OH, THE PARANOIA -- NOTME EXPERIMENTS

One night not too long ago, a very close friend of mine -- let's call him
"NotMe," -- was high on marijuana. Yes, that's right, the pot.

It should be said, though, that at first my friend was uncomfortable with
the idea of written documentation proving he had smoked up. But I'm pretty
sure I eased his mind by pointing out that any future party who might take
issue with his drug experimentation would probably have a larger problem
with the fact that he has sex with men. And so, bearing his consent, I am
telling his story as a warning to the curious. For that night, my dear
friend discovered that yes indeed, drugs are bad. And since I trust him,
I'm taking his word for it. After all, I of course have never touched the
stuff.

But that doesn't mean that I, along with the rest of the law-abiding Yale
population, am not familiar with the effects of marijuana. Popular culture
keeps us well informed: Pot, we learn, "relaxes;" it "mellows;" it "calms."
It also appears to make certain situations a good deal funnier than they
actually are. Sounds good, no? Well, there are also downsides, and my
friend discovered firsthand that night the true terror behind mind-altering
substances: paranoia.

Did anyone else happen to catch that commercial during the Super Bowl, the
one that linked marijuana to impaired judgment, and thus to teen pregnancy?
Well let me make this very clear: My friend was so completely paranoid that
he would have avoided sex for fear of himself getting pregnant. The
commercial obviously has it backwards: High school nurses should abandon
distributing condoms and parents should quit pushing abstinence since fat
blunts would do the trick nicely.

But my friend's fears became less abstract as he somehow managed to put
himself in a situation that could very easily have been riddled with
tension in the first place. To be more specific, he suddenly found himself
wondering if he was dressed too "gay" to be in the basement of a
fraternity, while simultaneously playing beer pong with the twin brother of
his ex-boyfriend, all the while suspecting that the same ex's current
boyfriend had suddenly turned hostile (although the latter turned out to be
true and completely unrelated to the pot -- but hey, no big loss). Throw
some temperamental heating pipes into the mix and you've got my friend,
NotMe, mentally cowering in the corner of that fraternity basement,
suspiciously darting his eyes and convinced that at any second a pipe will
explode, piercing his skull with thousands of tiny metal shards.

Suddenly "Mary Jane" doesn't seem so enticing now, does it?

And the worst part, or so my friend tells me, is that he was fully aware
that the paranoia was completely drug-induced. The entire time there was a
voice in his head laughing at him for having completely lost control of his
senses. Apparently pot makes you paranoid and self-deprecating for being
paranoid in the first place, so not only was everyone in the room out to
get him, but he would have kicked his own ass if he were somehow able.
Honestly, I don't blame him for getting the hell out of there as fast as he
could.

So with all this in mind then, what's the appeal? I mean, besides paranoia,
just look at the scam marijuana is pulling: first you throw down a good
portion of your hard-earned allowance to practically cough up a lung. Then
you possibly mire yourself in a situation you'd much rather experience
drunk, because after all at least alcohol has the decency to let you black
out and not remember. And finally, to top it all off, you end the night in
orgasms over a bag of Nacho Cheesier Doritos, which, any way you look at
it, is really pretty sad. It just doesn't add up!

Or maybe it does, 'cause there's pot out there and it's being smoked. I
guess it's also worth mentioning that despite sprinting back to his dorm
room for safety, my friend hasn't necessarily sworn off the stuff. As for
me, though, I think I'll play it safe and stay with what I know. In other
words, I plan on sticking to alcohol. Well, alcohol and heroin, that is.