A therapist friend recently attended a conference where a big group of doctors and health professionals focused around adolescents presented on the link between pot and the development of psychosis and even schizophrenia in users under age 32 or something like that.
I've definitely heard about this colloquially with people reacting very differently to the same strain ("we were all fine but she was just freaking out"), and the new science coming out of places like Colorado seems to be showing a strong correlation in that direction. I guess you could say (colloquially again, since I'm not at all in the medical field) that pot can open a bad door in some people that may have stayed shut otherwise. Is that gene expression? Brain plasticity? Dunno.
I think prohibition does way more harm than good and I'm glad to see legalization coming to the states, but I don't think we can treat pot as totally harmless for people under 30 and teens in particular because it seems like it's very harmful for some.
As I understand it THC aggravates symptoms in people predisposed to psychosis. CBD is antipsychotic and can have a balancing effect but unfortunately growers have been selectively breeding and optimizing for high THC at the expense of CBD for decades. The result is that cannabis is more "incompatible" with certain people than it used to be.
Which is one of the big problems with cannabis studies.
THC is known as the "active" ingredient in cannabis. However we know it's definitely not the only one.
There are 113 identified cannabinoids. Most are believed to have some effect. And there's terpenes that are believed to have effects as well.
So the problem is that ever single bit of cannabis has different ratios of these chemicals. Even two plants with the exact same genetics grown in same conditions can have widely ranging ratios. Which potentially means widely ranging effects.
The good thing is with legalization moving along we should see a lot more high quality studies that can help us figure this out.
> The good thing is with legalization moving along we should see a lot more high quality studies that can help us figure this out.
This is tangential, but it seems odd to me that many of the same people who are opposed to GMOs on the grounds that “science may have missed something” are okay with legalizing pot until science clearly demonstrates harm. Note that I’m not directing that at you (I don’t think you said anything like what I’m describing), but your quip made me think of it. I’m only calling this out as an intriguing observation; not trying to pick on anyone.
Firstly, marijuana taken internally has a long tradition of use. GMO's not so much. Admittedly, modern strains of marijuana may pose greater concerns.
Secondly, legalisation of recreational drugs is, I'd argue, only tangentially related to the harm they may cause by using them. Take alcohol as an example. The legalisation of recreational drugs is, I'd argue, more about a) personal-sovereignty, and b) the harm caused by the war on drugs.
For the record, I'm pro GMO when and where they makes sense, and also pro personal-sovereignty.
GMOs have been consumed as a primary food source daily by hundreds of millions of people per year with no known health risks, even after extensive study. Cannabis has been used for a while, but it hasn’t received the same level of study and concerns have been raised (e.g., this article). I’ve got to give this one to the GMOs.
> Secondly, legalisation of recreational drugs is, I'd argue, only tangentially related to the harm they may cause by using them. Take alcohol as an example. The legalisation of recreational drugs is, I'd argue, more about a) personal-sovereignty, and b) the harm caused by the war on drugs.
How does “personal sovereignty” explain supporting prohibitions against GMOs? The opposition to the war on drugs but seems plausible.
GMOs are the genetic equivalent to plastic in the ocean. Once it's in the wild it's damn hard to reverse the damage. Weed on the other hand you can just not consume.
GMOs are already produced on a massive scale; any irreversible damage is already done. Further, this is true for any domesticated organism, not GMOs in particular. Besides, the argument I referenced was about health risks, not ecological damage.
It stands to reason drug response follows a bell shaped curve, where most people fit in to the pleasant-effects most-of-the-time large area covered by the curve, and fewer people fall outside.
Fun anecdote, my Bipolar disorder didn't manifest itself until immediately after the first time I consumed marijuana, and it is now a lifetime endeavor.
I know a lot of people who tried out marijuana as a medication for depression. (well, illegal / no prescription) It helped in the beginning, but most of them just became addicted, paranoid and incredible slow thinkers and figuratively numb.
Depression is hell, but it's not worth giving up your sanity and intellect.
I'm a big supporter of legalization, because I think prohibition is dramatically worse than any negatives from people smoking pot (similar to alcohol, etc).
That said, the two friends of mine that were the heaviest smokers, saw dramatic improvements in their lives in the few years immediately following giving up smoking pot. Both in terms of health and professional success. They were recreational smokers, rather than smoking for pain purposes or similar, it should be noted. One of them has become a very successful business person, the pot smoking had considerably dulled their ambition. They used to do the minimum to further their life. Afterward, their potential was unleashed, it was night and day (and a dramatic benefit to the well-being of their family).
I am a huge opposer of legalization, because I've seen what pot has done to people I care about. I would point out that solution to the negatives of prohibition is not legalization, but decriminalization. The issue with legalization is that it removes the stigma with trying it, which means we get more users than otherwise.
We can maintain the very correct statements that drugs are bad and that all possible care should be made to remove it's availability and discourage it's use, but treat it as a social problem, not a crime. Let's continue to shut down drug dealers, who grow, import, and spread the crud around, but no longer penalize users. Offer them treatment, help them find better means, rather than throwing them in jail.
Drugs do not just lead you to harm others. In fact, like alcohol, most drug users probably do not harm others. But both cause significant self-harm. And society ends up bearing the burden of helping people who aren't able to help themselves, be it on an individual level or a governmental level.
The problem is the same people who want to kill themselves slowly want our tax dollars to provide them free medical care whilst they do so. Your comment ignores the real burden that self-harming people create upon those around them, and why we need to get them out of self-harm rather than bearing the burden of it.
While I agree with your general sentiment, I’m not convinced I have a comprehensive alternative to the current standard: legal / decriminalisation + harm reduction.
Prohibition seems like the least best alternative. I’m open to being wrong though.
It’s not up to the law to take upon itself the role of arbiter of society’s truer mores.
Once you establish a strong connection between what is lawful and what is moral, you open up the ominous gate of any future conflation of moral duty with any reproachable reach of law.
With legalization comes regulation, which is extremely beneficial, so it's better than just decriminalization. Like other commenter posted, the law shouldn't be the stigma-ruler we use to measure things. And I'll further that by saying that education and information is more important than stigma.
Isn’t that an overreaction? Pot allegedly has had an adverse effect on your friends, but anecdotally its only had a positive effect on friends and co-workers.
> I am a huge opposer of legalization, because I've seen what pot has done to people I care about.
frankly, this argument has no place in a society that considers itself free. it is not for you to tell me what harm i may inflict on my own body, nor to restrict others from helping me do it.
You're staking out a pretty extreme position there. Society has already accepted: helmet laws, seatbelt laws, mandatory health insurance, age limits for alcohol and tobacco consumption, food and drug regulations, etc.
You can argue that our society can't consider itself free, but it's the society we have and the same argument is in play on a number of issues.
> Society has already accepted: helmet laws, seatbelt laws, mandatory health insurance, age limits for alcohol and tobacco consumption, food and drug regulations, etc.
not everything on that list is terrible; in fact, it provides a good opportunity to illustrate my point. not wearing a seatbelt makes it likely that you will become a lethal projectile in the event of an accident, so i'm okay with seatbelts being required. as far as food and drugs go, i think people should have access to as much information as possible about the things they are putting in their body, but i don't think they should be prevented from selling raw milk or dangerous drugs. i also think it is fine to prevent children from doing any number of risky things, as they are not mature enough be fully responsible for their actions. my problem is with treating adults like children. unless what you do with your body actually harms others, you should be left to do it in peace. and no, the fact that other people choose to waste resources cleaning up your mistakes does not constitute harming them.
So you're in favor of alcohol prohibition, too, correct?
Alcohol is legal, not decriminalized. Alcohol kills and hurts more people than marijuana ever has and ever will. Despite those problems, most sane people do not believe prohibition of alcohol was a good time for humanity.
> I think prohibition is dramatically worse than any negatives from people smoking pot (similar to alcohol, etc).
Alcohol has been an integral part of Western civilization for quite a while now. Prohibition on alcohol is in no way comparable to prohibition on pot [in terms of its impact]. Why do you think its prohibition is "dramatically" worse than making this mind altering substance generally available?
[secret handshake disclaimer: I liked Spliff and I don't mean just the band.]
Because we've tried that prohibition, and the results are demonstrably worse. I would recommend Radley Balko's numerous articles and his book on how detrimental the "war on drugs" has been to civil liberties in the USA in general, and how many people's lives it ruined.
People who break the law are by definition not "innocent". You might disagree with the laws/penalties, but anyone who knowingly violates the law is categorically not innocent.
Of course, that's the entire point. Without prohibition they are innocent. With prohibition they are criminals. That is why prohibition is dramatically worse. People who are not a threat to society are imputed as criminals, losing their life to jailtime and a permanent criminal record.
The same argument could be made for anything. Not paying your taxes is only illegal because there is a law that says you have to. You can't just define words to have whatever meaning you want. If you agree that they did something illegal then you can't call them innocent without lying.
It isn't that hard, don't do illegal drugs if you don't want to be called a criminal. You can work to make them legal, but that doesn't change the fact that they are illegal right now.
The point is that a person who otherwise works and provides value, but does cannabis is better for the society as a working person rather than someone in prison where people will pay with taxes for his living. If you skip on taxes you are living off of society so this should be illegal ofcourse.
I'm not "defining words to have whatever meaning". I explicitly agreed with you on the technicality of innocent vs criminal ("Of course"), and brought the conversation back the actual point:
Prihibition is dramatically worse because it imputes criminal charges onto people who are otherwise innocent. This is bad because these people are not a threat to society, yet with prohibition they lose their life to jailtime and a permanent criminal record.
I talking about the original comment I was responding to. You specifically said that it "imputes innocent people as criminals". This implies that they are innocent which they are not.
I never said that it shouldn't be legalized/decriminalized, I'm just objecting to the usage of "innocent" to describe these people.
Fine - you are correct. These people are not "innocent" in the legal sense, in that they are in blatant violation of the law.
However I would then ask if the legal criteria of judging innocence are useful to society. My claim is that they are not, in that we label people as "guilty" and socially disadvantage them, when they may otherwise be perfectly productive members of society. Their use of cannabis in and of itself causes causes comparatively less harm to others, at least relative to harder drugs like alcohol.
Ok, I hear you. But I think my usage is ok. The purpose of prohibition is to apply a criminal status to an otherwise non-criminal. And without that law they are innocent, no? Or how else should we describe the status of said citizens without the existance of prohibition?
You mean the linked NPR article that agrees it doesn't have lasting effects, but instead effects that clear up as soon as people stop using? (Although with no control group, the described study is essentially worthless)
Every study done, and likely to ever be done given ethical standards, attempting to link marijuana usage to mental illness shares the same fundamental problem which makes their results meaningless: It cannot account for self-selection. There is no way to know that those who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia were not self medicating with marijuana, leading to the causation actually being backwards. And in that case there is also no way to know what effect preventing that self medication might have had, and whether it would be positive or negative.
Short of a plausible neurochemical explanation of how it would happen, phenomenological studies like those have to be discarded. They simply don't have the ability to illuminate anything, they can only feed intuitive guesses which is always dangerous in issues of health.
This same argument could be applied to many long-term medical studies: Maybe people with a pre-disposition to heart disease also hate exercising, so the link between heart disease is and lack of exercise is backwards. Yeah, that doesn't work.
Ignoring the link between mental illness and marijuana use is ridiculous. A medical study doesn't need 100% confidence to be true. If we held all of medical science to that bar, we'd never make progress.
Plus, we have a colloquialism for a person whose mind appears to have suffered damage from excessive marijuana usage: a burnout. It's something that even recreational users observe. And where there's smoke...
Alcohol is a red herring and serves no purpose in this discussion. The public has been made aware of the dangers of alcohol consumption.
> The relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia fulfills many but not all of the standard criteria for causality, including temporality, biological gradient, biological plausibility, experimental evidence, consistency, and coherence. At the present time, the evidence indicates that cannabis may be a component cause in the emergence of psychosis, and this warrants serious consideration from the point of view of public health policy. [0]
That's pretty solid, and far from "inconclusive." Animal testing have already confirmed that mice with certain genetic markers will develop schizophrenia if exposed to THC. [1]
I'm not an expert on this though my father is, and from my recollection of our conversations I believe schizophrenia being latent until some trauma 'triggers' it in young adulthood is a quite common pattern, especially in men. Drug use is just one of many events that can induce this, and I don't believe it's in line with current clinical understanding to say that "door" "may have stayed shut otherwise".
A personal anecdote of mine. A friend has schizophrenia. There was a clear point of descent from smoking cannabis. He was 13 at the time - young for schizophrenia. He's now on clozapine, a powerful antipsychotic. Whenever his judgement fails him and he smokes pot, it's weeks to months before he has to spend some time in hospital. Otherwise, he could take other, heavier drugs to excess and not require urgent hospitalisation.
You've illustrated the problem in anecdata: Nothing in what you said indicates that cannabis causes his episodes.
It is just as likely, given the description, that the sequence that results in an episode includes the prompts that trigger him to medicate with cannabis.
This is why we can't use personal experience to make public policy.
Nope. I understand that. I wouldn't say that cannabis causes schizophrenia or even episodes. It's more a story of how my friend and the people that love him came to view cannabis as it relates to his illness. It's an "understanding" if you will held by carers and primary care givers alike. If you suffer from psychosis, they make a point of warning about cannabis.
Perhaps the lapse in judgement is a sign of an oncoming episode, with weed unnecessarily blamed. But the experience of so many people and the possibility of a link deserves to be investigated with the rigour of science.
If anything, legalization will greatly increase the sample size of users that are comfortable with taking part in studies that could confirm the effects of marijuana on cognitive performance.
I personally find that in the times I've used marijuana, there's a very small zone between no effect and feeling like I'm clinging to my sanity. I rarely partake. It reminds me of how people describe ayahuasca as being profound, but not fun.
> but I don't think we can treat pot as totally harmless for people under 30 and teens in particular because it seems like it's very harmful for some.
But I can say the same for alcohol and cigarettes and ...
While there are a few diehards, most sane people will not defend "marijuana is harmless"--even for adults. It's a drug; it does something to your mind; that's why you use it.
However, the increasing amount of data suggests that what harm marijuana does is in the same class as things like alcohol and cigarettes--which are legal, but regulated.
Let us say there are 100 teens in your neighborhood, 65 of them tried eating peanuts and 20 of them liked very much and started eating multiple times a week on a regular basis.
Now 5 of those 20 started developing health/mental problems which are noticeable by parents, teachers & doctors.
What are the chances of the majority of those 5 stop eating peanuts, It is very high.
Now, what are the chances of similar 5 teens stop using weed for health/mental problems?
>Now, what are the chances of similar 5 teens stop using weed for health/mental problems?
I did. I recognized immediately on the first episode that something was wrong, I had a serious trip at the age of 18 where I was experiencing extremely high paranoia and psychosis to the point where I tried to get to the hospital, made worse by the fact it was illegal at the time so my friends stopped me, increasing the paranoia. It took me another bad experience to realise it was me, not the drug because my friends were fine. I didn't smoke for 20 years and only very carefully started again and now I can, but very very small doses and only when I'm out doing something. I'm a woman and what I went through wasn't so rare for my other friends, women and men. It didn't have any rhyme nor reason who it struck. But most of us stopped eventually, then we went on to our successful lives.
Now, what are the chances of similar 5 teens stop using weed for health/mental problems?
Probably good with actual education that makes sure folks know the actual risks and what sorts of things to look out for. We should do this in a better manner than we do with alcohol now. We should be very careful not to lie to folks lest folks cast aside all that we try to teach.
A few folks won't listen, just like a few folks will eat peanuts nonetheless.
Every drug is not heroin or meth. In fact, with the exception of cocaine, the overwhelming majority of recreational drug use (weed, MDMA, LSD, even ketamine) is relatively low risk for addiction.
It is not the same.
Look at the opioid epidemic in teens across USA, talk to health care providers in that area, there is very well recorded evidence "a BIG percentage" of kids who personally noticed "Learning problems and other mental problems" are UNABLE to STOP using weed.
Vs.
There is recorded clinical data evidence throughout USA hospitals. Millions of kids across the country were found having various kinds of food allergies and advised by the doctors to stop eating those foods and the vast majority DID STOP eating them.
Yes, but a food allergy is something you can feel. You feel sick, you might have to go to the hospital once or twice if you ate something which contained peanuts. It is a much tighter feedback loop. Eat some peanuts -> feel sick -> go to hospital. As far as I am aware this loop is very quick. If you extend this feedback loop to span multiple years, the connection between trigger and result is a lot more blurry, and it leaves more room for rationalization.
The comparision is "If you eat this, you will probably die if you do not get immediate treatment" versus "If you smoke this, in some time in the future you might have mental health issues. Or you might be totally fine"
Peanuts are also not (mentally) addictive, and neither do they alter your mental state.
People like to take chances, and hope that its not gonna be them who get mentally ill.
> Peanuts are also not (mentally) addictive, and neither do they alter your mental state
Yes, they are? Anecdotally, if i put a bowl of peanuts on my desk, I'll eat them without knowing it, and speed up eating them when nervous, thinking, or bored. Any habit a human does enough can be mentally addictive.
Importantly, neither are physiologically addictive.
Your example isnt about addiction though. its that most likely you are kinda hungry, want to do something with your hands while you are thinking, or a nervous tick.
mariam webster defines addiction as follows
> : compulsive need for and use of a habit-forming substance (such as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawal
> broadly : persistent compulsive use of a substance known by the user to be harmful
personally I would not even require the substance beeing harmfull. So yes, you can imho be addicted to peanuts, but finishing the bowl on your desk is not that.
My point in emphasizing is that there are no known physiological addictive components of canabis.
Presumably, the op knows the same, hence specified mentally addictive, but is confused because they don't think peanuts have the same, but they do. Mentally addictive only means you like the way it makes you feel so you keep doing it, not that your receptors actually need it or stop functioning without it (chemical dependence)
Cannabinoids have similar addiction pathways (dopamine receptors) as sex, sugar, and, for this example, salt.
Millions of people are told to stop smoking every day and they don't do it. That's because humans are bad at judging the likelihood of long-term effects, whereas food allergies have immediate and very painful ones.
This has nothing to do with the substance. If weed stopped you from breathing and made your tongue swell, people would drop it right away.
The problem is that the discourse right now is extremely polarized, following the left/right divide in politics. You have people on the right claiming that pot will automatically ruin your life, and (some) people on the left pretending it's completely benign and almost a panacea. I once watched a "documentary" claiming that pot cures cancer! I kid you not.
The fact is, it's a substance that affects different people differently. It can cause intense anxiety in some people, and it can severely impair your judgement. Responsible use requires that users be properly informed of the risks. We need to be having a more balanced and honest discussion about this, and many other issues.
I agree with you that it is extremely polarized, but disagree that it follows the left/right divide in politics.
I have many friends and family on all sides of the spectrum, and there are many conservatives that have opinions like, "it's not for me, but I don't care what you do with your body" (not a typical conservative position IMHO, but becoming more common). I've also been hearing the "I support medical, but not recreational." Even here in Utah, a very conservative state, we are close to legalizing medical cannabis with prop 2.
On the progressive side I've been starting to hear people saying more and more that the evidence is incomplete, and therefore the government needs to consider regulating it much more heavily or wait to legalize until more science is done.
Of course, those are not the stereotypical views, but it's one of the issues that seems to cross left/right divides a lot more than others.
All high school weed smokers are not equal. There are many occasional smokers.
For the sake of simplicity, let me put a number here.
High schooler between 9th to 12 grade who smoke weed at least 10 times a week all four years will settle in LIFE below 50% of his potential (compared to how he would have done without weed)
You did not read my post well. You did not know the guy you said did what I mentioned "10 times a week, for all 4 years 9-12 grade", If he did, he is unlikely to reach university. Even if few kids reach university with parents money, they would not have got 1st in Chemistry.
You may still show me 15 guys who reached university top class ranks after doing 4 year high school heavy weed.
In the same high school I can show 85 kids (4 year high school heavy weed users) whose life prospects are diminished by the time they finish the collage .
+1 definitely know a few people who somehow (total mystery to me) their brains are on fire when using. Similarly have opposite examples... It just seems to work differently for differently people.
Maybe this is too reductionist but I once heard someone describe it as, "there's nothing fundamentally dangerous about pot, but one of its (often intended) effects is that is slows our engines down. And some of us need to be firing on all cylinders."
School was a tricky time for me. I'm thriving intellectually now, but I was a C- student pretty much 4th-12th grade. I needed those cycles that pot would have robbed me of.
South Park put it quite well: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything."
These are the kind of honest explanations for drugs that we need more of. Most people that do heroin don't become prostitutes to fund the habit. But once you've done it, no matter what happens in your life, it's not as good as that time you did heroin in your friends basement. And that's really sad.
edit: I'm being rightfully called out. I haven't done heroin and didn't mean to authoritatively say that there is only one realistic outcome. I only meant that painting the picture of drugs completely ruining your entire life isn't accurate, we all know very successful people that regularly do drugs.
I guess looking at movies and books, I could see where you'd get this idea, but it really isn't accurate.
There are different types of feeling good, and the purely chemical good isn't particularly rewarding. There are the moments in life where you are happy because you are living the life you want to live, and those are way better than just feeling good from drugs. Sometimes life goals and drugs come together, and that gets really interesting. It's reasonably common for people to do MDMA and have a glimpse of their life without anxiety and trauma, or LSD and looking at their own existence objectively.
For me, the best moments in my life are around building connections with people.
Lotta people talking about heroin in this thread, but lets be clear, unless you have tried heroin, or are otherwise intimately familiar with its affects, you are probably not qualified to talk about what it feels like.
Not trying to single out parent, just felt like it should be mentioned.
As someone who's done quite a bit of heroin...All of these comments are sort of correct in their own way. On its own turf, no, nothing will ever feel as good as heroin. Normal life experiences can't compete with that, not directly. But there is a one-dimensionality to its goodness that allows you to have experiences that, though i'm not sure they feel "better" than heroin, feel good in different ways that can be more satisfying, while also being sustainable.
It's sort of like the fact that nothing tastes better than cheesecake (or insert your favorite dessert here), but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy life or even other food without it.
As someone who's been through many different addictions, I'm starting to appreciate freedom from craving (a specific form of inner peace) more than the pleasure of indulging in a craving. (As well as the subtle benefits to mind and mood that come with it!)
Ya. It's sort of hard to explain to people who haven't experienced it, right? They like to ask "does not cheesecake ever taste as good as cheesecake?" and of course the answer is no: Cheesecake always tastes better than not-cheesecake. But there are other dimensions to experience that aren't captured by the immediacy of taste in that sense.
I was trying to get to this with good versus rewarding, but it's one of those things that is so obvious when you feel it, but hard to communicate with people who haven't.
As far as drugs go though, there is a lot of personal preference involved too. For me, MDMA in unhealthy quantities is still the best that I've ever felt, and I know some other people prefer the meth high, but I don't think that's exactly what you are arguing against :)
The dimensionality is the key part. It's not just a metaphor, it's a physical quantity. Like cheesecake, the neurological response to heroin follows a specific profile of activation. However, (most) humans find fulfillment in far more dimensions than any single activity provides.
I am a very very fat guy trying to eat properly and it’s excruciating, even after 5 weeks away from most of my daily life. Damned if I haven’t toyed briefly and desperately with the idea of some kind of pharmaceutical intervention. But my lifelong policy with drugs has always been if I can’t even handle Mountain Dew Throwback, I won’t have a chance with speed or coke or pot
Unsolicited tip. Something I find has helped me a lot with challenges like you are facing is to stop looking at them as difficult or choices and simply understanding it what you have to and are going to do. Remove the choice from the equation. I had some pretty destructive habits when I was younger and now people comment on my strong mental discipline. This approach has really helped. I recently had to cut all starch from my diet due to an auto-immune diagnosis and went through ketosis. The discipline has now become the habit. It never occurred to me to not follow through even in the deepest keto flu period. It's possible to achieve and once you've beaten one hurdle the next one becomes easier until you control fully your thoughts and not the other way around.
Definitely second this. Choices are hard, but decisions are easy. If you make hard rules for yourself and decide to follow them without exception, it is much easier to stick to, at least, that's what i've found for myself as well.
Interesting. I will try to think that way. BTW I’m quite self-disciplined pretty much every other way and I never thought much about it, but I think that’s how I normally am. If it’s not food or caffeine...
To a lesser extent, that's part of what hospice / palliative care is. Not to the extent that it's purely recreational, but often involve continued use of opiods for pain management.
If I get to choose the way I die it will be with an unlimited morphine drip slamming on the button repetitively. I had morphine back as a kid for a ruptured appendix and damn that stuff was good. I'll never forget the day they came in and I was expecting to get my daily shot and they told me I was being switched over to Tylenol lest I become addicted. I was 8, and I still remember thinking of saying "Oh I'm not becoming addicted but can we do it for 1 more day" haha...
> I had morphine back as a kid for a ruptured appendix and damn that stuff was good.
I suppose this varies a lot from individual to individual. I had morphine a few months ago for a shoulder reduction, and I felt horrible enough that I almost wish I'd just done it without painkillers at all.
Sadly there's still some prohibition on giving the patient enough to comfortably OD and voluntarily end their suffering in a lot of places. I've heard nurses say that they're instructed to try and keep the patient optimistic, even when all that life means to them anymore is continued suffering. Gotta squeeze every last dollar out of them or something I suppose.
There is a less cynical explanation: if you make it too easy for people to kill themselves then you run the risk of old people being coerced into taking that option by, for example, greedy relatives eyeing their inheritance.
And it could be seen as a perverse incentive for governments to make it too easy for people who are an economic and budgetary burden to end their own lives.
I believe this approach is also present in the UK where the patient isn't paying for their treatment directly. So I doubt it is to do with making money.
There is extensive research and clinical practice on the topic of comfort-measure care at the end of life. Opioids are, indeed, often felt to be helpful at the very end.
Depending on the condition of the patient and the specifics of the palliative care prescribed, that's exactly what happens. Just using morphine minus the extra additves used to make heroin. Add pure oxygen to the mix and I'm not sure the patient notices much of a difference - they're high as a kite regardless.
From what I heard it is a bit of a lawyerish distinction at that point - that euthanasia is never the intent but may be the end result. If they arecterminally ill or mortally injured with instructions to treat by giving enough that they don't have pain. If it is a level that they can just slumber peacefully 22 hours a day they are to go with that. If they are 95% third degree burnt and they need more than that and it eventually stops their breathing it is an unfortunate side effect of treating their pain but still the best option sadly and not malpractice - sometimes needed treatments can kill even when everything is done right.
The evasion and mental gymnastics does have some point at least - it isn't the doctor deciding to take the life of a patient because of a judgement and well any student of the 20th century knows how /that/ can end.
The mental gymnastics are due to the legal environment in the US and in particular on laws in many states that could send physicians who prescribe a drug for the purpose of ending a patient's life to jail.
But there are lots of drugs that have the possible side effect of death, and plenty of patients who decide that the risk-benefit of taking a drug is warranted even though it might kill them.
So therefore, everything has to be described in terms of "pain management" and "comfort" where the cessation of breathing is just a... potential side effect. If that, combined with the patient's standing orders not to intubate or perform any sort of resuscitative action in the event that they stop breathing, leads to death... well...
The euphemism that is frequently used is "palliative sedation" (or "terminal sedation", although that seems to be used mostly by people of the thou-must-maximally-suffer school of thought).
I don't buy that. I'm not sure where that information came from, but it's not the case for all users. Heroin feels amazing, but there's a ton of things in life that past users can find even better--even more rewarding. Russell Brand has a good book about this, it's called "Recovery"
Throughout highschool and college I knew a decent amount of people who experimented with drugs. But only a few who injected heroin, and all of them expressed that they weren't sure they were ever going to be happy again without heroin. And now most(maybe all) of them are dead.
I'm sure that's not true of every user, but enough of them that I really think heroin(and strong opioids in general) is a different beast.
That's a valid point, but it's worth pointing out that it can be applied to many more things than just marijuana (TV, video games, alcohol, social media, most articles people read, many apps, etc.). There's an enormous section of our economy that's devoted to wasting people's time when they could be "learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative" (I'd add taking care of your body, your mind, and your community to that list as well). For a lot of people, evenings have been the time to sit mindlessly in front of a screen for a few hours.
This ends up hurting our society on multiple fronts: people not being as productive as they could be because they're encouraged to waste time, an overall less happy society, a less healthy society because of the encouragement of sedentary behavior (and the economic burden that comes with that), a large part of the economy that could be devoted to improving people's lives but is instead wasted on encouraging negative behavior, etc. The problem is that we've grown so accustomed to this situation that we rarely think much about it, or what we can do to change it (whereas marijuana is getting at least some scrutiny, since legalization is new).
The problem with this quote is that it's too vague and can be applied to general entertainment and leisure time, no drugs needed.
You shouldn't be listening to music, you should be creating it.
You shouldn't be playing video games, you should be designing them.
You shouldn't be just eating food, you should be the one cooking it.
You shouldn't be lazing around at the pool, you should be swimming laps.
It's disgustingly puritan. Really it's enough to tell people that you should spend part of your time being productive. How you spend your leisure time really doesn't matter. But I guess quoting south park is typically a prerequisite for constraining the discussion to the point of nothingness.
>If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.
I understand the audience on this forum will not like this sentiment, but with the empirical evidence we have on hand, video games are a bigger problem for our youth than pot will most likely ever be.
Clearly sitting around on the couch playing video games all day can be just as destructive as sitting on the couch smoking pot all day. Also clearly, there are tons of skilled, industrious people who also smoke pot. I don't think anyone here is saying you should never entertain yourself, but maybe also don't make yourself a slack jawed victim of Infinite Jest.
Moderation is the thing, and for young people in particular that can be a lot to ask.
>can be just as destructive as sitting on the couch smoking pot all day
All evidence points to it being more destructive.
>Moderation is the thing
That's exactly what I just said.
>and for young people in particular that can be a lot to ask.
It can be. And quite frankly certain forms of media are doing more damage to our youth than marijuana ever could when taken in excessive amounts. Loss of sleep, sedentary lifestyles, in some cases toxic social environments.
I understand the quote to mean that pot makes people okay with being bored. Other recreational activities don't have that same effect. You might do them to stave off boredom, or you won't be bored when doing them, but it's not really the same thing.
Video gaming is an interesting one, a form of dopamine addiction. Pot isnt about dopamine I think?
The quote, while probably the best way to address juvenile cannabis use I have ever heard, is still from a satirical cartoon. Subjectively, cannabis does NOT make oneself numbly content with being bored. What I found is that it makes things seem profound or meaningful or funny, significantly lowering the boredom threshold. You can for sure still be bored when high and I find the boredom feelings are actually amplified (like sitting in a huge line at a store with no screen/headphones gets really old really fast).
Well, if your definition of smoking marijuana is going outside, walking around, thinking about stuff or talking with friends, then yeah, it is also an alternative to boredom.
But when you finished the joint, you will still have to do something. And after the active part of smoking is done, the "beeing high makes you more likely be okay with beeing bored" still applies.
And I can promise you that I am not ignorant when talking about marijuana, and neither am I opposed to people smoking it for their enjoyment.
I don't understand what line you're drawing here, because I don't understand how this is different to say, listening to music.
I wouldn't consider music an "alternative to boredom" as its foremost characteristic or as a last resort to boredom. It's just a fun activity. Just like smoking marijuana is. It's too much of a mischaracterization of music, or pot, or any other leisure activity.
Thanks for wanting to understand, here's another go.
The effect of smoking pot lasts longer than the action of smoking pot. The effect of listening to music often is limited to the action of listening to music.
Pot affects people over time. So you might smoke a joint then be quite content being in the world doing whatever. If you didn't smoke the joint and did the same whatever things you would feel bored.
You generally don't feel bored and are ok with it on pot, you feel ok doing the same activities you would feel bored doing if you were not high.
There's a difference between being productive and being entertained. Stan's father describes productive activities, but sometimes you just want to relax and be entertained. Everything in moderation.
This isn't true, unfortunately (at least in the US and I suspect much of the world) unless you are getting it legally or know the source. The US does grow quite a bit of illegal marijuana but there is also quite a bit imported by Mexican cartels and I have seen articles about how legalization is having a non-trivial financial impact on cartels, such as:
Yes, you can say this is due to it being illegal and you would be right, but we shouldn't ignore what is actually being funded by US illegal drug consumption.
These are the kind of honest discussions we should have.
> South Park put it quite well: "Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son,
> pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative.
>If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything".
All high school weed smokers are not equal. There are many occasional smokers.
For the sake of simplicity, let me put a number here.
High schooler between 9th to 12 grade who smoke weed at least 10 times a week all four years will settle in LIFE below 50% of his potential (compared to how he would have done without weed)
I think you'd be surprised how many people smoke weed in high school. If I had to estimate I'd say that over half of my class smoked (including the class president and valedictorian) and probably close to 20% smoked on a daily basis. The parking lot literally reeked of weed every morning. Did everyone turn out ok? No but the vast majority of them did. Plenty of my aforementioned classmates are now doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. By a number of metrics, they are successful and very useful humans.
I know people who were like that in high school who are just fine now. Actually, come to think of it I can't think of a single one of the 'stoners' that were in my grade at school who wasted their time being stoned constantly who didn't at least end up living a reasonable life to this point.
The few that didn't were the ones that either got into harder drugs or were already also stealing or hanging out with gangsters also.
The people that just sat around smoking weed though for the most part ended up alright.
I didn't smoke weed through high school but I still did poorly because I didn't really care. I was more concerned with my mom slowly dying of lung cancer at the time. I did enough to pass but was about it. High school was honestly one of the most pointless things i've had to do in my life. It didn't stop me from going to school after and doing useful things with my life though. I also smoked weed constantly throughout university and was consistently among the top in my class. I'd be stoned during midterms and get 100% or more on a couple occasions.
I've never found it slows me down or stops me from thinking. If anything it does the opposite. It lets my mind focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted and makes tasks i'd othwerwise find boring and probably procrastinate on fun and interesting and gives me more incentive to do those things.
Ya maybe...i've always wondered. Never bothered getting tested. I've mostly just learned to focus and pay attention when I need to. A while back a learned to meditate and practice mindfulness and i've found that's been more helpful than anything. When i start to feel my mind race i'll just close my eyes and focus on my breathing while I count for a little bit. It usually helps me get my thoughts back under control.
Honestly I think it's a little sad you (1) spend this much time thinking about people who smoked pot in high school and (2) have painted their futures this bleak.
I know plenty of people that spent high school and even a not insignificant amount of college in a pot-induced daze that are successful developers, scientists and even one doctor.
I have a similar attitude to MSG. It's probably not going to give you cancer, or cause any serious health problems, but it makes you ok with eating non-nutritious food that would otherwise be bland and tasteless.
Only because fearmongering has scared people away from MSG. You can use it to improve the flavor of nutritious food, too. It’s conceptually no different than salt; junk food contains it, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it in your own cooking.
"Feeling weary and impatient because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one's current activity." [1]
As far as my observations go this is particularly not fitting the perception experienced under the influence of weed.
Weed makes you feel - provided one responds positive to it - not weary, not impatient and one finds the present activity overly interesting.
> And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.
In my personal opinion I think that's alright. Not everybody has to be "good" at something. Whatever that even means.
EDIT: I would like to mention that weed only makes me sleepy and helps relax. Also I don't think that one should respond to boredom (how I understand it) with weed - not at all. Drugs are never necessary to grow personally and often detrimental due to overuse.
> As far as my observations go this is particularly not fitting the perception experienced under the influence of weed.
And that is the point of what they're saying. Being bored can be uncomfortable. One route out of that is to do something more interesting and productive, another is to alter your perception so that you are ok with it.
People are usually bored doing math hw, but most people would still consider it "productive and interesting" once they are doing it. If you smoke weed and become more actively engaged with the boring activity of math hw, you become more interested and productive.
If people got to choose what they were doing it seems unlikely they would be bored in the first place though...
Most people say that weed helps them be more creative, which is the opposite of the South Park quote. Having creative thoughts and dreams but not acting on them can lead to depression. "Being in the moment" is doing what you are thinking, and not letting worry or doubt stop you. Hence the creative energy people often get when high.
Good point - personally, I am skeptical whether weed increases creativity. I never experienced that. I just don't like the weed-bashing from the angle of the you-have-to-be-productive-dogma.
When I was younger (in my early/mid 20s mostly) I enjoyed it and in some ways I think it can stimulate creativity. The way it always felt to me was that it made me think "tangentially".
The stereotype of an absent-minded stoner is one way to look at it, but I often found that it caused my mind to wander and occasionally follow trains of thought that would normally be cut off earlier by "normal" thought processes.
That said, letting your mind wander can spur creativity and cannabis is something that enables this state. At the same time, if all you do is come up with random ideas (some of which might have value to yourself or others), it's only the start of the process. Brainstorming is great but if it never goes past the daydream phase, it may be irrelevant.
Either way, as I got older I stopped reacting positively to cannabis and I find it makes me more anxious than anything these days (yeah, yeah, I tried "that one strain I just had to try"). For whatever reason my brain just doesn't like being in that state anymore. But I'd never tell someone else how to relax or when it's valid to indulge in a bit of daydreaming if it agrees with them.
I do - for me feeling bored means facing some kind of a vacuum. A lack of motivation and inspiration. When you deeply look into this it is for me often the only moment that makes me feel inspired. Of course it can cause weariness and if one responds to this boredom with avoidance - be it playing computer games or smoking weed. That's usually not benefiting personal growth.
"Weed makes you feel - provided one responds positive to it - not weary, not impatient and one finds the present activity overly interesting." - Exactly. It makes you ok with being bored rather than feeling weary and impatient and prone to go and do something instead of finding whatever banal activity you're doing overly interesting.
If cannabis makes you ok with being bored, just admit you're a boring person. It's there inside of you and you're using the cannabis as an excuse to continue it. You're not even considering what the implications are for add and adhd users, that is, they can concentrate on a task for much longer without feeling the same banality and lack of connection for example.
Banal: Overeating/overdrinking/overconsuming, sitting around, reading reddit/HN for hours, playing video games or twitch.
Not banal: Challenging yourself to new activities or hobbies that require skill. Seeing the world, interacting with other people IRL. Learning (new topics, reading, etc). Building things. Getting out of your comfort zone.
Essentially, being passive/not learning/not engaging vs. learning/challenging oneself and trying to be more than you are.
While I can say I have the experience of not 'growing' at times (now), I would never say that's the weed's fault. Mostly because I've felt the exact same thing before ever smoking weed (I didn't smoke until my 30s). It's depression for me, and it's pervasive.
That said I can say that having depression (and a bit of PTSD) is way more of a hell without the weed to take my mind off it. And even if it's just playing a video game for 6 hours (rimworld is my current 2nd drug) that's far more active and engaging than my typical super depressed not leaving my bed state.
I also think bettering yourself and being a success isn't a one-size-fits-all package. I have a friend who smoked so much damn weed it's a wonder they have any brains left. They learned to play league of legends 10+ hours a day sometimes while high as a kite. They're now making multiple times the money streaming on twitch than they ever would've with any job they would be qualified for. They're the happiest they've ever been, met their SO through twitch, and are living the good life all by ignoring the advice being given here.
>Not banal: Challenging yourself to new activities or hobbies that require skill. Seeing the world, interacting with other people IRL. Learning (new topics, reading, etc). Building things. Getting out of your comfort zone.
All those things feel AMAZING while high, even if the banal things feel way better than sober. Cannabis doesn't just somehow discriminate to make only unproductive activities feel better.
I personally reached the conclusion to start seriously self-learning coding while stoned out of my mind and would furiously code in my room while stoned out of my mind. Now, about seven years later, I have a good career as a developer and still get stoned silly every night.
There's nothing in cannabis that stops you from engaging in these activities, and for some the consumption of cannabis can enhance these activities that are otherwise difficult to enter for them to enter on their own. You seem to be unaware of just how many great pieces of pop culture were developed or punched up while high. There's nothing preclusive about getting high, it's time to stop blaming the drug that has widely different effects in people and start looking at the people themselves and the environment they're apart of. I'm willing to concede the clinic trials that show cannabis has a negative effect on word list memorization and digital symbol substitution tests, but it's not forcing you to do anything you were incapable of doing before, and if it you let it can open so many windows.
We really need to look at society and ask why people are looking for a way out instead of a way in, but I guess it's easier to blame weed.
Or a matter of definition? For me banal means reading a novel or playing a game. Maybe that's because the term "banal" in German means just almost the same as in English. The German "banal" just means "nothing special", "ordinary", "not ingenious".
There is nothing wrong. It's just that they don't contribute to success. Now you might ask, what's wrong with not striving for success? Nothing, I suppose. It's nice however to be able to reach one's fullest potential.
While I agree that spending your free time sitting around, smoking weed and watching Netflix is a poor use of your time, I'd be wary of defining for yourself what the 'fullest potential' of another person is.
You misunderstand me. I'm not making value judgements. Success and non-success means the same thing in the end. But while we're here, might as well experience a drive for success? Or smoke up and be lazy, that's fine too. I've done both and don't necessarily prefer one over another. I really don't think pride or confidence comes into play here.
Okay - so you normally would feel unpleasant. Now you don't because of weed. Of course you can argue weed is unhealthy - totally possible. But regarding the perceived state change. How is that causing harm? Because s/he's not going to become wealthy or "successful"?
The problem is if you do it to excess. When you would rather stay in and get high, than meet up with friends, drop out of school etc. When you are not living up to what you consider successful for yourself. Then you have a problem.
Good luck finding a single person on a developed country who fits this description. If anything, people with incredible drive lean on government assistance the most (e.g. Elon Musk and his two heavily-subsidized companies), because they know how to find leverage to accomplish their goals.
One the other hand, people who feel like their engines are firing on all cylinders all the time (ie ADHD and friends) might find some relief in a drug that allows them to slow down and switch of their head radio while firing on only one cylinder...
The problem with ADHD and friends cause is that my brain actually _doesn't_ fire on all cylinders. While I think I feel the same way as everyone else and I have the same cognitive ability, I don't have the energy to structure my work, complete it and keep track of things in ways other classmates/coworkers magically can.
Cannabis certainly has a calming effect that could lower the hyperactivity component, but it doesn't address the attention deficit part.
The reason the most common treatment are stimulants like Ritalin, is because it "wakes us up" and brings us ADHD people to an alertness level similar to what our peers have by default.
I definitely benefit from this. I find pot to be a great context switcher. Formerly after working on a problem for long hours, when I would go home I would still be immersed in the problem and unable to take my mind off it. Now when I come and have my things in order I warm up a vape bag and put on some jazz and am able to completely detach from work and really just enjoy my nights.
I use a completely different method (to detach from whatever it is - work or something else). I pick an instrument and play some music. Something anyone can do, as long as you don't fret about being good or not.
I always end up coming home from work, eating dinner, showering, queuing up a movie, smoking weed, having some random insight on a work related problem, and never getting around to the relaxing activity I had planned!
Haha, you are on some hyperbole stuff my dude. If you want to work super hard your whole life go for it. I am very satisfied working my 8 hours and then putting that work aside and enjoying my leisure time.
I still of course work extra some times or do productive things in my time off, but yeah unless there's a deadline I'm not gonna worry about some work problem on off hours when I can't even make progress until I get back to my work computer anyways.
Fear/worry/anxiety is the mind killer and often helps nothing.
And I never understood slaving away for your employee while you're not getting paid for it.
Relaxing is not overrated at all, it improves your ability to focus, and even makes you more productive. Far from depriving you of any powers or skills.
To each their own, but I'm not paid to work 24 hours per day, and doing so would undoubtedly affect my outside-of-work relationships and interests.
My experience is that there is not a linear relationship between effort invested and output. It's a diminishing returns problem after 8-10 hours per day, so it's not even productive for me to spend all day and night churning on a work problem, even if I wanted to do that.
I don't make my bed in the morning. But when my bed happens to be made, it is so refreshing to just come at night and sleep soundly. Like a reset button was hit.
ADHD was pretty much the reason I struggled in school. The diagnosis gave me access to medication which turned a knob between two settings:
Be social, happy, energetic, hungry, incapable of succeeding in the education system of the 90s, 00s. (default me)
Be quiet, jittery, never eat, anti-social, depressed at times, but kick ass at school.
Tried a lot of different ADHD medications and generally found success in simply selectively switching that knob when I wanted to be a human or when I wanted to be a learning machine.
I wonder what pot would have done... never really thought about it.
Not a doctor but someone who was in a similar boat but to me it sounds like that dosage might have been too high, or you weren't taking it regularly enough. I found that once I was able to negotiate with my doctor to a lower prescription I was able to mostly get rid of the negatives of ADHD medicines. I found in general via a lot of other friends who were prescribed in the 90s/00s that their dosages were crazy high to start with as well.
Nope. ADHD is a spectrum. Often times it was/is misunderstood and its victims would feel isolated from the world. Marijuana would make that worse on certain vectors. It is not a silver bullet. It is a role of the dice. And the condition of the moment that you take it in decides the fate of the drug's effects on you. Could be good or bad.
I have diagnosed ADD/ADHD. Would hardly consider myself a "victim." It has pros and cons just like everything else in life. Personally I don't take medication and am totally sober. Mindfulness meditation helps tremendously
I meant in the context of a misunderstood person who nobody knows has ADHD and possesses behaviors that do not fit the norm, he is a victim of unjust social attitudes.
1. Hyperfocus. It has been tremendous for programming or even reading. There's sort of an ADD threshold that I break through after ~30 minutes of self discipline and pain. Then I'm suddenly in the zone, some kind unshakeable state, for hours on end. Most people I know seem to need a break after 30-60 minutes, right when I'm just getting into it.
2. Fun and physical activity. I use extreme difficulty of maintaining attention as an indicator that what I'm doing is just not stimulating or interesting enough. Of course this might not be good when you're with other humans, but I find I'm often able to focus on things better when my body is moving. That means when I take someone out on a date somewhere, it's usually very interesting and unusual.
3. Fast context switching. This may be more of a coping mechanism than a benefit, but often times rather than focusing on a single task, I'll "procrastinate" by switching between multiple important tasks repeatedly or working on things that are peripherally related. As a result, I have a breadth of knowledge that helps me think creatively and still get work done as needed.
4. Creative thinking. I believe (anecdotally, no evidence) that people with ADD are less likely to get stuck in a rut, or get bogged down with repetitive, boring, familiar things, because we simply don't have the attention span for it.
I havent noticed any difference in how fast I recognize changes between me and coworkers. If at all, I seem to miss changes more often, as my mind usually goes "was that allways like that? I guess so", since recall of memories can be pretty flaky
The anti-drug-guy I am in this discussion: you are so right. It should be much more acceptable to just fire on one cylinder sometimes, just for the sake of human dignity.
I'm a very anxious person and my mind is always going a million miles an hour. I have find the occasional light usage of marijuana does wonders for me.
This topic is more complex than simple HN comments are going to cover. There are different types of ADHD and though ADHD is good for software development (because of hyperfocus) it's also correlated with having a lower IQ. So high functioning ADHD people are a rarity and they're often in software or something similar for a multitude of reasons.
What you read here is how smart people with ADHD feel about their condition. It's dangerous to extrapolate to the broader public. You're also going to miss much of the conversation because most people that have tried pot once or twice aren't going to comment on it because they know how it's going to end up in a database somewhere. So you're going to see more pro-pot arguments than "I tried it and it didn't work for me" arguments.
Also ADHD-PI, and yeah, hyperfocus is great for coding, but you have to be working on something "interesting enough" to trigger it. Not all the work you will do at work will be interesting, so without treatment you swing wildly between being super productive and massively unproductive, which might be okay in a small startup but fails to mesh with larger companies that expect any sort of consistency in your output.
So it's not just the loss of productivity from inattention that's a problem for most jobs, but the lack of consistency in your output.
I'm just going to combine these responses because they're related.
> Neurotypicals can hyperfocus as well, and personally for me (ADHD-PI) I hyperfocus very few times at work, but more frequently at home.
Yes, neurotypicals can hyperfocus as well, but I've found that ADHD coders are way more likely to hyperfocus. The key is setting up the environment around them. I'm also ADHD-PI if it matters, though my specific situation is more complicated so it went undiagnosed for decades.
> So it's not just the loss of productivity from inattention that's a problem for most jobs, but the lack of consistency in your output.
Agree here too; especially for the unmedicated.
That said, very few neurotypicals hit the performance I see from high functioning ADHD coders (~2000-3000 commits a year and completely ridiculous learning rate with new technology).
Neurotypicals are also less pissed off with minor annoyances than ADHDers and ASDers, so they don't code up solutions to little problems that cost them 5 seconds a day, when in the long run that it is worth it to do so.[0]
But you're right that the bigger the team, the worse they do. Especially if the project is a tarball of uninterestingness and wrought with pointless, unscheduled meetings and other interruptions.
ADHD is, to my knowledge, caused by a too low reward mechanism in the brain. Ie, the brain constantly attempts to find something to get a dopamine release, constantly flicking to a new channel on the TV, so to speak, because it's incapable of finding a particular program interesting.
The stimulants generally used allow the brain to get a reward for the current activity, pushing it over the threshold and allowing it to focus on an activity and pay attention to a situation.
On the inverse, simply making the brain slower would yield similar results, IMO. It likely wouldn't fix it overall, you would still suffer from an attention deficit but the overall condition would slow down a bit. That might help a lot.
Well, same can be said about watching television, playing games or staring at your phone.
Now, if there is no adverse health issue other than making you a little dumber, shouldn't we also ban a host of other habits that cause just a bit of harm to you? What about eating sweets that may give you a bit of pleasure but are also unhealthy if ingested regularly? What about driving car to cinema when you could watch the movie in safety of your home without causing pollution or risking getting your kids in an accident?
Or maybe, just maybe, the freedom is value in itself and we should allow people to make decisions even if they are not optimal for themselves and for others who may have to chip in to pay for somebody elses mistakes?
It's funny because all it has ever done for me is the opposite. I'm a pretty energetic dude and weed has always made me want to get out and move, go and play a pickup game or something. It has also brought a different type of focus on any activity I'm doing.
I see a lot of pretty silly takes in this thread that weed automatically makes you happy with boredom somehow, and that apparently leads to a bunch of people sitting on couches zoned out who would have otherwise, with that "bored" time, gone out and learned juggling. Sounds like some grandma's opinion from the 40s.
No, but the pharmacological effects are not to be ignored just because you have a different personal experience with the drug.
I am on a balanced schedule of stimulants that keep me productive and not-depressed. This doesn't give me the right to tell people to take these drugs because of my personal opinion; research shows the effects of stimulant use, abuse, and misuse, and it's mostly pretty negative.
I think we're saying the same thing here. Look at all sides. Don't make blanket judgments. One person's experience does not necessarily become another's. Science is good, but not a guarantee.
It seems that this might not be entirely the case. In young mice, at least, THC slows them down... but in elderly mice, it returns their brain to normal functioning. There's speculation that the young might already have enough endocannabinoids but as we age and production slows, supplementation can benefit memory and cognitive capabilities. That's only supported in animal models for now, though.
If you use it right you don't just vegitate. It makes you far better at many tasks and can be used to do epic amounts of work so long as you get your work that requires a lot of thinking done first.
All drugs work this way: alcohol, cigarettes, weed, facebook, coffee, etc.
The problem is confining to a narrow usage pattern. It is just impossible for 99.99% of people over 30 years of their lives. All will make mistakes at one point.
I'm not so sure. Many people get drunk every Friday or Saturday night for decades without developing alcoholism or ill effects on the rest of their life.
Even if you don't technically become an alcoholic, getting drunk once a week for decades will absolutely have ill effects on your body. This is medically inevitable.
It should also be a person's choice. I find this the main issue. Personal freedom. Many people choose to drive a car, which has one of the highest mortality rates. But people still drive. What's wrong with a drink or a smoke then, even if that person knows it's dangerous.
Yes but those people aren't exactly drinking just a little to become more productive the rest of the week. It's quite likely their day jobs are the hourly type factory based where intellect is need not apply.
I think the comment i was replying to stated that a little relaxation in the middle of a stressful hour can really help you focus more.
just my 2cts on smoking pot:
people always say pot is not addictive, and not fundamentally dangerous. but it's something that influences your state of mind, so it's totally dependent on your state of mind and your ability to control it. for me personally most drugs are not addictive, but i'm struggling already for YEARS to get off pot. first time i took time off it i actually got physically sick.
i've always smoked with pleasure, but i'd never ever recommend it to anyone, and i hope soon i will be free of it.
for me personally the effect is this:
when i am stoned, i can focus and learn easily. sometimes it feels more easy than when i'm sober.
HOWEVER
when i am stoned, i have trouble to APPLY what i learnt. when i am sober, it's easy to APPLY what i learnt. so it's very important to me to be sober, so i can finally apply more effectivly all that i learnt.
the key that led me to this is that one day in my early smoking days my brother told me, each year take a month or 2 off it, to show your mind and body you can do without. in these periods i started noticing these changes and differences between states of mind i was in, eventually taking me to the point of realization it was affecting me in a bad way compared to what i wanted out of life.
that being said i have a lot of stoner friends who are also aware of this, but it doesnt bother them and they live happy lives. that's the personal part. if it prevents you from being you or not, and if it stops you from acheiving your goals or not.
i am from the netherlands, it's super easy to get pot fairly ok pot to smoke, maybe for a person like me, too easy.
when i don't smoke even for a few days now after smoking pretty much constantly for around 10 years (5/6 joints a day generally) my cognition shoots up and because i can apply what i have learnt, my life's frustration drops and happiness increases. this is actually what i felt from being stoned when i first started, so that's also something which might be dynamic in nature, and personal to each individual.
last piece of information:
i think most people, smoke, drink and smoke pot etc. due to stress, knowingly or unknowingly. because these all reduce the impact of the stress. like instead of getting intense stress, you get less stress spread out over a longer period of time. this might seem nice for some very stressful singular event, but if you do it consistently , it means that you will be lagging behind on dealing with your stress, and these longer less stressful periods start to overlap, causing actually stress levels to be MUCH HIGHER than what you would expect.
be careful, self-reflect, and look critically at your life and how these substances affect your path. it's fun to do drugs or take substances w/e you want to call it. but there is a fine line between use and misuse. if you feel depressed or something like that, seek help from a PERSON and not a SUBSTANCE
Pediatric neurology and neurology are different specialties in medicine because developing brains are very different from adult brains.
I'm all for legalizing pot and it's just natural that young people _experiment_ with drugs. That does not mean that constant drug use during adolescence should be perceived as normal or harmless.
> Pediatric neurology and neurology are different specialties in medicine because developing brains are very different from adult brains.
One example is in cholonergic neurons in the pre-frontal cortex. Pre-puberty, they are inhibitory, and post-puberty they are excitatory; it's a fair bit of a change in a very complicated system. Though I can't find that citation right now, there is a good-ish overview of the changes in the pre and post-pubescent neuroanatomy here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5283387/
There is some evidence, in terms of THC, of effects on the growth of mossy climbing fiber neurons and retardation of climbing onset in adolescents. Again, though, I can't find that citation right now. Maybe I need more of the stimulant caffeine? ;)
Yes, people are curious. Curiosity is a good thing and experimenting with pot is hardly dangerous. I smoked weed only two times in my life because I was very curious (living in the Bay Area, everyone was smoking it) but decided it's not my thing. I think it's natural.
Why is that? There is a world of difference between stating that young people are naturally curious, and stating that drug 'experimentation' (or 'experimenting' with some other dangerous activity) by young people is natural.
Drug experimenting is not dangerous at all. If you know how to read, you can read studies about these drugs. Drugs like weed, alcohol, LSD, tobacco are extremely well-tested and we know most short-term/long-term effects on adult humans. If you decided to experiment with something known to be toxic to humans (like cigarettes), then that's on you. If you read studies claiming pot to be safe, and you're not convinced, then don't smoke it.
>If you read studies claiming pot to be safe, and you're not convinced, then don't smoke it.
Pot isn't safe for kids, and there are multitudes of studies that show this. Will it hurt if a kid does something dumb once or twice? No. But habitual use is disastrous, from a brain developmental standpoint, mental health, and the sheer amount of time lost by being 'drunk' and not focusing on things like school. Pot is also addictive, not in the same way that heroin is, but it is addictive.
Keep in mind, the original statement was around what is natural and what is isn't. I'm not conceding that it is natural for kids to smoke pot or do other drugs.
I never said "it's natural for kids to smoke pot" or never suggesting something even remotely close to a 13 year old trying heroin OR even an adult trying heroin. Sorry but I'm done with this conversation since you have bunch of strawmen you really want to fight.
>I'm done with this conversation since you have bunch of strawmen you really want to fight.
Just wanted to chime to compliment this gracious exit, it's easy to waste time online arguing with these types.
Why do you think it is so common for little kids to love to spin and spin until they get super dizzy? They are experimenting with altering their consciousness.
Well, that's quite a leap from saying that human beings are naturally curious about changing their consciousness, which is what I am saying. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
I'm not sure if you're being serious, but I disagree if you are. Any drug can be the gateway for a person at risk for addiction. I don't have hard data (and I suspect there is none proving weed is the gateway drug, but am happy to be educated) but my guess is that alcohol is the gateway drug for a vast majority of Americans.
Can weed be a person's gateway to harder drugs? Sure. Is it the gateway drug? I don't think so.
True, you should wait until you're 15 to try coke.
On a more serious note, that's quite a biased way of thinking about cocaine use. The plant/substance doesn't have the same stigma in, say, Peru, where a 13-year-old is quite likely to have chewed coca leaves or drunk coca tea on many occasions. The perception you have of cocaine use is very much a product of the community in which you were raised.
Obviously it was hyperbole, but OP was sloppy when they stated "it is perfectly normal for people to experiment with substances when they come of-age.". What are young people (13 year olds? 18 year olds? 20 year olds?) and what drugs (just weed? any drugs?)? Others chimed it and argued that kids naturally alter their consciousness by spinning around and nobody thought to clarify.
I don't think it's natural for kids to smoke marijuana. It is something that SOME kids do, but it is not natural or inevitable, and it is categorically not good for them (from a brain development, mental health, time-waste and addiction standpoint). There is a tendency for people to minimize marijuana risks and get sloppy around pot usage by kids.
I had the exact opposite experience. I only began to grok a lot of the STEM stuff once I took up regular weed smoking, around the age of 16-18.
I did note an initial period in which it was disorienting and novel to be "high", but this subsided.
It helps me focus, It helps me cognate by reducing the noise and allowing me to be interested in whatever I put in front of my face. There is a euphoric effect upon taking a puff off the pipe that never goes away (not in over 30 years so far...) This euphoria is associated with learning, focus, getting work done, and a generally positive work cycle of reward.
I do not own a television. I have many hobbies, and managed to live from performing original music in over 50 countries for approximately a decade. I study API's and tutorials after dev work before sleeping... I've never been able to be a couch potato, although online social activity (what is this? expression? I'm not sure...useless for sure...) certainly robs a lot of my time and I wish I would have the self-discipline to get away more, so that's all for now lol :D
I've found cannabis helps me be more creative in general. It allows me to take a step back and look at the bigger picture, which is great in some circumstances but bad in others. For example if I want to come up with a design for a website, I usually find that smoking helps me experiment a bit more, focus less on the fine details. But once I'm implementing a design in code? Thats sober time for me.
Beyond the direct cognitive effects, the increased probability of schizophrenia in people with predispositions to schizophrenia (if you have relatives who are schizophrenic) is staggering. (related: http://nationalacademies.org/hmd/reports/2017/health-effects...
Additionally, the smoke particulates themselves are really not good for your lungs, and are probably shortening peoples lives.
I believe marijuana has a place in society without a doubt, but people need to approach it with caution and try to avoid using it recreationally too frequently. Like most substances (e.g. sugar), it can become psychologically addictive. Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/sunday/marijuana-...
Personally, I'm a big fan, actually too big of a fan and trying to cut back on my habit right now.
A drug more benign than alcohol.
Smoke too much, take a nap.
Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again.
Drink too much, you get flu symptoms.
Drink too much too often, you get a new liver, or die.
Everyone I know that smokes daily (a lot of people) is less cognitive than those I know who don't smoke, in every arena except artistic pursuits. And not everyone reacts to weed the same way. I decided to quit when I recognized a lessened ability to solve complex coding questions the day after smoking.
That’s true of most people who don’t smoke up too.
Bill Hicks had a good bit about splitting your record collection into two groups: records made by people who did drugs and those who didn’t. Then decide which albums you wanted to keep. It doesn’t mean that everyone should do drugs, but it’s a good indicator that either drugs can be used to enhance creativity, or at least that highly creative people don’t seem to lose their edge on drugs.
I have also known a number of very bright, productive, motivated, successful scientists, engineers, and developers who consume cannabis.
Some have spoken highly of brainstorming while stoned, fleshing out the details and narrowing their scope and intentions as they sober up, while others say that it helps them concentrate by slowing down their racing thoughts.
And while I've known people who've used it to waste their lives away, that's true of so many things.
Anecdotally, a friend of mine and myself use marijuana down the former route. Fleshing out ideas, exploring thought. In fact, functional programming "clicked" for me when I was high. It was still there in the morning!
But that doesn't mean every thought is going to be valuable, or even good. If treated that way, I think it can be a good tool. I am thankfully not prone to addiction or reliance.
It reminds me of Carl Sagan's thoughts [0] and especially this quote:
> If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say ‘Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!’
I find it more fascinating to explore thought while on cannabis and that is what I primarily use it for. Instead of saying "dude you're so high" to a far out thought, I try to explore it as far as it will go. Quite enjoyable.
Same here. I know people who bum out with it much like many other vices. I also know many analytical and intellectual minds that enjoy it's effect for more open-ending brainstorming (architecting code for a solution, etc), then they sleep on it, wake up sober, and flesh-out the work from there. It's the balance that makes this work so well.
I totally disagree. Good bug fixing hinges on the ability to mentally organize multiple potential, interrelated points of failure. It's being able to have a working sense of the architecture and chain of logic without having to go back to the source too often.
The difference between abstract thinking and bug fixing is literally left vs. right brain.
> Something about the heightened ability to focus on a single thing, deeply.
I've found it helpful in sussing out tricky bugs that otherwise eluded me, in addition to it helping with the more creative aspects of software development.
Within the middle of the cognition bell curve, yes. Pattern recognition, organizational skills, general personal awareness and motivation are all higher in the non-smokers I know compared to the daily smokers.
My guess, anecdotally, is that the people you know who are perpetually high on cannabis are not the only people you know who are perpetually high on cannabis.
So then actually you're just talking about the average, right? If that's the case, then I think it's a bit harder to justify that cannabis use is the cause of those symptoms and not an effect of them.
I mean excluding exceptional cases. Someone who has an IQ of 150 who starts smoking daily will still probably be more cognizant than a sober person with an IQ of 80.
There are a lot of smokers who hate stoners, and won't mention their mj use to casual acquaintances. And it's certainly not for everybody, especially at higher doses or potency.
ITT: people talking about anecdotes and rebuttals to anecdotes using different time scales, time frames, usage scales, age ranges, statistics in different ranges and also totally incorrect information
Ideally legalization will remove this pop science and anecdotal experience presented as fact, as more studies can nail down what this drug is actually doing to people.
Perhaps reducing the black market and reassuring that the option will be open to them down the line makes the drug less accessible and less immediately desirable.
The implication was there and it was worth calling out. I’ve heard surprisingly little about the negative effects of marijuana in general conversation, to the extent that it seems to be above reproach (for some unknown reason).
I mostly agree with that, but I think we should definitely still be telling teens not to smoke pot, or really take any psychoactive drugs. And I say this as someone who has done a lot of them. Given that a lot of adults find it impossible to use drugs responsibly, teens definitely should be avoiding them.
I also think we should be doing it honestly and not telling them that their brain is going to immediately leak out of their ears and they're going to start turning tricks on corners to pay for their next hit.
"Hey, pot is going to temporarily make you dumber. Maybe don't use it a lot while you're trying to get through school. Thanks."
> we should definitely still be telling teens not to smoke pot, or really take any psychoactive drugs. And I say this as someone who has done a lot of them.
Man has this annoying tendency not to believe facts unless they are experienced directly. You can tell teens what you want and they will still do what they want, especially if they know you did the same and ended up alright.
I agree that honesty is the best policy, teenagers can smell hypocrisy from miles. Another good policy is to make experimentation safe, so everyone can make his or her mind up without risking potentially fatal or life-altering contact with the worst elements of society.
I personally think public education should also have a dedicated subject on the topic of addiction, be it to drugs, food, gambling, videogames, and whatnot. An economic system based on profit will inevitably thrive on addiction, often at the expense of public health. Surviving contact with addictive impulses is a life skill that gets more and more essential every day.
Teens also have this horribly annoying tendency to go on the internet and find other points of views. Like, I remember finding that essay where Carl Sagan explains how sensible cannabis smoking helped him appreciate art and music, gave him good ideas for articles and books, and was generally a hell of a nice time.
This, sort of. Everything can be good, in moderation, maybe. For some people though, it's best they don't drink or smoke pot or whatever else. For others, maybe they have such an un-addictive personality they can "safely" try meth or heroin or cocaine every now and then.
>"Hey, pot is going to temporarily make you dumber. Maybe don't use it a lot while you're trying to get through school. Thanks."
You're inviting devil's advocates here though, maybe rephrase it as "pot may make you dumber". Otherwise, I think you may be providing some with a goal, something to prove. I didn't enjoy finding out my health class was dead wrong about marijuana's effects and this was certainly solid motivation to get into it at that time.
So is the carbon on cooked foods. It's not good to breath solid carbon particles into your lungs, or ingest them into your body. But most people find it reasonable to cook food, because it tastes better.
That's not to say that these aren't things people should be aware of. They should know this and it will help them make the adult choices they want (smoke vs consumables vs other methods).
Just so you know, yes, smoking it causes cancer but it's not on anywhere near the same level as smoking tobacco cigarettes due to how tobacco is treated.
I am not a smoker so I do not know the details but isn't electronic cigarettes better because they have no smoke, the smoke is the main bad part?
I may be wrong and tabacoo causes cancer even without the smoke?
If pot is legalized it should have same packaging as cigarettes that tells clear that smoke causes cancer, and also should tell all the side effects (because I see here on HN how good weed is, especially for creativity but the person is not mentioning all possible downsides)
Vaporizing is better than smoking because it creates fewer carbon particles. Also there's fewer carcinogens (we're pretty sure on this one, but people like to argue about it) in pot than in tobacco. Another point is that you don't need to inhale at all, you could ingest since THC is alcohol and fat soluble. Many people find this to be a good way to imbibe because it's a more controlled dosage (if I use 1 LB of the same type of weed to make my edibles, each cookie should have the same effect on me vs smoking which is always some level of guess work)
The packaging would likely exist as it does for all drugs/controlled substances with a lot of warnings about health risks and impaired driving. There is MUCH hand wringing about making sure everyone is WELL aware that just because it's legal doesn't mean it's good.
I am fine with it becoming legal in the world with the condition there are not financial interest to increase the consumption. In the past smoking was not considered cool until advertising made it appear cool, especially for women.
I mean, that seems like a stretch. I agree that most drug advertising (including alcohol) should be limited and never targeted towards children, but IDK how you can limit a financial interest to not increase consumption. Even if you allow home production, there's going to be bong companies and vaporizer manufacturers that want more people buying their products.
Legalize weed, don't market it towards children, let adults do what they want if they're not harming themselves. Substance abuse problems (which are entirely different from the issues surrounding smoking, which wasn't "cool" but just "the thing that literally everyone does" prior to advertising) are mental health issues more so than access to a substance issue. People become alcoholics because they're genetically inclined towards the it or because they are trying to escape something about their circumstances (or frequently both).
TL;dr- Plenty of people already smoke weed, and nobody advocating legalization is advocating for people to be allowed to drive stoned or let children buy pot.
It is also a social thing, young people smoke not because it is a mental issue but because it is cool, their freiends smoke so they try it. If the movies,music will show that is cool and the risk of smoking pot is small then getting the truth out-there will be expensive. Some rich business makes tons of money and the society needs to pay for studies, education, health treatments.
Weed is closer to alcohol in this regard. People smoke cigarettes because it looks cool. People drink or smoke pot because they're mind altering substances. Movies/music/etc. already portray smoking pot (whether it's cool or not is up to you I guess) so that horse is out of the barn.
"Will Kids think it's cool" isn't really a good argument in favor of prohibition. If anything, so far the (small amount) of data seems to show that legalization doesn't really impact things too much in regards to kids smoking in states its been legalized in. The teen usage is about the same, but it's still a super new thing so who knows how that plays out long term.
I am not arguing for prohibition but for making sure that the financial interests won't go wild, I read daily here the phrase "companies have no moral" so I see this companies putting a lot of effort into selling as much as possible by advertising, misleading people about the side effects, a solution that I would be happy would be to not allow big companies to enter into this business, allow only small farmers, if it is imported then it should be done by non-profits and distribute it in pharmacies.
I admit I did not studied this topics since I am not interested just I am very disgusted on the tabacoo industry advertising and lobby and I would like to not repeat the history. I am not for prohibition, make it legal but don't have that a dozens of people get rich on this and society pays for the consequences.
I never ever said that alcohol is nothing to worry about. I just said that the liver heals better than the brain Please refrain from putting word in my mouth (or anyone) in the future.
And if your next point is "yeah but we know nothing about the long lasting effects after your stop", nature has you covered : https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201744
From the Abstract: "Future longitudinal studies could help determine whether cannabis use contributes to these observed shape differences or whether they are biomarkers of a vulnerability to the effects of cannabis that predate its misuse."
Also, the liver doesn't "heal better" than the brain. If anything, the problem is that Cirrhosis isn't really detected until too late. I would counter that more things cause brain damage than liver damage.
Finally, the last study you point to references two other studies that found OPPOSITE results in its discussion, so trying to say that is the definitive answer is scientifically disingenuous.
Your data doesn't even help your cause dude. It just shows that further research is needed before going out and making "case closed" proclamations.
Alcohol abuse destroys your brain as well as your liver. It's a substance that creates an actual physical dependence that can kill during withdrawal (something that even heroin doesn't do!).
It's an extremely toxic substance. Not trying to make any statements about pot here, just noting that you seem to be grossly misunderstanding the effects of prolonged alcohol abuse on the human body.
I've seen research that smoking can impact the brain development of adolescents, but nothing that shows it permanently impairs the cognition of adults. Please post that research, I'd like to take a look at it.
As for lung cancer, that's a straw man, vapes and edibles make that a non-issue.
You can't stop people from being stupid and self destructive, just look at the prevalence of obesity. If the law required that people eat beans and kale, there would be a lot less obesity, but would you really want to live in that society?
There's evolutionary reasons people prefer less healthy food. Obesity and weed smoking are not equals. You have to go out of your way to get weed. You can become obese with passive inaction.
Smoking WHILE on cancer therapy: "A number of small studies of smoked marijuana found that it can be helpful in treating nausea and vomiting from cancer chemotherapy."
Anti-cancer benefits: "More recently, scientists reported that THC and other cannabinoids such as CBD slow growth and/or cause death in certain types of cancer cells growing in lab dishes. Some animal studies also suggest certain cannabinoids may slow growth and reduce spread of some forms of cancer."
I was blown away when I first discovered this. I smoked weed when I was younger and my only gripe about it was the possibility of lung cancer. Luckily my non-weed-smoking friend debunked that for me. Props for spreading interesting info!
A family member of mine basically smoked away her future, in a sense, throughout middle and high school. She wasn't always the brightest candle in the box, but the heavy marijuana use certainly didn't help. She has the cognition and mental maturity of a 14-year old, now at 30 years.
Seeing how it affected her prompted me to "take a hint" and I've avoided the stuff since. That's not to say I avoid alcohol at all, however, but my family seems to handle the latter much better.
Edit: this is complete anec-data - I don't have any hard-and-fast evidence of long-term impairments like I describe above. Just what I've seen.
Your anec-data is pretty common. Most people went to high-school with a couple people who have basically the same story you describe. One of the people in my class "smoked himself stupid" over the course of sophomore and junior year. He tried to clean up his act and he cut back a lot toward the end of junior year and did manage to graduate but he was certainly not the same person. Maybe those changes would have happened regardless of the pot (he smoked at least daily), maybe not. I have no idea where he is now.
And also let's not forget that about everyone with big psychological problems in my peer group started to smoke early on (and developed mental health problems later).
There might also be some risk of psychological damage when you use a criminalized substance that has anxiety as a common side effect. For example, it's easy to see how that could make you a bit reclusive.
So anyone who's really concerned about the mental health of cannabis users is obliged to consider the damaging effects of its very criminality.
(There are all kinds of other factors. Like cannabis use being correlated with higher trait openness, which has its own particular correlations with certain personality disorders, et cetera.)
Not to mention that such criminalized substance might well have been mishandled by criminal resellers with no regard for public health. Any time one buys a criminalised substance, it's like he was going to eat a box of unlabelled chocolate: maybe it's safe to eat, or maybe it's full of rat excrement - you don't know until it's too late.
I suspect this is a big factor. Self-medication is a real thing. When people don't feel good, they start looking for things to make them feel better. And adolescence is a time when a lot of people don't feel good.
> Unfortunately not. If you spend a long time smoking you'll end up permanently slower in the brain.
"permanently slower" based on what evidence? By what measure? Are you speaking from personal experience? (i stopped a few years ago after decades of smoking. Memory as sharp as it's ever been. Creative spark is lower than when i smoked. Will resume when our laws change.)
"Permanent" implies that you'd have to look at people who did pot a while ago and then stopped. This data (and any data on current users) is consistent with the alternative hypothesis that the changes are temporary and will revert after ceasing use.
The fact that alcohol and tobacco are legal doesn't mean we should legalise all drugs that are somewhat healthier than alcohol and tobacco. I think we can do much better.
We have done much better. Look at tobacco usage. It hasn't plummeted because it was outlawed.
I don't think we'd necessarily get the same plummet with marijuana, because the health story isn't quite as uniformly bad, and I get the sense that pot users don't get as acclimated as cigarette users, who seem to be smoking not to feel good but to avoid withdrawal. (Just on the drug's own terms, tobacco is a really bad deal; the ratio of "high" to harm is just atrocious. If it wasn't so addictive nobody would use it on a regular basis.) But we could probably get some improvement if the messaging got more realistic. And by "improvement" I don't just mean "less", but better; less adolescents smoking some of their most important cognitive years away, more people using THC for correct medicinal uses, and if one chooses to smoke it recreationally, better informed choices.
I'm in favor of legalization, because marijuana prohibition is not as bad as alcohol prohibition was, but it's the same sort of thing even if less of it. I still plan on telling my children quite strongly the best move is not to play.
> Look at tobacco usage. It hasn't plummeted because it was outlawed.
Disagree to some extent. Outlawing of most indoor smoking has decreased usage significantly. Also disagree with reasons for smoking vs not since many do smoke recreationally to feel good as opposed to fear of withdrawal. Sure, most of the addicted are the latter, but the laws are there to target everyone.
Nobody seems to be saying they want unregulated marijuana usage, so it seems comparable. (If nothing else, everyone agrees it should be taxed, and that is already a form of regulation.)
> Nobody seems to be saying they want unregulated marijuana usage, so it seems comparable
Comparing outlawed, regulated, or unregulated without nuance is unfair. Things can be effectively outlawed, overly regulated, unenforced thereby unregulated, etc. Instead of focusing on the words, we should focus on the effect. To restate my previous claims in terms that hopefully won't be misinterpreted, "Increased regulation/restrictions on smoking has decreased usage significantly."
I'd say the reason it is not comparable is it is adding restrictions instead of removing them. To go from 0 to a set of regulations is one thing, but since that is not the case, the direction matters as much as the result.
as an ex-smoker who sometimes relapses for short periods, for me it's not to avoid withdrawal. It relieves stress and anxiety, and also gives me an excuse to step out of the office for a few minutes for a break or to collect my thoughts.
Classic tactic in the military: I wasn't a smoker, but under certain circumstances, I'd carry a pack with me so I could have a "smoke" break. Sometimes people would call me out, so I'd light one up without inhaling until that person left. Then I'd just give the cigarette to an actual smoker.
There does seem to be suspicion around leaving your desk to do “nothing”.
I once worked at a place where a lot of my colleagues would take smoke breaks and thought it was unfair. I loudly started taking gum breaks where I would go outside and smack peppermint gum for 5-10 minutes before throwing it in the trash and going back inside. Sometimes I would head out at the same time as the smokers so that I got to participate in the chitchat (which was unreasonably valuable from a professional perspective), and I would complain about how it wasn’t socially acceptable to chew gum at your desk like in the eighties when everyone did it. It was softly mocking, but no one objected.
Nicotine is a stimulant. I'd argue that stepping out of the office for a few minutes is what relaxes you and reduces your anxiety, not the cigarette. Unless you're a regular smoker when smoking stops withdrawal symptoms. (I'm an ex-20-a-day smoker)
I believe that we should expect responsible behavior from adults. Only this way a society can also develop responsibility. By prohibiting everything that is dangerous (or just considered as such) humans never actually get a chance to grow up.
It's sort of a balancing act between building safety rails so that people don't accidentally fall off cliffs while hiking while also allowing people the agency to free climb El Cap if they so choose...
You totally make a valid point. But I would literally remove all those safety rails. People just have to keep a safe distance from the edge of the cliff.
Isn't it likely that the rails were put in place as a response to people not keeping a safe distance from the edge of the cliff?
I often see this assumption that regulations appear from thin air as a way to keep people down. It seems more possible that they primarily come as a result of witnessing the reality of what happens with no regulations.
I think the prevalent assumption on HN is that every regulation can be traced back to some accident or mistake.
It is impossible to put safety rails everywhere (both literally and metaphorically). Some people will try to make selfies on the edge and fall to their death - very tragic - but why do I have to keep those people alive with my tax payments or even be annoyed from the sight of a rail in the middle of nature.
I also think that most accidents happen from overtrusting a safety gear - safety rails would sometimes fail. Typical example is the safety belt in cars - people suddenly drove faster. Or with helmets - rugby is less physically harmful than American football due to less protection. The examples refer to the mindset, though - of course I use safety belts but I also don't get too close to the edge of a cliff.
==I think the prevalent assumption on HN is that every regulation can be traced back to some accident or mistake.==
My experience on HN is quite the opposite, but that is besides the point.
==why do I have to keep those people alive with my tax payments or even be annoyed from the sight of a rail in the middle of nature.==
This is libertarian ideology in the real-world. Your argument is that your annoyance is as valuable or more valuable than someone else's potential death. In a civilized/democratic society, we have created a governmental system to make these decisions for us and to the betterment of the country at large, not just you. Stop lights are a regulation and annoyance to my car driving, if I stopped heeding them, do you think that makes society better or worse off?
==I also think that most accidents happen from overtrusting a safety gear==
Based on what? Do you have any evidence or just your personal observation/assumption?
It seems like you've lost the forest from the trees here. Specifically on safety belts, they save many more lives than they could ever cost as evidenced by empirical research:
==Seat belts dramatically reduce risk of death and serious injury. Among drivers and front-seat passengers, seat belts reduce the risk of death by 45%, and cut the risk of serious injury by 50%.==
Well, I am not a Libertarian. I am for regulation in many cases. The difference between a safety rail and traffic lights are this. When I approach an intersection then my health depends more the prudence of the car's driver also approaching the intersection and crossing my path. So putting traffic lights people at least know who can drive and who should stop. But a cliff is an obvious threat. There is nothing insidious about it. If that cliff would be close to an elementary school - then I would be for safety rails, though. Because children are not responsible and hence have to be protected from them self.
Regarding safety belts - I think you didn't get my point. I didn't say they aren't saving lives. I said that back when they didn't exist people drove more careful. With all those protection in place in cars - many people drive more reckless having those protections in mind.
But there are also other people around and animals and high wind speeds and any number of other factors that impact safety. I bet you still follow stop lights when nobody is coming the other way.
==Because children are not responsible and hence have to be protected from them self.==
This is an argument for putting rails on cliffs, as children are not barred from cliffs. Seems like you have talked yourself into a pretzel.
==I said that back when they didn't exist people drove more careful. With all those protection in place in cars - many people drive more reckless having those protections in mind. ==
I get the point, people may drive more recklessly because they feel protected by the seatbelt. I would say that all regulations are a cost-benefit equation. In the case of seatbelts, the benefit of more people living is larger than the cost of lost freedom.
Portugal's decriminalization is not the same as legalization; it could itself be viewed as "doing better". I personally am for legalization, but in terms of reducing consumption, it might be more effective.
> The fact that alcohol and tobacco are legal doesn't mean we should legalise all drugs that are somewhat healthier than alcohol and tobacco. I think we can do much better.
You're right. We can do better. I think it shows our hypocrisy. Nobody should get a fine or go to prison for possession of drugs. I think what we should focus on is distribution/sale of controlled substances without a proper label.
I don't do drugs so maybe I am out of touch but this is my opinion. Possession of anything should not be a crime (improper storage of hazardous material is a different story).
If you insist on sending people to prison for smoking pot, you might as well get ready to send me to prison for eating too much candy.
You seem to be aggressively pushing a political agenda in this thread by making several consistent generalist statements without providing a single source of evidence.
> There already are many places where the selling of sugar and caffeine-ridden products is controlled.
I think you are moving the goal posts here.
For one, I fully support regulation. By regulation, I mean education and truth in advertising. People should absolutely have their assets stripped and sent to prison for life for false advertising and bribing/intimidating researchers to produce bad science or knowingly lying about their products in general.
Additionally, I am not talking about putting people in prison for selling mislabeled candy. I absolutely support legislation that sends people to prison for life for selling candy that is not labeled properly or has a labeling inconsistent with its contents.
I am talking about imprisoning ME for possessing sugar and caffeine-ridden products that I intend to eat or serve to my guests at home. Are you willing to arrest me for eating candy? Are you willing to search me "randomly" on the streets because you think I have candy in my pockets?
We should move towards the elimination of authoritarianism.
Giving those the right to push their beliefs, no matter how apparently beneficial, cuts human freedoms.
Let people do what they want to do as long as it doesn't harm others. It's not your business otherwise.
The problem is that you have big financial interest from tabacoo (or other) industry that promotes consumption of X and on the other hand you have an under-budgeted health department that will try to spread information and make studies etc. So the average person will be tricked by the gigantic adverting campaigns... my point a person can't do a correct choice when big money companies have the intrest he does the wrong choice.
It's funny you brought up tobacco, since it's a counter-example to your point.
Somehow, even with Big Tobacco putting tons of money towards promotion and an under-funded health department spreading information, we've arrived at a society where a) nobody can deny that tobacco consumption is harmful (and be seen as sane) and b) tobacco consumption is declining (nicotine use may not be, but it's also not clear that nicotine use alone is as harmful).
It took a few decades to get there, but it worked.
>>b) tobacco consumption is declining (nicotine use may not be, but it's also not clear that nicotine use alone is as harmful).
Sure it's not "as harmful" but a shotgun isn't as harmful as a nuclear bomb. Relative harm isn't important here, it's just "ability to cause harm" and understanding the likelihood that could happen. A car can cause harm, but most people drive safely. Nobody smokes a pack a day for 30 years with ill effects. We're not sure exactly what happens is you vape the equivalent level of just nicotine and additives, but we're pretty sure it's not going to be a good thing.
"Prohibition has worked wonderfully well for tobacco in many countries"
Examples? As far as I know in most western countries
tobacco "prohibition" is limited to interior common spaces, not in private homes or in the open (say, on the street).
It is actively discouraged (and in that it has been very succesful) through PSAs, medical counseling, warnings on packets, high taxes and the mentioned public bans, but that's not "prohibition".
"Prohibition" is more akin to the alcohol ban in the US in the 1920s, or the current status for drugs in most countries.
In all cases it has been far from successful, the only things that are accomplished is favoring the black market and related criminal activities.
> We should move towards the elimination of all drugs.
I agree. While we're at it, also elimination of all crime and immorality. Let's start by executing offenders on the spot. Guaranteed to deter drug usage in adolescents. And adultery, too.
Also, we could and should do better than allow people to harm themselves by unhealthy food choices. It logically follows that we need to ban cheeseburgers and sugary drinks!
Would you seriously contend that prohibition doesn't come with awful side effects? The cartels in Mexico and South America are big fans.
We tackle smoking and alcohol abuse through education (and tax, to a certain extent). Meanwhile prohibition is being selectively enforced in the US to criminalize being non-white. I see zero reason to continue the madness, and economics, social science, and history tend to agree.
It very much hasn't. The War on Drugs is very much a catastrophic failure, claiming the lives of millions with no tangible improvement to control drug addiction. Meanwhile liberalisation and decriminalization programmes (e.g. Portugal for decriminalization and de facto tolerance without legalisation) have been much more successful. When will you start looking at empirical evidence and realise prohibition simply doesn't work?
It is literally false. There are only two countries with actual tobacco prohibition, Bhutan and Turkmenistan, and only since 2005 and 2016, respectively. We have decades of evidence from dozens of countries that total prohibition of recreational drugs is disastrous. Sensible regulation is what's needed.
Prohibition doesn’t work. Legalization and regulation do. Alcohol and Tobacco are the proof. We can do much better than a cure which has shown to be worse than the disease.
Legalization of cannabis in the The Netherlands lowered usage amongst teens. Making pot less accessible to teens was one of Trudeau’s primary arguments for legalization in Canada. Street dealers have a lot of reasons to not ask for ID.
There is a big difference between criminalising/punishing people and hyping drugs as all those cannabis activists do. Smoking may be your personal choice - but I honestly think it would be bad for society if the majority did it. There is a reason that under current law using/selling drugs is punished: society as a whole might suffer.
Those "cannabis activists" are most likely a (very vocal) minority... I don't know of anyone that _seriously_ hypes pot as a safe thing, and we have a lot of smokers here in Quebec (last official numbers were ~15% in 2015, pretty sure it's actually higher than that), so it's not hard to find one. There was probably "alcohol activists" back in prohibition, so I'd say this could also be a side-effect of its illegal status.
> There is a reason that under current law using/selling drugs is punished
There was also a law that prohibited alcohol for a time. I am also prohibited under Canadian law from pretending to practice witchcraft. Talking about differences, there is a big difference between legal and legitimate.
"There is a reason that under current law using/selling drugs is punished: society as a whole might suffer."
Hate to break it to you, but the "war on drugs" was and is really a war on minorities, and a war against alternatives to prescription drugs (among about a half dozen other nefarious reasons).
When I was 12 I would have believed that "drugs are bad and what's why they're illegal" - I'm no longer 12.
Tobacco shows probably the most effective way to reduce consumption of something - make it legal, but put heavy sin taxes on it. It's hard to keep a heavy cigarette habit going when a pack of Marlboros is like $10.
I don't smoke marijuana, but I'd like to see it legalized, if for no other reason than to shift law enforcement resources to more important things - when people are dying every day from Fentanyl overdoses, busting pot smokers and growers is asinine.
Heavy taxing and regulation will be (and is) a boon to the cannabis black market. In my state (MA), cannabis was legalized, but individual towns are preventing recreational shops from opening. The result? A booming, home-grown cannabis market.
Sure, we can do much better. For example, how about we recognize that bodily autonomy is a fundamental human right, and that includes deciding what to put into said body?
This. Drug dealers don't care if you're 7 or 70. I could get a dimebag in 5 minutes anytime in high school. Alcohol, on the other hand, took weeks of planning to obtain.
That argument is backwards. If marijuana is illegal for the stated reason that it has negative health affects, then everything that has worse affects should also be illegal.
If parts of reality are better than others this is probably due to internal responses. Every bit of sense-data modifies the internal brain state.
It follows that with sufficient control we can modify the brain, or the sense-data to create an experience akin to the coolest parts of whatever way of life we make.
Your considerations on whether synthetic reality is better, and whether all reality is effectively synthetic will then inform your conclusion on this meaning a modified view can always in theory beat reality.
In practice one will probably just chase a bigger high until the high is so risky that it eventually kills you.
Smoke once and it will be detectable in your body for weeks, drink once and no one will ever detect it in a linear number of hours after. The body has enzymes for alcohol, but non for pot. Drinking too much too often is another problem, of course.
Detectable vs. functioning are two different things. For cannabis, it is metabolites that are detectable for some time afterwards. They are no longer actively having an effect on the person. These metabolites get deposited into some tissue, like hair or fat, and can be detected later.
Imagine you eat cherries and accidentally stain your hair. This means that the cherry substance will be detectable in your hair for a long time, but any effects of you eating the cherries will be long gone.
And? It's ok if you do not care. But I wanted to make clear that for the body there is a difference between alcohol and other drugs as alcohol, to the body, is mostly just another nutrient (I mean almost all ripe fruits contain a certain amount of alcohol, yet we eat them without problems).
You have that entirely backwards. Our body has receptors for cannabinoids, and our bodies treats ingested sources just as though they were the endocannabinoids we produce naturally.
You do know that there are endocannabinoids present in your body, right? And also drug tests for cannabis detect the presence of cannabinoid metabolites, not THC itself. Your opinion does not sound informed.
"It's very natural" is utterly irrelevant to the question of whether (or to what degree) it may be harmful. Belladonna salad, anyone? Mushroom & pepperoni pizza made with Amanita phalloides?
I'd love to see more research on this. I may occasionally consume, but one obvious effect is that I remember far less dreams if under the effect prior to sleeping that night. For me this is appreciated because dreaming is a source of mental annoyance the next day.
I have heard that it may reduce REM sleep. Consequently, many people who consume regularly then take a break will agree that after stopping they are flooded with more dreams than normal. They may be more intense, realistic, etc. But the effect subsides to normal quickly. Withdrawal is minor to non-existent for such people. Interesting!!
Cannabis slows down certain abstract thinking abilities and you basically think differently for a while. This can be an amazing insightful juxtaposition to normality. I suspect it is the effect on the short term memory centers that make it more difficult to hold complex ideas in your head long enough to find results. I personally do not enjoy critical thinking when partaking. I can feel the deficiency. It does seem to open my creative side, and for me goes best at the end of a long day like a glass of wine or video game.
Substance used to numb oneself turns out to actually numb oneself. News at 11.
Looking forward to grounbreaking research on "when adolescents give up smoking, their lung capacity quickly improves" and "when adolescents give up alcohol, their liver performance quickly improves".
The conclusion comes without further study. As an example, Professor Xia Zhang from the University of Saskatchewan discovered, which was further repeatedly verified, that marijuana causes neurogenesis [1].
This is interesting because other non marijuana related studies show that neurogenesis ends after puberty [2].
So, then, could the conclusion not be that the sudden growth of brain cells causes a sudden mismapping of information and memory within the brain causing slight issues with memory recall and retention until the brain is able to cope with and understand the neurogenesis?
I smoke a lot of weed (it's been legal in Oregon since 2014) and support Nationwide legalization, but I am fully aware of the risks and think we need to be absolutely clear and honest about them.
My brother began smoking weed in high school, he smoked so much I'd call it an addiction, eventually he developed what the doctors called substance induced psychosis, he saw and heard things no one else saw. He became really paranoid, it was scary to watch and I promised to myself I would never smoke weed.
He's fully recovered and as mentioned before I broke my promise to myself, we should do everything we can to keep weed out of kids hands until they are of legal age to buy it.
I'd also like to see the federal government allow for the FDA to research marijuana and it's byproducts, the fact that states are legalizing it without robust research from the FDA is backwards.
I took pot when I was 22 and it had disastrous effects on my life for over a year after. Had to seek psychiatric help because of it. Had intense depersonalization and panic effects triggered from the one bad pot experience. It's unfortunate that pot is perceived as being so benign. The psychiatrist told me that cases like me are actually not that rare unfortunately.
This happens to a lot of people (my self included) and I’m willing to bet it is at least partially triggered by the paranoia around doing drugs. You were expecting something bad to happen, or were nervous about something bad happening, so it did.
I had a similar experience. Eventually learned to control my anxiety and now am I able to come down from the onset of a panic attack before it happens. Weed is no longer an issue for me now that I’m not afraid.
Anxiety is a much different issue than psychosis. The psychosis issue is very real but only affects a very small number of people who are predisposed, and even then likely only when they’re young and unlucky.
Just to be clear you never had anxiety or panic attack issues before? You weren't seeing a psychiatrist before but this experience made you seek one out?
I had panic attacks start out of no where when I was around the same age (~21). There was no obvious moment where/why it started but it would keep happening every once in a while.
I first used medication (lorazepam, cipralex) but eventually learned mental tactics to deal with it and now I never have them. Although antidepressants did help a lot early on, they killed my sex drive which wasnt a good trade off.
No, I was not seeking help from a psychiatrist before that because I didn't need it before the pot incident :(
Fortunately, I do not have panic attacks anymore and learned how to deal with the depersonalization as well.
It is definitely related to sleep. Cannabis disrupts NREM sleep, where memories are ushered from short term memory into your hippocampus. Matthew Walker's excellent book "Why We Sleep" goes into this in some detail, highly recommended.
Edit: I should add, many substances disrupt NREM sleep in addition to cannabis, such as alcohol, caffeine, and sleep aids.
As a society we need to understand the effects of drugs and inform our citizens. Right now marijuana is a schedule 1 drug, right up there with heroin. This, to me, makes me ignore and distrust these classifications. This is not how we educate our populace on the harms of drugs!
We can't expect our youth to make a well informed decision when they are told:
1. Marijuana is a schedule 1 drug
2. Marijuana isn't as harmful as alcohol
3. People < 26 years old, who's brains are still developing, should limit their marijuana use.
A Colorado study of 5 year trends in pot use found 19% of high school students have used it in the oast month. It is almost same percentage reported in a national survey. The Colorado number was based 47K respondents.
Marijuana interferes with forming new memories, it's a pretty well known effect. Just try having a conversation with someone stoned, you're lucky if they can remember what the subject is one sentence later.
Obviously this effect isn't going to complement one's academic life, especially in the early stages where it's mostly rote memorization and testing.
Nothing news here. We all know kids recover quickly. Their minds are still developing and they can shake off whatever bad effects they have accumulated.
Title might as well be:
When Adolescents Give Up Pizza, their health quickly improves.
When Adolescents Give Up bad habits, their behavior quickly improves.
When Adolescents Give Up Facebook, their social circle quickly improves.
What are you talking about? That's a ridiculous overgeneralization. There are plenty of things that kids do NOT recover from and we now know that moderate marijuana use is NOT one of them.
edit: emphasized the double negative to prevent further confusion. It could have been phrased better.
...I'm well aware of that. The original comment stated that kids recover from everything and this study was a tautology. I'm saying that this is not true.
edit: it's clear my comment was confusing b/c there's a double negative. Reread it with emphasis on the NOT's.
I wish that you told me what kinds of things don't kids recover from. Physical muscles, check! Mental cognition, check! Emotional therapy, check. Attitude adjustment, check.
What's left? Hunger? Poverty? Love? Addiction? Depression? It's debatable whether the child really did recover or just get stronger in a different way.
Is this a joke? Are you actually trying to defend your over generalization by pretending a handful of issues is a comprehensive list? Please explain to me how a child suffering from diabetes or fetal alcohol syndrome is really just "getting strong[er] in a different way".
> There are plenty of things that kids do not recover from and we now know that moderate marijuana use is not one of them.
That is a ridiculous overgeneralization.
This article supports the opposite.
While it is never good for kids to do drugs (including alcohol, smoking/nicotine or too much caffeine), the article takes the reverse point that you are taking here, cognition quickly improves after which is obvious as it would with alcohol, eating less fast food, doing more homework/study etc.
Also, that is a broad generalization to say kids never recover... kids were doing more marijuana in the counter culture of the 60s, did those kids never recover who are now adults? You would be hearing about that if so.
What needs to happen to protect kids is full decriminalization and legalization because the legal/regulated market handles harm reduction better than the black market, and does a better job of keeping drugs (including alcohol) away from kids. Alcohol for instance would be more dangerous if it was still black market for both kids and adults.
Marijuana is a rare drug in that for users tolerance completely resets as the CB receptors are blocked during heavy usage.
> If you continue to consume THC, it will have less of an effect on brain functioning because there are fewer receptors for it to act on
Those receptors repair themselves after tolerance reset.
> Compared to other recreational drugs, cannabis is unique in the speed at which the brain “recovers” following a period of abstinence. Recovery is notably difficult to measure, but we can look at changes in behavior, brain function, and brain chemical receptor levels as a proxy.
> A study of daily cannabis users reported that users had reduced CB1 receptors compared to non-users, which increased to around-normal after just two weeks of abstinence. Importantly, this study didn’t assess whether CB1 receptors remained desensitized. However, additional studies demonstrated that withdrawal is more intense when there are fewer available CB1 receptors for THC to bind, suggesting that tolerance is indeed the internalization of CB1 receptors.
> Since internalization of CB1 receptors is the predominant consequence of excessive THC consumption, it helps explain why there’s faster brain recovery with cannabis abstinence than many other drugs of abuse. At worst, CB1 receptors become internalized and broken down, in which case they must be reproduced and sent back up to the cell’s surface to recover normal brain function (it should be noted that there can be additional repercussions with substantial use on other brain chemical systems).
Alcohol and fast food cause permanent damage to liver and circulation as well as contribute to obesity.
Additionally, cannabis may also help against fatty liver diseases [2] and fatty alcohol liver diseases [3].
I think you misread what I said, which could have been worded better.
> There are plenty of things that kids do NOT recover from and we now know that moderate marijuana use is NOT one of them.
i.e. Kids don't recover from everything (as OP stated) but we now know they can recover from moderate marijuana use. The original comment was trying to dismiss this work as trivial, I was trying to prove otherwise.
Also, no one made any claim that kid's don't recover from anything. You're arguing with yourself. I'm simply trying to state that having proof that kids can recover (like this paper provides) is necessary. I'm specifically arguing that we shouldn't make overgeneralizations and assumptions without supporting evidence.
I agree though it is nice to have proof, part of the campaign against cannabis and safer decriminalized markets / regulated markets is about harm to kids, which would be better served in a legal / regulated market where more harm reduction is employed.
I completely agree. I'm pretty sure we share similar views on this. Sorry for my confusing comment at the start, I'll choose my wording more carefully next time :)
Meh what this study doesn't take into consideration is dependent memory states or differential memory states. If you learn something while high, then you often need to get high again to be able to remember it. This happens with everything from antidepressants to alcohol. Why this is always overlooked for cannabis I don't know.
For example, if someone where to study high, then get high before taking their test they might perform equally to the sober group or possibly even have improved performance. I know there have been many times when cannabis actually improved my cognition like this in certain circumstances.
Anyone who uses cannabis regularly will experience this, so of course if you stop using it completely the testing metrics they use to measure cognition will improve as the sober group becomes more sober their ability to remember what they've learned while sober will improve since they're no longer oscillating between different memory states. What would be really interesting is to take a control group who continues to use cannabis and see how they compare to the kids who you make stop using it. If their cognition remains stable and on par with the sober group with continued use then does this study really mean what they think it means?
This study is also limited to THC, which means they're only studying 1 cannabinoid and not the whole plant and how it works with CBD and other cannabinoids. From experience I can tell you that CBD counters many of the negative side effects of THC, as it functions as a neuro-protectant and anti-inflammatory. Had they tested against a variety of cannabinoids and measured which cannabinoids had what effects and then studied the using groups vs. the sober group and how they performed then you could come to a more conclusive argument.
I’m one of those people high THC weed changes perception of reality for me. It opens doors and way of thinking that should be locked or shouldn’t exist. CBD in the other hand, improve reasoning. It helped me a lot on many human relations.
I just stopped smoking (it's been maybe 2 weeks) after having used for over 10 years (I'm 25). This study gives me some hope that I haven't fucked up things forever.
You guys ever see that experiment where they give a mouse sugar, and it can no longer find the island in a pool, causing it to drown? Does weed do this as well?
It is, but harder to get in non-legal markets (most of the US right now). I work in the industry and the trend seems to be more towards purer concentrates like wax and oil - the margins on those are incredible
I did a bit of thinking why I have preferred hashish and it might have to do with the way the weed is grown : outdoors in large fields in Morocco, Turkey, Lebanon etc.
In other words : not made from indoor/artificial light/heavy strain. Weed sold here in NL is incredibly strong. Too strong.
Pot is a safe drug, safer than alcohol, as insurmountable evidence suggests. This still doesn't mean it's completely safe, as in you can smoke arbitrary amounts without any negative effects. A rational person should read all this evidence and find a good balance between recreation and health. I don't smoke pot because I don't like it that much and the "slowness" it gives me the day after isn't worth the pleasure. I do drink a few times a month because alcohol, even though more dangerous than pot, does give me more pleasure and the day after is usually not bad enough that I wish I didn't drink the day before. It's a personal balance.
While enzyms in the human body are totally able to cope with alcohol and (which I absolutely do not favor either, for the record), the human body has to "wash out" the remains of pot in the synapses of the brain (which is why there is ZERO alcohol in the blood after a few hours but even after months, smoking pot can sometimes be detected in urine).
I personally have a big problem with really punishing people for smoking pot, I see no sense in it. Yet I see no sign why there should be more people smoking it.
Recently a friend came up to me and told me how great cannabis could be for certain health issues. I just replied: 95% of what you tell me could also be accomplished by good old ginger, no need for weed.
Also: the regular pot smokers in my class in school are NOT successful people nowadays (if people smoke once or twice a year, of course, there seem to be no big issues concerning their success in life).
You're incorrect about the science of cannabinoids. They are not "washed out from the synapses". As anyone who has made cannabutter knows, cannabinoids are fat soluble. Therefore, when they are taken into the blood stream, they are uptaken by fat cells. It is these fat cells that store the metabolites of cannabinoids for 2-4 weeks, and it is what makes cannabis a drug that can be identified in tests up to 20 days after consumption.
Please do not spread your non-scientific opinions as if they were factual.
Successful people learn when and how often to enjoy what life has to offer and still remain successful. What was meant by "regular pot smoker" is up in the air, but I interpret that those who smoke a bit more than they should, in the same way you can do that with alcohol (or sex, or food, or HN, or whatever, and still remain successful)
I don't know much about biology, medicine or toxicology so I can't really refute your argument but your first sentence triggers all sorts of red flags for me, mainly because it appears way too simplistic and fails to provide any source or real scientific argument.
What does "washing out" mean and why is it bad if remains of pot can be detected in urine months later? What does the fact that the human body is able to "cope" with alcohol quickly have to do with the relative danger of the substances? I seem to recall that the human body is able to process cyanide pretty quickly to get rid of it for instance, I don't think that's enough to say that it's less dangerous than pot.
I definitely don't think we should push people to smoke more (I'm not a smoker myself, pot or otherwise) and we should definitely fight teenage smoking but your pseudo-scientific babble and anecdotal evidence resembles way too much the type of "argument" I see from anti-vaxxers and similar unscientific movements for me to take it seriously.
Sorry, my knowledge is from biology classes a few years ago, but no blabla (I am no biologist either). Washing out means, there is no real process in the body to cope with THC in a linear way and thus, if heavily used, it might accumulate and have side-effects such as worse cognition. Also, just a reminder, a little acohol is in many ripe fruits and your body will not suffer from it by eating many fruits.
It is a pity that concerning THC, English Wikipedia is very thin. Concerning potential risks, you might use Google Translate for this:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrocannabinol#Wirkungen Please review the English references 29, 30, 31 for a further discussion of the correlation of psychosis and THC.
Have been dealing with that result on a young relative. Whether it's correlation or causation, it seems bizarre to me that modern-day 500mg 72% THC vape could be considered a safe thing by default - particularly when so many studies are 10 or 15 years old.
I could imagine some adults regulating themselves. But teens and young adults?
I've definitely heard about this colloquially with people reacting very differently to the same strain ("we were all fine but she was just freaking out"), and the new science coming out of places like Colorado seems to be showing a strong correlation in that direction. I guess you could say (colloquially again, since I'm not at all in the medical field) that pot can open a bad door in some people that may have stayed shut otherwise. Is that gene expression? Brain plasticity? Dunno.
I think prohibition does way more harm than good and I'm glad to see legalization coming to the states, but I don't think we can treat pot as totally harmless for people under 30 and teens in particular because it seems like it's very harmful for some.
One paper on the subject: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2931552/