“Good Lord! That two grams didn’t last very long.” This is the lament of the fiscally challenged, the monetarily strapped, the thin of wallet, and can be heard day and night throughout the land. Ok, maybe not heard so much as vibed, but you get the picture. It kind of goes against the ‘60’s counter-culture world view, but a guy driving a Porshe Turbo Carrera is much likelier to be holding a fat can of bud that would make a rabid skunk hold its nose than a guy living in his parent’s garage.
Does that make the world an unfair and hostile place? Maybe, but so what? What you want to do is to make sure that you are the guy behind the wheel of the Porshe and not the guy staring longingly into the little bitty container he got at the dispensary and wondering how his two grams vanished so quickly. It’s all a matter of personal choice.
If you want to be in a position to buy the meds you want, the car you want, or anything else you want, you need to develop the appropriate skill set. You have to know something, you have to be able to do something, you have to be able to create something that is of value to others. Once you can do something, know something, create something that is of value to others then you have contributed to the overall wellbeing of society and you are in a position to demand compensation in return.
The best way to put yourself in such a position is to first put your self in school. Then, once you are in school, you put yourself at the head of the class. “Yeah, but Lorenzo,” you may be saying to yourself, “I fear that if I do that I must quit smoking the happy tobacky and live a boring and buzzless life for many, many years.” Ha! That’s where you’re wrong and that’s why I’m writing this article. High academic performance is not incompatible with being high, they are not mutually exclusive. There are just some things you need to know in order to be able to pull it off.
And it is to that end that these next few articles will be addressed. When you have finished reading these articles you will know everything necessary to succeed in school, succeed in work, and enjoy the good times associated with being able to afford the kind of meds you desire. To begin, we are going to learn a little neuroscience. Do not be put off, it’s not that hard and during the course of these articles you will become familiar with terms and terminology that you can drop into casual conversation and impress hotties.
To be precise, we are going to talk about cerebral neuroscience. That’s brain neuroscience and by a remarkable coincidence the brain is where both your school work and marijuana have their effect. See, if the two weren’t compatible what’s the chances that that would happen?
Like every other organ in your body the brain is composed of individual cells. These cells are called neurons. The one thing that sets neurons apart from all the other cells in your body is that neurons can communicate with one another. In fact, it is the communication of neurons in the brain that are responsible for every aspect of your consciousness from your dreams, your thoughts, everything you know and everything you feel. So, whether you are learning something new, or floating on a euphoric cloud of primo Kush, it is the activity of the neurons in your brain that are responsible.
And it is here where we can begin to tear down this silly notion that smoking marijuana and succeeding in school are incompatible. Let’s begin with a few facts. Both learning and buzzing are caused by the altered activity of neurons. This difference is that the changes brought about by smoking meds are temporary while the changes brought about by learning are permanent. When you are learning, you are inducing, through an incredible cascade of electro-chemical impulses, a permanent alteration in one or more neurons. When you are smoking you are not causing a permanent alteration of neurons, you are temporarily enhancing the communication between the neurons in a particular part of the brain.
So, the idea is to make sure that the process of learning, that is the permanent physical alteration of neurons, is not impeded by the temporary alteration of the activity of some neurons. That is to say, you want to alter your neurons permanently, that is learning, and you don’t want the temporary activity of some neurons, getting buzzed, to impair that.
As soon as you understand a few simple facts about the two processes you will not need to be lectured on your habits, nor will the few changes in your behavior that are required seem odious or burdensome because you will understand the benefits. If someone were to tell you that if you wore a blue shirt every day for a week, they would give you a bucket of gold coins, would you consider wearing a blue shirt to be a drag? Nope.
But, if someone told you to wear a blue shirt and insisted that you do so only because they ordered you to do so, you would most likely be inclined to feed them your blue shirt rather than wear it. It’s the same with your smoking and learning. The bucket of gold coins is there all you have to do is pick it up, you don’t even have to wear a blue shirt.
Tags: cannabis, editorial, education, hemp, magazine, marijuana, medical, ocw, study
