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More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

theatlantic.com

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Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#371

Post by tk75x »

bihnkim wrote: post #253
psychedelic wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has never smoked, I feel like this is the argument I always had with my friends who all have/do. Ultimately, their argument for smoking basically boiled down to the lack of scientific evidence that there are lasting consequences and that it was nowhere near as bad as alcohol. My argument was that there was a lack in scientific evidence, and that comparing the utility to alcohol was stupid.

then that's a pretty ironic username for ya!

MJ != the only psychedelic out there...

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#372

Post by mindgam3 »

WalterSear wrote: post #328
mindgam3 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a bit odd. I often have the experience of standing somewhere wondering what I was doing, but that's more of a momentary thing that I would call garden variety absent-mindedness. The other experience that comes to mind is driving - my brain sometimes shuts off for minutes at a time. Not a good thing. I suspect this has more to do with what's on my mind than what substance I'm taking. I'd be skeptical that it's…

No, it's the CBD, and no, I'm not distracted - I know that feeling well :) It's reasonable to be skeptical - I get some kind of pushback every time I mention this. I'm not high when it happens. And it's not a moment - at least one time was over ten minutes, involved parking a car, doing some shopping and who the fuck knows what else. I spent an hour searching for my car. And it's never happened, ever, unless I'd smok…

I see. The plot thickens :-)

Based on what you're saying, my best guess for what is happening is that the memory issue might be correlated to the CBD intake but not caused by it. i.e., maybe you are taking the CBD to cope with a period of high stress or anxiety, and it's the anxiety which is causing the short-term memory loss. There is a fair amount of research correlating intense emotional stress with changes in memory or outright memory loss. Repressed memories of childhood abuse are an extreme example of this, but this also can happen for somewhat milder events.

It's not impossible that CBD could be causing your symptoms, but the lack of precedence in research findings or even other people's anecdotal experience makes this seem like the least likely scenario.

I'm curious if you have thought about doing some controlled testing, i.e. take some CBD once a week for 4 weeks every Monday, and see if you experience this memory glitch in the 24 hour period afterwards. Apologies if you've already thought of/done all of this.

As someone who lives with PTSD and has found CBD to be a godsend, I'm trying to investigate the potential downsides to this substance, and so far you're the only data point I have pointing to memory loss.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#373

Post by code_duck »

jknightco wrote: post #332
code_duck wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have used cannabis a long time and while I had similar ideas in my 20s, none of this is similar to my current experience - mainly the verbiage and ideas that seem to be derived from drug treatment literature. I’ve tried not consuming cannabis for long periods and it doesn’t improve my life overall. I did find it necessary to abstain when I has a programming/sysadmin startup job and was trying to learn and manage a…

Have you investigated that GI issue in depth? You could have Celiac, Crohn's, or a number of other issues. Covering up the symptoms with cannabis sounds like a surefire way to risk some sort of GI cancer down the road. My family has a long history of GI issues that went unidentified and untreated for several years. They're extremely damaging over time. If you're constantly uncomfortable you should really diagnose the…

Oh, and I’ll add that i’ve been self employed with no insurance or financially reasonable access to health care for almost all of the time my health was slowly deteriorating- over 18 years.

When I did see doctors, my symptoms were diagnosed as other syndromes or dismissed as something very mild. A family member who has celiac suffered from years of misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment, including surgeries, for conditions they don’t suffer from. So if I had been in the medical system all this time, it’s not clear the outcome would have been significantly better.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#374

Post by antidesitter »

fzeroracer wrote: post #357
dqpb wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an easy answer though. You do what successful humans have done for thousands of years: - educate yourself - join or form a community that supports each other - fight for your survival like every ancestor in your genetic tree did before you. Life isn't easy. But you also aren't naturally weak. Unfortunately, once you start doing drugs, you risk corrupting the source code of the machine you rely on.

Man who has never experienced extreme poverty or the absolute depths of American society attempts to provide easy answer to something he's never been through.

User claims to have intimate knowledge of what another user's been through.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#375

Post by dolzenko »

EpicEng wrote: post #280
andbberger wrote: post #34

Alternative headline: citizens of deeply broken society turn to least harmful drug available to them to dull the pain of their shitty lives.

>deeply broken society What hypothetical utopia are you comparing against exactly? If the US is "deeply broken" then so is every society ever.

Not every, there are at least 22 above the US according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#376

Post by erikpukinskis »

idoh wrote: post #29
e40 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't list what you think the problem is.

The problem isn't listed because it viewed as self evident to some people. I'd list the problem of having high functional people who use marijuana everyday as: A - MJ, while a mild drug, is still a drug, and it seems like people who use it everyday are addicts. B - On the one hand I'm OK with people making their own decisions as to how they want to live their life, but on the other hand if we are talking about the ty…

You are telling us you have an intuition that there are more dangers than meet the eye. That’s a valid intuition.

But you’re structuring your comments as if you have an argument and evidence, when you don’t. That’s confusing people and causing fights.

It’s ok to have speculative thoughts, just frame them as such and you’ll get higher quality conversation.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#377

Post by EpicEng »

dolzenko wrote: post #375
EpicEng wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>deeply broken society What hypothetical utopia are you comparing against exactly? If the US is "deeply broken" then so is every society ever.

Not every, there are at least 22 above the US according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index

So any society below those 22 on the "Satisfaction with life index" is "deeply broken"? I think you're missing the point; I'm not saying that the US is the most super awesome society in existence, I'm saying that we're much better off than most, and we're _obviously_ much better off than most historical civilizations.

The term "deeply broken" implies that the whole thing needs to be upended and reformed. A more reasonable and informed observer would note that there remain issues to be addressed, but we have seen incremental improvements for quite some time now and there's no good reason for e.g. revolution.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#378

Post by int_19h »

sonnyblarney wrote: post #367
int_19h wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the civic virtues or moral precepts that you believe would have been infringed by such a society?

Show up drunk or stoned to your friends kid's birthday, to a wedding or a funeral, to work, to meetings with clients, to the DMV, to your parents Christmas meet-and-greet, to your kids school play, to the PTA meeting, and then ponder that and you'll have your answer.

If you live in US, it is quite likely that you're interacting with people who are under influence of some drug (usually cannabis) on a daily basis, without realizing that.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#379

Post by andrenth »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #325
andrenth wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were true, humanity wouldn't even have reached the point where that advertising and protestant ethic were even possible.

I don’t get your logic? I assumed protestant ethic came from all the non-anal families literally dying in an unforgiving and unfamiliar land.

My point was simply that if doing nothing was men’s natural state, we wouldn’t have progressed to the point where Protestantism (or advertising) was even a thing.

What’s a non-anal family? Most families are non-anal if you consider how human reproduction works by I’m not sure that’s what you’re talking about :P

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#380

Post by cpncrunch »

lev99 wrote: post #369
cpncrunch wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unlikely that a drug that affects neurotransmitters wouldn't result in tolerance, and the scientific evidence and anecdotal reports seem to confirm this. Anything that gives you a 'high' will ultimately have the opposite effect when you're sober. So in the end you'll just wind up wasting money smoking to feel normal, and you'll feel like shit when you've been sober for a while.

I did not feel like shit when cold turkey stopping a 4 year daily habit of MJ. I know it's highly anecdotal, but I'm very thankful I spent those four years smoking cannabis instead of drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, or taking prescription pills.

How much did you smoke per day?
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