beachguy in thongs
01-18-2006, 09:37 PM
Emily, the healthy volunteer sitting in a half-lotus on a bed in room 29, is only going to smoke half of a joint, while David, the AIDS-related-pain patient reading his Bible in the room next door, won't smoke until tomorrow.
Emily, 26, is outfitted for her six-day stay at the research center--during which she will take pot each day at precisely 10 a.m., alternating between smoking and taking it through a high-tech vaporizer device called a Volcano--with a stack of books and videos, a suitcase filled with comfortable clothes, a boom box, and a cell phone.
She's been relaxed and chatty and looking forward to the study--"a lounging, couch potato-y thing to do," she says--but that was before nurses Lorna Aquino and Hector Vizoso took her through the final preparations. Aquino has just finished listing the various exams--the blood draws, the breath test for carbon monoxide levels, the survey of her levels of intoxication, the computerized pattern-recognition test--that she will be taking each day, once before she gets high and five times after.
Now Vizoso hands her the "Instructions to Smoke Marijuana"--a laminated card detailing the Fulton Puff Procedure. He goes over the method--5 seconds on the draw, hold it for 10, exhale, and wait for 45--and explains that Aquino will watch her from a window in the hallway to make sure she gets the timing right.
Now Emily seems self-conscious and flustered. "You're really going to watch while I do this?" she asks.
It's a perfect moment for Dr. Donald Abrams to come in. Although he's wearing a crisp pin-striped shirt and shiny shoes instead of a cardigan and sneakers, he looks like Mister Rogers, and he introduces himself in a neighborly way that immediately puts Emily at ease. "I need to do a little exam here," he says apologetically, fixing his stethoscope to his ears. "It's just that when you're stoned you don't want someone coming at you like this." His exam is brief.
On the table in front of Emily, Aquino has arranged a blue plastic ashtray, a Bic lighter, and a shiny hemostat--for a roach clip. In the ashtray is precisely half of a marijuana cigarette, as everyone around here calls the government-issued, machine-rolled joint, which is bright white and perfectly round.
Emily lights it up and draws deeply while Abrams coaches her through the Fulton procedure.
She starts to hack, and he assures her in his doctorly tones: "If you don't cough, you don't get off." Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who was one of the first people to suggest that a virus causes AIDS, knows all about working with stoned people.
He's one of the few American scientists allowed to study pot in human subjects.
Emily, 26, is outfitted for her six-day stay at the research center--during which she will take pot each day at precisely 10 a.m., alternating between smoking and taking it through a high-tech vaporizer device called a Volcano--with a stack of books and videos, a suitcase filled with comfortable clothes, a boom box, and a cell phone.
She's been relaxed and chatty and looking forward to the study--"a lounging, couch potato-y thing to do," she says--but that was before nurses Lorna Aquino and Hector Vizoso took her through the final preparations. Aquino has just finished listing the various exams--the blood draws, the breath test for carbon monoxide levels, the survey of her levels of intoxication, the computerized pattern-recognition test--that she will be taking each day, once before she gets high and five times after.
Now Vizoso hands her the "Instructions to Smoke Marijuana"--a laminated card detailing the Fulton Puff Procedure. He goes over the method--5 seconds on the draw, hold it for 10, exhale, and wait for 45--and explains that Aquino will watch her from a window in the hallway to make sure she gets the timing right.
Now Emily seems self-conscious and flustered. "You're really going to watch while I do this?" she asks.
It's a perfect moment for Dr. Donald Abrams to come in. Although he's wearing a crisp pin-striped shirt and shiny shoes instead of a cardigan and sneakers, he looks like Mister Rogers, and he introduces himself in a neighborly way that immediately puts Emily at ease. "I need to do a little exam here," he says apologetically, fixing his stethoscope to his ears. "It's just that when you're stoned you don't want someone coming at you like this." His exam is brief.
On the table in front of Emily, Aquino has arranged a blue plastic ashtray, a Bic lighter, and a shiny hemostat--for a roach clip. In the ashtray is precisely half of a marijuana cigarette, as everyone around here calls the government-issued, machine-rolled joint, which is bright white and perfectly round.
Emily lights it up and draws deeply while Abrams coaches her through the Fulton procedure.
She starts to hack, and he assures her in his doctorly tones: "If you don't cough, you don't get off." Abrams, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who was one of the first people to suggest that a virus causes AIDS, knows all about working with stoned people.
He's one of the few American scientists allowed to study pot in human subjects.