This essay makes very few references to LRH materials. It is based on my observations and opinions. Your mileage may vary.

I recently found out that someone I knew, a Scientologist and highly classed auditor out in the Field was regularly smoking pot (in order to be able to get to sleep?). The information was corroborated by more than one person. When I found this out, I was incredulous. As the Brits say, I was "gobsmacked". After I heard the news, I was talking about it to my wife, and I mentioned how surprised I was about this. She reminded me that a lot of people make the argument that marijuana/THC is generally about the same as alcohol in terms of its severity and effects.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

I know a lot about alcoholism. I never had a problem with it, but it runs deep in my family. My father, my step-father, my step-brother, my grandmother, my cousin, two of my uncles at least were all alcoholics. I've had ample opportunity to observe alcoholism in action and its effect on people's lives. Whether we've experienced it ourselves, we have all seen it on display either in other people's lives or in books and movies or TV.

I also know quite a bit about marijuana users. I knew some stoners in high school. One of my first roommates when I moved out of my parents' house at 18 was a marijuana dealer. My second roommate in college and most of his friends were total stoners. And as if that wasn't enough, I spent many years of my youth working as an electrician and steel worker. I'm not sure if there is a profession more rife with stoners and alcoholics than construction. I've known hordes of them. Even on staff, a good half of my fellow staff members had been, at one time or another, heavy drug users. My personal experience with marijuana is quite shallow, confined to one year of college, and my experiences "under the influence" were not particularly noteworthy in any way.

I grew up in the 1960s. The years before I was born were not marked generally by drug abuse. However, things changed radically in the 1960s, and by the late 60s and early 70s it became clear to LRH that drugs were becoming a significant factor in cases. This is the reason we have the Purification Rundown and other drug handling today on the Bridge.

I'm not an expert on this subject, but I am aware that drugs (and alcohol) typically tie the time track in knots and restimulate earlier painful experiences, which the PC tends to carry around with them until handled by auditing. The more experiences like this a person carries around unknowingly, the less they are able to focus attention units on their immediate environment. And in fact, the more of a liability they become, both to themselves and those around them. This is true, both of alcoholics and stoners.

Marijuana, however, deserves its own class as a street drug, both because of its widespread use and because of its effects on the person. It is well and widely acknowledged that marijuana saps ambition. My observation is that it starts doing so immediately, and the effect becomes more profound over time. In addition, I've noticed that the ability to reason and determine cause is severely affected long term by marijuana use. Unfortunately, because the effects are gradual, they can go unnoticed by the user for quite a long time. Long enough that the user never realizes that the effects come from the drug he's abusing. He'll have a long list of "other reasons" why this or that condition prevails in his life, whereas the truth is his use of this drug is the proximate cause all the way along.

Here's an example of what marijuana does to your thinking ability. Back when I was in college, a newspaper article came out, highlighting the "Native American Church". The Native American Church is a religion which is chiefly known for its members taking the hallucinogen peyote (active ingredient: mescaline). The reporter journeyed, with an old girlfriend of mine from high school, to a Native American Church location to study their religion and culture. What he found isn't particularly important. What's important for our purposes is some tangential remarks he made in the article. Turns out, this fellow (who was married with children) frequently retired to a closet in his house to smoke pot. And one of the most enlightening quotes from him was, "Nothing ever really causes anything anyway". This tells the complete story of this guy, and clearly demonstrates what comes of regular marijuana use. I've heard similar drivel from other pot smokers.

Let's compare. I can order a marguerita and sip it with dinner. My blood/alcohol level will never rise above, say, 0.02% (typically, 0.08% is considered intoxicated here is the States). In fact, I'll never even know I've been drinking anything other than Coca-Cola. I happen to like margueritas, and on rare occasions I'll have one. Unfortunately, I often leave 3/4 of it undrunk when I leave a restaurant.

Now let's consider marijuana. One "hit"-- that's ONE-- and a person will shortly feel the effects. The more hits, the more one can feel the effects, and the more profound they are. It would probably take me a couple of margueritas in short succession, without food, to achieve the same level of intoxication as one hit of marijuana. Whoever came up with the idea that marijuana and alcohol were somehow on the same level was an idiot.

I also strongly suspect that mental health "professionals" do not consider marijuana as a problem at hardly any level of consumption. In fact, I imagine that when and if it comes up in wog counseling, it is more or less passed over and thereby implicitly condoned by the therapist. They, too, have likely been more or less bewitched by the idea that alcohol and marijuana are generally equivalent.

I'm not a classed auditor. But I've had enough life experience and observation to see clearly that A does not equal A does not equal A in this case. Alcohol and marijuana are not the same nor comparable. They can both eventually have appalling effects on a life, even bringing one to ruination. Whether it happens slowly or quickly depends on the person and the level of consumption. But near as I can tell from my observations, marijuana is by far the worse of the two.