John Steinbeck IV: The Importance of Being Stoned in Vietnam

John Steinbeck IV, the son of the novelist who wrote The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, was drafted into the army in 1965 and served as a war correspondent in Vietnam.  On January 1, 1968, he published an article in The Washingtonian titled, "The Importance of Being Stoned in Vietnam." 

Steinbeck wrote that soldiers were supplied dextro-amphetamine by the army in survival kits given to soldiers in the field, and that pharmacists in the port of Hong Kong, an R&R center, sold "all manner of barbiturates, and other prescriptive drugs, to military personnel without a prescription." Writing that soldiers eschewed incapacitating opium, "a drug for old men in this part of Asia," he added: 

After opium, what remains are the fields and jungles of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, which for thousands of years have been the natural home of the ever-popular Cannabis sativa, or marijuana. It has a more powerful brother known as hashish or kif or plain hemp. It is basically the same cannabis plant, but it is richer in resins, and thus in intoxicating tars when smoked or eaten. Unlike opium, which is a body drug rather than a mind drug, you can learn to function normally with marijuana. In the southern areas, the best of this plant comes from Cambodia, and the vast majority of “good stuff” comes across the border via the Ho Chi Minh trail, the same route made famous by the Viet Cong—a fairly romantic migration. 

For the most part, the drug is cheaper and easier to find in Vietnam than a package of Lucky Strikes. It might be interesting to find out if the derivation of the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company’s slogan, “I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” might not have come from the revered Arab expression, “A puff of kif in the morning makes a man as strong as a hundred camels in the courtyard.” In any case, marijuana is as easy to find in Vietnam as a Vietnamese national, and you needn’t find one to find the other. 

Steinbeck remarked that "practically no civil or military controls" were used to inhibit the smoking of marijuana, not so much as "a matter of kindness" but for practical reasons. "To enforce a prohibition against smoking the plant would be like trying to prohibit the inhalation of smog in Los Angeles." 

He hit on a historical note in the article:

The mass use of drugs in war is as ancient as war itself. The Vikings well knew the mind-expanding mushrooms. They would eat the fungus before battle for its mixture of inner calm and energy. The word “berserk” comes from the Nordic language to describe the state of enthusiasms achieved. Like this is the word “panic” used by the ancient Greeks, who, in worshipping the goat-footed god Pan, would partake of organic mind-drugs as well as wine. Despite this, it is inaccurate to think of the effects of these drugs causing an almost inhuman state of violence. When used as a sacrament, Skippy peanut butter could bring enthusiasms and group spirit. By themselves the drugs allow a certain amount of mental flexibility, and an almost spiritual easiness that can lead either lethargy or excitement. Suffice it to say that these drugs, including marijuana, bring a sort of ethereal happiness, and what acts are to be performed within the gates of this happiness are up to the individual. Marijuana for the most part leads to a calm, perceiving detachment.

He continued that, "Because of what marijuana does to the brain’s interpretation of light, and what we call beauty, a wonderful change in war starts to occur. Instead of the grim order of terror, explosions modulate musically; death takes on a new approachable symbolism that is not so horrible. All the senses, including the emotions, are muted by being hyper-charged with their own capacity....."

He then described watching an attack with soldiers as though they were watching a fireworks exhibition: 

When the flares and fifty-caliber machine guns started up for cover, you could barely hear the noise of the ordnance over the ohs and ahs coming from our little group of defenders, smoking Papa-san’s grass. The beauty of all that gunpowder (an oriental invention, you remember) was almost too much to bear. Up would shoot a white star-flare on a parachute, and all eyes would be transfixed at the glow. Of course, it was intended to show whether the enemy was coming up our side of the crest, but a sigh of “did you dig that?” whispered past the shuffling of grenades and ammunition. The mutual feeling was, “If this is it, what a nice way to go.” The clatter of the machine guns was like a Stravinsky percussion interlude from “Le Sacre du Printemps.” There isn’t a psychedelic discotheque that can match the beauty of flares and bombs at night. Everyone was left with the feeling that we were unique in this war to be seeing it from such a detached and esthetic vantage point. That was until discussion started up on the mountain after it was all over. Other Gl’s, when commenting on the action, or any action, would say, “Yeah, but you should see it when you’re high.”

Steinbeck concluded, "I was very happy that because of a few plants, Americans and Viet Cong alike didn’t have to bear the naked weight or other people’s decisions and foregone conclusions. At least they had the buffer of their mind—its happiness, its desires, its woes, and giving—these textures that would always remain untouched by leaflets or campaign speeches, or bullets, or horror. This part of the mind was in itself an area of peace into which no one might trespass: a hallowed garden of thought that could be maintained even in the face of all calamity."

Steinbeck testified that March before Congress, estimating that "about 60 percent of American soldiers between the ages of 19 and 27 smoke marijuana when they think it is reasonable to do that." The testimony caused "a media firestorm" and in response to the scrutiny, the Army began clamping down on marijuana usage, arresting roughly 1000 G.I.s per week for marijuana possession, while also searching out and destroying marijuana-growing fields with the help of South Vietnamese troops. The unintended consequence: many G.I.s shifted their drug use to heroin, which was odorless and thus harder to detect. According to a Pentagon study, by 1973 up to 20 percent of soldiers were habitual heroin users. Noting the negative consequences of stifling marijuana use, one army commanding officer was quoted saying, “If it would get them to give up the hard stuff, I would buy all the marijuana and hashish in the Delta as a present.” 

In 1970 Bob Hope spiced up his act in Vietnam with jokes about marijuana, which met with roars of approval from soldiers. "I hear you guys are interested in gardening here," he quipped. "Our security officer said a lot of you guys are growing your own grass." Poignantly, he added that "instead of taking it away from the soldiers, we ought to give it to the negotiators in Paris." The jokes were censored from Hope's 1970 Christmas special, but he told them later on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Steinbeck with his father and LBJ in 1966

John Steinbeck IV was the second son born to Nobel laureate John Steinbeck and his second wife, who divorced him for his boorish and egocentric behavior (and/or was unreasonable herself, according to some). The novelist modeled the whorish character of the mother of twin boys Aaron and Caleb in East of Eden on her. In the movie adaptation of the book, James Dean plays Cal, the misunderstood and unloved son, who may have been modeled on John Junior. In his memoir The Other Side of Eden he wrote that his father said, "They should have jailed you" when he was arrested for marijuana in 1967. 

Later in 1968, Steinbeck returned to South Vietnam as a journalist. Along with Sean Flynn (the son of actor Errol Flynn), he founded Dispatch News Service, which originally published Seymour Hersh's story on the My Lai massacre. According to Wikipedia, "Fluent in street Vietnamese, Flynn and Steinbeck quickly became independent of the flow of information dispensed by the United States Press Office, enabling them to discover the truth about the My Lai massacre." Flynn disappeared after being taken as a prisoner of war during a photo shoot in Cambodia. Steinbeck's Vietnam memoir In Touch was published by Knopf in 1969. 

Steinbeck took the vows of a Buddhist monk while living on Phoenix Island in the Mekong Delta, under the tutelage of the Coconut Monk. Amid the raging war, Steinbeck stayed in the monk's "peace zone," where the 400 monks who lived on the island hammered howitzer shell casings into bells. Steinbeck traveled back and forth between Asia and the United States several more times before settling in Boulder, Colorado, where he studied Tibetan Buddhism with Chögyam Trungpa. In 1982, he married Nancy Harper and in 1983, they traveled around the world for a year, living in Kathmandu to pursue their Buddhist studies. Nancy completed The Other Side of Eden following her husband's death in 1991. 

The documentary "Join the Club" about medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron begins with his experience of trying marijuana as a soldier in Vietnam.  The Odyssey is full of warriors taking drugs like nepenthe and lotus leaves to forget the horrors of war.