POT LUCK: CULTURE, FOOD AND THE MARIJUANA EFFECT Sudipto Sanyall Abstract: This paper is an auempt to open up discussions on marijuana as a psychoactive substance that engages with food and the act of eating in very complex and discursive ways. This study conducts numerous interviews that demonstrate that. frequently, marijuana is not the countercultural drug it is commonly supposed to be if analysed in its relations to food habit~ and the act of consumption. It also brings to light the surprising ways in which marijuana affects attitudes towards certain kinds of foods. thereby open up a space for a kind of psycho geographical tourism within the self. Key words: Marijuana,food. ethnography, cultural variations. INTRODUCTION It was close to 3 a.m. one midsummer morning when a couple of friends and I decided to cook an elaborate meal. We had been smoking hashish continually for the past few hours, and 'the munchies' were beginning to set in. So we went downstairs to the kitchen in my Calcutta home, raided the refrigerator for supplies, and went about cooking a very large crack-of-dawn snack, if it can be called that, consisting of a huge pot of Reggano brand spaghetti swimming in I Sudipto Sanyal,B.A., M.A. is currently an American Cultural Studies doctoral student at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, USA. He obtained his B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India. S. Sanyal, Pot Luck: Culture, Food and the Marijuana Effect 125 marijuana makes us want to have chocolate. We have this on good authority. REFERENCES Belasco, Warren 1. Appetite for Change: How the counterculture took on the food industry, 1966-1988. New York: Pantheon Books, 1989. Benjamin, Walter. On Hashish. Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2006. Di Marzo, Vincenzo, Sravan K. Goparaju, Lei Wang, Jie Liu, Sandor B!tkai, Zoltan Jarai, Filomena Fezza, Grant I. Miura, Richard D. Palmiter, Takayuki Sugiura, and George Kunos. 'Leptin-regulated endocannabinoids are involved in maintaining food intake.' Nature 410, 822-825 (12 April 2001), http://O-www.nature.com.maurice. bgsu.cdulnature/journal/v4101 n6830/fulV41 0822aO.html. Grujic, Ana. 'The Urgency of Fantasizing: Saving Lady Sackville-West.' Unpublished research paper, 2008. Kirsch, Adam. 'The Philosopher Stoned.' The New Yorker, December 17, 2008, http://www.newyorker.com/archivel2006/08/211060821crbo_ books?currentPage=5. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. Foreword to Culinary Tourism, ed. Lucy M. Long, xi-xiv. Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World. New York: Random House, 2001. Ray, Krishncndu. The Migrant's Table: Meals and Memories in Bengali- American Households. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004.