7 ms·

As a long time marijuana user, these pro weed articles always crack me up. Sure it has some limited legitimate medical usages for pain or other applications. Va

• throwfaraway4 8mo ago
  I mean so is sugar, alchohol, synthetic opioids, ect. Pick your poison. Life is about trade-offs.
  • zdragnar 8mo ago
    You don't actually have to pick any of them.
    • LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago
      Your brain needs glucose. So some form of sugar is essential.
      • zdragnar 8mo ago
        Your brain doesn't need to indulge in sugar to the point of becoming a poisonous vice. You can get more than a sufficient amount eating readily available whole foods. It's a bit like suggesting we are all addicted to water. Sure, enough of it will kill you, but that's not exactly helpful pedantry.
        • LargoLasskhyfv 8mo ago
          It depends. Not enough water kills you too.
  • hackeraccount 8mo ago
    Sure but the article seem to be suggesting this is a free lunch.
  • gunsle 8mo ago
    Except no one is going to outright lie to you that alcohol is “medicine,” that it’s not addictive, and that it’s entirely healthy to consume.
    • lostmsu 8mo ago
      But a glass of wine after dinner is good for your heart!
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
    • NoGravitas 8mo ago
      My grandmother used to insist that her nightly glass of gin was strictly medicinal.
• tsunamifury 8mo ago
  I’ve noticed it California since legalization use has skyrocketed and everyday intelligence seems to have gone through the floor. Similar to if we as a society started day drinking regularly. I see people smoke all day all the time now and while driving and it clearly affects their judgement. I don’t know why legalization lead to “no moderation at all” and “I smoke at work”
  • Gud 8mo ago
    Correlation does not imply causation. Society has bigger problems(probably).
    • tsunamifury 8mo ago
      Net contributor along with phones and agitation of modern life.
    • NoGravitas 8mo ago
      I've certainly noticed people acting as if they had less "everyday intelligence" where I live, where cannabis is not legal, and consumption has not soared.
  • gunsle 8mo ago
    I live in MN where it’s effectively been decriminalized for years. I believe 100% it has had extremely negative effects on the general populace. I see it in myself and all of my Gen Z/millennial friends that smoke regularly. The amount of money I’ve wasted alone on weed is frankly disgusting, and it’s not looked down upon like it would be if I was at the liquor store every other day blowing my paychecks. Agreed completely on the day drinking point. That’s actually what got me to quit initially years ago. I realized, would I be drinking right now before work? Hell no. So why am I okay with getting high?
  • takklob 8mo ago
    [dead]
    • deleted 8mo ago
• andreygrehov 8mo ago
  My biggest complaint is the smell. I absolutely hate it. The smell is strong and spreads everywhere. Some people in our community smoke marijuana while walking their dogs. At the same time, my wife takes our newborn for a walk. It’s absolutely unacceptable. Edit: down-voters do not allow me to dislike the smell. Hilarious! I'm at -2 now. Nice! I get it, i get it. I must love it.
  • chaostheory 8mo ago
    Yeah, people need to switch to edibles as a courtesy
  • codybontecou 8mo ago
    That's just smoking in public. It's an issue regardless of what's being smoked.
    • andreygrehov 8mo ago
      Not really. Regular cigarette smoke is less intense and dissipates pretty quickly outdoors. Marijuana smoke is much stronger, lingers longer, and carries farther, so it impacts everyone nearby a lot more.
      • matwood 8mo ago
        It's fine to dislike the smell, but I find cigarette smoke far more unappealing. I grew up in a time where everyone seemed to smoke everywhere. Catching a waft of weed every once in awhile is much more preferable.
        • andreygrehov 8mo ago
          That wasn't the point. This isn't about personal preference or which smell someone finds more 'appealing'. The point is intensity and spread. Cannabis smoke is much stronger, lingers longer, and carries farther in open air than cigarette smoke, so it affects more people nearby regardless of anyone's taste.
• AndrewKemendo 8mo ago
  I started medical cannabis at 38 after leaving the military and it has been completely transformative for my Epilepsy/PTSD/CPTSD/arthritis and all of the other bullshit that came from being in the military for 17 years 100% of my doctors say (incl. Director level at Mt Sinai and orthopedic surgeons for the Washington commnders) are more than delighted with my prescription so like that’s just your opinion man
  • hackboyfly 8mo ago
    Ha +1 for the Lebowski reference.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• mhitza 8mo ago
  My impression was that it is a well known fact that canabinoids help with neurogenesis. Random article on topic https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2020.00109/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/behavioral-neuroscience... But maybe its a pop-science kind of fact that I've been carring along all this time without factuality?
  • gunsle 8mo ago
    I can tell you from years of first hand experience, it certainly makes you far dumber. The biggest factor is loss of memory. Most stoners (myself included) have terrible memory. I used to have near photographic memory, where I’d only have to read things once to remember them nearly verbatim for months after. I genuinely wonder at times where I’d be in my life if I had never got sucked into it years ago. I’m doing great despite the problems it’s caused me, but who knows where I’d be without it.
    • Eddy_Viscosity2 8mo ago
      A few of my friends are chronic users and have a characteristic that when talking to them even when not high, there is a noticeable pause. It's like when they do those news interviews from someone around the world via satellite. There is the question and then a pause while the person just stares blankly for second, then recognition of the question and the answer. Have you ever experienced this yourself or notice it in heavy users.
      • radlad 8mo ago
        As a chronic user, this is something I experience while stoned, but not while sober. I have a lot of behaviors when sober that people tend to classify as ADHD-like and I suspect it is related to this pause. Normally, when sober, I have a tough time staying focused on one thing. I typically have many projects going at once - half of them forgotten. You should see me cleaning my house - the whole thing will look torn apart as I jump from one area to the next, until the very end. But when stoned, during that pause, I'm finishing with processing another thought that is already in my head. I find it harder to context-switch immediately when stoned. This is very different from my normal experience when sober, where my brain is very "flighty." The other time I notice this type of pause is when I've entered a "flow state," e.g. when deep in a programming project. Sometimes I can leverage this "focus" into productivity when stoned, but then I am often equally likely to get focused on the wrong thing. That said, it's well established that marijuana use acutely reduces your reaction time.
• stingraycharles 8mo ago
  I’m not going to comment on the gateway drug part, but I definitely agree that - as someone who has consumed cannabis daily for about 30 years now - that I always smirks when only positives are being highlighted. It definitely has negative effects long term. Concentration is impacted. In my case, it can cause anxiety. The impacts are subtle, but they’re there. The negative side effects are definitely being underrepresented at the “non-scaremongering” parts of civilization.
  • Gud 8mo ago
    Regarding anxiety, Have you tried blending in CBD? Typically I smoke small joints with 90% CBD strains and the rest a high THC strain, only thing I can smoke.
  • gunsle 8mo ago
    I think weed is actually far more insidious than most drugs, because it’s incredibly easy to be a functional stoner. The downsides don’t start to appear until you’re years down the road, and often the marijuana haze keeps you from fully evaluating just how detrimental those downsides have been on you. At that point, you’re legitimately addicted, and your brain begins to sweet talk any attempt at rationality. For me, the downsides manifest as drarticlsly increased anxiety (I naturally have next to none), extremely poor sleep - I sleep but the sleep is so low quality it begins to feel like my brain barely works right, and the obvious one, the effects on your motivation. I naturally tend towards ADHD style dopamine chasing, and weed makes that about 100x worse. Instead of getting my work done, I will procrastinate with any number of cheap dopamine hits such as video games, internet sleuthing, etc.
    • projectazorian 8mo ago
      > At that point, you’re legitimately addicted You can just stop. Really. Go take a long trip somewhere weed is illegal (eg. Japan) and throw out your stash on the way out the door. You will be fine, maybe a little irritable for a couple days, but the trip will distract you and it'll be indistinguishable from typical jet lag symptoms. There is no biological dependence, unlike with most legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, benzos...
• master-lincoln 8mo ago
  How would it clearly be a gateway drug? I don't think this concept even makes sense. Sure if contact to X also brings you in contact with Y, you could see X as gateway to Y. But what contact to other drugs you have depends on where you acquire the Marijuana. If I home-grow I see none. In a pharmacy I need prescriptions to access their other drugs, so also not a gateway. It's only problematic when acquired via dealers who also sell other stuff. When I tried buying weed on the street, vendors didn't offer me other drugs. I agree with your other points though.
  • gunsle 8mo ago
    I mean in my case, I never even considered drugs until I started smoking weed in college. So it was definitely a gateway drug for me. At first glance, weed has little to no noticeable downsides. This made me think that the other drugs must be the same way. It led me into a drug abuse phase of my life that I still struggle with. Prior to that, I barely did drugs at all and had no real inclination to do so. I think part of it is the crowd you end up in when you smoke weed. Unsurprisingly, drug use lends itself to putting you in situations with other drug users. These users often completely ignore, leave out, or outright lie about the downsides of these drugs, from chronic weed use to LSD.
    • tuesdaynight 8mo ago
      I don't agree with you, but I don't think that your experience is invalid. Just trying to understand your point, but don't you think that calling weed a gateway drug sounds like propaganda when a lot of addicted people started with alcohol and nobody dares to say that alcohol is a gateway drug? I'm not saying that you are doing propaganda, I just don't get this argument when alcohol, in my opinion, should have this title. And I say that as someone who doesn't use both, so I don't have a horse in this race
      • GeorgeOldfield 8mo ago
        i think alcohol is also a gateway drug. anything that creates REAL addiction/disinhibition/escapism (not food). paradoxically i don't think cigarettes are a gateway drug, but weed is because of how it works
• deleted 8mo ago
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• johnea 8mo ago
  After smoking weed for over 50 years, I would definitely say I am not addicted. When I travel internationally, often for periods of over a month, I don't use any cannabis at all. During these times I experience no withdrawal symptoms or craving. I abstained for over a year during a number of periods during those 50 years, due to specific job requirements and other situations where using weed would be viewed detrimentally. If anything, I would say cannabis is one of the least "addictive" substances that create a euphoric experience. Please remember the old adage: gateways work for both getting you out of, as well as into, other situations. I would say that cannabis would be a great substance to use daily for helping people abstain from more harmful substances. In the US we have the ass-hat social acceptance of: Alcohol, tobacco and firearms, like the little baby jesus intended. All three of which are VASTLY more dangerous and deadly than cannabis. A more direct link to the article, which doesn't require "Are you a bot" authentication, or javascript: https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/study-finds-cannabis-usage-in-middle-aged-and-older-adults-associated-with-larger-brain-volume-better-cognitive-function https://news.cuanschutz.edu/news-stories/study-finds-cannabi...
• plugger 8mo ago
  > Anthropologists in the future will be studying the effects of drastically increased marijuana consumption on society for decades in the future. This information is already readily available by studying the Rastafari in Jamaica. If there were serious negative impacts from daily consumption over a lifetime it would have been apparent in that cohort for decades.