Respect Authority

It seems that whenever I think, to say nothing of hope, that progress is being made on the marijuana front, that the misconceptions are being remedied and the assumptions being undone, some half-high and way-drunk woman crashes her minivan into an SUV and kills eight people. So much for that.

But if it isn’t the tragic car crashes that get us — after all, plenty of people die from alcohol-related accidents every year, with no repercussions for the substance’s legality — it’s this: the heartfelt and depressing memoirs written by parents of addicts, moms and dads who have watched their sons and daughters fight a battle against any kind of substance, whether it’s pot or heroin or online pornography. So Julie Myerson’s The Lost Child, a story about her son’s battle with marijuana addiction, is sure to set us back at least another decade.

The book comes out next week, and needless to say, I won’t be reading it, so my understanding of its plot points comes almost exclusively from the New York Times‘ review, which I found oddly confusing. Myerson’s son smokes “skunk,” a cannabis strain with a THC content of up to 22% in some cases, which makes the immediate point that at least some of the risk with marijuana is the endless potential for more potent varieties, much as beer ostensibly poses a lesser threat to well-being than Bacardi 151. According to the review, which I have to assume is taking information from the book, or WebMD, stronger varieties of weed, like skunk, have been linked to behavioral and cognitive changes reminiscent of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia, biopolar disorder, major depression and anxiety disorder — which to me sounds simply like the physical manifestation of addiction. There’s no room for cognitive or rational thought when the mind is consumed with the drug.

But in any case, the son - who isn’t named in the review or the book proper - steals money, assaults his mother, disappears for weeks at a time, and refuses rehab. His story is intertwined with that of Mary Yelloly, some long-dead woman who Myerson is apparently researching for another book and whose story seems wholly irrelevant to this particular tale, both for me and the Times‘ reviewer.

The book has already been compared to two like it — David Sheff’s Beautiful Boy, a memoir about his son’s addiction to meth; and Michael Greenberg’s Hurry Down Sunshine, about his daughter’s mental illness. I find these comparisons ill-fitting. Pot is not meth, not by a long shot, and no drug is the equivalent of mental illness. What the comparisons do show is what’s most obvious, and what will ultimately sell The Lost Child: emotion. Memoirs about addiction are emotional, for the author, for the readers, and certainly for anyone who’s experienced anything even vaguely similar. I have no doubt Beautiful Boy, when I do read it, will resonate with me on an emotional level, will bring back memories of my family’s battle with alcoholism, whether or not vodka and meth are chemically equal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lost Child were the same.

Times reviewer Dominique Browning snarks that as Myerson experiences the mental and psychological toll marijuana takes on her son, “we find ourselves arguing about whether pot is addictive or a gateway drug or should be legalized. We are collectively losing our minds. The Lost Child is a cry for help and a plea for a clear acknowledgment of the toll this drug is taking on our children.”

But unfortunately for Myerson, and Browning, we don’t make laws based on emotion, nor is everything that’s ever warranted a tragic memoir illegal. Smashed, Dry, Drinking: A Love Story, A Drinking Life: A Memoir …the list is endless. And substance abuse is awful. But it’s also exactly that: abuse. That Myerson was able, and free, and brave enough to share her experience in writing is great. That the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty, or wrong, for enjoying something that has caused her so much pain—or use her singular experience to discredit or discount the millions of other cases where marijuana has been wholly harmless—is, frankly, bullshit.