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I've also known three people who smoked marijuana regularly and developed serious life problems as a result, along with a larger number who didn't develop major

by IsaacL 10y ago

I've also known three people who smoked marijuana regularly and developed serious life problems as a result, along with a larger number who didn't develop major problems but who definitely "stalled". I also knew many who smoked it regularly without major issues, so I'm not saying it inevitably causes problems, but I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up. I used to smoke it occasionally myself and I definitely saw its positive effects - for computer scientists, it's a fascinating springboard into understanding consciousness and meta-cognition. It makes good music and art even more enjoyable. It's also one of the most seductive drugs out there. Alcohol leads to very painful hangovers, which is a clear signal for people to slow down. Psychedelics are too mind-blowing and the trips last too long to be used regularly. Heroin, crack, meth etc are widely seen as dangerous. Cocaine is expensive. Cannabis is affordable, and can be enjoyed on a weekday evening without strong next-morning effects. So some people end up integrating it into their routine: surfing the internet stoned, listening to music stoned, playing video games stoned, chatting to friends stoned. If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc. Long-term, you run the risk of becoming paranoid and demotivated, struggling to make everyday decisions or to get a grip on your own thinking. Given that this isn't a universal consequence of weed usage, it might not be solely due to the weed but also certain personality traits which weed amplifies. I rarely smoke it at all any more - personally, I found training myself to enjoy good art, and reading deep philosophy/literature gave me access to much more profound pleasures and insights than weed ever did.

lettergram 10y ago
To add to the antidotal evidence... Ive smoked a lot of weed for a long time, I finished college, have a job paying well above average, I work on projects / my startup, I have a wife, and am looking to start a family (at which point I'll stop smoking for a bit). Further, my startup is starting to make money and I'm up for promotion at work. Then to tie this in nicely which the argument that people with issues will ignore them - I went through court during school for restraining orders, I worked a full-time job while in school, and started a small profitable business. All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems. All that being said, I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc. It's really no different than people who become alcoholics. It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. That being said, perhaps some people want this, and it should be an option. I don't care one bit if people want to waste their life on drugs. I only care that I have to pay for them via tax dollars, so remove social welfare for them and I'm all for it! I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. Just like you can't blame a gun for murder, you can't blame a vice for a wasted life. At some point, if a person had choice, and knew what they were getting into it's their fault.
- IsaacL 10y ago
  All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems. I did say "If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage." I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. People use many things as psychological crutches, yes. What I'm arguing is that some of the specific effects of weed (esp. the effects on cognition) make it more dangerous than other crutches.
  - lettergram 10y ago
    I guess what I'm trying to relay, is that it doesn't appear to be more dangerous than other crutches. There is some evidence from research to support both sides, but in general it's agreed marijuana is less dangerous than say cocaine or heroine. I'd be careful not to say it's bad, until that research is overwhelming. I say this because a large number of people I know who smoke(d) regularly end up in prison for it - which of course makes them way less productive. It's just hard without a ton of evidence whether or not it is more dangerous inherently or if we make it more dangerous with our society.
- TelmoMenezes 10y ago
  > It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. Let's not forget that it can also be a symptom of society itself. In a scenario where the majority is insane, behaving sanely makes you look crazy. I understand the disgust for supporting human beings who are inert, but I suspect it's largely irrational. The idea that we should "all do our share" is becoming more and more impractical as technology progresses. There simply isn't a big enough share to keep everyone occupied, and the majority of jobs are completely unnecessary, if not detrimental to our collective welfare. Let's face it: most of it is just status games and posturing. Anecdotally, cannabis dissolves the desire to participate in status games. My personal theory is that it tends to increase the creativity of people who find meaning in their work and the desire to "opt out" in those who don't. Unfortunately, out current economic system creates a surplus of the latter, because we are stuck with a system of health distribution that is based on human labor, which is increasingly irrelevant.
tamana 10y ago
How do you know weed caused demotivation, and demotivated weed users weren't already demotivated?
wutbrodo 10y ago
> I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up. > If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc. As a counterexample to your 99.99% certainty, I had more or less the opposite reaction. I was in a pretty terrible place about a year and a half ago, and I found myself coming home after work and getting high almost every weekday evening. Not only did it serve the intended purpose of getting me through the day-to-day of a pretty horrible and anxiety-inducing time in my life, the fact that I noticed myself using so much more was one of the clearest signals that made me realize that something was wrong in the first place (without the health costs and potential physical dependency that most other drugs would've imposed). In most measurable ways, I was still pretty functional (e.g., still very productive at work, etc), but the place I was in mentally was absolutely unsustainable. That signal made me take a look at what might be wrong and start thinking about fixing it. As soon as I took the first step towards fixing everything I needed to, my marijuana usage dropped off a cliff (even though I had quit my job and had far, far more free time). A year after quitting, I'm better off in almost every way. AFAICT, marijuana is more or less like junk food (except physically better for you): the costs aren't as dramatic as other drugs but if you're doing it what you perceive as too often you should at least consider that there's an underlying reason (much as I would conclude I was stress eating or had a poorly balanced diet if I was eating junk food once a week or more).

by IsaacL 10y ago

lettergram 10y ago

To add to the antidotal evidence... Ive smoked a lot of weed for a long time, I finished college, have a job paying well above average, I work on projects / my startup, I have a wife, and am looking to start a family (at which point I'll stop smoking for a bit). Further, my startup is starting to make money and I'm up for promotion at work. Then to tie this in nicely which the argument that people with issues will ignore them - I went through court during school for restraining orders, I worked a full-time job while in school, and started a small profitable business. All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems. All that being said, I think people who smoke weed (or tobacco for that matter) are more likely to get into the "drug culture" of partying, carnivals / festival, climbing, etc. It's really no different than people who become alcoholics. It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. That being said, perhaps some people want this, and it should be an option. I don't care one bit if people want to waste their life on drugs. I only care that I have to pay for them via tax dollars, so remove social welfare for them and I'm all for it! I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. Just like you can't blame a gun for murder, you can't blame a vice for a wasted life. At some point, if a person had choice, and knew what they were getting into it's their fault.

IsaacL 10y ago
All of that is insanely stressful and I would argue if weed would have caused issues, I would have had larger problems. I did say "If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage." I'd even expand my argument, and say any vice including videogames, cars, etc. Anything can get out of hand if people are trying to avoid a problem. People use many things as psychological crutches, yes. What I'm arguing is that some of the specific effects of weed (esp. the effects on cognition) make it more dangerous than other crutches.
- lettergram 10y ago
  I guess what I'm trying to relay, is that it doesn't appear to be more dangerous than other crutches. There is some evidence from research to support both sides, but in general it's agreed marijuana is less dangerous than say cocaine or heroine. I'd be careful not to say it's bad, until that research is overwhelming. I say this because a large number of people I know who smoke(d) regularly end up in prison for it - which of course makes them way less productive. It's just hard without a ton of evidence whether or not it is more dangerous inherently or if we make it more dangerous with our society.
TelmoMenezes 10y ago
> It's probably a symptom of a larger issue when people abuse drugs and attempt to "opt-out" of society. Let's not forget that it can also be a symptom of society itself. In a scenario where the majority is insane, behaving sanely makes you look crazy. I understand the disgust for supporting human beings who are inert, but I suspect it's largely irrational. The idea that we should "all do our share" is becoming more and more impractical as technology progresses. There simply isn't a big enough share to keep everyone occupied, and the majority of jobs are completely unnecessary, if not detrimental to our collective welfare. Let's face it: most of it is just status games and posturing. Anecdotally, cannabis dissolves the desire to participate in status games. My personal theory is that it tends to increase the creativity of people who find meaning in their work and the desire to "opt out" in those who don't. Unfortunately, out current economic system creates a surplus of the latter, because we are stuck with a system of health distribution that is based on human labor, which is increasingly irrelevant.

tamana 10y ago

How do you know weed caused demotivation, and demotivated weed users weren't already demotivated?

wutbrodo 10y ago

> I am 99.99% certain that if you already suffer problems with motivation or life direction, marijuana can majorly f... you up. > If you have your s... more or less together, you can probably use weed semi-regularly without too much damage. But if there are one or more real problems in your life, things which would take real effort and motivation to fix (poor social life / grades slipping / lack career direction / etc), weed will tempt you to chill out and ignore said problems. You concoct wild rationalisations about why you don't really want X, why people who chase X are manipulated by the system, etc, etc. As a counterexample to your 99.99% certainty, I had more or less the opposite reaction. I was in a pretty terrible place about a year and a half ago, and I found myself coming home after work and getting high almost every weekday evening. Not only did it serve the intended purpose of getting me through the day-to-day of a pretty horrible and anxiety-inducing time in my life, the fact that I noticed myself using so much more was one of the clearest signals that made me realize that something was wrong in the first place (without the health costs and potential physical dependency that most other drugs would've imposed). In most measurable ways, I was still pretty functional (e.g., still very productive at work, etc), but the place I was in mentally was absolutely unsustainable. That signal made me take a look at what might be wrong and start thinking about fixing it. As soon as I took the first step towards fixing everything I needed to, my marijuana usage dropped off a cliff (even though I had quit my job and had far, far more free time). A year after quitting, I'm better off in almost every way. AFAICT, marijuana is more or less like junk food (except physically better for you): the costs aren't as dramatic as other drugs but if you're doing it what you perceive as too often you should at least consider that there's an underlying reason (much as I would conclude I was stress eating or had a poorly balanced diet if I was eating junk food once a week or more).