Marijuana might have analgesic, anti-inflammatory and antipsychotic properties, and it may provide a fulfilling personal experience, generating euphoria or heightened sensations (also anxiety and paranoia), and chances are high nothing averse will happen if you smoke up when you’re young. But it’s doubtful you’ll ever be clinking bongs at a wedding or setting aside the Scotch to drown your sorrows with family members over a joint. That’s not only because of the stigma. Alcohol, which can be consumed, unlike pot, for the taste alone, often makes life more accessible, you more likeable, and others more bearable.

It’s also likely to make you more interesting. In a recent piece in New Republic, “Is Drinking Responsible for the Great American Novel?”, Alice Robb runs down some interesting studies that link creativity and imbibing, riffing off of Olivia Laing’s book “The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking,” which focuses on writers John Berryman, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams and their prodigious drinking habits. The literary list of drinkers is endless. I suppose there can be a debate about whether creativity springs from the alcohol or the creative life leads to it. Then again, the art and literature created by the dedicated non-alcoholic drug user, seems only to be interesting to other dedicated drug users.

Yes, there are cases of doctors and lawyers and homemakers smoking pot regularly and functioning effortlessly in the world.