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Becoming a Marihuana User by Howard S. Becker (2015, Trade Paperback)

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OG Kush. Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. From there he asks: so how do people decide to get high, and what kind of experience do they have as a result of being part of the marijuana world?.

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press

ISBN-10022633290X

ISBN-139780226332901

eBay Product ID (ePID)11038253581

Product Key Features

Book TitleBecoming a Marihuana User

Number of Pages88 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2015

TopicEntheogens & Visionary Substances, Sociology / General, General

IllustratorYes

GenreBody, Mind & Spirit, Social Science, Psychology

AuthorHoward S. Becker

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0 in

Item Weight3.1 Oz

Item Length0.6 in

Item Width0.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2015-018481

Dewey Edition23

ReviewsBecker's classic essay Becoming a Marihuana User still sparkles with insight all these years after its original publication. The idea that one has to learn to be high on cannabis, that the highs users report are not intrinsic and automatic effects of the drug, was completely novel. It is consistent with the observations and experiments of many subsequent researchers who have concluded that effects of psychoactive drugs result from interactions of pharmacology, expectation (set), and environment (setting). Becker was also the first expert to talk about marijuana use, when everyone else called all consumption of the drug 'abuse.' At present, our society is moving, with many bumps and stops, toward total acceptance of marijuana, as both a medical and recreational drug, not to mention a source of superior fiber, a highly nutritious oil, and new foods. In writing Becoming a Marihuana User , Becker pointed the way toward a more enlightened, rational view of cannabis. I could not be more pleased to see his wise words republished., Becker's classic essay Becoming a Marihuana User still sparkles with insight all these years after its original publication. The idea that one has to learn to be high on cannabis, that the highs users report are not intrinsic and automatic effects of the drug, was completely novel. It is consistent with the observations and experiments of many subsequent researchers who have concluded that effects of psychoactive drugs result from interactions of pharmacology, expectation (set), and environment (setting). Becker was also the first expert to talk about marijuana use, when everyone else called all consumption of the drug 'abuse.' At present, our society is moving, with many bumps and stops, toward total acceptance of marijuana, as both a medical and recreational drug, not to mention a source of superior fiber, a highly nutritious oil, and new foods. In writing Becoming a Marihuana User , Becker pointed the way toward a more enlightened, rational view of cannabis. I could not be more pleased to see his wise words republished., A sort of Richard Feynman of the social sciences, notable for his street smarts, his informal manner, and his breezy, pungent prose style--a Northwestern professor who was just as at home playing piano in saloons. . . . A Beckerian analysis of a social 'world' asks how, in any culture or subculture, someone comes to be called an insider while someone else gets pushed outside. Simple as it is, this approach has proved immensely influential in the study of everything from drug addiction to queer theory. . . . The influence of Becker's early work remains profound.

Dewey Decimal362.29/5

SynopsisOG Kush. Sour Diesel. Wax, shatter, and vapes. Marijuana has come a long way since its seedy days in the back parking lots of our culture. So has Howard S. Becker, the eminent sociologist, jazz musician, expert on "deviant" culture, and founding NORML board member. When he published Becoming a Marihuana User more than sixty years ago, hardly anyone paid attention--because few people smoked pot. Decades of Cheech and Chong films, Grateful Dead shows, and Cannabis Cups later, and it's clear--marijuana isn't just an established commodity, it's an entire culture. And that's just the thing--Becker totally called it: pot has everything to do with culture . It's not a blight on culture, but a culture itself--in fact, you'll see in this book the first use of the term "users," rather than "abusers" or "addicts." Come along on this short little study--now a famous timestamp in weed studies--and you will be astonished at how relevant it is to us today. Becker doesn't judge, but neither does he holler for legalization, tell you how to grow it in a hollowed-out dresser, or anything else like that for which there are plenty of other books you can buy. Instead, he looks at marijuana with a clear sociological lens--as a substance that some people enjoy, and that some others have decided none of us should. From there he asks: so how do people decide to get high, and what kind of experience do they have as a result of being part of the marijuana world? What he discovers will bother some, especially those who proselytize the irrefutably stunning effects of the latest strain: chemistry isn't everything--the important thing about pot is how we interact with it. We learn to be high. We learn to like it. And from there, we teach others, passing the pipe in a circle that begins to resemble a bona fide community, defined by shared norms, values, and definitions just like any other community. All throughout this book, you'll see the intimate moments when this transformation takes place. You'll see people doing it for the first time and those with considerable experience. You'll see the early signs of the truths that have come to define the marijuana experience: that you probably won't get high at first, that you have to hold the hit in, and that there are other people here who are going to smoke that, too., Among Howard Becker's favorite quotes is one he coined--"management is a one-word oxymoron"--and another uttered by Ambrose Bierce--"I think I think, therefore I think I am." His distrust of authority and convention is already apparent from the first, and his belief that things (or "facts") don't carry their meaning on their faces, but are relative to an observer and the observer's community, comes through in the second. His reputation as a maverick was firmly established more than 60 years ago when he published, in The American Journal of Sociology, "Becoming a Marihuana User." He gets fan mail about this piece even now, six decades later (e.g., from a British manager of a criminal justice/drug rehab center, who insists that his volunteers and new employees read the article, "even though a good few years have past and patterns of drug use have greatly changed, [but] this chapter like the vast majority of your work remains relevant and highly useful"). Smoking marijuana, still against the law in most places, is therefore "deviant," and instead of asking "why do they break universally accepted rules," for Becker marijuana is simply a substance whose use someone has outlawed. The question of how a choice is made to use it thus becomes a focus of study. And so, smoking marijuana is an experience one learns to enjoy: "The taste for such experience is a socially acquired one, not different in kind from acquired tastes for oysters or dry martinis." The user acquires a stable set of categories for registering the drug's effects. Becker shows the steps by which the user acquires these categories from others in his marijuana-smoking world. Becker's new preface addresses the fact that marihuana over the past 60 years has become more accepted, thus more widely used, and that the cultivation of the plant has resulted in increased potency. Do people still have to learn how to get high? Yes, but there are some intricacies. And there are ironies; in some quarters, people think the 1953 article is the beginning point of the gradual revolution in acceptance of pot smoking (Becker knows better), and he wryly observes that people at first didn't know what to make of the article or of his conference presentations until, thanks to a police bust of several Northwestern students a decade or so later (where he was teaching), Becker all of a sudden became an "expert." Nowadays, he is being celebrated as the Voice of Sociology, thanks to a wonderful write-up in The New Yorker magazine of his life as a jazz musician, scholar, and Chicagoan (at least for his first 50 years), and of his fame in French circles as the anti-Bourdieu and avatar of empiricism.

LC Classification NumberHV5822.M3B395 2015