Pot's Prime Number Explained
Facts and fabrications about the legendary 420.
If you smoke herb, tree, sherm, floyd, grass, cheeba, the chronic, wet, weed or plain old marijuana or you know someone who owns at least one piss-poor quality Phish bootleg or an Orange Goblin record, you know about the magical number 420. It's the hopheads' pseudo underground--"dude, you know what the deal is,"--numerical code for getting high. Whether you're in a perpetual 420 time zone, or look forward to April 20th like it was your birthday, or you make it a verb and go get 420'd, you are propagating a decade-long cultural phenomenon. And it has many mythical and legendary points of origin.
Until now, that is.
Myth #1 : 420 is the police call-in code for "Possession of Marijuana" or "Drug Bust in Progress" or "Hippie Smoking Herb" or whatever.
Bust: It's not. Check radiolabs.com for all your cop related call-in number codes. The call codes are pretty universal and 420 ain't even on there.
Myth #2 : "Come Together" by the Beatles is 4 minutes and 20 seconds long. And if you know the lyrics, you know they were reeeeeeally fuckin' high when they wrote it.
Bust: Granted, the words to the tune are pretty "wow, man, dude, whoa!" and the Fab Four might have smoked a bit of shake back in the day. But the song is 4 minutes and 16 seconds long.
Myth #3 : April 20th is Earth Day. And you gotta perpetuate the celebration of smoking a bit of the Mother Earth, maaaaaaan.
Bust: Um, check that calendar, Sunshine. Earth Day has been on April 22 since 1970.
Myth #4: THC (Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol), the element in weed that makes you high, has 420 chemicals in it.
Bust: The number of active chemicals in marijuana hovers around the 300-315 mark, depending on the strain of bud you're puffin'.
Myth #5: Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer and synthesizer of LSD first dropped acid at 4:20 p.m., April 19, 1943.
Bust: Well, yes, he did. His notebooks can verify that. And if you wanna get all technical and shit, he first tripped three days prior--by accident. But acid and weed are two separate drugs. This is just some odd, hippie coincidence.
Myth #6: When the Grateful Dead toured they always stayed in room #420 of whatever hotel they were at.
Bust: Dead biographer and historian for 20 some-odd years (and author of A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead) Dennis McNally has gone on record as saying this is ridiculous.
Myth #7: April 20 is National Pot Smokers Day.
Bust: That's true--but it's only on April 20th because of all this 4:20 horseshit.
Myth #8: April 20 is the last day you should plant your seeds.
Bust: This makes no sense. You can grow virtually anytime, virtually anywhere.
Myth #9: The number comes from the children's nursery rhyme "Sing A Song of Sixpence," which is all about drugs. It says, "Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." Get it?
Bust: There is no tie-in except for the number and the word "baked." Go to writingresources.com/nursery_rhymes/sing_a_song_of_sixpence.html for the real story on the bird-pie thing.
Myth #10: In the H.P. Lovercaft short story "In the Walls Of Eryx," the protagonist talks of a hallucinatory plant with "shaggy stalk, spikey leaves" and the ability to seemingly stop time. When the slowed-down time in the story is checked, it's 4:20.
Bust: This is the coolest-sounding, coincidental myth, but the story has time checks throughout.
Truth: According to a very trustworthy source, High Times editor Steve Hager, the pot periodical wrote a history in 1998, which found that the 420 phenomenon started in San Rafael High School in California, in 1971. A dozen stoners who hung and smoked together heard of a secret patch of homegrown growing nearby. They decided to meet at 4:20 at the campus statue of scientist Louis Pasteur to begin their search for the secret field o' weed. They never found it. But they started incorporating the time and number 420 into their language to slyly talk about smoking in front of teachers and parents. They then told two friends who in turn told two friends and so on and so on....Further documentation is at 420.com.
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The Lovecraft thing is pretty crazy even if it's a coincidence. The story was written in 1936.
The outlines of everything shimmered rhythmically, and bright points of light appeared and danced in the same slow, steady tempo. After that the temperature seemed to fluctuate in unison with a peculiar rhythmic drumming.
The whole universe seemed to be throbbing in deep, regular pulsations that filled every corner of space and flowed through my body and mind alike. I lost all sense of equilibrium and staggered dizzily, nor did it change things in the least when I shut my eyes and covered my ears with my hands. However, my mind was still clear, and in a very few minutes I realized what had happened.
I had encountered at last one of those curious mirage-plants about which so many of our men told stories. Anderson had warned me of them, and described their appearance very closely - the shaggy stalk, the spiky leaves , and the mottled blossoms whose gaseous, dream-breeding exhalations penetrate every existing make of mask.
Recalling what happened to Bailey three years ago, I fell into a momentary panic, and began to dash and stagger about in the crazy, chaotic world which the plant's exhalations had woven around me. Then good sense came back, and I realized all I need do was retreat from the dangerous blossoms - heading away from the source of the pulsations, and cutting a path blindly - regardless of what might seem to swirl around me - until safely out of the plant's effective radius.
Although everything was spinning perilously, I tried to start in the right direction and hack my way ahead. My route must have been far from straight, for it seemed hours before I was free of the mirage-plant's pervasive influence. Gradually the dancing lights began to disappear, and the shimmering spectral scenery began to assume the aspect of solidity. When I did get wholly clear I looked at my watch and was astonished to find that the time was only 4:20. Though eternities had seemed to pass, the whole experience could have consumed little more than a half-hour.
Sounds like weed...
Edited by sinenomine (04/20/08 04:37 PM)
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