Motivational Syndrome
Far from inducing the asocial apathy and laziness ascribed to it in drug war propaganda, for many users marijuana is an aid to concentration. It is well known as the drug of conviviality, and it helps bring the same playful mode of relaxed attention to bear on work.
It is true that cannabis can lead to introspection and questioning of received values. A state of mind that tends toward peace and love is obviously a danger to life as we know it. A plant that induces such a state of mind is a direct threat to the ethic of consumptive competition. It’s a puff of smoke in the eye to all that is mean, self-righteous, greedy, and belligerent in people. After encountering marijuana the first few times, a period of pensive withdrawal may ensue as one looks for a new path, a search that unsympathetic evaluators will call antisocial.
But the myth of amotivational syndrome has long been laid to rest by science. Numerous studies of American college students have failed to find any link between cannabis use and poor academic performance. In fact, some have found that users have slightly better grades and higher scores on standardized tests than nonusers. Attention-deficit disorder may be largely a fad diagnosis, but some doctors, such as California mother and pediatrician Claudia Jensen, say marijuana may be the best remedy for true cases of it.
At one end of the work spectrum, cannabis lets the mind float free, so as to make arduous, boring, repetitive work tolerable. Scientists have studied field hands in India, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, including many sugar cane cutters, who have one of the most exhausting jobs on earth. They’ve documented how the laborers use ganja breaks to relax and energize themselves for more of their brutal toil.
But cannabis is also cherished as a catalyst for creative work. Its scent has sweetened the air of American music ever since Storyville launched the Jazz Age, and melodic group improvisation would be hard under a drug that causes confusion and memory loss. Shen Nong recommended it for absent-mindedness in his Pen Cao. But ganja can also lend itself to a sort of absent-minded professor state where you follow a convoluted train of thought right into a mud hole. Psychiatrists believe that this increased tracking attention to thoughts is what gives us the sense of expanded time. In any case, Ayurvedic medical texts also recommend it for alertness and intellectual stamina. For thousands of years, students seeking to master the vast literature of Hinduism in the great universities of Benares have been encouraged to seek the aid of goddess ganja. And William Burroughs said he wrote the best parts of Naked Lunch after “a sip from the twisted tit of Miss Green.”
Creativity is as important in sickness as it is in health. Motivation and the ability to work hard at getting well are crucial aspects of healing. Too often we overlook them in Western medicine’s schema of patient as passive recipient, first of disease and then of therapy
