Cannabis

A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I’m down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex – on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.
- Carl Sagan

Um cara fodalhão pra caralho como o Carl Sagan fumou maconha metade da vida e continuou sendo inteligente, produtivo e um maridão exemplar até falecer aos 62 anos de idade. A hipocrisia com relação à maconha no mundo inteiro é patética: o álcool é muitíssimo mais destrutivo e perigoso e no entanto é legalizado e tolerado por praticamente todos os países. Claro que - como muitas coisas na vida (álcool inclusive) - é uma questão de dose. Agora proibir a maconha ao mesmo tempo em que se permite o álcool é uma incoerência inexplicável: ou se proibe os dois, ou se legaliza os dois. Eu voto pela segunda opção.

Enfim, o texto completo do Sagan está aqui. Senão, só deixo mais um trecho:

I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I’ve negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I’m not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you’re high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don’t advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.