I am a new Catholic, confirmed at Easter this year, in my mid-fifties. I do, and have for most of my adult life, struggled with alcoholism. It has demolished my life. I know a lot about alcohol, and I’m still struggling with it.
Most drinkers I have known drink for the effect it offers. It’s all about the effect. To say, “Well, you can have a drink or two and you’re just fine and there’s no significant intoxication and it’s all good but you can’t do that with marijuana because you always get intoxicated on marijuana, you always get an effect . . .” is to make a moot point. The reality is, people who *drink * – and there are hundreds of millions of us – aren’t going to have a drink or two: we are going to keep going until there is a tangible effect. We are drinking for effect, for intoxication to one degree or another. Perhaps we want to get a little tipsy, uninhibited at a party; perhaps we want to rent a sleazy motel room and get semi-comatose for two weeks (been there and done that). It’s all intoxication. It doesn’t matter that it’s possible to have a beer or two and not be significantly intoxicated. That’s not the way that, every day, millions and millions and millions of people drink! We drink for effect; we smoke for effect.
The difference, as far as I can see, is that drinking alcohol is often about being under the influence of something that is physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, devastatingly harmful; potentially addictive; and a thing that contributes, more than any street drug – and certainly more than marijuana – to every imaginable form of violence and wreckage in the world. Alcohol is very prone to evil, believe me.
“Marijuana is a ‘gateway drug.’” Really? Listen, I’ve tried just about every kind of street drug out there, and in every case I tried it because I’d been drinking at the time it was available. I don’t know why anyone would imagine marijuana is, to any significant extent, more a “gateway drug” than alcohol is. In fact, I’m sure that the opposite is true. Because it is legal, plentiful, and accessible, alcohol has just *got * to be the most commonly occurring gateway drug on earth. It totally loosens inhibitions, and if one is bent on evil, one is likely to get a little evil.
Marijuana - I have smoked it off and on since 1974, about 40 years. I’ll pick up smoking for maybe two months, maybe four, and then loose interest in it. I may not have another smoke for eight years after that. Just don’t want it. But when I smoke, I smoke for effect. The effects I experience from marijuana don’t compare to the effects from alcohol. Alcohol makes me all kinds of stupid. Behind alcohol, I will do all kinds of violence to myself and others that I would never, ever, EVER do sober.
Marijuana doesn’t have that effect. When I smoke, I stay true to how I am sober: I maintain my wits, values, beliefs, morals, the quality of my physical health (I don’t smoke enough to hammer my lungs). Marijuana’s effect for me: if I were to sum it up in one word, it “gentles” me. I loose my rough edges and become especially thoughtful and exceptionally meditative, patient, and compassionate. I smile more than I usually do. I wouldn’t say that I’m especially virtuous when I smoke, but I’d say that I’m way more virtuous when I’m smoking than when I’m drinking or when I’m sober but getting stoned on fast-food. (I get really stoned on most fast-food: it makes me mean-spirited, restless, irritable, and discontent.) (Seriously.)
Marijuana is proving to have legitimate therapeutic uses, and our church condones the therapeutic use of drugs (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2291). So is its use, in and of itself, sinful? Apparently not. The sin seems to be not about use. I think it is about intent. It is sinful if it is “inflicting very grave damage on human health and life.” I can tell you, alcohol inflicts a whole lot of grave damage. So does fast food and soda pop: obesity inflicts very grave damage.
Earlier in this thread someone asked would I smoke marijuana with Jesus or our Holy Mother? I think I’d enjoy that as long as they didn’t have a problem with it. Would they have a problem with it? DO they have a problem with it?
I think they do, and they don’t. I think they care about grave damage, but I doubt Jesus has a problem with effective, herbal medicine. I think they may not like our intent in most cases. Jesus and the Blessed Virgin want us to get high on them! Their graces provide infinitely greater joy than does any substance on Earth. They want us to discover them, to have them.
Do they have a problem with a diet consisting largely of fast food or with obesity? Yes: grave damage. There are a lot of chubby bishops in the Church; I trust that those bishops have passionate love for Our Lord and Blessed Mother, thus They have made Their home in those bishops’ hearts.
