Smokin' Dope: 50 Years of Fun, Crimes, and Harm Reduction

By Gail Amity

Gail Amity has practiced forms of social work for 53 years, eventually specializing in anxiety and trauma resolution using art psychotherapy and dream work, among other techniques. Gail has been state licensed for 23 years at this writing. She has facilitated literally thousands of individual, family, and group counseling sessions, learning along with her clients.

As a mature woman, Gail has become more mindful, and that is making a difference. She wants everyone to know the human subconscious is still highly operative, accessible, and critical to human growth and development, although it is often overlooked by today's "behavioral health" industries. She believes the subconscious is where trauma can hide.

In her private time, Ms. Amity has legally and illegally used cannabis or marijuana for just over 50 years. She has suffered some consequences, but on balance wants to continue doing so while reducing harm to her health, until she becomes an ancestor. This is her first nonfiction book, intended to share with the public what she has learned over a lifetime of fun, crimes, and harm reduction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889823445

Book preview

Table of Contents

Abstract

Prologue

Chapter 1: History of Cannabis Laws in the United States

Chapter 2: Smuggling, Interstate, and International Crimes

Chapter 3: Drug Testing: Preemployment and Random

Chapter 4: Medical and Recreational Cannabis Industry in the US

Chapter 5: Part 1: Psychotherapy for Profit Industry and the Treatment of Anxiety

Chapter 5: Part 2: What Your Counselor Might Think

Chapter 6: Growing Weed in the Southwestern US

Chapter 7: Recent Research on Cannabis Use (Pain Relief, PTSD, Driving, Orgasm)

Chapter 8: March Cold Sober and May Cool Sober

What can one expect if one decides to take a break?

Chapter 9: What Is Happening to My Habituation?

Epilogue, Including Harm Reduction

About the Author

Sources

cover.jpg

Smokin' Dope

50 Years of Fun, Crimes, and Harm Reduction

Gail Amity

Copyright © 2023 Gail Amity

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88982-343-8 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-344-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Abstract

Cannabis or marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug in the world. This memoir/manual is meant to help consumers navigate the choppy waters of cannabis laws across the United States, hopefully without burdening the legal system (or losing employment). Gail Amity has decades of experience doing so and even more experience in the field of counseling. She has practiced forms of social work for fifty-three years and has carried a state license to practice professional psychotherapy for over the past twenty years. If you are wondering if cannabis might benefit you psychologically or physically, if you are thinking you or your partner have been smoking too much cannabis, or if you have a dysfunctional underemployed thirtysomething living in your basement (yet smoking lots of weed), this manual might be instructive.

The history of cannabis use in the United States is reflective of Americans' fierce attitudes about independence as well as the steady advance of capitalism. Currently (early 2023) it is legal in many states but illegal at the federal level, considered by the Food and Drug Administration to be a level 1 narcotic like heroin. Gail Amity knows her own psychology and freely admits she might have ruined her life and her career on many occasions. In addition, Ms. Amity humorously and honestly reveals her process from using cannabis as an impressionable college freshman, later to treat normal conditions of aging, to becoming habituated and continually dissatisfied with today's cannabis industry. Gail lampoons that industry while presenting research that indicates cannabis as medication has evolving uses. She reveals simple secrets of growing organic cannabis at no cost, cooking cannabis to avoid its worst health effects, and what recent research seems to say about using cannabis either for fun or treatment or both. Gail outlines a number of harm reduction strategies she wishes she'd known about back in the day. If you live to be sixty-eight, you will thank her. She further gives invaluable (if cynical) insights into today's counseling industry, now often called behavioral health.

Gail does not advocate breaking laws, but fortunately cannabis laws are finally changing.

Prologue

It was autumn 1972, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, gigantic trees and imposing ivy-covered stone buildings. Everywhere there were boys, boys, boys. Oh my, was I going to get in trouble! I was a freshman in a coed dorm with 1200 other youngbloods.

My resident advisor, a sophomore, arrived at my dorm room with a joint. Of course I had to try it; she was in charge of our floor. The accommodations were meager, but we were young, and living independently was thrilling. My RA and I remained friends for almost fifty years, but sadly she passed away while I was writing this memoir.

You might not get high the first couple of times you try cannabis. I didn't, but I kept practicing! The third or fourth time we were waiting in line for a movie, and my feet felt nailed to the ground as my body swayed back and forth and around slooowly, most pleasantly. Don't remember a thing about the movie. So began my intense friendship with cannabis.

I was seventeen, precocious, intelligent, and antiauthoritarian. Then at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, on April Fools' Day everyone was allowed to turn out on campus and blow some dope. It was the annual Hash Bash on the diag (the diagonal park in the center of campus) and continued to its fiftieth anniversary, April 1, 2022. It is ongoing annually. Interestingly it doesn't look like people are enjoying themselves all that much, judging by their flat affects, meaning their faces aren't animated. Google it and see for yourself.

Back then it was glorious fun and temporarily legal. God only knows where the weed came from. Never asked, never knew besides maybe Kenny, the older guy who sold it to us and of whom we made fun behind his back.

Chapter 1

History of Cannabis Laws in the United States

How did cannabis get the name marijuana? I would have no idea if I didn't write this memoir. Marijuana is commonly thought to be a Mexican word. According to Zativo's website, before the civil war broke out in Mexico in 1910, pot was referred to by its scientific name: cannabis. For the most part, I will be referring to it by its correct name.

Another source states that Chinese settlers arrived on the West Coast of South America and brought the flower of hemp seed, which they called ma ren hua. A third source (from training to renew my license) said it comes from a Portuguese word meaning intoxicant. Ironically, I have to question that source. (See Chapter 5: Part 2: What Your Counselor Might Think.)

At some point authorities started calling it marijuana, playing on the fears of American citizens toward immigrants from Central and South America. With the leadership of FBI director Harry J. Anslinger (1892–1975), it was further demonized, as were those who smoked it:

There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and many others. (See Anslinger quotes and more at https://www.zativo.com/blog/88-why-is-cannabis-called-marijuana?")

Guess Anslinger might have been right because I'm a white woman and my husband is a musician! It is no accident that the first states to outlaw pot were all border states. However, before 1980 I did not live in a border state, and by then it was outlawed everywhere in the United States, making it infinitely more attractive to my generation.

My mom took to calling it Mary Jane after she found a pound someone hid inside our player piano (c. 1973). You know who you are! How long did it take to waste a pound of dope? Mom flushed the whole stash down the toilet, and I'm surprised its owner didn't get hurt. She thought it sounded hip to call it Mary Jane, but we laughed at her too.

Worldwide these days there are estimated to be between six and two hundred million users of cannabis, marijuana, weed, pot, ganja, or dope, just to give a few of cannabis's nicknames. My research failed to clarify the exact number! Let's agree that it's popular. Hope they