Weed vs. Booze Is the Wrong Question

by Richard P. Weigand

 

Alcohol and marijuana are often compared as though one of them must win.

Which is worse?

Which is safer?

Which should society tolerate?

The answer depends on what one chooses to measure.

If the measure is violence, recklessness, family disorder, and public chaos, alcohol looks worse.

If the measure is distorted perception, loss of motivation, paranoia, or psychiatric danger in vulnerable people, marijuana looks worse.

Both answers may be partly true.

But the comparison itself is flawed.

The Wrong Question

The real question is not which intoxication is better.

The real question is why is either being considered?

Alcohol and marijuana damage people in different ways.

Alcohol often attacks conduct.

It lowers inhibition, weakens judgment, and can make a person reckless, careless, aggressive, or cruel.

Marijuana works differently.

It may quiet the mind and soften the edges of life, but it can also distort perception, dull attention, and make a person less present to himself.

Alcohol may make a man dangerous to others.

Marijuana may make a man absent from himself.

Neither is a path to self reliance.

The Missing Standard

That is the missing standard.

The modern argument usually compares harms. One side says alcohol is worse. Another says marijuana is safer. Another says marijuana is natural. Another says alcohol is traditional.

But none of that reaches the deeper issue.

The issue is not which substance has the better public case.

The issue is what either one does to or for the person using it.

Does it improve judgment?

Does it strengthen responsibility?

Does it make the person more truthful?

Does it increase self-command?

Does it help him face life, or help him avoid it?

Why Do I Want This?

I quit alcohol decades ago because I saw something simple.

If I wanted anything that would impair my judgment, even for a moment, that desire itself pointed to something I needed to fix in my life.

Neither booze nor weed repair anything.

It is evasion.

That realization changed the question.

Instead of asking, “Can I handle this?”

I began asking, “Why do I want this?”

That is the better question.

What Is Not Being Handled?

A person may drink to relax. Why is he stressed?

He may use marijuana to take the edge off.  What edge and from what?

He may want relief from pressure, boredom, grief, fear, anger, regret, or emptiness.

And he may be telling the truth.

But that truth should not end the inquiry.

It should begin it.

What is not being handled?

What pain is being postponed?

What responsibility is being avoided?

What condition of life is being left unchanged?

Relief Is Not Resolution

Alcohol and marijuana are both short-term solutions.

That is why they attract people.

They work quickly.

They change the state.

They interrupt discomfort.

They offer relief without requiring repair.

But relief is not resolution and they are long term destructive.

A short-term solution becomes a long-term trap when it trains a person to escape discomfort rather than understand it.

Neither Deserves the Crown

This is why the comparison between weed and booze is misleading.

If one substance makes a person loud and another makes him passive, which one is better?

If one substance weakens conduct and another weakens presence, which one wins?

The better answer is neither.

Neither deserves the crown.

A society that asks only which intoxication is less harmful has already lowered its standard.

The higher question is what kind of human being is being formed.

What Does It Replace?

A man is not strengthened by the thing that helps him avoid himself.

He is not made freer by anything that weakens his command.

He is not made wiser by anything that blurs his judgment or distorts his perception.

This does not mean every person who drinks is ruined.

It does not mean every person who uses marijuana is lost.

Life is more complicated than that.

But the principle remains.

Anything that reduces command of self should be judged not only by its pleasure, but by what it replaces.

Does it replace courage?

Does it replace honest conversation?

Does it replace discipline?

Does it replace the hard work of changing one’s life?

That is the question.

Changing State Without Changing Life

Alcohol and marijuana may differ in chemistry, legality, culture, and effect.

But they can serve the same false purpose.

They can become ways of changing one’s state without changing one’s life.

That is why “weed vs. booze” is the wrong question.

The question is not which one is better.

The question is why a person wants to be less fully present to his own life.

And once that question is asked honestly, the answer is no longer weed or booze.

The answer is something that needs to be remedied.

The answer is responsibility.

The answer is truth.

The answer is command of self.

A man does not need a better intoxicant.

He needs a better answer and there is one out there.

 

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