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Disclaimer: I'm an almost daily smoker of cannabis. There is definitely some impairment long term. I think we can assume that even without this huge study. I d
by BobbyJo 5y ago
Disclaimer: I'm an almost daily smoker of cannabis.
There is definitely some impairment long term. I think we can assume that even without this huge study. I don't think knowing that matters unless we have some scale that tells us how dramatic that impairment is.
If I compare someone who smoked all the time, but also had a rich and engaging social life with a lifelong abstainer who live a mostly isolated existence, who is going to be more cognitively capable?
There are so many inputs that feed into who we are and what we are capable of that, in all likelihood, cannabis use is likely only incidental to much larger factors like isolation, media preferences, home life, etc.
As an anecdote, the worse thing I think I've ever done for my brain, the thing that I immediately felt dumber after doing, was reading "Shadow Wolves" (Steven Segal's book). I had trouble communicating thoughts effectively for weeks after finishing it. It was like it had sucked vocabulary out of my brain. Maybe that's how cannabis leads to long term impairment. It makes you read "Shadow Wolves".
Edit: Since people are voting this, I want to add an extra warning that I was not joking about "Shadow Wolves". If you read it, you will feel dumber, and it will take time to heal the damage done. Seriously.
- asdfsd234234444 5y agoI wonder, if you hold other psychoactive substances - say coffee, alcohol, or nicotine to the same standard? That is, we should assume they cause long term impairment without the need for any kind of study?
- BobbyJo 5y agoYou should assume any disturbance of your brains chemical equilibrium is bad long term. Those drugs included. Absent fixing a specific deficiency that is. If a study comes back and says, with a high confidence, that isn't the case for this or that, great, but I think it's a safe assumption for most chemicals. Edit: Just to be clear, I'm saying it's not enough to show something is bad, as pretty much everything is bad. It has to be bad enough to matter.
- asdfsd234234444 5y agoIf you take the point a step further, your argument can be applied to everything including sugar, salt, etc. I think we are mostly in agreement - that any substance entering the body will have some effect. The question is what effect, how much of an effect, and wether it is permanent/long lasting. Questions which require a study to answer.
- BobbyJo 5y agoTotally agree. However, I highly doubt such a study will be possible for the same reasons we still argue about salt and sugar: what's the control? Unless we're able to find twins that live largely the same lives absent the one factor, we are really only capable of sussing out the especially harmful things with long term lifestyle studies. If cannabis is as bad as sugar, then we have 40 years of back and forth to look forward to, and the answer will ultimately be: A little bit is bad, but not bad enough to matter more than how many steps you took today, or how sad or angry you were, or how late you ate dinner.
- Nbox9 5y agoI don’t think assumption is the correct stance, but a healthy skepticism sounds in order. Alcohol is clearly capable of long term impairment, the debate seems to be about dose response. Nicotine is more questionable, but clearly leaves long term changes in the mind. People abstaining after long term nicotine usage will spend the rest of their lives experiencing cravings. Hell, it seems plausible long term consumption of food types has long term cognitive effects.
- ghiotion 5y agoOh goodness. Thank you for introducing me to Shadow Wolves. It sounds positively dreadful. I want to read it but I don't want to pay for it. Either monetarily or cognitively.
- BobbyJo 5y agoYou really really don't though. It's not one of those 'so bad it's good' kind of things where there is some novelty to be had. It's boring. It's written with a 4th grade vocabulary. There's no character development outside shallow tropes. Random right wing conspiracies are mixed in without any grounding in the story. The main character is a cartoon of cartoon of a human in a cartoon world with cartoon side kicks. It's awful in every way a book can be awful. And to top it all off it will literally curse your brain.
- ghiotion 5y agoHaha. Fair. I've got this morbid curiosity about right wing authoritarian conspiracy fiction. Apparently Ben Shapiro has several novels in the same vein. Genuinely curious... why'd you read it in the first place? Are you part of the worst book club in history or something?
- BobbyJo 5y agoA friend gave it to me for Christmas as a gag gift, and as part of the joke escalation cycle I decided I would read it so I could bring it up sometime later. Bad idea :(