Although recreational marijuana use may lead to a preoccupation (compulsive behavior) with the drug, it is not typically associated with the pharmacological dependence characteristic of addiction. However, in the novel Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace challenges many of the popular held beliefs about the drug’s addictive potential. Through the characters of Ken Erdedy, Hal Incandeza, and Kate Gompert, Wallace broadens the discourse on marijuana, and in the process, forces us to reexamine our notions of addiction.

The prevailing sentiment that marijuana is not a “hard” drug is underscored by Don Gately. The narrator observes that Erdedy came to Ennet House primarily for marijuana addiction. “Gately has a hard time Identifying with anybody getting in enough trouble with weed to leave his job and condo to bunk in a room full of tattooed guys who smoke in their sleep, and to work like pumping gas (sic) for 32 minimum-wage hours a week” (361). It should be noted that marijuana was not Gately’s drug of choice, and although he experimented with it, his experience should be viewed anecdotally. Understanding the chemistry of the drug may provide some clarification. WikiAnswers.com states that most people (including scientists and street-users) don’t think of marijuana as addictive because “THC is active in very low dosages, (and) tiny dosages typically don't generate the large-scale physiological changes a true addiction needs.” Instead, marijuana is seen as habituating.

Wallace gives us our first glimpse at marijuana’s addictive potential through the character of Ken Erdedy. Erdedy is waiting for a woman to deliver 200 grams of marijuana to his condo (17). In order to “properly” indulge his habit, he has meticulously “shut the whole system of his life down” (26). By the extent of his preparations alone, we can discern that Erdedy is a quintessential slave to his compulsions. He cleans his bedroom, buys a new bong, rents film cartridges, parks his car in a distant garage, informs his job that he has to leave town, and records a message on his answering machine (19-20). In essence, he has virtually cut himself off from the outside world. Anti-social behavior is one of the side-effects of marijuana. Although Erdedy’s case seems extreme, we can infer that Wallace’s hyperbolic portrayal is intended to represent worst case scenario as truth.

Wallace states: “…Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking” (203). If we accept the validity of the author’s statement, then Ken Erdedy qualifies as an addict: he is mired in convoluted thinking. He doesn’t leave a message for his dealer because he doesn’t want her to know how badly he wants the drugs (18) and he was reluctant to walk by the telephone lest he be tempted to call her (21). Furthermore, he berates himself for not giving her the $1250 in advance (19). These thoughts and actions all have an irrational quality to them, and it is apparent that Erdedy succumbs to these imagined scenarios as a direct consequence of his drug fixation.

In addition to compulsive behaviors and circular logic, Erdedy also exhibits the more recognizable symptoms of an addict. “He planned to smoke 200 or 300 heavy bong-hits per day, an insane and deliberately unpleasant amount,” (20) a clear indication that he intends to binge. In this case, Wallace’s reinforcement of Erdedy’s condition borders on the miraculous. And when Erdedy admits that he has tried to quit smoking “70 or 80 times before,” (18) it becomes clear that the drug is in total control. Wallace tries to dispel any doubts we have about marijuana addiction through Erdedy’s former counselor, Randi. He (Randi) considers it “every bit as rapacious as pure alcoholism,” (21) thereby lending credibility to the argument.

On the surface, Hal Incandenza could be defined as a recreational drug-user. That many of his peers are aware of his marijuana habit indicates that Wallace views it as an acceptable part of the culture at E.T.A. Indeed, many of the prorectors also use drugs, for various reasons. In Hal, we see the same sense of isolation and ritualism – albeit to a lesser degree – that we find in Ken Erdedy. “Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he’s as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high” (49). But unlike Erdedy, Hal uses the drug on an almost daily basis (114).

Through Hal’s character we gain deeper insight into the psychoactive effects of marijuana. While observing his peers play at the game of Eschaton, “Hal finds himself riveted at something about the degenerating game that seems so terribly abstract and fraught with implications and consequences that even thinking about how to articulate it seems so complexly stressful that being almost incapacitated with absorption is almost the only way out of the complex stress” (340). Herein lies the paradox of the drug: on one hand, marijuana may provide an escape from the stressors of the existing reality, however, the effects of the drug have the potential of ensnaring the user in a cycle of “involuted marijuana-type thinking” (136).

While it is evident that Erdedy’s drug habit will not progress beyond marijuana, a case can be made that for Hal, marijuana is the Gateway drug. Hal’s closest friend at E.T.A., Michael Pemulis has procured the “incredibly potent” DMZ, “the single grimmest thing ever conceived in a tube” (170). Although we never actually witness Hal ingest the drug, one reading of the text supports the notion that Hal is under the influence of the drug while meeting with the college officials in Arizona. In this scene, Hal is dragged from the meeting room by the Composition Director who sees Hal as “psychotically out of control” (13). Both Hal and Erdedy struggle in their individual attempts to quit using the drug. At an NA meeting, Erdedy listens to his fellow addicts describe their “hideous psychic fallout” from marijuana dependency and detox: “…the social isolation, anxious lassitude, and the hyperself-consciousness that then reinforced the withdrawal and anxiety – the increasing emotional abstraction, poverty of affect, and then total emotional catalepsy –“ (503). These are the side-effects of which Pemulus forewarns Hal about when Hal has decided to quit “Cold Turkey.” Pemulus tells Hal: “You lose your mind, Inc. You die inside. What happens if you try and go without something the machine needs? Food, moisture, sleep, O2? What happens to the machine?” (1065)

With the insertion of Kate Gompert into the narrative, Wallace forces us to question the disreputable aspects of marijuana use. On suicide watch for exhibiting suicidal tendencies, Gompert describes depression as “horror more than sadness” (73). Through the doctor’s assessment we learn that Gompert has, in effect, self-prescribed the drug because she believes it is the only panacea that can assuage her pain (78). Yet as her story unfolds, we learn that her drug use may adversely affect her underlying mental illness. While Gompert sees value in using the drug to keep her out of a state of psychotic depression, in actuality, the drug may be exacerbating her condition. On the InfiniteSummer.org web-site, blogger Everybody Hurts observes: “…marijuana may have a more profound impact on people with other mental health issues, whether because of interactions with prescribed meds (a la Kate Gompert) or because it destabilizes an already unstable mental equilibrium.” Through Gompert’s circumstances, Wallace continues to broach the one-size-fits-all attitude that marijuana is a “soft” drug, and that there is a uniform experience for all who partake.

A cursory assessment would suggest that Wallace’s characters use marijuana for the same reason that other characters in the novel use harder drugs – to ameliorate some kind of inner pain or turmoil. And, in some cases, we are given the back stories for these characters and can, in effect, connect the dots between their trauma and what led them to use marijuana (although cause and effect is not always a reliable approach). But perhaps these are nothing more than misplaced assumptions that we bring to the text. Nichols states: “Wallace associates a commitment to experiencing the world without the deliberate alterations of perceptions – drugs, veils, disguises, entertainments – as itself a subversive foray into the no man’s land of human experience.” In the end, it is up to the individual to determine whether the drug addict or the abstainer qualifies as normal (loaded term). Regardless, Wallace's inversion of the truth provides us with a new vantage point from which to consider the human condition.

Works Cited:

http://infinitesummer.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=196&start=10

Nichols, Catherine. “Dialogizing Postmodern Carnival: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.” Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43 (Fall 2001): 3-16.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. Print.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_marijuana_addictive







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