Book Review: The Psychologist as a Cancer Survivor. Shapiro, D. (2000). Mom's Marijuana. New York: Harmony Books, 256 pp, $20.00 (hardcover).
No, this is not the story of a drug dealing, substance-abusing parent. Mom’s Marijuana is an intensely moving, insightful, and often humorous autobiographical account of a journey to adulthood challenged repeatedly by a battle with cancer. Through a series of intimate and exceptionally well-written essays, readers witness the evolution of a twenty year old college student to a gifted 34-year-old psychologist across a landscape of life-threatening illness. Along the way there is much to learn about family support, the inner life of patient-hood, coping, meritorious and insensitive care-givers, and living. The story begins when Dan Shapiro, then an undergraduate at Vassar, is diagnosed with Stage IIB nodular sclerosing Hodgkin’s disease. Taking leave from college and moving home to undergo chemotherapy Shapiro soon tells his parents that he will definitely need ‘‘some weed’’ to cope with medication-induced nausea. His overly-protective but pragmatic and Consumer Reports-oriented mother at first protests, but soon buys him a bong and provides money to by pot. Stunned by the street price of the product, she uses her substantial gardening acumen to grow a crop of her own for her son. Marijuana becomes the metaphor for the social support and friendship that sustains Shapiro through his illness. Along the way we are witness to numerous clinical human encounters described clear and powerful prose. After initial successful treatment of the cancer, he enters graduate school in clinical psychology at the University of Florida, meets his wife-to-be (head