Becker talks about getting into the culture of weed-smoking people, but i honestly think it's more of a sub-culture for most people. Sure it could be a culture for those self-proclaimed "stoners" but for the rest of us it's not what defines our lives. He makes smoking weed a process that is worked into, step by step, as opposed to one day you don't, the next you do. A lot of people don't get high the first time they smoke and with good reason. Maybe it's because it just chemically doesn't effect their bodies but then again they wouldn't know if they were high whether they felt it or not. It's difficult to answer a question like "Are you high?" if you don't know what "high" feels like. After a couple times you start to feel it, and either like it or don't. A kid in the dorms last year took two hits for the first time and proceeded to puke his brains out for about an hour. Not for everyone. One of the first couple times that I did it, i finally felt it real good and experienced the "geek-out" that I had heard my buddies talking about. It's just a whole new experience and if you don't look at it positively than you won't enjoy it. Becker sees that and lays it out such that you take the symptoms as they come, if you don't like how they make you feel then stop smoking. It's kind of a surreal experience.
Some signs Becker mentions are munching out or laughing hysterically and that's what a lot of people look into weed smoking as. If you ask a non-smoker what they think when they hear about people smoking, they talk about people giggling at stupid shit and chowing down a bag of doritos. Granted it's accurate sometimes but that is the poster child of marijuana, munchies and giggling, with the obvious red-eye. Why do we eat though? Does it trigger something in our brain? Or is it just because secretly we always want to just eat a disgusting amount of food all the time and we don't give a shit when we're high? Regardless the bowl of ice cream, 2 bags of popcorn, and 15 fruit snacks can be seen as signs of the pot-smoking culture. People more frequent in their smoking habits start to socially construct their life to fit in this aspect of weed. Wake up in the morning and pack a bowl before work or plan to go grab a bag on your lunch break rather than eating.
I just lost my train of thought so that's all I've got. Adios!
You made a really good point about weed-smoking being more of a sub-culture than anything. There are groups of people who do make it a staple in their lives but then there are those who just do it every now and then. Another point you made was about a bad "high" vs. a good "high". If you have a bad high you are less likely to try it again. Yet if you have a good high you will probably try it again and again. This is an example of positive reinforcement. Weed has a lot of stereotypes surrounding it and you are right you don't understand it until you try it. Culture has given these perceptions of what it is like so that when a person tries it for the first time they either act like they are high because of what they have heard about it or they really are. Smoking weed can become a so-called addiction. The people who consider themselves "stoners", as you said, have constructed their life around it.
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