It’d be better if we all just talked about it
6-minute read
Alright, I gotta speak up about something. I’ve been reveling in the joyous delight, emotional nutrition, superpower insight, and glorious appetite gifted to me by cannabis—and been quiet about it—for far too long. I overshare about my life as it is and I speak up about mundane things like nanoplastic accumulation in river sediments and which migratory birds are at my feeder, so why would I not also share about something as integral to my happiness and sustenance as cannabis?
The reason I haven’t shared is probably the same reason many don’t: social stigma.
I was a kid of the D.A.R.E. generation, a 17-lesson curriculum taught by uniformed police officers, who visited our childhood classrooms with drug-sniffing German shepherds wearing tactical vests. The deputies vilified marijuana as a “gateway drug” for lazy losers and criminals—a slippery slope to the serious stuff, the addictive shit—and an unsuccessful life. They instilled a culture of fear and criminality around cannabis that settled in, deeply, much the way previous government programs did to our parents and their parents before them.
Today, more than 55 million Americans consume cannabis regularly. All but three states have legalized the plant in some form and the US legal market is expected to top $130 billion by 2024. The House of Representatives just voted to decriminalize it, making it the first chamber of Congress to endorse cannabis legalization. It is encouraging that Americans are awakening to cannabis, but deep-seated trepidation still lingers. Surveys show a fear of being judged is the most cited barrier to usage and the top reason people who consume cannabis remain closeted. In a 2015 study on how medicinal cannabis consumers perceive stigma, researchers found patients were reluctant to discuss medicinal cannabis treatment even with their personal physicians.
That stigma is doing damage.
The long struggle to end cannabis prohibition has not been a victimless one. People of color have been unfairly targeted and prosecuted over the decades of war on cannabis, even though the data shows the consumption rate among Blacks and whites is equal. Though Black people comprise just 13 percent of the population, they make up more than half of those incarcerated for drug crimes (the majority of which are for cannabis). The illegality of cannabis was, and continues to be, wielded as a tool for race-driven law enforcement.
Stigma is allowing it to persist.
Americans only recently warmed to the idea of legal cannabis. The nascent legal industry is dominated by people of my skin color (81 percent of cannabis businesses are white-owned), while Black people continue to serve prison sentences for cannabis-related crimes. Not only are white business owners cashing in on legal cannabis and building generational wealth, according to the ACLU, in every state that has legalized or decriminalized marijuana possession Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than whites.
Something is wrong here.
That a portion of our citizens continue to be imprisoned for something once shunned by society—while those of us who weren’t targeted by systemic racism are free to capitalize on the new market—doesn’t sit right with me. I’ve learned that where legality and morality don’t align I will find injustice. In my quest to address the ways I perpetuate injustice and understand my privilege, I must acknowledge all the ways I’ve benefited from features of the system—including cannabis.
Too many people continue to suffer from the consequences of a society that negatively stigmatizes cannabis for me not to be open about the benefits I find in this herb. Since the people disproportionately impacted tend not to look like me, I feel a responsibility to speak up. So, I humbly offer my cannabis experience and, perhaps, a perspective that could relax the sphincter of our minds a bit more. Briefly, here’s what I like about Mary Jane:
The propaganda was right, it has been a gateway drug—a portal to my truest Self, to higher love, and deeper understanding. Cannabis enables me to quiet my inner critic, that narrator who tells the story of my existence, the one who whispers self-doubt, who judges me harshly, who limits me. Cannabis shushes that self—freeing me to be present with my feelings, my company, and my environs.
Cannabis seems to turn the keys that access my heart—it enables me to feel how I am feeling. Not long ago if you asked me how I was I would not have had the ability to parse a feeling from a thought or an emotion, let alone the vocabulary to name it. It’s not that cannabis magically imbues a consumer with emotional intelligence, but it can create the space to feel. When I am high I experience love and compassion for all things. In the subway car, I would sometimes look about and feel so much love for each person on board that I’d silently declare myself willing to die for each of them if it came down to it.
When I lost my best friend in a training accident at 24, I numbed my pain with alcohol and feigned emotional stability. Once cannabis became available to me, after leaving the service, it helped connect me to my grief. One night, my partner and I got high and laughed ourselves into a pile on our kitchen floor in Queens, as we often did. It was among those fractured tiles of our pre-war apartment that I had the realization that I’d been harboring guilt and shame about being a fraudulent friend to Thomas, guilt because our friendship was rooted in egoic competition, and not soulful connection the way others’ relationships with him seemed to be. In a puddle of tears, I forgave myself for feeling like a fake friend—I just hadn’t understood the nature of our friendship. And when that partner and I separated, cannabis made bearable the emotional upheaval and subsequent grief.
In my transition from military to civilian life, I had to deconstruct an identity that was conflated with being a Coast Guard officer. I didn’t transition immediately into a new corporate job-identity like many of my peers who left the service, I had time to figure out a bit more of who I was. The realization that I had held so much self-worth in being Lieutenant Deneen was an epiphany I had while I was high, again laying on my kitchen floor (see a theme here?). Looking back, it seems obvious to me that I would get validation from the uniform—rank and ribbons will go to your head. But doing work toward re-assigning where I receive self-esteem required awareness that I hadn’t yet found. Cannabis helped.
As an athlete, cannabis helped me find purpose in sport. I found intrinsic motivation, rather than playing for accolades or the temporary glory of winning. I started to care more about how I played. It made me realize that I actually do love to play for the beauty of the game and creation with teammates—not for scoring titles or recognition. Today I mostly run mountains and I do so for many ego-driven reasons, but the difference now is that I am aware of it—and can choose to permit it. To be candid, I do harbor concern about my lungs, which motivates me to maintain pulmonary health—one reason I hold myself to an elevated standard of athletic performance (click to connect with me on Strava).
Cannabis also emboldened me to express myself through dance and music—creative outlets that I had long ago written off as not being for me because I swore I was born rhythm-less and tone-deaf. Actually, I was just stuck in my own head. Cannabis freed me from the narrative that had locked me in a psycho-somatic paralysis where I believed I could not move or create. Today I dance freely and I make music with friends and it might look and sound awful—but man is it fun!
For me, cannabis is also an aphrodisiac. The tenderness that comes from cannabis opening my heart bleeds into a passionate eroticism that love before weed lacked. And my appetite! My desire to eat goes from unquenchable to unstoppable—the texture, the chewiness, the sourness, the coldness, the crunchiness, the fizziness of foods when I am stoned is an orgasmica of delight. It’s no wonder doctors prescribe cannabis to chemotherapy patients trying to recover from appetite loss.
For a long time I feared being outspoken about cannabis because of work—I thought I might need to reinstate my clearance for a position at some point. I feared that by being out of the canna-closet I might somehow disqualify myself from certain jobs. I still fear that to a degree. But in sharing this I’ve decided that following my moral compass is the righteous path. So in a way, I am preemptively resigning from working for anyone in the future who would not accept me.
I’ve said all this because I can no longer enjoy the benefits of something if it means someone else gets persecuted for seeking those same benefits as me. My happiness doesn’t feel fully aligned unless I am doing my part to shed the stigma, normalise consumption, and absolve those who still suffer from “crimes” they were punished for—crimes that violated laws based on fundamentally incorrect, amoral, racist policies. It’s hardly even about cannabis—it’s about justice.
I walk through The East Village, where cannabis is decriminalized, but somehow still not yet completely legal. I enjoy a toke in public without being hassled by law enforcement. I am a physically large, educated, prior-service, white, male. I feel like a king in this jungle, as I suppose I should, since it was made for me. As a white man I am nearly four times less likely to get arrested than my Black brothers and sisters. I jaywalk while smoking a jay…I approach strangers freely…I make eye contact and get eye contact back….people don’t cross the street when they see me coming…I share a picture of my ganja plants on the internet and receive validation…people don’t seem to judge me too hard, perhaps because I fit some white professional archetype for whom smoking a little weed is okay. But this shouldn’t be something only me and people who look like me can do without fear. Even if it’s not for you, can we agree that cannabis is not a threat to society? It’s just grass, guys. I’m high right now writing this story.
If this story resonated with you reach out. If you feel called to take action, visit the Last Prisoner Project—a woman-led non-profit doing work to address the injustice you read about in this story.
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