Okay, I have this vivid memory of sitting with a bunch of colleagues in a doctors’ lounge in Beauvais, France, trying to figure out why we had inflicted upon ourselves the punishment of studying medicine and then practicing it for a living.  There were a couple of guys who wanted to be missionaries; really religious folk.  Others discussed the exalted status of the doctor in the community, the money that went with it, etc. When it came to a choice of specialty, there was a lot of discussion, even then and even in France, about the difficulty of the studies, of developing a practice, of making a living. Rarely there was a feeling of passion.  This was viewed as naive.  I remember a woman who wanted to go into oral surgery because she believed that the human spirit was lodged in the teeth (Really).  A woman who wanted to be a cancer doctor because her mother had died of cancer far too young. And there was me, the “brain freak,” granted there was a Jewish idea of public service and healing humanity.  But my passion for the brain was (and is) real. How it works and what it does to behavior are things I find passionately consuming as well as sacred. Some of the French doctors laughed; others just smiled.  I guess they figured I would grow out of it.

As I write this, I am wearing a heart-shaped wristwatch, with a picture of a sagittal section of the human brain. Read more on “Marijuana Doctors”…