How can he not love me? I go over and kiss him, and together we smile down on the best cat in the world as we snuggle for a while.

I am basically an optimist, but I would have more persistent negative feelings about heading into my eighties and extinction if I did not have the pleasure of my marihuana-induced ego trips. And that’s not all. I also find it helpful for insomnia, itchy skin, boredom, loss of appetite, indigestion, and — name it. Sometimes, to be sure, I recall that using the forbidden medicine is a crime, and I wonder what kind of ego trip a women’s prison would provide.

Men tanten har en lite längre text på din sidan också:

Ego Trips
By Del Cogswell Brebner

Del Cogswell Brebner is an 80 year old writer who lives in New Hampshire.

The book that somebody has recommended is totally disappointing. The point-of-view leaps about distractingly. The characters are too good, too nasty, too unreal. Into the up-for-grabs bag it goes. Hmmm. What now? My dearly beloved (and sometimes hated) of fifty-two years is watching a football game, not a choice for me. Ah! That joint rolled with my efficient eighty-year-old fingers is up in the bookcase behind Another Roadside Attraction, tucked there a couple of nights ago because the book of that night was happily absorbing. Football is not. So how about a little ego trip, a continuation in my thirty-year plan to thwart that ailment that troubled both my parents, glaucoma. The bonus in smoking pot, sort of medicinally, is something one does not talk about, write about, or even think about. But as long as this football game is on let me give it a try.

Almost immediately it turns out to have been a lifelong error to have forsworn football. It’s really a very fine game. See that incredibly long pass to the running-like-crazy guy who actually catches the ball against all odds – the speed, the distance, those guys in the orange shirts trying to prevent his catching the ball. But, there you go, he does catch it and then, in the cleverest maneuver, cuts away from the three brutes and runs all the way to the goalposts while thousands cheer. “While Thousands Cheer.” What is that, a musical? A movie? Did Dad take me? It was at the Colonial? Did we go to the Parker House for dinner? Before or after the show? Dad was dear about taking me to excellent places. Shore dinners at the Salem Willows. He was so amused by how much I ate. Baseball games, remember Rabbit Maranville and his “vest pocket catch.” The Ritz. The Copley-Plaza. The Kenmore for baseball games. The hockey game where we saw Sonja Henie skating like Pavlova between periods of the game. Was that the same night there was blood on the ice and I almost fainted?

Oh, wow! That player just kicked a perfect field goal with his bare foot!

But what’s this? Has my watch stopped? Was it only ten minutes ago that I took that couple of tokes of dope? Dope. Is that short for dopamine? What’s dopamine? Some kind of neurotransmitter in the brain, the wonderful brain. My wonderful brain. Here I am at long last enjoying football and at the same time musing about neurotransmitters and wondering how I managed to pull out that bit of information and remember, too, that dopamine has something to do with pleasure and watch, with pleasure, while the orange shirts try to get even with the blue shirts.

After a pleasant while it is half time and the jock anchormen are yakety-yakking and they don’t capture me although another time they might and then I could get right into their chatter and find them either bright and informative or dull and even silly. And enjoy the discovery, either way.

So then, delighted by my fascinating brain and its surprising recollection about dopamine, the greatness of me becomes a matter for consideration. And the greatness of me is the greatness of everybody. And the smallness. Hmmm. Sure. I really have it all figured out. Except that I’m quietly giggling at my own arrogance and calling out to the sports commentator, “No, no! Not ‘he invited my wife and I.'” And my love nods and asks if I had noticed a minute ago that the same handsome fellow had said of a player that he has an “unbridled love of the game.”

We are together. But not quite.

Where was I? Ah, yes, getting the answers. Somebody better write me down. Or is that somebody’d better?

Hmmm. We’re all great. We’re all small. You got that? And what was the other thing? Well, for one thing people have no free will. Human will is utterly incapable of generating or preventing individuals’ decisions, from tying their shoes to getting married until death do them part except if they get divorced for which also their will is not free. Fact. Nobody out there can do anything. They are all – all – puppets in the wily hands of the all-powerful memory. B. F. Skinner and I could probably enjoy a chat about this over a few Buds.

“Honey, is B. F. Skinner still alive?”

“Skinner?” He considers. “No, he died about ten years ago.”

Great guy, my mate of fifty-two years.

No matter. B. F. and I will invite Sigmund. Hume? I’ll look it up. But not now. I have to watch a football game and eat some pizza. But I forgot something, something important. You see, as opposed to all you millions of helpless puppets I – yes I – do just happen to have what is otherwise an oxymoron – Free Will.

Out of the ego trip now, the off-the-wall fantasy.

But why put oneself into such a silly frame of mind? Why not spend that time doing something useful? Well, maybe I’ve been doing something useful all day. And when straight I have neither the time nor the inclination to sit and let my head play. Nor would it even work without the couple of tokes. I’d probably remember something like I have to change the kitty litter or I ought to clean those glass doors where my neighbor ten-year-old twins had been playing with sticky tumble-down-the-glass toys.

This is strange. After about thirty years of occasional enjoyment (aka abuse) of this miraculous leaf (aka substance) I do not recall actually trying to describe the experience. Friends who share a joint or two with me might comment the next day, “Wow!”

“Oh, man!” Good stuff!”

“Can I get some of that?”

But nobody, in my memory, has ever described or shared personal stories about this very subjective event.

So, if I’m on an ego trip in which I think I’m having an epiphany, others might be eagerly planning a menu, remembering a happy occasion, embellishing and changing it. It’s possible that somewhere an investment banker in a three-piece suit is having a jolly ego trip in the Dow Jones. I could have a couple of small hits and list a hundred possible ego trips to be had out there.

But here’s a thought. Maybe I’m the only one who sees this as I do, who trips as I do. Then how do the others trip? How about an international competition for the World Champion Tripper? Even for this abuser it is not always the same. One should see my energy and enthusiasm for “cleaning up this mess”, sometimes to the tune of John Lennon’s “Clean Up Time.” Positively athletic, and productive as well. The mess is cleaned up with more than ordinary efficiency, and it was great fun.

Fun is the word. Even not having discussed this with my friends, the endangered species, to me it is extremely likely that the one word they would use to describe their reason for persisting in so dangerous an activity is FUN.

Fun to get a bit silly with friends.

Fun to have food fests hastily put together in the local convenience store.

Fun to play with the clouds.

Fun to get into your head.

Fun to listen to music.

It is important to note here that it is also inconceivable to me that any of the potheads in my world would go wild, get hooked on drugs, commit any crime beyond this particular one in which fun is the chief object.

Certainly it could be argued that some proven criminals are also proven tokers. Some of us would suggest that the cause of the criminal behavior was probably the end result of the criminals having been abused as children or at least ignored, unloved.

Addiction? Not a problem with any of my lawbreaking friends and acquaintances. The majority smoke at most a few tokes daily, more likely on occasion, sometimes days or even weeks apart. And many of them will admit that they couldn’t start the day without a couple of cups of coffee, a very popular drug that the Drug Enforcement Agency has not added to its schedules to alert police across the country to criminal activity.

Does anything positive aside from fun, a categorical positive, result from this euphoric rush and its attendant head trip? Others will have to speak for themselves but of myself I can report that I have made many good decisions on difficult problems while happily in a state of “reefer madness.” I have had insights into heady philosophical matters, insights that hold and that affect positively my behavior, my relationships, my life. In other words, quite often when I take a head trip, just as when I take trips by planes, trains, and automobiles, I am more knowledgeable and richer for having made the voyage.

And I had a lot of fun.

[yogi]

Ahh, ok. Tyckte hans nya projekt verkar mer intressant.

Please Note: Dr. Grinspoon is now compiling a new anthology, The Uses of Marijuana, that will focus on the non-medical uses of cannabis. He is looking for people who are interested in contributing to this anthology — anonymously, if you prefer. For more information, and for examples of the kinds of material he hopes to publish, please visit the project web-site: http://www.marijuana-uses.com

Medicinska användningsområden i all ära men det rent rekreationella bruket är trots allt det mest vanligt förekommande och för mig personligen mer intressant.

[mrburns]

@Yogi wrote:

…Medicinska användningsområden i all ära men det rent rekreationella bruket är trots allt det mest vanligt förekommande och för mig personligen mer intressant.

Fast den gamla kvinnan (mycket rörande läsning för övrigt, well done friggs) använder ju drogen mer som rekreation tycker jag snarare än rent medicinskt. Hursomhelst så tror jag att det är toppen när äldre människor berättar om sitt förhållande till mj, istället för att bara ungdomar och gangsta-wannabees skriver om hur fett det é att röka.

[farull]

Härlig läsning friggs. Jag blev nästan tårögd när jag läste om den gamla tanten och farbrorns erfarenheter.

Jag har länge funderat på att baka lite kakor till min gamla farmor, som först nu i 85’års åldern kan börja njuta av livet efter ett liv med epilepsi. Hon är otroligt pigg och livsglad, men hennes gamla kropp och starr begränsar henne.
Kan det vara farligt vid hennes ålder om hon inte är van användare? Jag vill inte riskera att skada henne på något sätt.

[reaper]

Farull>>> Framför allt hoppas jag att du inte har tänkt ge henne något utan hennes vetskap…? Det är nämligen farligt…

I övrigt vet jag faktiskt inte.

[farull]

@PottigaLotta wrote:

Farull>>> Framför allt hoppas jag att du inte har tänkt ge henne något utan hennes vetskap…? Det är nämligen farligt…

I övrigt vet jag faktiskt inte.

Nej det hade jag verkligen inte tänkt! Men jag tror inte hon vet så mycket om örten, så jag får väl börja med att berätta lite, och se om hon visar intresse.

[reaper]

Farull>>> Då är det nog inte en så dum idé… du kan ju sondera terrängen i alla fall, och se vad hon tycker.

[enviousness]

Starr? Det är inte grön starr? Isåfall borde du sätta igång omgående. Cannabis ska tydligen mer eller mindre bota det vad jag läst.

Lycka till oavsett, helt rätt att prata med de gamla om saken

[reaper]

Och intresset för att skriva någon form av manifest verkar inte särskilt stor…

Jag håller på med min C-uppsats just nu, men så fort den är klar kan jag hjälpa till med detta projekt.

[phreakish]

Jag som trodde att efter 4 år måste väl något ha hänt. Men icke. Synd. Oj vilken gamling man bumpar.. hehe