by Carl Hart
But wanting to seem cool to impress the woman I was attracted to, I smoked far more reefer than I’d intended that night. At first we had a good time, just laughing a lot, making silly jokes. After about an hour or so, however, I started to become paranoid. It started with a nagging sense of unease. And then I became convinced that these two suspiciously beautiful women I’d picked up were Rolex bandits like the ones I’d seen on Oprah.
Needless to say, I did not have a Rolex, nor was there anything of great value to steal in Betty’s apartment. Melissa and her aunt did not behave in any way that was at all suspect. It was highly unlikely that the day I watched an Oprah episode about females who preyed on men using sexual enticements to rob them I would have such an experience myself.
Nonetheless, once the idea was planted in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it. Everything seemed to be telling me that these ladies were up to no good. I tried to tell myself to chill out, but it was to no avail. The paranoia became almost unbearable. I had to do something. To everyone’s surprise, without warning, I suddenly stood up and said, “Y’all gotta get the fuck out!”
What had been a pleasant evening suddenly turned strange. They both looked at me and said, “What?”
“You gotta go. Now,” I said. There was a serious edge in my voice. They froze and then began hastily gathering their things to leave.
I certainly was attracted to Melissa and she seemed into me. But at that moment, I thought she was just trying to use me. I was so paranoid and insistent—and probably frightening—that the party stopped right there. I thought I’d never see her again.
As silly as that experience seems in retrospect, it illustrates some important issues about drug use that have critical implications for how we understand and deal with it. A drug’s effects are determined not only by the dose and the way it’s taken into the body but also by many different characteristics of the user and her or his environment.
LSD guru and onetime Harvard lecturer Timothy Leary first popularized the notion of set and setting as being crucial to the psychedelic experience. By set, he meant the mind-set of the person who has taken the drug: their preconceptions about the substance, expectations of its effects, and the person’s mood and physiology. Setting encompasses the environment: the social, cultural, and physical place in which the drug use occurs. It turns out that these two factors affect all drug experiences, not just those with psychedelics. Though some of Leary’s approaches had serious limitations, the concept of set and setting remains useful and they are crucial factors in understanding drug effects. The major point here is that psychoactive drug effects are not determined by pharmacology alone. It is the interaction between biology (the drug’s effects on the brain) and environment that determines drug effects on human behavior. This is why attempts to characterize drug effects on human behavior by solely examining the brain after drug administration are inadequate and naive.
My set and setting the day I kicked Melissa and her aunt out of Betty’s apartment weren’t especially conducive to a “good high.” That Oprah episode had raised the possibility in my mind that sexy women were likely to be predators and con artists—so my mind-set wasn’t likely to make me feel comfortable getting high with women I didn’t already know and trust. My reduced tolerance also increased the chances that I would experience paranoia from smoking more than I was used to handling. With THC, the primary active ingredient in marijuana, higher doses taken by inexperienced users increase the odds of negative side effects like paranoia or anxiety.
Set and setting can explain a lot about the variability of effects reported by users who take the same drug and about why different environments can produce different behavioral responses to drugs. The divergent responses of the Rat Park rats (see chapter 5) that eschewed morphine in favor of family and socializing with other rats, and the isolated rats who took dose after dose of the drug, are one example. Another one is the differing experiences of smoking cocaine found in Wall Street traders and among homeless cocaine smokers. The homeless people experience far more paranoia and fear than the executives do because wealthier users are more likely to be sheltered from frightening consequences like being arrested. The setting of the drug use can profoundly influence behaviors that are often attributed to the drugs themselves.
The night I got high with Melissa and her aunt, I couldn’t sleep at all. Now I know that adequate sleep is essential for the health and survival of an individual and that severe sleep loss, even without drug use, can cause hallucinations and paranoia. As a result, even the next day, when I tried to make a deposit at the bank, the paranoia was still with me. Standing in line, I felt as though the cameras were trained on me specifically. I got so freaked out that I left without depositing my UPS paycheck. But I realized early on that this was the result of smoking so much weed and simply waited for it to wear off.
And fortunately for me—and, as it turned out, my academic future—Melissa had a serious crush on me. Several days later, when I ran into her again, she came over immediately and asked me if I was all right. I laughed off the incident and before long, we were seeing each other. Melissa would become my girlfriend for the next year and a half.
About a month later, Melissa introduced me to cocaine. One of the local dealers was also pursuing her, though she wasn’t much impressed by him. He asked if she indulged, seeing an opportunity to spend time with her; she said yes but often secretly stashed the cocaine he gave her so we could do it together. I wasn’t especially interested in the drug. But when she took it out for the first time, I didn’t think it would be cool to say no.
It was still 1988; at the time you couldn’t turn on the TV or see a headline without being confronted with a story about the horrors of crack. I still knew nothing more than street lore about drugs, but even that far into the 1980s among the people I knew, powder cocaine had retained its glamorous associations with wealth, celebrity, and sex. Snorting it was perceived as fun rather than risky or particularly addictive. I didn’t see any harm in trying it and thought that Melissa knew what she was doing, although I later learned that she wasn’t actually an experienced user.
And sniffing my first line through a straw, I thought it was great. I had a sense of mastery and found relief regarding any anxieties that I might have been feeling about the evening. But while the drug made Melissa peppy and talkative, I found it calming and became more contemplative, perhaps because I also drank Schlitz malt liquor when I did lines. (Interestingly, although most drugs are not taken solo, little research focuses on the effects of drug combinations.)
Like many Gil Scott-Heron fans, I’d also taken to writing poetry. After a few lines, I loved nothing better than writing. As many cocaine fans discover, while the drug can produce stimulation and mental clarity, you may also come to see the most banal thought as being the height of brilliance. Under the influence of cocaine, dull or usual thoughts sometimes seem more important or significant than they are during nonintoxicated states. This is one of the main reasons that people take drugs: to alter their consciousness. And, as far as we can tell, humans have sought to alter their consciousness with psychoactive agents (often plant-based) ever since they have inhabited earth. There doesn’t seem to be an end toward this pursuit anytime soon. In other words, there has never been a drug-free society and there probably will never be one. So slogans like “our aim is a drug-free generation” are nothing more than empty political rhetoric.
Nonetheless, although I thoroughly enjoyed it, I never developed the intense craving for or compulsive use of cocaine that some users describe. I knew that if I developed a serious cocaine habit it would have jeopardized my ability to earn money, which in turn would have jeopardized my housing arrangement with Betty. With no money or accommodations, I seriously doubt that Melissa would have remained interested in me. So, when cocaine was available—and Melissa and I did it about twice a month for a few months—I often did want more as we enjoyed our supply. When we ran out, however, I never found myself unfolding the p
acket to see if there was perhaps a hidden clump left or looking on the mirror for stray flakes. I didn’t even consider going out and buying some. It was certainly pleasant and I definitely enjoyed the sense of clarity it gave me. But it wasn’t irresistible to the point that I was willing to jeopardize the things—earnings from work, housing, and Melissa—that allowed me to indulge in the first place.
Yet again, I’d had the experience of most drug users, the not particularly exciting nonaddiction story that never gets told. I was in the 80–90 percent of cocaine users who do not develop problems with the drug, the group that rarely speaks out about their experiences because they have nothing much to say about them or because they are afraid of being vilified for having taken an illegal substance. In the current political climate, it is not surprising that many drug users do not speak out about their experiences. I served as an expert witness in multiple court cases where mothers have had their children removed from their custody simply because they admitted to smoking marijuana. My testimony on behalf of these mothers, explaining that it’s inappropriate to conclude that someone has a drug problem simply because they admit to illegal drug use, didn’t seem to matter. Since we tend to hear from that problematic 10–20 percent, their experience is incorrectly regarded as the norm.
Indeed, when I began researching drugs myself as a scientist, I first discounted my own personal experience as being aberrant, falling for the propaganda that continuously puts pathology at the center of the drug dialogue. I ignored my own story, just as I had when I didn’t notice that problems in my neighborhood that were later attributed to crack cocaine had actually preceded it.
Because my ties to Atlanta weren’t particularly strong, when Melissa suggested that I move with her to North Carolina and take a job at her mother’s restaurant, I agreed. I became their short-order cook and manager. The idea was that their restaurant was going to be a huge success and make us all lots of money. Simultaneously, I enrolled at UNC-Wilmington in 1989, still set on finishing my degree. I managed to get some Pell Grants to cover the tuition. If that didn’t work out, I figured the restaurant job would.
Without my relationship with Melissa, I might never have become a neuroscientist. If I hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t have moved to Wilmington and wouldn’t have taken Rob Hakan’s experimental psychology class at UNC-W. Also, I would have never met my two other crucial mentors at that school, Don Habibi and Jim Braye. I don’t know if I would have completed my education without these three men. Due to my seemingly interminable work at the restaurant, I almost dropped out within a few months of starting.
Managing a restaurant and being a cook is hardly a part-time job. Pretty soon I found myself working twelve- to sixteen-hour days for minimum wage, dumping the grease into the grease pit when my shift finally ended at 1 a.m. and wondering how the hell I’d gotten there. I stank of sweat and cooking oil and every part of my body was tired. The long hours meant that I had little attention left for my classes and even less time to do homework. In my first semester, I barely managed to make Cs.
Without being aware of it, I began to slip away from academia. My air force goal of becoming a counselor to uplift black youth started to seem like a foolish pipe dream. I was called into the financial aid office because I was required to maintain a 2.0 to keep the Pell Grant funding. My grades were so low that I was in danger of losing it.
But during that same time, I also took a philosophy class with a young white professor named Don Habibi. It was his second semester teaching and he was the most intellectually curious person I’d ever met. It seemed like he knew something about everything—and yet he treated me like my perspective was unique and important as well. We connected. As a Jewish man who felt out of place in the South, he understood, I think, some of the alienation I felt, too.
Later, when I moved into the building where he lived, we became even closer and he encouraged me to continue to take the academic opportunities that began to present themselves. He was single and admired my ability to meet women; I respected his intellectual achievements. I’d take him to black clubs and in return, he taught me many essential aspects of cultural capital associated with growing up in the white middle class. When I first took his class, though, it was still not completely clear that I’d be able to stay in school.
Luckily, however, I had also found another mentor who refused to give up on me. Jim Braye was one of only three black men on campus who were in professional positions at the time. He did not teach, but rather worked in the administration as the director of career planning and placement. He was a retired army colonel with a rich, deep baritone voice that made him sound like Paul Robeson. My time in the air force had given me great respect for any black man who had moved up through the ranks in the military, particularly as early as he had, which was during the Korean War.
A friend of mine who had also been in the military had introduced us. I followed up with Jim and he had actually helped me enroll at UNC-W in the first place. As had happened many times before in my young life, chance placed an opportunity in front of me. I saw it and grabbed on, as if it were a life preserver.
Soon Jim began spending hours with me, teaching me new vocabulary and even how to pronounce words that I often stumbled on like apocalypse. He had a calendar with a “word of the day” to learn, and he’d drill me on them as the weeks went by. When he saw that my restaurant job was getting in the way of my education, he kept his eyes open for job openings in psychology for which he thought I’d be qualified. He had me do mock interviews in his office. He taught me about the hell that black men—even those with his accomplishments—catch in the white world.
Often, however, he’d just let me hang out and soak up his wisdom. I wasn’t afraid to seem “dumb” or “uncool” in front of him because it was so clear that he knew much more than I did. Before long, he was like family. I could tell that he understood my struggles.
Sometimes when he saw me coming he would take one look at me and say, “Time for a shot in the arm.” He could always tell when I needed a lift. Then he’d close the door to his office behind us and tell his secretary that we weren’t to be interrupted. I loved listening to him because he sounded so authoritative and was so wise. He wouldn’t let me get discouraged.
Most of the other students I knew didn’t recognize what he had to offer because they hadn’t been in the military. But I could see that he’d learned how to survive in a biased world and I paid attention. I wanted what he had and wanted to know exactly how he’d gotten it. It was because of Jim that I finally quit the job at Melissa’s family restaurant and got an entry-level position that did not require a degree at a child psychiatric hospital, which had more student-friendly hours. And that was why, when I took that experimental psychology class with Rob Hakan in my last semester, I was ready to learn and be inspired.
My best friend and classmate, Walt, was a brother with whom I used to listen to the latest Public Enemy LPs. We’d sit for hours critiquing every lyric and relating them to our current situation at UNC-White (the name that black students called the university due to its low number of black students and faculty, despite being located in a town with a large black population). Walt couldn’t understand why I would spend so much time with white men like Rob and Don. I had to explain that I needed support from those who’d forged the kind of career I wanted. No matter how different they seemed from us, they were actually more like us than their colleagues, I argued. Walt couldn’t wrap his head around this thought.
Indeed, research shows that having a white male mentor is advantageous to women and minorities in science. When a field contains few members of historically excluded groups, having a mentor from the privileged majority can open doors. In one study of sociologists, for example, blacks with white male mentors were found to be more likely to be on track for tenure and to get a position at a major research university, which led to publications in better quality journals and greater academic productivity.1 For me, both in college and graduate school,
having a variety of mentors with different experiences and strengths made a massive difference. I was happy to receive all the knowledge and insight I could from wherever it was offered.
Of course, making good use of multiple mentors means recognizing their specific expertise: a white male mentor may give useful advice on science but be less knowledgeable or effective in advising on the race-related challenges a black student faces.
Even after I’d found my three mentors, however, I hadn’t completely left my old life behind. Money was a constant issue. None of the jobs I had paid more than six dollars an hour and once I got involved with Rob, I was spending more and more time at the lab, which initially didn’t pay at all. When Melissa and I broke up in November 1989, I needed to find a new place to live because she had paid half the rent. A woman who ran a record store that specialized in reggae allowed me to stay in her store for a short time, until she hooked me up with a Jamaican named Dwight, who wanted a housemate.
Dwight was a cool brother with long dreads that he wore covered with a hat. He was also a high-level marijuana dealer: he had operations in Miami and Brooklyn as well as Wilmington. I didn’t care that he was in the game; his being a drug dealer was not my concern. I wasn’t about getting into anyone else’s business. I needed an affordable place to live and he had one. He knew that I knew but it wasn’t something we talked about. Besides, his position within the drug game was high enough so that he himself never possessed marijuana. So I didn’t have to worry about our place being raided by the police or robbed by rival dealers. He was a low-key, mellow guy who had also worked in construction. Well, he didn’t actually work in construction; he just kept his union dues current to give the appearance of maintaining legitimate work.