William S. Burroughs: Drug Dependency Versus Drug Addiction

William S. Burroughs in Junkie wrote the best definition of drug dependency versus drug addiction I have ever seen.  Burroughs points out that opium derivatives cause physical addiction.  Marijuana causes psychological dependency but no addiction because if you run out of the pot and cannot secure more the body does not go through physical opium-based withdrawal symptoms.*  William S. Burroughs also noted that even though cocaine increases dopamine levels in the brain, and despite the fact that pigeons will peck a lever for a dopamine reinforcement to the exclusion of all else until they drop dead, these facts have no relevance, if the stimulus is withdrawn and the behavior ceases without the physical distress associated with opium withdrawal syndromes.  Thus by strict definition behavior associated with cocaine use is driven by dependency, not addiction.

I have had discussions with potheads who insist they are addicted to marijuana.  But potheads function in a fog of altered perceptual awareness.  True some potheads will spend days running around town looking for an elusive lid, waiting around in cars for hours, while friends look for contacts.  Most times they come up empty-handed.  But this behavior to secure more dope is not driven by physical distress that requires "the cure" at Lexington's Narcotic Farm.

Marijuana as a gateway drug has never been established.**  However, marijuana dependency has some adverse consequences.  I knew a woman who would steal items from her family members and run off to a pawn shop.  While stoned, she would craft a masterful plan to steal without being caught.  This woman had a very reduced mental capacity, an intelligence quotient of 70, but when she was stoned she thought she was an exalted princess of a higher dimension.  Of course, when challenged, she resorted to habitual lies and denials a narcissistic psychopath would envy.  Her denials were so transparent a three-year-old child could have seen through them, and when confronted with absolute facts as to her culpability, she would explode into childish temper tantrums intended to intimidate you into backing down.  The old biker gang momma bitch act.  I always thought she was nothing more than a second rate con-artist.  If she had been a little smarter, she would have run a Ponzi scheme like Bernard Madoff, living like a queen in a mansion, with high priced cars, a yacht, dining at the finest restaurants, swindling other people like a bloated parasite until she was arrested.  Later on, she would act all innocent and friendly like nothing happened.  Anti-social personalities have a lack of impulse control, they take things without permission based upon immediate need, rush off to the pawnshop, pocket the money, then congratulate themselves on a job well done.  Anti-social personalities have no morality, no conscious, they are indifferent to the damage they do to other people.  People exist to be used as pawns.  Why does she do these things?  She needs to get stoned!  Marijuana dependency mixed with anti-social traits is as damaging as a heroin addict committing burglary to support a habit.

Update

*Police officers, prosecutors, and judges all make the same mistake when classifying marijuana as a "narcotic".  Opium based derivatives such as heroin are narcotics.  Marijuana is a hallucinogen, not a narcotic.  Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, correctly points out that a "roach is not called a roach because it resembles a cockroach".  This idiotic idea was presented to a gullible law enforcement audience by some quack "drug expert" psychiatrist during a "police anti-drug convention".  In the same vein a prosecuting attorney who calls marijuana a "addicting narcotic" is doing nothing more than demonstrating his or her ignorance of the facts at hand.  Unfortunately, some judges have been brainwashed into believing that marijuana is a "dangerous drug" with no "medicinal value," and that use of marijuana constitutes a "clear and present danger" to society.  An argument straight out of 1965.  Of course, the cannabis prohibition law was formulated by ignorant legislators who were probably indoctrinated by the clergy, or by anti-drug propaganda films written by Nancy Reagan and shown in high schools, or by watching cheap camp movies like Reefer Madness.  Marinol (dronabinol) is a synthetic form of delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive component of cannabis.  THC fits into cannabinoid receptor sites in the brain.  Marinol is prescribed to patients as an appetite stimulant, antiemetic, and sleep apnea reliever.  Marijuana has medical efficacy for cancer and AIDS patients.

**Whoever invented the notion that marijuana is a dangerous gateway "narcotic" needs to have his or her brains tested.  52% of Americans over 18 have smoked marijuana at some point in their lives.  According to the pot gateway theory logic, there should be 171.6 million deranged "addicted dope fiends" running amok terrorizing suburban neighborhoods.  Science calls the weak "correlation" between pot smokers and heroin users a spurious relationship.  The appearance of a comet did not cause a plague, even if a plague occurred shortly after the appearance of the comet.  People who blamed the comet for the plague reached a spurious conclusion based on superstition, not on scientific facts.  Much like the advocates of the theory cannabis is a "gateway" to more destructive drug abuse.

I am not an advocate of cannabis recreational use.  Actually, I think potheads are some of the stupidest people I have ever met.