Science Cannabis

88 THE SCIENCE OF MARIJUANAI have felt mentally ill twice when using hashish. On both occasions Ifelt that I could control no thoughts whatsoever that passed through mymind. It was as though my brain had burst and was distributed around theroom. I knew that a short time beforehand I had been quite sane, but thatnow I was insane and I was desperate because I thought that I would neverreach normality again. I saw myself in the mirror, and although I knew thatit, the person I saw was me, she appeared to be a complete stranger, and Irealized that this was how others must see me. Then the head becameestranged from the body —flat piece of cardboard floating a few inchesabove the shoulders. I was completely horrified, but fascinated, and stoodand watched for what must have been some minutes.(Berke and Hernton, 1974)As is so often the case, Ludlow's description of a cannabis-inducedhorror is particularly graphic. After he had taken a much larger dose ofcannabis than usual —in the mistaken belief that the preparation wasweaker than the one he had used most recently —he went to sleep in adark room:... I awoke suddenly to find myself in a realm of the most perfect clarityof view, yet terrible with an infinitude of demoniac shadows. Perhaps, Ithought, I am still dreaming; but no effort could arouse me from my vision,and I realized that I was wide awake. Yet it was an awaking which, fortorture, had no parallel in all the stupendous domain of sleeping incubus.Beside my bed in the centre of the room stood a bier, from whose cornersdrooped the folds of a heavy pall; outstretched upon it lay in state a mostfearful corpse, whose livid face was distorted with the pangs of assassination.The traces of a great agony were frozen into fixedness in the tenseposition of every muscle, and the nails of the dead man's fingers piercedhis palms with the desperate clinch of one who has yielded not withoutagonizing resistance. ... I pressed my hands upon my eyeballs till theyached, in intensity of desire to shut out this spectacle; I buried my head inthe pillow, that I might not hear that awful laugh of diabolic sarcasm. . . .The stony eyes stared up into my own, and again the maddening peal offiendish laughter rang close beside my ear. Now I was touched upon allsides by the walls of the terrible press; there came a heavy crush, and I feltall sense blotted out in the darkness.I awaked at last; the corpse had gone, but I had taken his place upon