They are proud of their marihuana use. They think "it's just a lifestyle choice", well it is, in the same way shooting black tar heroin every day is. Heroin addicts know that they are addicted and that heroin use is not healthy. Marihuana addicts think that they are not addicted and that marihuana is not just harmless, but good for you! They glorify their addiction while not even knowing that they are hooked.
This pic is pretty good: http://i.imgur.com/Z9pGQ7Nl.jpg
Well, if we're just talking about drugs and drug use, the lifestyles of the junkie and pothead are different, as driven both by the norms of the prevailing culture, the adapted norms of the counterculture, and also of the pharmacological effects of the drug in question. But, the point made here, I think, is essential: if we, and this is probably the most common position for a Bluelighter, view drug use as an intimate matter of personal choice, what right has the pothead to set himself apart from the junkie? n.b. both as differentiated from mere recreational-to-moderate users. Both tend to be rather obvious and obnoxious to the outsider, but the junkie fully realizes that he is stigmatized and outcast from society because of his lifestyle decisions, the pothead tries to justify them with such tripe as pot being harmless, or not a drug. Now, the political changes that are going on with respect to marijuana's medical, pseudo-medical, and recreational use in certain Western States, will to a degree effect all of this, but still, in the eye of the society as a whole, these are two drugs, and one of them is probably worse for you than the other, that I don't think anyone could deny, but what upsets myself and others as raised in this and
other recent threads (inter alia), is that the junkie, in general, has an accurate assessment of himself as having a problematic relationship with his drug of choice, whereas the pothead has a tendency to see it as wholly benign, or even virtuous, to indulge. This objectively is not the case. Furthermore, our pop culture from Cheech and Chong to Half Baked to the White Castle movie to Snoop Dogg and so on portray pot use as mild and humorous, if sometimes the stoners are laughed at, not only laughed with. This is what I'm getting at with societal stigma. Towards weed, it's decreasing; towards everything else, not much movement. If you see this is a disparity, then you're agreeing with me. If you don't, then you kind of give the impression of a certain sort of
elitism regarding drug of choice. Drug users share a common dilemma in society, and that's how we integrate our deviant practices with regards to fiddling with our neurochemistry into our daily lives and into the prevailing culture. The thing is, the pothead is treated as at worst a source of humor or a practicioner of a harmless if stupefying habit, and the users of other drugs are considered wholly degenerate. And in certain cases, the stereotype will hold; in certain cases, it won't. I know many an excessive use of "mari
huana" who has seriously damaged themselves and their life prospects thereby and, on the opposite side, many a "righteous dope fiend," who maintains job, family, car, all the needfuls, plus an opiate habit. Different strokes, as they say. But the issue we're talking about in this thread is the failure of the former category to have any real insight into their circumstances, or, in fact, that their circumstances may be even worse off than the latter.