Coming out for Marijuana

“Many people can smoke marijuana every day without ill effects, advocates say, just as many casually drink wine in the evening.” New York Times, July 19, 2009

When was the last time you talked about pot the way you talk about alcohol? With friends and family? Your doctor? Openly and honestly. The closet has a strange effect on information and as queer people we know this extremely well. We know that stigma around certain practices has the ability to cut us off from life saving information and support.

I had been working at a grassroots lesbian cancer organization for less than a week when I got a phone call from a cancer patient looking for marijuana. Full disclosure here, I thought my job would be mostly fundraising and public policy but as someone who has enjoyed marijuana for over 20 years I was thrilled at the idea of two of my worlds coming together.

I had known of the medical benefits of marijuana first hand with HIV positive friends who used it as an appetite stimulant. But truthfully, most of my friends with HIV were already recreational pot smokers, so they already knew of its benefits. Such has been the case with friends battling cancer. Many were already pot smokers so using it to battle the effects of chemo was a no brainer (and in some cases, a good excuse). This caller wasn't a pot smoker.

She felt she couldn't talk to her doctor about it and was more willing to make an anonymous phone call to us versus ask any of her friends or doctors for help. I introduced her to another lesbian with chronic illness who helped folks procure marijuana, recommended she use a vaporizer and no, didn't add this to my funder report.

But this isn't a blog about medical marijuana, racism and drug laws, or if marijuana is addictive. Three seriously important issues I could easily wax on about (especially when high).  It's hard to talk about any of those because of the stigma attached to discussing our own marijuana use.

How many of us have worked up the courage to talk to our doctors about our sexuality and gender identity but not that we smoke pot? Sure, I fear the ramifications from it being included in my medical records but I used to feel that way about my sexuality too.

Links:
NYC Has the Most Marijuana Arrests in the World (But Don’t Worry, White People, It Won’t Be You)
Marijuana Policy Project
NYTimes: Marijuana Is Gateway Drug for Two Debates
If Marijuana Is Legal, Will Addiction Rise?
Vaporization
Why Do People With HIV Use Marijuana?
American Cancer Society and Marijuana

More Thoughts on the Goodness and Badness of Alcohol

The New York Times has a great article entitled "Alcohol’s Good for You? Some Scientists Doubt It" on whether alcohol in moderation is good for you or not.

A few sweeping generalizations about why this connects to us: as queers, research shows we drink more. Our community tends to be based around events, not geography (hence the "we are everywhere" t-shirts back in the 90's). That's one of the reasons our community has so many damn galas and fundraisers. As well as social gatherings. So, we're not drinking home, alone (well, I'm sure some of us do, but I couldn't find anything sweeping on that). We're doing it out in community.

So that's why I am really interested in all of this back and forth about whether its OK or not OK to drink (cause we do it a lot). And how much. And how it benefits your heart. But not your breasts. Or whatever.

What I like about this article is that it allows for nuance. And how things affect each other. Rather than isolating alcohol use, they suggest that context matters:

“The moderate drinkers tend to do everything right — they exercise, they don’t smoke, they eat right and they drink moderately,” said Kaye Middleton Fillmore, a retired sociologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who has criticized the research. “It’s very hard to disentangle all of that, and that’s a real problem.”

Do you find that when your alcohol consumption is more moderate the rest of your life is more balanced? Or does one not affect the other?