Learning to be High

In “Becoming a Marijuana User” Becker explains how every action is a social construct and as a result everything associated with this action is learned though cultural knowledge. Becker uses the example of smoking pot, explaining that one must learn how to become high from experienced guides and social ques. In class we touched on that fact that there is some chemical reaction to smoking pot, but according to Becker for one to truly be “high” they must invoke the behaviors of the pot smoking sub-culture.

The idea that smoking pot has its own culture with rules and practices it very interesting. Although it may seem odd at first that one must learn to be “high”, if you think about it the concept it makes sense. Long before someone starts to smoke they are given cultural clues of how they should behave and what there likes and dislikes in this area should be. Movies like Half Baked, Harold and Kumar, or anything by Kevin Smith present signs of smoking pot, which we as a subject learn and then invoke if we hope to fit into the pot smoking sub-culture. All of these movies and other cultural texts (pot leaf posters, Bob Marley’s music, etc…) tell us “when you high you should be hungry, think cartoons and really funny….” And because we have the cultural knowledge our passive bodies invoke these practices when/if we get high without even thinking about it. Had one not be presented with these cultural signs and they smoked pot would it be the same experience? Becker would argue that it would not be. This user would not get fully “high” because they did not express the right social ques and as a result would miss the cultural and social aspect of the experience.