Games
Like
sports, games are popular stoned activities. Frisbee is a great favorite, as
are such indoor activities as Boggle, Go, chess, pinball, and Monopoly. One
smoker recommends magic tricks as the ideal stoned activity, noting that when
his friends are stoned, "they get so shocked by these tricks, especially
if I just do one or two without announcing that I'm doing magic."
Some California smokers are familiar with a game called
"Dealer McDope," in which players are given an allotted sum of money
that they then spend on drugs, running the various risks that real dealers
encounter. Another popular game, especially in California, is known as
"the seventh son of the seventh son." Actually, it is more of a
ritual than a game, as marijuana scholar Michael Aldrich explains:
Played most often in communes and frat houses, it requires a constant fresh input from large numbers of smokers, who save every roach from their joints, and put them into a can marked number 1. About seven of these roaches make enough smoke for a new joint; the roach from it is put in can number 2. When there are seven, a joint is made, and its roach is put in can number 3, and so forth. Starting with the second generation the joints will start oozing and getting softer and heavier with THC, almost like smoking a fresh hash joint. By number 3 you will probably have to drill a hole through the center of the joint with a toothpick. By number 4 you may have to keep the paper attached to the third-son roaches intact or the thing will glob up too much. Keeping it in an airtight container like a film can helps this hashishization. The object, of course, is to get to the seventh son of the seventh son, a ticket to a world far beyond "marijuana" as usually smoked. Multiple exponents of seven (one number 2 equals seven number 1s, and so forth) are said to lead geometrically to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In 1974 writer Jon Lipsky wrote an article for The Real Paper,
a Boston weekly,
listing several of his favorite stoned games, three of which are reprinted here:[4]
DICTIONARY AND FICTIONARY
While the
verbal facilities are still intact we turn to Dictionary, a game that many fine
people are playing these days.
Jayne looks up a word neither she nor anyone else can define.
"How about icteric?" says Jayne. No one has the foggiest for icteric.
But we all write down on sheets of paper what icteric ought to mean. These
made-up meanings are written in dictionary lingo in order to fool people. Jayne
writes the real meaning on another sheet of paper, mixes it in with the fakes
and reads them all. We have to guess the right one (one point for each person
you fool with your fake meaning, one point for guessing the true dictionary
meaning yourself):
"Icteric—a prehistoric dinosaur with leathery wings."
"Icteric—a rhythmic beat, a stroke or blow; also
sunstroke."
"Icteric—pertaining to, affected with, or service as, a cure
for jaundice."
"Icteric, Hans—a 14th Century Danish explorer, discoverer of
the Isthmus of Mikwen."
"Icteric—nasty, bilious, filled with bile or fetid
materials."
If you want the right answer, look it up. But be careful—the game
is infectious and will make your mind define words like "hello" or
find derivations for "ostrich feather."
Eventually, however, dictionary lingo becomes uninteresting. To
put the creativity back into this type of game we have developed
"Fictionary." You play Fictionary the same way, only instead of a
dictionary you use any work of fiction.
Nicky grabs The Idiot off the shelf. She picks a line from
Dostoyevsky's book:
"Nastasya Filippovna had taken a glass of champagne..."
We have to complete the sentence. In the style of Dostoyevsky The
real sentence is mixed in with our fakes. Is the correct finish "... and
declared that she would drink three that evening"?
Or is the correct finish "... and it was difficult to
understand her strange and at times abrupt and sudden sallies, her hysterical
and causeless laughter, alternating with silent and even morose
depression"?
Or "... and a piece of black bread"?