I was in graduate school at the time, and the news was so momentous that-in the way that some people remember where they were and what they were doing when Kennedy was shot or the Twin Towers came down-I remember exactly where I was when the THC receptor was identified all over the brain. The broad reach of this drug was a big surprise to researchers when it was realized in the early 1990s. Unlike cocaine, for instance, which acts in relatively few discrete spots in the brain, THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, acts throughout the brain, and in some regions in every single connection (of which there are trillions). It’s a five-gallon bucket and a four-inch brush, painting up the grain on all kinds of neural processing. First is its well-known ability to accentuate environmental stimuli: Music is amazing, food delicious, jokes hilarious, colors rich, and so on. If alcohol is a pharmacological sledgehammer and cocaine a laser (and they are), marijuana is a bucket of red paint. ![]() The first few hits of the day were reliably comforting as the gray dust of reality was blown away to reveal beauty and meaning in everyday encounters. One of my favorite moments was shortly after coming to consciousness in a new day and seeing for an instant the vast bleakness of life before me and then suddenly realizing-just as newlyweds might reach in excitement and hope for a spouse beside them in the bed-that I could get high. Some people it makes sleepy, others paranoid (due, no doubt, to an unfortunate confluence of neurobiology and genetics), but for me it was nearly perfect. Not to belabor the point, but from the first time I got high until long after I’d smoked my last bowl, I loved the drug like a best friend. ![]() ![]() As an antidote to boredom, the drug made everything more interesting, and time and space delightful instead of threatening. I loved the taste, the smell, and the fabulous buffering effects of weed separating me from the messy business of interacting with other people and fulfilling my daily obligations-as well as the promise of something new and glittering in the midst of the relatively unappealing present. I was an avid marijuana smoker for nearly ten years of my youth, and today I am a neuroscientist who studies addiction.
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