When we think of addicts, we usually think of a strung out junky prostitute, or a wild-eyed coke-tooting pretty-boy Hollywood actor, or even just the old drunk that lives upstairs. In fact, addiction medicine specialists often define addiction as the inability to change behaviour in the face of undesirable consequences. The thing is though, for every Whitney Houston, there are probably 10 drug users who keep it together enough that no one ever need know of their dirty habit.
Everyone knows that certain substances have a far greater capacity to addict a person than others. On the same token, each individual has a threshold for addiction which is what allows us to enjoy things without becoming dependent. A great many people have tried booze, weed, LSD, coke, and all the other commonly available brain candies and enjoyed them without the troubling compulsion to ceaselessly pursue a chemical euphoria. Everyone has a rock bottom. Some will die before hitting it, some will get help, and some will see it coming and steer well clear.
Those of us who have goals and aspirations of life have an easier time of making good decisions. In my later teenage years and early twenties I would often roam about in a drug-induced stupour. I tried lots of drugs, and enjoyed them thoroughly, but when I started to see the effects I had to pull back and re-evaluate my lifestyle. Fortunately I was not prone to addiction (not a gamble worth taking), so it was not difficult to stop the drinking and drugs, but there was one drug that wasn't so easy to stop.
Smoking pot just doesn't do enough damage to encourage giving it up. Sure, we've all seen the hard-core heads who are so zooted all the time you wonder how they could ever hold down a job before you remember they don't. Looking at a life like that is enough to make any straight and narrow kid stay that way. But those guys are sitting around all day puffing herb and doing nothing else. Don't get me wrong; Pot makes you stupid, pollutes your lungs, and dehabilitates your body, but someone who smokes a couple hits of danks every night after coming home from work is not going to have an obvious problem.
That's the real danger of marijuana for the non-addict type. You can go on for years smoking the stuff, feeling the negative effects, knowing it's not good for you, but never having a solid enough reason to quit. The fact that marijuana is not physically addictive only makes it harder to quit. George Carlin is one of the few old guys to admit he smokes, but it's all part of the routine. Who knows what prominent baby boomers are out there secretly toking behind closed doors?