Title
Question 1
Addiction is an elastic concept, which has been defined in various ways. The definition of addiction is founded on very diverse approaches that has historically emerged and variously shaped our views of the role of the substance or the object of addiction, the user and the sociocultural context of use.
To complete this assignment, you need to explore the website of two major mental health and addiction institutions:
the National Institute of Drug Abuse of the National Institute of Health (USA) at:
https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/addiction-science
and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (Canada) at:
https://www.porticonetwork.ca/web/fundamentals-addiction-toolkit/introduction/defining-addiction
Using information that is available on the two websites, you should:
1. Describe how addiction is defined within the two institutions (please do not copy and paste the definitions but present a comprehensive synthesis of it);
2. Present the approach on which these definitions are founded for each institution;
3. Discuss the strengths and limitations of the vision(s) that are promoted by these institutions (i.e, what dimensions of addiction they consider, and what dimensions are left out).
Question 2
To complete this section, you are requested to read the following reference: Becker, H. (1953). Becoming a Marihuana User. American Journal of Sociology, 59(3), 235-242. (I have attached as a second file)
1. Compare the position that was put forth in Beckers paper to the position that is adopted in the Brain disease model, by contrasting major similarities and/or differences;
2. In your opinion, what is the potential impact of these two conceptions of addiction (sociological and brain disease model) on stigmatizing or marginalizing the user or the addict?
Must be 3-5 pages double spaces Becoming a Marihuana User
Author(s): Howard S. Becker
Source: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 59, No. 3 (Nov., 1953), pp. 235-242
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2771989 .
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BECOMING A MARIHUANA USER*
HOWARD S. BECKER
ABSTRACT
An individual will be able to use marihuana for pleasure only when he (1) learns to smoke it in a way
that will produce real effects; (2) learns to recognize the effects and connect them with drug use; and (3) learns
to enjoy the sensations he perceives. This proposition, based on an analysis of fifty interviews with marihuana
users, calls into question theories which ascribe behavior to antecedent predispositions and suggests the
utility of explaining behavior in terms of the emergence of motives and dispositions in the course of experi-
ence.
The use of marihuana is and has been the
focus of a good deal of attention on the part
of both scientists and laymen. One of the
major problems students of the practice
have addressed themselves to has been the
identification of those individual psycholog-
ical traits which differentiate marihuana
users from nonusers and which are assumed
to account for the use of the drug. That ap-
proach, common in the study of behavior
categorized as deviant, is based on the prem-
ise that the presence of a given kind of be-
havior in an individual can best be ex-
plained as the result of some trait which pre-
disposes or motivates him to engage in the
behavior.’
This study is likewise concerned with ac-
counting for the presence or absence of
marihuana use in an individual’s behavior.
It starts, however, from a different premise:
that the presence of a given kind of behavior
is the result of a sequence of social experi-
ences during which the person acquires a
conception of the meaning of the behavior,
and perceptions and judgments of objects
and situations, all of which make the activ-
ity possible and desirable. Thus, the motiva-
tion or disposition to engage in the activity
is built up in the course of learning to engage
in it and does not antedate this learning
process. For such a view it is not necessary
to identify those “traits” which “cause” the
behavior. Instead, the problem becomes one
of describing the set of changes in the per-
son’s conception of the activity and of the
experience it provides for him.2
This paper seeks to describe the sequence
of changes in attitude and experience which
lead to the use of marihuana for pleasure.
Marihuana does not produce addiction, as
do alcohol and the opiate drugs; there is no
withdrawal sickness and no ineradicable
craving for the drug.3 The most frequent
pattern of use might be termed “recrea-
tional.” The drug is used occasionally for the
pleasure the user finds in it, a relatively
casual kind of behavior in comparison with
that connected with the use of addicting
drugs. The term “use for pleasure” is meant
to emphasize the noncompulsive and casual
$ Paper read at the meetings of the Midwest So-
ciological Society in Omaha, Nebraska, April 25,
1953. The research on which this paper is based was
done while I was a member of the staff of the Chi-
cago Narcotics Survey, a study done by the Chicago
Area Project, Inc., under a grant from the National
Mental Health Institute. My thanks to Solomon
Kobrin, Harold Finestone, Henry McKay, and An-
selm Strauss, who read and discussed with me earlier
versions of this paper.
‘ See, as examples of this approach, the following:
Eli Marcovitz and Henry J. Meyers, “The Mari-
huana Addict in the Army,” War Medicine, VI (De-
cember, 1944), 382-91; Herbert S. Gaskill, “Mari-
huana, an Intoxicant,” American Journal of Psychia-
try, CII (September, 1945), 202-4; Sol Charen and
Luis Perelman, “Personality Studies of Marihuana
Addicts,” American Journal of Psychiatry, CII
(March, 1946), 674-82.
2This approach stems from George Herbert
Mead’s discussion of objects in Mind, Self, and So-
ciety (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934),
pp. 277-80.
3Cf. Roger Adams, “Marihuana,” Bulletin of the
New York Academy of Medicine, XVIII (Novem-
ber, 1942), 705-30.
235
236 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
character of the behavior. It is also meant to
eliminate from consideration here those few
cases in which marihuana is used for its
prestige value only, as a symbol that one is a
certain kind of person, with no pleasure at
all being derived from its use.
The analysis presented here is conceived
of as demonstrating the greater explanatory
usefulness of the kind of theory outlined
above as opposed to the predispositional
theories now current. This may be seen in
two ways: (1) predispositional theories
cannot account for that group of users
(whose existence is admitted)4 who do not
exhibit the trait or traits considered to
cause the behavior and (2) such theories
cannot account for the great variability over
time of a given individual’s behavior with
reference to the drug. The same person will
at one stage be unable to use the drug for
pleasure, at a later stage be able and willing
to do so, and, still later, again be unable to
use it in this way. These changes, difficult to
explain from a predispositional or motiva-
tional theory, are readily understandable in
terms of changes in the individual’s concep-
tion of the drug as is the existence of “nor-
mal” users.
The study attempted to arrive at a gen-
eral statement of the sequence of changes in
individual attitude and experience which
have always occurred when the individual
has become willing and able to use mari-
huana for pleasure and which have not oc-
curred or not been pennanently maintained
when this is not the case. This generaliza-
tion is stated in universal terms in order that
negative cases may be discovered and used
to revise the explanatory hypothesis.5
Fifty interviews with marihuana users
from a variety of social backgrounds and
present positions in society constitute the
data from which the generalization was con-
structed and against which it was tested.6
The interviews focused on the history of the
person’s experience with the drug, seeking
major changes in his attitude toward it and
in his actual use of it and the reasons for
these changes. The final generalization is a
statement of that sequence of changes in at-
titude which occurred in every case known
to me in which the person came to use mari-
huana for pleasure. Until a negative case is
found, it may be considered as an explana-
tion of all cases of marihuana use for pleas-
ure. In addition, changes from use to nonuse
are shown to be related to similar changes in
conception, and in each case it is possible to
explain variations in the individual’s behav-
ior in these terms.
This paper covers only a portion of the
natural history of an individual’s use of
marihuana,7 starting with the person having
arrived at the point of willingness to try
marihuana. He knows that others use it to
“get high,” but he does not know what this
means in concrete terms. He is curious about
the experience, ignorant of what it may turn
out to be, and afraid that it may be more
than he has bargained for. The steps out-
lined below, if he undergoes them all and
maintains the attitudes developed in them,
leave him willing and able to use the drug
for pleasure when the opportunity presents
itself.
The novice does not ordinarily get high
the first time he smokes marihuana, and sev-
eral attempts are usually necessary to in-
duce this state. One explanation of this may
be that the drug is not smoked “properly,”
that is, in a way that insures sufficient dos-
age to produce real symptoms of intoxica-
I Cf. Lawrence Kolb, “Marihuana,” Federal Pro-
bation, II (July, 1938), 22-25; and Walter Bromberg,
“Marihuana: A Psychiatric Study,” Journal of the
American Medical Association, CX:I (July 1, 1939),
11.
5 The method used is that described by Alfred R.
Lindesmith in his Opiate Addiction (Bloomington:
Principia Press, 1947), chap. i. I would like also to
acknowledge the important role Lindesmith’s work
played in shaping my thinking about the genesis of
marihuana use.
6 Most of the interviews were done by the author.
I am grateful to Solomon Kobrin and Harold Fine-
stone for allowing me to make use of interviews done
by them.
7 I hope to discuss elsewhere other stages in this
natural history.
BECOMING A MARIHUANA USER 237
tion. Most users agree that it cannot be
smoked like tobacco if one is to get high:
Take in a lot of air, you know, and … I
don’t know how to describe it, you don’t smoke
it like a cigarette, you draw in a lot of air and
get it deep down in your system and then keep
it there. Keep it there as long as you can.
Without the use of some such technique8
the drug will produce no effects, and the user
will be unable to get high:
The trouble with people like that [who are
not able to get high] is that they’re just not
smoking it right, that’s all there is to it. Either
they’re not holding it down long enough, or
they’re getting too much air and not enough
smoke, or the other way around or something
like that. A lot of people just don’t smoke it
right, so naturally nothing’s gonna happen.
If nothing happens, it is manifestly i’mpos-
sible for the user to develop a conception of
the drug as an object which can be used for
pleasure, and use will therefore not continue.
The first step in the sequence of events that
must occur if the person is to become a user
is that he must learn to use the proper smok-
ing technique in order that his use of the
drug will produce some effects in terms of
which his conception of it can change.
Such a change is, as might be expected, a
result of the individual’s participation in
groups in which marihuana is used. In them
the individual learns the proper way to
smoke the drug. This may occur through
direct teaching:
I was smoking like I did an ordinary ciga-
rette. He said, “No, don’t do it like that.” He
said, “Suck it, you know, draw in and hold it in
your lungs till you … for a period of time.”
I said, “Is there any limit of time to hold it?”
He said, “No, just till you feel that you
want to let it out, let it out.” So I did that
three or four times.
Many new users are ashamed to admit igno-
rance and, pretending to know already, must
learn through the more indirect means of
observation and imitation:
I came on like I had turned on [smoked mari-
huana] many times before, you know. I didn’t
want to seem like a punk to this cat. See, like I
didn’t know the first thing about it-how to
smoke it, or what was going to happen, or what.
I just watched him like a hawk-I didn’t take
my eyes off him for a second, because I wanted
to do everything just as he did it. I watched how
he held it, how he smoked it, and everything.
Then when he gave it to me I just came on cool,
as though I knew exactly what the score was. I
held it like he did and took a poke just the way
he did.
No person continued marihuana use for
pleasure without learning a technique that
supplied sufficient dosage for the effects of
the drug to appear. Only when this was
learned was it possible for a conception of
the drug as an object which could be used
for pleasure to emerge. Without such a con-
ception marihuana use was considered
meaningless and did not continue.
II
Even after he learns the proper smoking
technique, the new user may not get high
and thus not form a conception of the drug
as something which can be used for pleasure.
A remark made by a user suggested the rea-
son for this difficulty in getting high and
pointed to the next necessary step on the
road to being a user:
I was told during an interview, “As a matter
of fact, I’ve seen a guy who was high out of his
mind and didn’t know it.”
I expressed disbelief: “How can that be,
man?”
The interviewee said, “Well, it’s pretty
strange, I’ll grant you that, but I’ve seen it.
This guy got on with me, claiming that he’d
never got high, one of those guys, and he got
completely stoned. And he kept insisting that he
wasn’t high. So I had to prove to him that he
was.”
What does this mean? It suggests that
being high consists of two elements: the
presence of symptoms caused by marihuana
use and the recognition of these symptoms
8 A pharmacologist notes that this ritual is in fact
an extremely efficient way of getting the drug into
the blood stream (R. P. Walton, Marihuana: Ameri-
ca’s New Drug Problem [Philadelphia: J. B. Lippin-
cott, 1938], p. 48).
238 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
and their connection by the user with his use
of the drug. It is not enough, that is, that the
effects be present; they alone do not auto-
matically provide the experience of being
high. The user must be able to point them
out to himself and consciously connect them
with his having smoked marihuana before
he can have this experience. Otherwise, re-
gardless of the actual effects produced, he
considers that the drug has had no effect on
him: “I figured it either had no effect on me
or other people were exaggerating its effect
on them, you know. I thought it was prob-
ably psychological, see.” Such persons be-
lieve that the whole thing is an illusion and
that the wish to be high leads the user to
deceive himself into believing that some-
thing is happening when, in fact, nothing is.
They do not continue marihuana use, feeling
that “it does nothing” for them.
Typically, however, the novice has faith
(developed from his observation of users
who do get high) that the drug actually will
produce some new experience and continues
to experiment with it until it does. His fail-
ure to get high worries him, and he is likely
to ask more experienced users or provoke
comments from them about it. In such con-
versations he is made aware of specific de-
tails of his experience which he may not
have noticed or may have noticed but failed
to identify as symptoms of being high:
I didn’t get high the first time…. I don’t
think I held it in long enough. I probably let it
out, you know, you’re a little afraid. The second
time I wasn’t sure, and he [smoking companion]
told me, like I asked him for some of the symp-
toms or something, how would I know, you
know…. So he told me to sit on a stool. I sat
on-I think I sat on a bar stool-and he said,
“Let your feet hang,” and then when I got
down my feet were real cold, you know.
And I started feeling it, you know. That was
the first time. And then about a week after that,
sometime pretty close to it, I really got on. That
was the first time I got on a big laughing kick,
you know. Then I really knew I was on.
One symptom of being high is an intense
hunger. In the next case the novice becomes
aware of this and gets high for the first time:
They were just laughing the hell out of me
because like I was eating so much. I just scoffed
[ate] so much food, and they were just laughing
at me, you know. Sometimes I’d be looking at
them, you know, wondering why they’re laugh-
ing, you know, not knowing what I was doing.
[Well, did they teHl you why they were laughing
eventually?] Yeah, yeah, I come back, “Hey,
man, what’s happening?” Like, you know, like
I’d ask, “What’s happening?” and all of a sud-
den I feel weird, you know. “Man, you’re on,
you know. You’re on pot [high on marihuana].”
I said, “No, am I?” Like I don’t know what’s
happening.
The learning may occur in more indirect
ways:
I heard little remarks that were made by
other people. Somebody said, “My legs are rub-
bery,” and I can’t remember all the remarks
that were made because I was very attentively
listening for all these cues for what I was sup-
posed to feel like.
The novice, then, eager to have this feel-
ing, picks up from other users some concrete
referents of the term “high” and applies
these notions to his own experience. The
new concepts make it possible for him to lo-
cate these symptoms among his own sensa-
tions and to point out to himself a “some-
thing different” in his experience that he
connects with drug use. It is only when he
can do this that he is high. In the next case,
the contrast between two successive experi-
ences of a user makes clear the crucial im-
portance of the awareness of the symptoms
in being high and re-emphasizes the impor-
tant role of interaction with other users in
acquiring the concepts that make this
awareness possible:
[Did you get high the first time you turned
on?] Yeah, sure. Although, come to think of it, I
guess I really didn’t. I mean, like that first time
it was more or less of a mild drunk. I was happy,
I guess, you know what I mean. But I didn’t
really know I was high, you know what I mean.
It was only after the second time I got high that
I realized I was high the first time. Then I knew
that something different was happening.
[How did you know that?] How did I know?
If what happened to me that night would of
happened to you, you would’ve known, believe
BECOMING A MARIHUANA USER 239
me. We played the first tune for almost two
hours-one tune! Imagine, man! We got on the
stand and played this one tune, we started at
nine o’clock. When we got finished I looked at
my watch, it’s a quarter to eleven. Almost two
hours on one tune. And it didn’t seem like any-
thing.
I mean, you know, it does that to you. It’s
like you have much more time or something.
Anyway, when I saw that, man, it was too
much. I knew I must really be high or some-
thing if anything like that could happen. See,
and then they explained to me that that’s what
it did to you, you had a different sense of time
and everything. So I realized that that’s what it
was. I knew then. Like the first time, I probably
felt that way, you know, but I didn’t know
what’s happening.
It is only when the novice becomes able to
get high in this sense that he will continue to
use marihuana for pleasure. In every case in
which use continued, the user had acquired
the necessary concepts with which to ex-
press to himself the fact that he was ex-
periencing new sensations caused by the
drug. That is, for use to continue, it is neces-
sary not only to use the drug so as to pro-
duce effects but also to learn to perceive
these effects when they occur. In this way
marihuana acquires meaning for the user as
an object which can be used for pleasure.
With increasing experience the user de-
velops a greater appreciation of the drug’s
effects; he continues to learn to get high.
He examines succeeding experiences closely,
looking, for new effects, making sure the old
ones are still there. Out of this there grows a
stable set of categories for experiencing the
drug’s effects whose presence enables the
user to get high with ease.
The ability to perceive the drug’s effects
must be maintained if use is to continue; if
it is lost, marihuana use ceases. Two kinds of
evidence support this statement. First,
people who become heavy users of alcohol,
barbiturates, or opiates do not continue to
smoke marihuana, largely because they lose
the ability to distinguish between its effects
and those of the other drugs.9 They no
longer know whether the marihuana gets
them high. Second, in those few cases in
which an individual uses marihuana in such
quantities that he is always high, he is apt to
get this same feeling that the drug has no
effect on him, since the essential element of a
noticeable difference between feeling high
and feeling normal is missing. In such a situ-
ation, use is likely to be given up com-
pletely, but temporarily, in order that the
user may once again be able to perceive the
difference.
III
One more step is necessary if the user who
has now learned to get high is to continue
use. He must learn to enjoy the effects he has
just learned to experience. Marihuana-pro-
duced sensations are not automatically or
necessarily pleasurable. The taste for such
experience is a socially acquired one, not dif-
ferent in kind from acquired tastes for oys-
ters or dry martinis. The user feels dizzy,
thirsty; his scalp tingles; he misjudges time
and distances; and so on. Are these things
pleasurable? He isn’t sure. If he is to con-
tinue marihuana use, he must decide that
they are. Otherwise, getting high, while a
real enough experience, will be an unpleas-
ant one he would rather avoid.
The effects of the drug, when first per-
ceived, may be physically unpleasant or at
least ambiguous:
It started taking effect, and I didn’t know
what was happening, you know, what it was,
and I was very sick. I walked around the room,
walking around the room trying to get off, you
know; it just scared me at first, you know. I
wasn’t used to that kind of feeling.
In addition, the novice’s naive interpreta-
tion of what is happening to him may fur-
ther confuse and frighten him, particularly
if he decides, as many do, that he is going
insane:
9 “‘Smokers have repeatedly stated that the con-
sumption of whiskey while smoking negates the po-
tency of the drug. They find it very difficult to get
‘high’ while drinking whiskey and because of that
smokers will not drink while using the ‘weed'” (cf.
New York City Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana,
The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York
[Lancaster, Pa.: Jacques Cattell Press, 19441, p. 13).
240 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
I felt I was insane, you know. Everything
people done to me just wigged me. I couldn’t
hold a conversation, and my mind would be
wandering, and I was always thinking, oh, I
don’t know, weird things, like hearing music dif-
ferent. . . . I get the feeling that I can’t talk to
anyone. I’ll goof completely.
Given these typically frightening and
unpleasant first experiences, the beginner
will not continue use unless he learns to re-
define the sensations as pleasurable:
It was offered to me, and I tried it. I’ll tell
you one thing. I never did enjoy it at all. I
mean it was just nothing that I could enjoy.
[Well, did you get high when you turned on?]
Oh, yeah, I got definite feelings from it. But I
didn’t enjoy them. I mean I got plenty of reac-
tions, but they were mostly reactions of fear.
[You were frightened?] Yes. I didn’t enjoy it. I
couldn’t seem to relax with it, you know. If you
can’t relax with a thing, you can’t enjoy it, I
don’t think.
In other cases the first experiences were also
definitely unpleasant, but the person did
become a marihuana user. This occurred,
however, only after a later experience en-
abled him to redefine the sensations as
pleasurable:
[This man’s first experience was extremely
unpleasant, involving distortion of spatial rela-
tionships and sounds, violent thirst, and panic
produced by these symptoms.] After the first
time I didn’t turn on for about, I’d say, ten
months to a year…. It wasn’t a moral thing;
it was because I’d gotten so frightened, bein’ so
high. An’ I didn’t want to go through that
again, I mean, my reaction was, “Well, if this is
what they call bein’ high, I don’t dig [like] it.”
. . . So I didn’t turn on for a year almost, ac-
counta that….
Well, my friends started, an’ consequently I
started again. But I didn’t have any more, I
didn’t have that same initial reaction, after I
started turning on again.
[In interaction with his friends he became
able to find pleasure in the effects of the drug
and eventually became a regular user.]
In no case will use continue without such a
redefinition of the effects as enjoyable.
This redefinition occurs, typically, in in-
teraction with more experienced users who,
in a number of ways, teach the novice to
find pleasure in this experience which is at
first so frightening.’0 They may reassure him
as to the temporary character of the un-
pleasant sensations and minimize their seri-
ousness, at the same time calling attention
to the more enjoyable aspects. An experi-
enced user describes how he handles new-
comers to marihuana use:
Well, they get pretty high sometimes. The
average person isn’t ready for that, and it is a
little frightening to them sometimes. I mean,
they’ve been high on lush [alcohol], and they
get higher that way than they’ve ever been be-
fore, and they don’t know what’s happening to
them. Because they think they’re going to keep
going up, up, up till they lose their minds or
begin doing weird things or something. You
have to like reassure them, explain to them that
they’re not really flipping or anything, that
they’re gonna be all right. You have to just talk
them out of being afraid. Keep talking to them,
reassuring, telling them it’s all right. And come
on with your own story, you know: “The same
thing happened to me. You’ll get to like that
after awhile.” Keep coming on like that; pretty
soon you talk them out of being scared. And
besides they see you doing it and nothing hor-
rible is happening to you, so that gives them
more confidence.
The more experienced user may also teach
the novice to regulate the amount he smokes
more carefully, so as to avoid any severely
uncomfortable symptoms while retaining
the pleasant ones. Finally, he teaches the
new user that he can “get to like it after
awhile.” He teaches him to regard those am-
biguous experiences formerly defined as un-
pleasant as enjoyable. The older user in the
following incident is a person whose tastes
have shifted in this way, and his remarks
have the effect of helping others to make a
similar redefinition:
A new user had her first experience of the
effects of marihuana and became frightened and
hysterical. She “felt like she was half in and half
out of the room” and experienced a number of
alarming physical symptoms. One of the more
experienced users present said, “She’s dragged
because she’s high like that. I’d give anything to
10 Charen and Perelman, op. cit., p. 679.
BECOMING A MARIHUANA USER 241
get that high myself. I haven’t been that high in
years.”
In short, what was once frightening and
distasteful becomes, after a taste for it is
built up, pleasant, desired, and sought after.
Enjoyment is introduced by the favorable
definition of the experience that one ac-
quires from others. Without this, use will
not continue, for marihuana will not be for
the user an object he can use for pleasure.
In addition to being a necessary step in
becoming a user, this represents an impor-
tant condition for continued use. It is quite
common for experienced users suddenly to
have an unpleasant or frightening experi-
ence, which they cannot define as pleasur-
able, either because they have used a larger
amount of marihuana than usual or because
it turns out to be a higher-quality mari-
huana than they expected. The user has sen-
sations which go beyond any conception he
has of what being high is and is in much the
same situation as the novice, uncomfortable
and frightened. He may blame it on an over-
dose and simply be more careful in the fu-
ture. But he may make this the occasion for
a rethinking of his attitude toward the drug
and decide that it no longer can give him
pleasure. When this occurs and is not fol-
lowed by a redefinition of the drug as ca-
pable of producing pleasure, use will cease.
The likelihood of such a redefinition oc-
curring depends on the degree of the individ-
ual’s participation with other users. Where
this participation is intensive, the individual
is quickly talked out of his feeling against
marihuana use. In the next case, on the
other hand, the experience was very dis-
turbing, and the aftermath of the incident
cut the person’s participation with other
users to almost zero. Use stopped for three
years and began again only when a com-
bination of circumstances, important among
which was a resumption of ties with users,
made possible a redefinition of the nature
of the drug:
It was too much, like I only made about four
pokes, and I couldn’t even get it out of my
mouth, I was so high, and I got real flipped. In
the basement, you know, I just couldn’t stay in
there anymore. My heart was pounding real
hard, you know, and I was going out of my
mind; I thought I was losing my mind com-
pletely. So I cut out of this basement, and this
other guy, he’s out of his mind, told me, “Don’t,
don’t leave me, man. Stay here.” And I
couldn’t.
I walked outside, and it was five below zero,
and I thought I was dying, and I had my coat
open; I was sweating, I was perspiring. My
whole insides were all … , and I walked about
two blocks away, and I fainted behind a bush. I
don’t know how long I laid there. I woke up, and
I was feeling the worst, I can’t describe it at all,
so I made it to a bowling alley, man, and I was
trying to act normal, I was trying to shoot pool,
you know, trying to act real normal, and I
couldn’t lay and I couldn’t stand up and I
couldn’t sit down, and I went up and laid down
where some guys that spot pins lay down, a
