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Fear Deconditioning: An Autobiological Memoir of a South Asian-Oklahoman Physician-Scientist Author(s): Sunil Kumar Aggarwal Source: Journal of Ethnobiology, 38(4):489-503. Published By: Society of Ethnobiology https://doi.org/10.2993/0278-0771-38.4.489 URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.2993/0278-0771-38.4.489

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BioOne sees sustainable scholarly publishing as an inherently collaborative enterprise connecting authors, nonprofit publishers, academic institutions, research libraries, and research funders in the common goal of maximizing access to critical research. Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503

Cannabis Fear Deconditioning: An Autobiological Marijuana Memoir of a South Asian-Oklahoman Physician-Scientist

Sunil Kumar Aggarwal1

Abstract. Here I take up calls to engage in developing an “ethnobiology of us,” in which Western biota-cultural relations are centered. When Western-influenced scholars study extinct and extant of , trade, and consumption in celebratory, reverential, or mundane contexts, it is crucial for appropriate self-reflective positionality to appreciate the power, persistence, and remarkable idiosyncrasy of the western socioecological worldview of cannabis. In human- cannabis relations, I argue this is essential, as the Western worldview carries profound hegemonic weight, influencing preconceptions of scholars and global societies. A prevailing Western notion is that close contact with cannabis is socially legitimate only for a privileged few and otherwise harshly criminalized and stigmatized. Constructed scarcity and inequitable accessibility of this traditional and widely cultivated species and its products are ubiquitous, including near-total invisibility of wild and cultivated plots. Drawing upon my own memories and reflections navigating multiple cannabis-related cultural frames, spanning from disgust to fear and curiosity to reverence, I will chronicle the cannabis and the various cultural frames in which it was embedded, which I have passively or actively encountered throughout my life, including in my training and practice as a geographer and medical doctor. The thematic arc has been shifting from alienating to allying with cannabis, yet, at the same time, being ever-vigilant of the official marginality of that alliance and related structural violence. To adapt to that social marginalization, I have come to accept various logics that connect cannabis with the body, stretching from spiritual and cosmological, cultural-traditional, and pharmacological-biochemical. Keywords: autobiology, human–cannabis relationship, prohibition, structural violence, embodiment

Introduction able scholarship on cannabis, none of this A special issue of the Journal of Ethno- surprises me. While cannabis is arguably biology dedicated to cannabis is welcome. the world’s most widely distributed culti- In searching the text of its over 37-year vated plant (Clarke 1981:ix), its marginality collected works, using the digital archives in scholarship is a testament to the success Biodiversity Heritage Library (1981–2004) of the widespread policy of canna- and BioOne (2005–2018), I discovered bis prohibition. I believe this policy has cannabis has been mentioned in 11 issues helped construct a psychological barrier of the journal—only in three in the last 13 in the minds of scholars between cultural years. In contrast, “” and “” formations involving cannabis and those appear in 44 and 45 issues, respectively. involving the vast array of other significant Aside from prehistoric and rare histori- biotas with which groups utilize and cultur- cal diasporic ethnobiology, cannabis is ally interconnect in their environs. mentioned only in passing with little depth, I believe this isolation of cannabis from never in a title or article abstract, and cultural ecological scholarship is due to predominantly in book reviews. Having the longstanding obscurantism associated surveyed, as a student, much of the avail- with cannabis-related topics. Any scholar

1University of Washington, Departments of Geography, Rehabilitation Medicine; Advanced Integrative Medical Science Institute; MultiCare Health System; National Family Medicine Residency, 2825 Eastlake Ave E #115, Seattle, WA 98102 ([email protected]) 490 Aggarwal who has spent formative years during the experiences and knowledge” (Wolverton second half—especially last quarter—of et al. 2014:126). The most local position the twentieth century in the U.S., or in is one’s own internal locus and embod- places strongly influenced by U.S. law and ied experience, which autobiographical custom, has been exposed to the social memoir singularly can elucidate. Embodi- predisposition to keep cannabis cultural ment is a process through which the world formations obscured and out of the purview is orientated towards and encountered of formal scholarly investigations and seri- through the lived body. A phenomenolog- ous study. ical approach can help convey the subtle In my view, the repeated and contin- ways in which orientation towards and uous imposition and ongoing threat of direct encounter with particular biotas are criminal and other formal sanctions on experienced at an embodied level (Abram those engaged in prohibited cannabis- 1996; Massumi 2002). Additionally, as related domestication and trade behav- human-cannabis relations continue to be iors have led to shame and secrecy, which deeply political and are an emerging area deters serious cannabis ethnoscience of nature/society scholarship, as laws and scholarship (Gootenburg 2004; Grinspoon policies shift, speaking from a first-person 2002a, 2002b; Lenson 1995; Marlatt 2002). vantagepoint allows for bearing witness to Undertaking social scientific research the human-cannabis relationship (Aggar- involving close contact with cannabis in wal et al. 2012; Bloomer 2009). the field is still a significant challenge given To understand how individuals and legal and institutional barriers that current groups experience cannabis, whether law and bureaucratic practices erect. To materially encountered growing wildly that end, a personal account is useful, as it or domestically, cut and packaged, loose, provides empirical participant-observation or symbolically encountered in name and can be produced without need for or representation, it will be necessary to cutting through a morass of red tape or appreciate how violence is experienced, endangering the legal status of others. One given the reach, pervasiveness, and severity can probe deeply into how cannabis and of cannabis prohibition law enforcement. cannabis-related social formations become Such violence, codified and unevenly embodied. Theoretically, such an approach socially distributed, is predominantly orga- can help broaden our understanding of nized as structural violence. Structural cannabis to include behaviors, violence is a term coined by Johan Galtung beliefs, and practices associated with (1969), elucidated on as symbolic violence cannabis utilization and its prohibition. by Pierre Bourdieu (1979), and defined by Wolverton et al. (2014) identify the Paul Farmer (2004:307–308) as: need to incorporate in ethnobiology schol- violence exerted systematically— arship narratives from Western peoples that is, indirectly—by everyone who regarding biota-cultural relations, refer- belongs to a certain social order… ring to such approaches as autobiology, roles [are] played by the erasure of ethnobiology of us, or auto-ethnobiology. historical memory and other forms of Memoir is an excellent method to exca- desocialization as enabling conditions vate “subtle ecologies” (Wyndham 2009), of structures that are both “sinful” and which are essential to addressing contem- ostensibly “nobody’s fault” …adverse porary environmental problems. Subtle outcomes associated…—death, injury, ecologies are nuanced, slow, embedded, illness, subjugation, stigmatization, intrinsic, and “local in scale and repre- and even psychological terror. sent[ing] direct human-environment

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How is this structural violence experienced I have experienced violence, both struc- at the personal level? How does it foment tural and direct, as well as insight, relief, interpersonal conflict, sow seeds of mistrust, and pleasure, in the context of canna- and facilitate alienation or ostracization? In bis encounters. Mine is certainly only close encounters with contraband biota, one perspective on cannabis and related how is structural violence present and what social formations in the U.S. in the last are the effects? four decades. Others have had radically One way of conceiving of struc- different experiences given particular race, tural violence tied to engagement with a class, gender, and sociocultural predispos- contraband biotic species is through the ing factors. As a geographically rural racial lens of geography. Exposure to violence is minority and second-generation immi- socially structured through a set of invisi- grant, I had the most peculiar experience ble boundary lines enclosing the tissues of discovering and assigning to a of all individual organism members of plant species entirely obscured by neglect a contraband biotic species. These lines or distortion for the first 20 years of my are sociopolitical and have been drawn life. I have been exposed from within to at particular historical moments by forces a large array of cannabis-related cultural of power, influence, and authority, which valuations, from disgust to indifference to help to maintain them as well. When we reverence, and I have worked profession- encounter these boundary lines, depend- ally in academic and organized medicine, ing on our social position, they effectively social sciences, public health, and public alienate us from freely associating with the policy institutional cultures to propose a biotic elements of nature enclosed behind beneficial cannabis–human relationship. them, leading to a feeling of exhilaration The main thrust of the memoir will be to or fear when approaching or crossing such explore the ways in which I was sociopo- boundaries. In this way, structural violence litically and socioculturally conditioned for ethnobiology can help to characterize to fear cannabis and how this condition- subtle and not-so-subtle political ecolo- ing intersected with other elements of my gies. Recall Robbins’ (2004:213) excellent autobiography, starting from my child- description of the analytic of political ecol- hood. I will then explore the ways that my ogy as a hatchet for demystifying nature/ fear conditioning was challenged through society relations, revealing how: “powerful self-experimentation and inquiry, and how modern institutions and individuals…have embodied experiences and social expo- gained undue and disproportionate power sures helped me to assign new meanings by explicitly attempting to divide and to cannabis. Finally, I will describe the police the boundaries between human and ways in which I experienced stigma and non-human nature” and how, in response, marginalization related to my professional “resistance emerges from traditional, alter- openness regarding cannabis and how I native, and progressive human/non-human adapted to threats of violence related to alliances marginalized by such efforts cannabis prohibition. In the discussion, I (usually along lines of gender, class, and will explore how cannabis prohibition can race).” be understood as structural violence and Using my memoir, set in late twenti- how my experiences might be illustrative of eth and early twenty-first century United those of others. I will conclude by exploring States, this article endeavors to contribute what cannabis fear deconditioning entailed to autobiology (Nabhan 2013; Wolverton for me and what it might suggest for future et al. 2014) by focusing on our conflict- research directions. ual culture. I discuss how

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Memoir I took it all in as sacrosanct. I never understood why anyone would willingly Early Indoctrination in Cannabis wish to consume alcohol or substances, Obscurantism as I believed the message I was getting from I was born in Autumn, 1979, in adults that they would invariably toxify Muskogee, Oklahoma, a small rural city, one’s brain. As a child of first-generation population then and now of approximately immigrants, my parents were constantly 38,000 (Waits 2018) to a South Asian Indian instilling the model minority mythos: keep immigrant, hetero-patriarchic married your head down, listen to your teach- couple from Northwestern India (Punjab/ ers, don’t rock the boat, and you will be Haryana). I was raised in the same city, the successful. Additionally, since my father second of three children. Between the ages viewed alcohol ambivalently, given his of three and eight years old, and particu- father drank heavily and died well before larly ages four to six years, U.S. President I was born, I had a tendency as a youth and First Lady Ronald and towards absolute teetotaling. Given that were at the height of their unprecedented I was an academic overachiever, had no mass political campaign to indoctrinate sports acumen, very few friends, and felt the millions of youth with the alarmist message sting of racial microaggression regularly, “!” when the offer of “” of I put all my eggs in the academic basket any kind was raised. The First Lady traveled as my ticket out of a life of banal drudgery over 250,000 miles for the campaign and and discrimination. I figured that, given the had many television appearances (Mozingo risks that drugs apparently posed to social et al. 2016). upward mobility and academic achieve- Over my years in primary school, the ment, “just say no” was just fine by me. I “Just Say No!” message became couched was at the right age, at the right time, and increasingly in war metaphors, as it heard it repeated with sufficient quantity became more heavily policed and milita- to thoroughly absorb the message and for rized (Gray 1997:29–35). We had school it to have a psychologically-conditioned, presentations by police officers warning of long-lasting effect. the harms and criminal consequences of Geographically, I lived in a highly drug use, complete with “drug dog” visi- compliant place where the Reagans and tations and premises searches, tours of the their successors, the Bushes, enjoyed interior of a police cruiser, exhortations significant popularity and in which unques- and literal verbal repetitions of the “Just tioned patriotism and the general absence Say No!” slogan, which we promised to of dissent were seemingly commonplace. utter if we were ever offered any kind of Though it was rural mid-America, the drugs. Once, in mid-elementary school, federal government played a significant we were bussed to a large rally at the civic and disproportionately large role in the center, along with students from other area lives of many in Muskogee throughout the schools. There, a traveling band sang sappy twentieth century, including mine. In the rock , gave us wristbands, and taught early 1900s, due to the local work of the us a shallow, self-esteem boosting hand Dawes Commission to register the so-called gesture. It was, I presume, a way to pres- Five Civilized Tribes in then-called Indian ent a pseudo-feel-good self-affirmation to Territory, and due to the placement there counterpoint the negative indoctrination of the Territory’s first federal district court, of associating revulsion, disgust, fear, and Muskogee was home to the second highest aversion to “drugs”—what’s been called number of federal employees in the U.S., “drug hate” (Baggins 1998). second only to the Washington, D.C. (Waits

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2018). Starting in the late 1970s, my father calls for preserving traditionalist “square” became one of these federal employees as culture in the face of encroaching, foreign, a physician at the local Veteran’s Adminis- anti-establishment “” culture, stating tration Hospital—which led to my family’s “and football is still the roughest thing on settlement in Muskogee. campus” (La Chapelle 2007). Outside of T.V., I recall very little expo- R.A.I.D. was sponsored by my sure to informal drug indoctrination. When 10th-grade biology teacher-coach, who a middle school classmate explained to refused to teach evolution and also spon- me during an after-school conversation sored the student organization Teens that “marijuana” was also called “grass,” I for Christ. R.A.I.D. celebrated no-knock remember looking at the grass in my back- raids, the violent tactic police would use, yard, being very puzzled by how and why with guns drawn, to take drug suspects by that term was used. In retrospect, I had no surprise. Scenes of raids were sensation- idea marijuana was a living plant mate- alized on the extremely popular reality rial, and it is clear to me, upon reflection, television program Cops, which went prime- that I had no rudimentary natural science time in 1991, when I was in seventh grade, knowledge regarding marijuana to even becoming one of the longest running T.V. grasp alternate understandings about programs in the U.S. The opening song’s it from peers. In addition, even though lyrics, “bad boys, bad boys / what- educators encouraged reporting witnessed cha gonna do? / whatcha gonna do when drug-related activity to relevant authorities, they come for you?”, became the verita- informally, on the school playground, there ble soundtrack glorifying police drug raids was a competing stigmatization of being (Bacle 2018). Such programming helped to labeled a “snitch” or “narc,” who sought cement a fear and alarm association with higher authority intervention to address any illicit drugs which simply layered over peer disputes or personal matters. the prior indoctrination of revulsion and Though I had a sense that any “brain toxicity. damage” from the use of alcohol or drugs was maybe a tad exaggerated, the social Self-Experimentation consequences of law transgression were As an adolescent, I did experiment a quite a deterrent. I was more inclined few times with alcohol on New Year’s Eve, to stay in line because I felt, as a racial thanks to older relatives. I only remember minority in a town with significant racist the thrill of the transgressions (once made history and ongoing tensions, I would be a moreso by the fact that the drink concocted more visible target. As an attempted behav- for me was a “Sex on the Beach”). At age 17 ioral deterrent, even student organizations or 18, I experienced the “buzz” of alcohol at Muskogee High School made sure to drinking with college dorm mates. I had, emphasize the most spear-tipped aspects by then, relaxed my teetotaling stance and of drug law enforcement when promoting was willing to infrequently break underage “drug-free” lifestyles. For example, a student alcohol laws, as it was commonplace, and group at our school, whose mascot is “The I felt it did very little self-harm in exchange Roughers,” was called Roughers Against for conviviality and feeling adult. Illegal Drugs, or R.A.I.D. As a noteworthy At college, I underwent mild culture aside, a subtle reference to The Roughers is shock leaving conservative Oklahoma hidden in a line of country-western singer for liberal Berkeley. Having been a fan of Merle Haggard’s 1970 hit song “Okie dystopic novels such as Orwell’s Nineteen From Muskogee,” which opens with “we Eighty-Four (1994) and Huxley’s Brave don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee” and New World (1989), I picked up a copy

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 494 Aggarwal of Huxley’s Doors of Perception (1970), inner stillness and peace, devoid of tension drawn by its provocative title and brevity. and any feelings of excessive worry related I was amazed at the philosophical insights to unattended obligations. I was alert, into the “Platonic realms” Huxley gleaned awake, and at the same time relaxed and after imbibing , the halluci- attuned to everything around me. In that nogenic/entheogenic chemical found in moment, I realized that this was the state Lophophora williamsii (). This piqued that the meditation books I’d read in my my curiosity. I thought that, one day, I, too, youth had been describing. may wish to try that, or something like it, This experience of anxiolytic inner to further my understanding of the nature peace was radically transformative. My of reality. intellectual curiosity into the how and why While no opportunities arose to try of what had happened to me was piqued; mescaline, I did eventually, after starting I felt a desire to share this with others. In junior year in college, experiment with subsequent experiences, I found taking taking cannabis. In retrospect, what led to cannabis enhanced the quality of my life by this was going through the breakup of a fostering psychological balance, making me three-year-old romantic relationship, which a better student and a more well-rounded catalyzed seismic shifts in my thinking and person. Over time, I explored cannabis in theretofore-accepted attitudes, including various forms and settings, read up on its early ones (Brook et al. 2008). I had had history and pharmacology, and socialized marijuana entreats from members of the with its aficionados and devotees. Thus, Undergraduate Philosophy Club, whose I began the process of reconciling my meetings and informal gatherings I had first-hand experiences of cannabis with my begun attending. I did not really feel open to fear-conditioned upbringing. trying it until I saw, and was deeply moved by, the Sam Mendes film American Beauty Meaning-making Through Embodiment in the movie theater. It depicted Lester Burn- It is nearly impossible to capture with ham (Kevin Spacey) breaking away from a words the supreme bliss, or ananda in life of inane drudgery through a series of , that I’ve felt when under the effects vivid dreams and through his consumption of cannabis. It can best be categorized as of marijuana, both alone while working spiritual and holistic healing and growth. In out in his garage and together with another, these moments of influence, I experience a younger actor in the film, who appreciated full gamut of direct, embodied experiences, beauty in small details. I thought that canna- including laughter, joy, playfulness, new bis cannot be all that bad if these characters appreciation of sensual pleasure like music, are able to use it and still perform in some food, and the natural environment, ease- ways I considered to be heroic. I allowed a ment of physical and psychological tension, new mythos about marijuana to form in my and bursts of and inspiration. My psyche. The next time opportunity knocked, mind, body, and persona are changed and I answered. stretched. I became quite enthralled with A few months later, in early Novem- the biotic natural history of cannabis, which, ber of 1999, I found myself sitting next to had it come to me in a different ethnobio- Strawberry Creek, on the Berkeley campus, logical context, might have been seen as a listening to the sounds of running water. socially mediated urban foraging of a locally Having taken a few draws of cannabis domesticated medicinal plant. smoke for the first time with my Philosophy Jason Silva, Michael Pollan, and Andrew Club friends and having wandered away Weil are three writers/communicators from the group to sit in repose in a place whose descriptions of cannabis-occasioned of natural beauty, I felt a profound sense of experiences resonate most profoundly with

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 Cannabis Fear Deconditioning 495 my own. In a Big Think YouTube video perceptions to occur as habitual modes are (2015), prolific mind science communi- disrupted, and a bathing of the “most ordi- cator Jason Silva describes the impact of nary insights” with an “aura of profundity” cannabis on generating awe, drawing from to arise. It also contributes to the feeling the writings of David Lenson and Richard of subjective time dilation: “the sense that Doyle. Cannabis-occasioned subjective time has slowed or even stopped.” Pollan psychological experience, he explains, is poetically observes how important this context dependent and produces a “dialec- is for those, like me, who have struggled tal pattern of reconcilable estrangement” with anxious states of mind. “For it is only with the world of perceptions. It starts with by forgetting that we ever really drop the an alienation from the world of ordinary thread of time and approach the experience perceptions, so things become perceived of living in the present moment, so elusive as “novel, new, interesting, and strange.” in ordinary hours” (Pollan 2001:162). Then, there is a witnessing of that trans- Finally, integrative medicine pioneer formation and a reconciliation with that Dr. Andrew Weil, in The Marriage of estrangement. This reconciliation with the the Sun and the Moon (1998), originally world of objects is such that the thing that is published in 1981, prior to the discovery seen is seen as if for the first time, and “can of the neural endocannabinoid molecular be regarded, can be revered, via a state of network, makes excellent points about how sacred or archetypical consciousness.” This the aforementioned are change in perspective can hopefully result not simply transient thrills and curiosities; in some kind of transformation: “height- rather, like many highs, such as those that ened appreciation, increased compassion, can come from music, dance, sex, and increased well-being, and increased meditation, they actually have the potential creativity.” In this context, it is easy to see to transform and unlock potentials in one’s how this plant that can occasion reverence nervous system and foster overall health in those who partake of it can itself become and well-being. He observes in the chapter meaningfully valued and revered. “Marijuana Reconsidered” that: UC Berkeley Journalism Professor High states of consciousness show us Michael Pollan’s (2001) widely acclaimed the potentials of our nervous system… book Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View help us integrate mind and body… of the World, describes the brain’s built-in promote health…feel good…being forgetting faculty, which is critical to high on marijuana is a learned asso- normal functioning. He notes, “our mental ciation between an experience that health depends on a mechanism for editing is always on tap within the nervous the moment-by-moment ocean of sensory system and a change in feeling caused data flowing into our consciousness down by the drug. (Weil 1998:87–88) to a manageable trickle of the noticed and remembered” (Pollan 2001:161). He My embodied phytocannabinoid-aided invokes the endocannabinoid molecu- modes of being/feeling/experiencing were lar signaling network when describing not simply time-limited by the pharma- how marijuana, working mechanistically cokinetic duration of the cannabis resin through this network, may “overstimulate in my body; rather, they led to a widen- the brain’s built-in forgetting faculty” and ing of my nervous system and ordinary posits that this effect is primarily responsi- consciousness. Accessing new vistas and ble for the “texture” of consciousness under ways of being did not invariably require the its influence. Stimulation of the forgetting presence of an external “drug”; they were faculty allows for a feeling of novelty to new parts of myself discovered through infuse experiences, a sharpening of sensory my relationship with cannabis’s resin-

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 496 Aggarwal ous pistillate inflorescences. To devalue shows the level of uncomfortableness and or deny these parts of myself would be ambiguity surrounding cannabis and the self-negating. While I also had negative partaking of it in such settings. experiences (coughing due to inhaling Two months later, as I was returning soot-laden smoke and also panic/paranoia), home from the UCSF chemical neurobiol- I found these could be mitigated through ogy lab, where I worked in at the time, I consumption of cannabis with increased came upon a symposium underway in the percentage of the non-inebriating canna- main auditorium of Berkeley’s life sciences bidiol (CBD), consuming less, employment building put on by a student group, of non-smoked delivery methods, psycho- Students for Sensible , titled therapeutic exploration, and progressive “Marijuana: What D.A.R.E. Didn’t Teach fear deconditioning through studying the You.” Neurobiology professor Dr. David sociopolitical history of cannabis laws and Presti was giving a talk. He sketched on taking steps urging repeal of prohibition. the chalkboard chemical structures of the compounds in cannabis and Coming Out as a Cannabis Researcher described the recent discovery of the endo- I mostly kept my cannabis interests out cannabinoid signaling system, highlighting of institutional, professional, and formal its unique mode of retrograde signaling circles for five years. Then, during my final between neurons. I found it fascinating, year in college, in September 2001, I inter- as it implied a built-in feedback system. I viewed at the University of Pittsburgh’s grasped more clearly that day the putative National Institute of Health (NIH)-sup- mechanism of action underpinning claims ported Medical Scientist Training Program about cannabis’ utility in conditions such (MSTP), a funded program conferring M.D. as pain, nausea, and vomiting. For me, the and Ph.D. degrees. At the end of a day of chemistry connected. interviews, I cavalierly chose to reveal to a That the symposium took place in neuroscience student interviewer my inter- the very auditorium where I had attended ests in cannabis and cannabinoid science. many biochemistry course lectures added He invited me to his home and then offered to my sense of confidence in the biosci- me cannabis to smoke before taking me to ence and lessened my prior tendency to the applicant dinner, where alcohol was discretion. I remember even voicing “show served. The next morning, while touring us!” when presenter Jeffrey Jones, of the the anatomy class, amongst cadavers, a Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, little after 9:00 a.m. on September 11, we who had gone before the Supreme Court received news about the events seven months earlier to argue for a patient’s at the World Trade Center. Interviews were right to cannabis as a medical necessity, canceled. While we all were in a state of said he told the press in D.C. he does not shock and bewilderment, I returned the “smoke marijuana” but instead vapor- next day to interview with medical faculty izes it. He opened his silver briefcase and and stayed several days due to the ground- demonstrated the heat gun vaporization ing of all flights. A few weeks after I finally technology of the time to inhale canna- made it home, I received news that I had bis vapor without generating smoke or been accepted to the medical school but not combustion byproducts. the MSTP. Many peers surmised—perhaps Not long after, I discovered that the lab rightly—that I had not gotten in because I of Dr. Roger Nicoll was just a few floors had discussed my interest in cannabis and up from where I worked. It was in Nicoll’s taken up my student interviewer’s invitation lab at UCSF that the discovery of the retro- to smoke some. The fact that many people grade nature of endocannabinoid signaling were seeing this as a plausible cause was made through molecular electrophys-

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 Cannabis Fear Deconditioning 497 iology experiments, published earlier that Marijuana Policy Review Panel, formed year in Nature (Wilson and Nicholl 2001). when the citizens passed an initiative to I eagerly went to meet Dr. Nicoll to make marijuana the lowest law enforce- discuss his discoveries and the field over- ment priority. Eventually, I found additional all. I remember him smiling coyly about interested and supportive faculty. the implications of his work for cannabis understanding. Embodying Violence: Threat of Several months later, when I inter- Contraband Exposure viewed for the University of Washington Going into my third year, in September MSTP, I was asked to provide a list of faculty 2004, as I shifted into geography graduate I would like to meet. Dr. Nephi Stella was school, I had a traumatic breach of trust that on the faculty. His area of work was canna- gave me insight into cannabis law-related binoid signaling to study neurological distress. What started as an amicable rela- diseases and treatments. He was one of two tionship with an older man, whom I had faculty with a focus on , the casually hired to fix a few things in my other being Ken Mackie, M.D. I decided to apartment, ended abruptly with a threat- offer their names and ended up interview- ening letter left on my kitchen table after I ing with Dr. Stella. He seemed favorable refused to take part in an interstate canna- to my scientific interests in cannabinoid bis trade deal with some of his friends in science and impressed I had met other Montana. In it, the man threatened to report scientists in the field. Ultimately, I was my cannabis use, with my vaporizer with offered admission, which I accepted and “fingerprints” as proof, and jeopardize my completed over eight years. I received a academic standing, freedom, and ostensi- Ph.D. in 2008, writing a dissertation titled: bly clean criminal record. He referenced a “The Medical Geography of Cannabinoid .50 caliber gun which he would “show... Botanicals in Washington State: Access, to me” and had stolen some cannabis Delivery, and Distress” (Aggarwal 2008) flower and paraphernalia from my home. and an M.D. in 2010. I became concerned that he might have During my first year, I did a precep- taken some of my personal home videos, torship through the Department of Family which portrayed me and others consuming Medicine and asked to be assigned to a cannabis and having all manner of philo- physician practicing integrative, or what sophical and mystical discussions, which I was called then “complementary and did not want being made public, as they alternative,” medicine. Once, while work- could have been considered compromising ing with physician Peter Grote, we had a to the wrong people. I later discovered that patient, a man in his forties or fifties, who none of these tapes were missing. told us about his asthma and attempts at In retrospect, I should have been more cannabis to help alleviate some forthcoming about paying him for his of his respiratory symptoms but being chal- labors. We had never come to any formal lenged by smoke irritating his air passages. arrangement for payment, as he had always With no sense of fear or discomfort in been reluctant to do so, and perhaps it bringing up such a topic, I asked the patient appeared I was “stiffing” him, and his if he had ever tried a vaporizer. Both the anger over this may have percolated after patient and Dr. Grote were very interested I refused to help him bring in cannabis in this, and it led to further exploration. In from Montana. The trauma heightened my second year, I was able to confide in my my paranoia and sense of lack of internal pharmacology professor, Frank Vincenzi, locus of control. I sometimes believed I saw about my interests in this topic and that his red truck driving by and would try to I had applied to be a member of Seattle’s take cover. I worried there was some kind

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 498 Aggarwal of malicious messages sent to me in spam an experiment she did in one of her large, emails. I was concerned acts of vandalism undergraduate classes, when she took to the of our building’s basement windows and podium to present her work. She surprised keybox were somehow connected to my everyone by pulling out of her bag a plastic predicament. I had the lock on my apart- baggie with a substantial amount of green, ment door changed. I had the misfortune flowery herb, announcing, “here I happen of being randomly selected to participate to have brought some marijuana to show in the annual National Crime Victimization to you as a demonstration.” She received Survey. I felt, yet again, the helplessness hushed half-sighs, expressions of shock of not having any legal recourse because and surprise, and spontaneous woahs and I knew that the crimes against me could wows. She then revealed to her audience not be reported on a government survey she merely was holding a bag of the ordi- because they could end up incriminating nary kitchen herb oregano (Origanum me. I had more than a few very negative vulgare), and that what they had just expe- “trip” experiences with high dose canna- rienced, at a visceral and embodied level, bis, where I felt I was being followed, and was the unadulterated stigma sociocultur- even one time that an outside force was ally attached to cannabis. The story made psychologically torturing me! These types an impression on me. of experiences truly seemed to border I have been stigmatized multiple times madness. in my professional life because of my affil- Upon reflection, I thought more about iation with cannabis. For instance, it took the violence people inflict upon each other nearly a year to get approval from the IRB to in general and I pursued this as a research start my dissertation project involving inter- topic. Eventually, on New Year’s Day 2005, view, surveys, and medical chart reviews. when taking a flight with my sister, I had During my residency in Physical Medicine an epiphany: the violence I could study and Rehabilitation at NYU, the chair of in my doctoral work is that related to the my department asked my program direc- drug wars, later focusing in on cannabis. I tor to consider putting a “black mark” in resolved to have some modicum of control my record, as I was quoted too often in the by making strides to question and ulti- press regarding cannabis policy or science mately challenge this social framework in with my affiliation to NYU. I had to default, which I felt trapped (Valentine 1998). in the media, to saying, “a large, academic medical center in New York.” During my Embodying Cannabis’s Sociolegal Impurity 2014-2015 Clinical Fellowship in Hospice I began attending and Palliative Medicine at the NIH-Clinical national conferences in 2005. One such Center, the world’s largest research hospi- conference is held annually by the National tal, I was asked to cancel a meeting Organization for the Reform of Marijuana on the ethics of cannabis in medicine with Laws (NORML), the oldest continuing the Deputy Director of Science, Ethics, and organization of its kind founded shortly Policy. When I was invited by the Congres- after the Nixon Administration decided, in sional Black Caucus to speak at the Health the early 1970s, to place cannabis in the Braintrust Conference on Cannabis for most restrictive category of Schedule I, Chronic Pain, I had to seek permission from against the expressed advice of Congressio- the NIH; it went two levels up before the nally and Administratively paneled experts. invitation was declined “on my behalf” by At a 2006 conference, I met UC Berke- an office in Health and Human Services. ley student Joen Madonna (2006), who I was eventually allowed, after nearly a wrote a honor’s thesis year of waiting, to be an Editorial Advisory on cannabis and visibility. She recounted Board Member for an online document on

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 Cannabis Fear Deconditioning 499 cannabis and cannabinoids maintained by loved ones might be indirectly harmed. It the National Cancer Institute. heightened my sense of mistrust, given the In the early 2000s, I began to recon- extensive use of informants in drug law sider the official demonization of enforcement, a tactic to plant the seeds marijuana, as I delved into its history, and of paranoia. In traumatology research, the science about it seemed to make sense betrayal is recognized as a feature that of my experiences and those of my friends. increases risk of post-traumatic stress disor- I wondered if the pull into a world in which ders and severity of the emotional impact marijuana is seen as useful and beneficial, of trauma (Boals et al. 2013; Kelley et al. in which I express a positive valence and 2012). Experiencing this, coupled with my fondness for it, is simply the alluring choke- study of the history of structural violence, hold of and the subtle descent has heightened my understanding of the into distorted and drug-crazed pathological subtle ways that violence is experienced lines of thinking that the diligent educators as racist-classist-colonialist discrimination of my youth long warned me about. The by those who are targets of the low inten- “marijuana law loyalty oath,” in which I sity, deadly conflict of the drug war (Gray was disciplined into at a young age, was 1997). The contraband “drugs” in question strong enough to lead me to question the are a seemingly arbitrary, yet historically veracity of my own primary experience. and hegemonically contingent, grouping Through my studies, I discovered the plant’s of psychoactive substances that exempt longstanding and cross-cultural socially tobacco, alcohol, , sugar, cacao, integrated and revered usage, including as and others. One scholar has called this a significant part of my South Asian heritage “psychopharmacological McCarthyism” tradition. As I reflected on my experiences (Grinspoon 1973); another has compared it of marginalization and the legacy of my to witch-hunting (Manderson 2005). grandparents’ and earlier generations’ Even in states where cannabis use experiences of British colonialism, I came has been legalized, harsh criminal penal- to see what I was experiencing, in my ties persist related to “exposing youth” to own consciousness, was a manifestation minute amounts and particles of canna- of structural violence. The violence was a bis and taking cannabis in public view true, felt sense of violation and shame that (Leafly 2016). These prohibitions imprint flowed from the criminalization of canna- on one’s cannabis-contacting body that bis contact behaviors. It demanded that I there is a part of you that is shameful, bear the stigma of an impure and shameful impure, and sufficiently socially dangerous underclass, especially when I had material to necessitate criminalization. Cannabis elements of cannabis within me, on my is an enclosured biotic species arbitrarily person, or in my immediate social environ- “carved out” by the law of the biospheric ment. “web of life,” surveilled, policed, and counted, microgram by microgram. The Discussion drug law enforcement apparatus weights and measures used to quantify amounts of The Structural Violence of Cannabis cannabis used, grown, possessed, biome- Prohibition tabolized, or sold are in my view a way of When the threat of exposing my past inflicting violence through forcing remem- contraband consumption practices was brance of exactly how much plant matter used to terrorize me, I feared arrest, loss of one has consumed or has in reserves, funding, disqualification for professional including bodily ones. The lead up to the licensure, expulsion from collegiate and Neolithic agrarian revolution, as evidenced professional training schools, and that my by the initial domestication of medicinal,

Journal of Ethnobiology 2018 38(4): 489–503 500 Aggarwal hallucinatory, and “exotic” plants in Meso- death penalty is routinely used abroad and america (Hastorf 1998:774), was dependent available to prosecutors in some cases in on cultivation of such plants and the sharing the U.S.; multi-decadal mandatory prison and trading of surplus—exactly the kinds sentences are routinely meted out to drug of domestication practices that cannabis offenders, and other violations of drug prohibition most harshly punishes. offenders’ privacy and family integrity are My experiences of violence are ordi- normalized. In a survey I conducted in nary experience in the drug wars: threats 2009–2010, I tallied 119 separate drug law of arrest, snitching, and shaming via public enforcement tactics in total that 37 Wash- exposure. I have seen much worse befall ington state patients others. During my medical and graduate reported exposure to, including searches, school education, I had an opportunity surveillance, raids, confidential informant to work with an intrepid Seattle-based placement, arrest, incarceration, child defense attorney, Douglas Hiatt, who removal, job loss, home eviction, asset brought me face-to-face with human rights forfeiture, financial aid suspension, and violations of chronically ill, self-identified others (Aggarwal et al. 2013). patients caught up in federal-state conflict In sharp contrast to this mess of and official reluctance to implement medi- violence, I have witnessed others whose cal cannabis law. I met people living with close contact with cannabis came with no advanced rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS, apparent distress or barrier. I have met the liver failure, spinal cord injury, cancers, grower who has produced cannabis under and post-traumatic chronic pain who liter- U.S. government contract for decades ally had been terrorized and tortured by and sells that cannabis to pharmaceutical arrest, incarceration, removal from organ companies. I have publicly debated with transplantation recipient lists, or otherwise the senior legal counsel for GW Phar- forcibly denied access to therapeutic and maceuticals, a British pharmaceutical palliative or other company privileged with licensed grow- medical treatment. I even met people who ing and selling of cannabis, whose stock is were facing or had faced life sentences for traded on the NASDAQ exchange, and who their cannabis cultivation practices—even is in partnership with multibillion-dollar when used for medical purposes—and firms like Bayer (Aggarwal 2010). I have others who faced grave legal consequences, met three of the four remaining chronically such as lengthy incarceration or its threat ill American patients who, as a result of a related to their possession and consumption landmark lawsuit which forced the federal of other biotic psychoactive substances, health authority’s hand, are exclusively such as -containing fungi. As a supplied cannabis through a now-closed medical professional, I treated patients in program because their physicians attested clinical scenarios who might have bene- to its therapeutic value for them (Aggarwal fited from medicinal use of contraband et al. 2007). I have also met chronically ill biotas with potential therapeutic utility and patients in Canada who have been granted shared their frustration at being unable to amnesty to produce and consume canna- try these options due to legal and institu- bis, and I have attended local hempfests tional barriers (Aggarwal et al. 2012). and visited geographically distant zones of In the U.S., despite increasing liberal- amnesty, such as in the Netherlands, where ization, the penalty for cannabis possession people freely enter beautiful shops, buying can be as severe as one year in federal dried cannabis flowers and products or prison for possession of any amount and psilocybin-containing mushrooms, and up to five years for growing one plant. The consume them openly.

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In the end, the ordinary individual My autobiological memoir, chronicling is being told that he or she too can have my relationship with cannabis, including an unimpeded and unbegrudged close its presence in my youth in an obscured encounter with cannabis, as long as he form, demonstrates various orientations or she has the right social, economic, and towards cannabis: from biotic target of political capital. This inequity in cannabis draconian prohibition enforcement to valu- prohibition-enforcement is characteristic able medicament, treasured , of structural violence and is experienced and well-being enhancer. While singular, it culturally, interpersonally, and at the offers a detailed subtle ecology perspective embodied level. on the ethnobiology and political ecology It is worth noting that, while canna- of cannabis in the West. As a member of bis prohibition is a unique sociopolitical the South Asian diaspora, I have a heri- formation, originally globally promulgated tage connection to a traditional cultural by elite Western powers and predicated relationship to cannabis integrated into on the devaluation of the traditional longstanding spiritual, convivial, and medi- human-cannabis relationship (Aggarwal cine traditions. This places my narrative in 2013), it is part of a more generalized class the company of other minority perspectives of human-environment interactions that in the West, including Latinx, African-, warrant further exploration. Other biotas Caribbean-, and Asian-American—groups with diverse chemistries, places of origin, who also have alternative social and and traditional uses include: Papaver cultural histories related to cannabis. As a somniferum, Erythroxylum , Lopho- racial minority, I share some of the height- phora williamsii, multiple psilocybine fungi ened apprehension related to the racial species, Catha edulis, Tabernanthe iboga, and privilege disparity in drug law enforce- Banisteriopsis caapi, and Psychotria viridis ment targeting. My autobiology also (commonly known as , coca, peyote, shows the influence of the newly emerg- mushrooms, , iboga, and ) ing bio-scientific narrative that developed (Aggarwal et al. 2012). in the late twentieth century about the ways that the molecular components of Conclusion cannabis flower resin make meaningful, An assertion of benefit from close specific chemical bonds of contact with contact with the contraband plant canna- our bodies—a paradigm that has helped bis necessitates social adaptation to stigma. to strengthen the natural ecological link- Professionally, I pivoted from the trope of age between humans and biotas—further cannabis as an “idle and illicit pursuit” to a marginalizing the formal status quo of legitimate “herbal tool” in medico-scientific contrabanding. To better integrate canna- research, public health, and healthcare. bis, fear deconditioning of its contraband I cognitively adapted to my stigmatized status will be necessary, and more focused cannabis relationship by advancing a ethnobiology will help in our understand- reframing of close contact with cannabis ing of this transformation. from the illicit, foreign, and dangerous to the homeostasis-inducing, by mobilizing References Cited an endogenous biomolecular mechanis- Abram, D. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous: tic view. I emotionally adapted, through Perception and Language in a More-than- mustering the courage, to formally affirm human World. Pantheon Books, New York, cannabis, in spite of my conditioned fear NY. response to not do so, bolstered by a grow- Aggarwal, S. K. 2008. The Medical Geography ing social movement of which I felt a part. of Cannabinoid Botanicals in Washington

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