A defense of the hapless stoner

A stoner isn’t going to define you as an alcoholic for enjoying your twenties, and it’s high time you left the Scooby-doo references at the door.

Some people smoke up, other people drink, they are all drugs (admit it), they make us feel great.

People are fond of poking fun at the fine herb community. Now, although I do not smoke myself, I feel i have experienced enough of the world to call out the ‘nonsensical bullshit’.

Just because someone does something that is different from sloshing pints or swilling vk’s, this shouldn’t define this person or require a degrading, judgmental name – the stoner.

It’s safe to say as a truism: no stoner believes that smoking marijuana makes you more intellectual, more perceptive or dare I say more alternative from our pint downing cousins.

From what I understand, the majority of stoners will concede that 90 per cent of what is chatted about, is overly benign and arbitrary. But that 10 per cent is gold.

When intoxicated and overly relaxed, your brain patterns are different, generating thoughts which your sober self would have passed over or not considered. And it’s from this ignorance that some golden ideas are born – just look at Nottingham’s friendly milkshake delivery service Munchies.

Equally, according to Callum, a white-widow fanatic, those trips to Amsterdam are “frankly sacrosanct”. Not just “for the sole reason that you can light up legally in public” or due to the “vast supply of high-grade available” but also due to the “culture of the city”.

The weed seems to be accepted as the principle motivation, but none of the stoners I talked to seemed motivated by the existential attraction of being able to light up when you want, without the fear of the police. You don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to realize this happens anyway, a quick assessment of  Wollaton park on a summers day reveals groups of people casually smoking suspicious looking cigarettes.

Amsterdam obviously has more to it than just weed with more high culture museums than you could shake your baggie at. But while it seems an attractive place to visit anyway, it is the above dualism which seems to provides the mecca-like allure.

Besides this, there seem to be a fair few reasons to enjoy the sweet mary-jane, that extend past those enjoyed by the stereotyped greasy, pizza-loving, call-of-duty bashing reprobate – which arguably provides cannabis with a valuable place in the timetable of students everywhere.

Let’s speculate you have an extensive friendship group, which takes an act of miraculous proportions to bind together, but sadly you have a 9 a.m. tomorrow, which your sleep deprived hung-over-self will have no hope of understanding what Kant was waxing lyrical about.

The underlying point is, a spliff is a way to remain socially committed, while enabling you to avoid the inevitable tension of feeling that you aren’t getting the most out of your £9000 degree because you’re so hungover from a night of beer and bad shots.

Or, lets speculate that you’ve had a really tough day at uni. After attending your two hours of lectures, you found out you received a 2:2 on that essay and now Daddy’s on the warpath.

You have a decision to make. Either sit there like a drip, or do the rational thing – roll up a fat joint, gather your thoughts and arrange to see your tutor tomorrow.