|
I have to say, I have known quite a number of pot smokers, in every context of my life: when I was in community organizing and politics, I knew lots of politicos and organizers who liked to spark one up Saturday night instead of going out for drinks. When I was in the film industry, I knew plenty of successful producers, directors, cinematographers, and technical experts who smoked in their spare time. I have known pot smokers among my friends in education, and among my friends in the rabbinate. All were bright, motivated, and successful in their fields.
None used hard drugs. None were alcoholics. Most smoked a bowl or a jay or two with some friends, a couple of times a month, maybe once or twice a week, tops, for some people.
Sure, when I was in college, I knew some people who smoked all day, every day, and they were capable of some pretty monumental slackage. But most of them grew out of that phase of their lives, and cut down, and stopped slacking, and became more or less successful and productive people. Very few were actually content to just slack their lives away forever.
I smoke about once a week, and I am close to the top of my rabbinical school class; I have also been a very successful classroom teacher for years.
One can always run into a particularly slackish group of people. But I think that mostly, the whole "pot smokers are all hopeless slackers" thing is just a media stereotype.
__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
|