The classified ad in San Francisco's Bay Guardian was straight
out of a doper's dream: Marijuana Research Subjects Wanted. Sure,
why not?! In those days—late 1975—it seemed surprising
that the U.S. government was still trying to figure out the physiological
effects of cannabis, but if they were willing to pay folks to smoke
their Mississippi-grown weed, I certainly didn't want to be left
out.
Besides, the ongoing studies were taking place in Langley Porter
Neuropsychiatric Institute, a place made legendary by The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe's 1967 opus. Several passages
in his book documented the adventures of fellow writer Ken Kesey,
who spent a significant amount of time in Langley Porter, gobbling
down the government's LSD. Ken was one of our generation's heroes,
and not just for writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
My screening session consisted of being locked inside a small airtight
room, while an erstwhile grad student sat in a nearby chair, to
ensure that I practiced good smoking technique with one of the program's
fat, U.S. Prime, machine-rolled doobies. He had nothing to do except
watch me, and I had nothing to do except smoke, so we struck up
a dialogue which gradually became quite fascinating. As the drug
gained traction, I kept forgetting where we were, and often attempted
to pass the joint over to him, out of simple courtesy. Since he
was obliged to enforce the experiment's protocol, he always turned
down my proffered toke, but a contact high was unavoidable in that
tiny room, and the longing in his eyes grew more and more pronounced.
For insurance reasons, the experiment itself required a commitment
to living inside Langley Porter's supervised hospital psych ward,
so I secured a 30-day leave of absence from my day job. Getting
wasted was dirty work, but somebody had to do it. During the first
week, the four of us enrolled in the research study were given placebo
pills every six hours, around the clock. We weren't supposed to
know they were fake, but nobody was getting off, so we shrugged
our shoulders and tried to settle into the mental facility's daily
routine: screams in the night, blood on the bathroom walls from
failed suicide attempts, zombie-like patients who wondered why we
chose to live among them.
Then there were the daily 14-page physiological self-evaluations,
which included hundreds of questions like: "Is your mouth wet
or dry? Do your feet feel cold or warm? Are your lips loose or tight?"
It took nearly an hour to diligently answer each item, and the question
about lips came near the end, when everything began to seem quite
absurd, so I always added these words: Loose Lips Sink Ships. I
figured this reference to a common WWII security slogan, warning
citizens against revealing unnecessary details to strangers, might
amuse the poor graduate students who were forced to process these
godawful forms. But a few days later, one of them hesitantly pulled
me aside, whispering, "Is this some kind of code?"
Following a week of baseline physical tests, the placebo pills
were suddenly replaced with real THC. Yaaay! I started to relax,
and interact with the non-study patients. They, in turn, began to
seem less disturbed, less strange, less like... The Other. I even
talked to the 14-year-old boy who mutely followed me around the
pool table, like a puppy dog. After a couple of weeks, we were old
buddies, even though he never said anything in return. I slowly
became aware of the patients he liked and disliked, from subtle
changes in his body language, and he began to smile at my lame jokes.
During the fourth week, his father visited - and spent an hour berating
him, inside his room. I overheard the monologue through an open
door, and winced.
Then the father came to visit me, beside the pool table: "He
hasn't smiled in three years! How did you do it?"
The nurses must have said something. I was caught off-guard, but
managed to blurt out, "I dunno. I just try to listen to him."
"But he never speaks!"
"I know."