Remember when we were young and wild and experimented with marijuana, then grew up to be rich, solipsistic New York Times columnists? David Brooks does, today, in an amazing op-ed that has, ahem, lit up the Internet with derision. If you haven't read it already, please make sure your eyeballs are securely fastened inside your head so that they don't roll across the room as you subject them to Brooks's "Weed: Been There, Done That" story. Here's a highlight:

I think we gave it up, first, because we each had had a few embarrassing incidents. Stoned people do stupid things (that’s basically the point). I smoked one day during lunch and then had to give a presentation in English class. I stumbled through it, incapable of putting together simple phrases, feeling like a total loser. It is still one of those embarrassing memories that pop up unbidden at 4 in the morning.

We gave it up, second, I think, because one member of our clique became a full-on stoner. He may have been the smartest of us, but something sad happened to him as he sunk deeper into pothead life.

Third, most of us developed higher pleasures. Smoking was fun, for a bit, but it was kind of repetitive. Most of us figured out early on that smoking weed doesn’t really make you funnier or more creative (academic studies more or less confirm this). We graduated to more satisfying pleasures. The deeper sources of happiness usually involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

You see, some people like Brooks grow up to realize that dope is for dopes, and that abiding satisfaction comes from being highly compensated for trolling liberals with infuriatingly smug generalizations. Other people never grow up and continue to waste their lives by sometimes enjoying a powerful plant that naturally grows in the ground, for some stupid reason. These people are called losers.

Brooks is concerned about marijuana legalization laws in states like Colorado eroding America's moral fiber, and creating a weakened nation with millions of citizens smoking marijuana and not working. Joe Scarborough and Tina Brown share his fears:

But common sense would suggest to some of us that any substance taken immoderately can be harmful, whether it be relatively innocuous marijuana or the highly-addictive ambrosia-like fumes wafting from one's own immense sense of self-satisfaction. In fact, you're probably better off not doing ANY drugs and going vegan and waking up at dawn to do yoga and, like Brooks, create precious #smarttakes for the opinion-starved media ecosystem.

Surely Brooks must know that people less evolved than Brooks have, since the dawn of civilization, sought to alter their consciousness by ingesting various substances. That's never going to change, and so the question is: should they be incarcerated and have their lives destroyed for it? Revolting examples of the War on Drugs' futility and madness are legion, and decriminalizing marijuana is a much more serious issue than Brooks lets on in his fatuous little flashback, which is short on facts and long on condescension.

Smoking pot doesn't make you stupid (that's not "basically the point"), but reading Brooks's column on a regular basis just might. Brooks is bad, kids, don't do Brooks. You don't want to wind up like your poor bumbling burnout uncle David. Folks say he got too high on his own supply.