9. Cannabis-With-Other-Drugs

I sometimes imagine being in a street vox-pop, for example, in Glasgow’s George-Square, and being asked “what’s your view on drugs?”, to which I reply “I like them”. Presumably this is not the considered reply that was hoped-fo,r along the lines of “I think they should be decriminalized”, or “crack-down on drugs”, but this is the issue. Drugs are enjoyable, that’s true, but there are lots of other considerations, especially when mixing drugs. Do they mix well? What’s it feels-like? Is it dangerous? Above all, does it fit my personality? 

Let’s initially explore the taking of cannabis and tobacco. This was so common as to be unremarkable. If you took cannabis, you had to mix it with tobacco to smoke it. So, you were never taking the pure drug, but a combination of two. These days, thank goodness, this is far less of a given. If you want to smoke cannabis you can use an inert plant filler, or even better, take cannabis edibles. This avoids having to use tobacco altogether, and leaves it as a choice. Which prompts the question “who on earth wants to use tobacco anyway?”. A very good question. Its so easy to pick-up a tobacco habit, as nicotine seems to be a stimulant drug that the brain is very fond of. 

I don’t and won’t use the word “addictive” in relation to nicotine, or any other drug, as I believe it is a “loaded” word that has been hijacked by vested-views (medical, legal etc.). I’ve read that in the thirties “addicted” meant more like being a “dedicated-fan-of” rather than being under the mind-control of some white powder or other. I’m a great believer in free-will/agency and do not accept that humans cannot control their actions. It may be difficult, many things are in life (e.g. giving birth, holding-down a job, of farting in B-flat), but saying “it’s the drug what did it” seems like a playground-abrogation of any responsibility, both by the user and society. There should be nice-people to help if you want. To quote the Bible (first book of Knackerdemus, chapter-five, verse-twelve), “Do not bear-malice of the tree of knowledge if its fruits be corrupted by the bile of the Beelzebub”. 

Instead of using loaded-words like “addict”, I believe in using words that are descriptive-and-accurate, like “user”, or “problem-user”. These also bring compassion-and-understanding back into the equation; “addict” is “them”, “other”, while “user” is more “us”, i.e. human. What I do say about tobacco is that there are many problem-users of-it health-wise, both to the user themselves and to the society they live in that has to patch-them-up when they get heart-attacks or worse. Kids and everyone else, beware of nicotine, but if you do like-it, vape-it. As for mixing with cannabis? I only ever really noticed the cannabis. 

Now let’s examine the taking of cannabis with alcohol. This is the most common combination that people take, and that’s true for me. Alcohol is not a natural partner of cannabis, experience-wise. Alcohol makes you loud, impulsive, aggressive, sociable, disinhibited, outward-going. Cannabis makes you quiet, considered, giggly, contemplative and inward-looking. Put the two together and you get two semi-opposing influencers. In my view the two are most commonly consumed together for availability reasons, not a natural, complementary mix. However, they do produce a superposition of state-of-minds that can be very enjoyable, in computing terms, more a qubit than a bit. As ever, caution and practice are advised.

This is one reason why coffee-shops in the Netherlands were prevented from selling alcohol. Cheek; imaging a coffee-shop being forced to sell coffee. In the good-old-days you could rock-up to a coffee-shop in Amsterdam, neck a few lagers, smoke a few joints, before staggering outside, start insulting the locals before throwing-up into the canal. As a Brit I have to admit that there is still a small part of me that still craves this behaviour, but at least I’m fully aware of it, and can keep it contained. 

The Dutch, enterprising as ever, adapted to these regulations by the same business opening a coffee-shop next to a bar. Buy your dope in the shop then get blotto in the bar next door which still allows you to smoke, provided no tobacco is involved (a Dutch solution if-ever-there-was-one).  I remember a tourist coming into my local and asking about this, to which the barista proudly replied “yes, Billies have four places, a coffee-shop, a seed-shop, a bar/restaurant and a brothel – pretty-much all bases covered”. This was true except for the last place. By-the-way, the Dutch don’t call cannabis dope; that word is used for the so-called hard-drugs (just a little educational). 

The trick is to learn to embrace the best effects of both drugs and be sociable and giggly. Choosing the right bar can greatly help as well; try to find somewhere with a buzz and avoid drinking-dens or Dutch brown-bars. Marvella and I used to go to modern bar on the high-street in Canterbury that had an easy-going, young clientele. I remember at the end of one very enjoyable evening a young couple coming up to us and saying “its really nice to see older people getting really out-of-it”. They were being genuinely pleasant to us; hilarious. 

Let’s move-on to taking cannabis with LSD or other strong hallucinogens like mushrooms. Cannabis to the alarmists is called a gateway drug in that it leads to other drug use, such as LSD. I believe the science of the bleeding-obvious is now unambiguously showing its not cannabis that leads to other drugs, it is having to mix in that illegal world of drug-supply that does this. This is why the Dutch decided to tolerate cannabis use in order to isolate it from other drug-supply. This has undoubtedly worked. It is virtually impossible to source LSD or other drugs from a coffee-shop or its patrons. You have to go to clubs or certain bars to find supply. 

However you source your LSD, does cannabis mix with it? The short answer is yes. Cannabis is a very mild hallucinogen; close your eyes while on it and you can see all those swirly thingy’s hallucinogens produce, but that’s about the extent of it. LSD is orders-of-magnitude stronger than cannabis, so cannabis has to be seen as LSD’s little sibling; same family, but a toddler in comparison to its big sister/brother. So why take cannabis and LSD when the effects of the latter are going to drown the effects of the former? Well as any true acid-head will tell you cannabis helps calm-you on the way-up and smooths things on the way-down. OK, I wasn’t planning to do this, but I guess I’ll have to explain things a little and break the golden-rule of not attempting to describe a trip and why this going-up phase is particularly important. Wish me well! 

We must firstly understand the word hallucination. This is the Webster’s dictionary definition: “a sensory perception (such as a visual image or a sound) that occurs in the absence of an actual external stimulus and usually arises from neurological disturbance (such as that associated with delirium tremens, schizophrenia, Parkinson's disease, or narcolepsy) or in response to drugs (such as LSD or phencyclidine)”. The thing to notice here is the bit where it says “such as visual image or sound”. This is where things get interesting. LSD and similar drugs absolutely do cause these two senses, and ones like touch, taste and smell, to go “off-piste”. There are some very good videos showing what visual hallucinations are like, with trees morphing into faces morphing into abstract shapes and morphing back into familiar and unfamiliar “stuff”. 

I’ve not heard anyone attempting to do a similar thing with sound, but you can kind-of-guess what that might be like. There isn’t any current technology that can give you a realistic impression of touch, taste and smell, but use your imagination and you won’t be far wrong. So, there we have it then? LSD and the like produce visual, audio and touch hallucinations, and we can just sit back and enjoy the experience, like going to see mega-sophisticated audio-visual-tactile-etc show. Oh yes, that’s true, but its only a fraction of what else is happening, and this is the interesting/scary bit.

With LSD et-al everything hallucinates. Not just your senses, but stuff like emotions such as wonder, fear, love, perception-of-time; the whole-damn shooting match. If things go well as they should, you can be stuck in a wonder-wall of amazement-and-enjoyment, contemplating the harmony of the universe, and lasting a few-hours. If they don’t (a bad trip) the same few-hours can be spent mentally-avoiding the terrors of being hunted-down by thoughts of death and eternal suffering. For old-hands this is part of the experience, helping navigate the trip towards the former and away from the latter, but it is a very hard thing to do, especially when you are new to all of this. 

For many of us, me included, this uncertain outcome is the ultimate “bummer”. To use an analogy, I just don’t want to drive a sports-car where the steering-wheel suddenly comes-off and the “experts” say “well, that’s part of the fun”. No, it isn’t, trust me on this, it isn’t. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t want to spend hours of my life clinging to my bed because I can feel gravity pulling me towards and out of the window to my death fourteen floors below (my first trip). Waking up into a sea of fluorescent-crocodiles is OK, quite fun actually (my first trip again, after the six pints of lager wore off), but fear of imminent death is not. 

This is where cannabis can help, and definitely more than those six pints of lager. During the hour or so before lift-off it should put you in a better frame of mind. Relaxed, amongst friends, listening to music and in a safe environment. This is the best launch you can reasonably expect but does not guarantee a good trip, but it does increase the chances. Since I’m supposed to be entertaining you here and not scaring the heebie-jeebies out of you, let me add two don’ts and a maybe to the mix. 

Firstly, never look in a mirror. I was told this, but of course being me, ignored the advice. Things started well with my face slowly morphing into a very impressive red-Indian warrior; feathers, war-paint, all that sort of stuff. This was temporary as the face in the mirror then morphed into distorted faces of angry monsters coming out of the mirror and into the room. What is probably going-on is that your brain system for recognizing faces has gone into a frenzy where it is conjuring up demons and ghosts. Not only that but your emotion of fear is simultaneously being exaggerated. Just don’t do it, or put the mirror down as soon as you see something troubling. 

Secondly, never play an LP by Leonard-Cohen (sorry Lenny). Kids who haven’t heard of him, do your research. Very much like the mirror things start OK with deep emotions being triggered by the songs. Almost inevitably these emotions phase into a sadness so deep as to feel like being at the bottom of the Marian-trench. Just don’t go there in the first place; be smart and choose some uplifting, trancey-music. 

And the maybe? Avoid going to the toilet by going before your trip. This may of course be impossible depending on your physiology (ort the six pints). Peeing isn’t too bad. I found my urine started to change colour, from yellow to green, then to all the colours of the rainbow. Quite pretty actually. Then I noticed instead of one stream coming-out of me, there were half-a-dozen or so. What was really worrying however, was the time. It seemed I was peeing for twenty minutes or so. Where is all this liquid coming from? Is this a side-effect of the drug? Will I be found in the toilet looking like one of those three-thousand-year-old mummies, totally desiccated? As for crapping, well you can imagine what your brain makes of that, so please, never look into the bowl before flushing as you will see something very unpleasant, usually with eyes looking menacingly up at you.

Well have I put you off taking LSD? I know full well no; its down to your personality. If you are a risk taker you will do strong-hallucinogens anyway, whatever I or others say. If you are more sensible just factor these things in to your decision making. What else can I say? Yes, remember throughout your trip it can only last a few hours, and you will return to normality, to classwork, exams, the day-to-day stuff which we all do. And if things are right, enjoy it. It will change you, almost always for the better. Most people go through an LSD phase, five, ten trips or so, and they are satisfied. Idiots like me do fifty, and I do know people who did hundreds, but they tend to become unemployable. 

Now let’s do cannabis and ecstasy. Like cannabis and LSD, cannabis is a very good way of smoothing the transition from that regular, boring reality into the euphoric-highs of an ecstasy-extravaganza. It helps scale those little foothills until you encounter the mountains that are the ecstasy peaks. Even then the transition can happen alarmingly quickly. I remember talking quite rationally to a young lad who worked for Microsoft and was visiting this S&M venue for the first time, but had to stop mid-sentence as I realized my mouth seemed to have disconnected from my brain. I gathered myself, managed to apologise, before heading for the dance-floor with Marvella (I can’t dance, but it was an escape route). What impression must I have left? 

So, as per my LSD expose, what’s ecstasy like? I remember being asked this by one of my Dutch consulting colleagues and gave the truthful response “it’s a mix between speed and LSD”, to which she replied “but I’ve never tried either of those two”. So much for my explanation by analogy. Later-on she told me she had been prescribed SSRIs (though she hadn’t heard of the term), and asked if I had an issue with that? I replied “I’m hardly one to give advice”, though I do have an issue with SSRIs and the mental-health-industry in general. Though as a believer in free-will, I think its ultimately up to you whatever rubbish you introduce to your body, whether it’s prescribed by a doctor, a witch-doctor, or your local street-dealer. Consumer beware. 

The really positive thing about ecstasy is that you are almost certain to enjoy the experience. Also, like LSD and cannabis, you can’t over-do it (I’ve tried). You can get smashed-as-a Ming-vase, but it can never kill you, at least directly. I suppose what is happening is that it triggers a flood of something-or-other in your brain, and once flooded, it can’t be overflooded. This is different to speed, cocaine, alcohol and the opiates/opioids (see below). Indirectly it can and does have negative effects, but that’s down to you and societal norms, not the drug. 

What negative effects are these? The obvious one is on your sexuality, and I’m reliably informed this is particularly true if you are of the female persuasion. You can make a lot of new friends on ecstasy, so much so that things evolve physically. Do you really want to be the one at the centre of the dark-room scrum, every orifice-filled with the appendages of these new friends? Some do, many don’t. Ecstasy leaves you “open”, and in the cold-light of the next day, what seems like a good idea may be less so. You have been warned. 

Also dancing all night may be fine for a twenty-something, but for a fifty-something, expect your doctor to look over their spectacles as he asks incredulously “just how old are you?” when you’re trying to hide the real reason for your sore legs and aching feet (they are not all quite as daft as you think they are). It’s a bit like expecting sympathy for getting your head stuck in the railings.  Ecstasy is very strong, so much so everyone I knew went through a phase of using it, just like LSD, then stopped. The amazing memories remain, of course. 

Now cannabis with speed/cocaine. I put these two drugs together, because for me, I found their effects very similar, with speed lasting several hours, but cocaine less than an hour. Also, when I was a lad and taking these drugs, cocaine was not that available, and when it was, it was very expensive. How things have changed since the 70’s. I suppose I’m biased; I just don’t like speed/cocaine as I found them too invasive, and its all to easy to build-up a habit.

How many regular users of speed/cocaine do you know who manage it well, or at all? I’m not saying its impossible, and there are communities in the world where speed-like drugs are the local drug of choice (khat, betelnuts etc.), but have you seen their long-term effects on their users? Not good. I remember viewing an episode of “Floortje to Het Einde Van De Wereld” on Dutch TV, who was visiting a husband-and-wife doctor team in the interior of PNG (Papua-New-Guinea), whose surgery had a sign instructing patients “No witchcraft, and no betelnuts). Guess what their most common ailment was; that’s right, machete and arrow wounds! As for using these two drugs with cannabis, well you won’t notice the cannabis.  

Penultimately, the opiates and opioids. These are basically the same thing, with opiates derived from poppies (e.g. heroin) and opioids from illicit labs (e.g. fentanyl). Don’t get taken-in by the “facts” floated on the media that opioids are fifty-thousand times stronger than heroin. That’s all about the concentration and the active site in comparison to the size of the host molecule (do your research). Both are extremely strong, extremely dangerous, and extremely nice. That’s the problem with them. Your brain just loves them. Its like plugging yourself into the mains. Again, there are no doubt hill-tribes who culturally use opiates safely(ish?) over the long term, but I doubt even that. As per speed/cocaine, you won’t notice cannabis if you’re goofing on smack.  

Finally, I should mention speed/cocaine with an opiate/opioid. This is called a speedball, and is one of the quickest ways to find your way to A&E with an overdose or heart-attack, or go straight to the morgue. It is an incredibly dangerous combination. But what does it feel like? Brilliant of course. You could try cave-free-diving I suppose for a similar kick, with approximately the same survival rate. Good swimming, and hold your breath, is all I can say to you.