11 ms·

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…

• rv-de 8y ago
  > pot makes you feel fine with being bored. How do you define "boredom"? According to Oxford Dictionary it means: "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. [1]: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bored https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/bored 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.
  • IanCal 8y ago
    > 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.
    • rv-de 8y ago
      I think it depends on your definition of boredom. What does feeling bored mean to you?
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • IanCal 8y ago
        I don't see a problem with the definition you posted.
        • rv-de 8y ago
          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.
      • dredds 8y ago
        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.
        • rv-de 8y ago
          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.
          • soylentcola 8y ago
            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.
  • empath75 8y ago
    > Weed makes you feel - provided one responds positive to it - not weary, not impatient and one finds the present activity overly interesting. That's basically what he said. You're doing something that you'd ordinarily find boring, but now you don't feel bored. Feeling bored is your mind telling you that you should be doing something else.
    • rv-de 8y ago
      And how is that bad? 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"?
      • dasil003 8y ago
        It’s not causing harm, it’s preventing growth.
      • GrumpiNerd 8y ago
        Being able to not rely on government assistance for ANYTHING, including health care, would be a start.
        • icebraining 8y ago
          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.
        • engineeringwoke 8y ago
          As a young, successful stoner living in Western Europe, I salute your ignorance
          • dang 8y ago
  • conception 8y ago
    "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.
    • rv-de 8y ago
      What's wrong with "banal" activities?
      • unethical_ban 8y ago
        You're right, it's a matter of values. 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.
        • engineeringwoke 8y ago
          Banal is a pretty negative connotation for activities that I think are pretty core to human happiness Some of the unhappiest people I know obsess over optimizing every second to be productive
        • welly 8y ago
          Sometimes, often, in fact, we need banality to reset ourselves, to rest and recuperate. We're not all Elon Musk, working 90 hours a week and always starting up a new start up. Banality will ensure we don't burn out before we're 40.
          • jimmaswell 8y ago
            Relevant note here is that Elon actually smokes it himself
• ngngngng 8y ago
  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.
  • kaybe 8y ago
    That makes it sound as if we should let people that only have a few days to live take all the heroin they want, actually. Maybe we should.
    • carbocation 8y ago
      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.
    • BearsAreCool 8y ago
      That pretty much already happens with painkillers in many cases.
    • magicnubs 8y ago
      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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care#Physical_pain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care#Physical_pain
      • djsumdog 8y ago
        Wouldn't that be the argument of legitimate medical use though? You're mitigating the pain of people who literally have less than a year to live.
• nicoburns 8y ago
  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.
  • goldenkey 8y ago
    Nutrients don't give food taste though. Mostly acids and other non vital alkaloids and terpenes do..
    • max76 8y ago
      Vitamin-C definitely has a taste.
      • goldenkey 8y ago
        Because it is an acid..namely ascorbic acid..
  • stouset 8y ago
    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.
    • nicoburns 8y ago
      This was more or less my point about MSG.
      • thedaemon 8y ago
        People are quick to down vote here.
• Rotdhizon 8y ago
  [Deleted]
  • keithwhor 8y ago
    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.
  • grawprog 8y ago
    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.
    • tomazio 8y ago
      No to dissuade or reject your points but you might have ADD/ADHD if that's how marijuana affects you.
      • 8y ago
• kadendogthing 8y ago
  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. http://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/
  • thinkingemote 8y ago
    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?
    • kadendogthing 8y ago
      >Other recreational activities don't have that same effect. I'm sorry what do you think leisure activities are?
      • thecatspaw 8y ago
        _alternatives_ to beeing bored
        • kadendogthing 8y ago
          Where does marijuana suddenly not fall under the same characteristics as any other leisure activity? It's blatantly obvious some of the comments are speaking out of unbridled ignorance.
• rayvy 8y ago
  I read this in Randy's voice and laughed out loud.
• Chathamization 8y ago
  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).
• LrnByTeach 8y ago
  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)
• TheBeardKing 8y ago
  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.
• joveian 8y ago
  "most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism" 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: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal-marijuana-is-finally-doing-what-the-drug-war-couldnt/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/03/legal... For detailed reporting on cartels in Mexico see Borderland Beat: http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ http://www.borderlandbeat.com/ 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.
  • dubya23 8y ago
    Good research, please go write a letter to the esteemed Journalists at South Park letting them know that they made an error.
• m23khan 8y ago
  impressive quote from a cartoon, wow.