mild drug SPOILER Re: other stoned detectives? Re: finished IV…

[Doug Millison]

He can smoke pot all day and not be stoned?  ;o)  He's got to have a  
buzz pretty much all the time don't you think, as often as he mentions  
smoking a joint?  Even with commercial grade stash, and at various  
points notes that he's smoking higher-potency Colombian, "thai stick",  
resinous Asian pot.  And what a fine surprise pleasure that was, back  
in the day -- the move from commercial pressed brick weed to buds that  
had been handled with care, like the cut from black and white to color  
in The Wizard of Oz.

Whatever his actual consumption turns out to be during the days and  
nights covered in IV, Doc strikes me as a wake-and-bake kind of guy,  
not uncommon back in that day, even less so in present day California  
with a booming medical cannabis cottage industry.  (You can take a  
weekend seminar over at Oaksterdam University -- affiliated with the  
Blue Sky in Oakland -- coffeeshop and learn how to be a "budtender" at  
a licensed cannabis club, how to grow it in your garage or backyard,  
how to make "concentrates" and thus join what I've heard described as  
a small but growing army of new wave artisanal hashmakers centered  
here in the SF Bay Area, how to cook with it and prepare various kinds  
of "edibles". ) All it takes is a doctor's prescription.

I'll make notes when I re-read IV, so I can keep track of how much Doc  
smokes and when.  Gotta fight the short-term memory loss, you know.

Joe mentions PCP, recalling a batch of that substance that moved  
through Fort Worth, Texas in the late 1971-early 1972 period,  
introduced as "synthetic THC", it froze a friend of mine on the couch  
for hours listening to Johnny Winter one afternoon and evening.  He  
later reported that his field of vision was like looking through the  
wrong end of a telescope.  Same era, Quaaludes and Sopers became  
popular in some circles, too.

I had a wild weekend in LA in early fall 1972, with some GI buddies we  
drove down from Ft. Ord in Monterey to one guy's family home in  
Topanga Canyon where among many fun and mostly illegal activities we  
wound up attending a party full of movie and music business hippies. A  
fun time was had by all. Pynchon's not exaggerating by much in IV, if  
that experience is anything to go by.


On Aug 10, 2009, at 3:50 PM, Carvill John wrote:

>
> Is he though? The more reviews I read, coupled with my second proper  
> run through IV itself, makes me question how much of the time Doc is  
> really stoned. He rools joints, and smokes, but to what extent is he  
> really out of it, how much of the time?
>
> ---