Alcohol is a blunt instrument. It is a kind of biochemical sledgehammer. It doesn’t expand but instead contracts and degrades the fidelity of the nervous system. Language blobs out and can even collapse, motor control falters, memory dissolves into black gaps. It is, in essence, a controlled poisoning. The pleasure it offers is inseparable from its toxicity. Not even getting into the latest science of what alcohol, even in small amounts, is doing to the meat suit that is our body, one drinks ethanol, the same molecule that powers engines, and celebrates the continual impairment of one’s own organism. And this has been ritualized, sanctified even, across civilizations.

Cannabis, by contrast, is something altogether more curious, more dialogical. It does not impose itself in the same tyrannical way. Instead, it modulates perception rather than annihilating it. Sensory input becomes rich, layered, almost linguistic in its texture. Time dilates, thought becomes associative, and the boundaries between ideas soften, allowing novel connections to emerge as all 5 senses are expanded.

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