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When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

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Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#101

Post by jesseb »

jlawson wrote: post #7
S0ckpupp3t wrote: post #4

A drug more benign than alcohol. Smoke too much, take a nap. Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again. Drink too much, you get flu symptoms. Drink too much too often, you get a new liver, or die.

>Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again. Unfortunately not. If you spend a long time smoking you'll end up permanently slower in the brain. Also, let's not forget our friend lung cancer.

> Unfortunately not. If you spend a long time smoking you'll end up permanently slower in the brain.

I'm sorry, but what? You can't make claims like that without providing evidence to back it up.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#102

Post by IMTDb »

S0ckpupp3t wrote: post #4

A drug more benign than alcohol. Smoke too much, take a nap. Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again. Drink too much, you get flu symptoms. Drink too much too often, you get a new liver, or die.

Watch the MRI scan of a 35 yo alcoholic and the MRI scan of a 35 yo heavy pot smoker then do the comparison again.

The liver can more or less heal itself until it's too late. The brain, not so much.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#103

Post by dfxm12 »

S0ckpupp3t wrote: post #4

A drug more benign than alcohol. Smoke too much, take a nap. Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again. Drink too much, you get flu symptoms. Drink too much too often, you get a new liver, or die.

The article is about middle and high school aged kids. Many places don't let them drink alcohol for similar reasons described in the article either.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#104

Post by rv-de »

Balero wrote: post #86
Waterluvian wrote: post #67

Maybe this is too reductionist but I once heard someone describe it as, "there's nothing fundamentally dangerous about pot, but one of its (often intended) effects is that is slows our engines down. And some of us need to be firing on all cylinders." School was a tricky time for me. I'm thriving intellectually now, but I was a C- student pretty much 4th-12th grade. I needed those cycles that pot would have robbed me…

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."

> 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

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.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#105

Post by andrepd »

narzu wrote: post #16
zaroth wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Do much better” is a platitude - it conveys zero information as to what you actually believe should be done differently.

We should move towards the elimination of all drugs. Prohibition has worked wonderfully well for tobacco in many countries, cutting consumption in half and even more.

>Prohibition has worked wonderfully well

It very much hasn't. The War on Drugs is very much a catastrophic failure, claiming the lives of millions with no tangible improvement to control drug addiction. Meanwhile liberalisation and decriminalization programmes (e.g. Portugal for decriminalization and de facto tolerance without legalisation) have been much more successful. When will you start looking at empirical evidence and realise prohibition simply doesn't work?

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#106

Post by nashashmi »

Waterluvian wrote: post #91
zaarn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One the other hand, people who feel like their engines are firing on all cylinders all the time (ie ADHD and friends) might find some relief in a drug that allows them to slow down and switch of their head radio while firing on only one cylinder...

ADHD was pretty much the reason I struggled in school. The diagnosis gave me access to medication which turned a knob between two settings: Be social, happy, energetic, hungry, incapable of succeeding in the education system of the 90s, 00s. (default me) Be quiet, jittery, never eat, anti-social, depressed at times, but kick ass at school. Tried a lot of different ADHD medications and generally found success in simpl…

Nope. ADHD is a spectrum. Often times it was/is misunderstood and its victims would feel isolated from the world. Marijuana would make that worse on certain vectors. It is not a silver bullet. It is a role of the dice. And the condition of the moment that you take it in decides the fate of the drug's effects on you. Could be good or bad.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#107

Post by gmadsen »

dredds wrote: post #93
jlawson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As for lung cancer, that's a straw man, vapes and edibles make that a non-issue. Isn't that kind of like saying "drunk driving is a straw man, Uber makes it a non issue"? Of course we know there's less harmful ways to consume these substances. We also know many, many people will not make use of those less harmful ways.

Again, show us the evidence that a non-tobacco-smoking average pot smoker has increased risk of lung cancer.

inhaling any type of smoke is bad for your lungs. Combustion of organic material releases carcinogens. That is pretty basic science.

https://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/smoking-facts/marijuana-an...

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#108

Post by nobody271 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #67

Maybe this is too reductionist but I once heard someone describe it as, "there's nothing fundamentally dangerous about pot, but one of its (often intended) effects is that is slows our engines down. And some of us need to be firing on all cylinders." School was a tricky time for me. I'm thriving intellectually now, but I was a C- student pretty much 4th-12th grade. I needed those cycles that pot would have robbed me…

If you use it right you don't just vegitate. It makes you far better at many tasks and can be used to do epic amounts of work so long as you get your work that requires a lot of thinking done first.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#109

Post by nashashmi »

leesec wrote: post #85
zaarn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One the other hand, people who feel like their engines are firing on all cylinders all the time (ie ADHD and friends) might find some relief in a drug that allows them to slow down and switch of their head radio while firing on only one cylinder...

I definitely benefit from this. I find pot to be a great context switcher. Formerly after working on a problem for long hours, when I would go home I would still be immersed in the problem and unable to take my mind off it. Now when I come and have my things in order I warm up a vape bag and put on some jazz and am able to completely detach from work and really just enjoy my nights.

I have never understood this concept of detaching from work only to wake up the next day and having to face it. Why would you detach so much?

Relaxing is overrated. It deprives you of powers you have developed or will develop, only to make you a more powerless person.

And a powerless person can never and should never relax.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#110

Post by IMTDb »

jesseb wrote: post #101
jlawson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Smoke too often, cut down and get sharp again. Unfortunately not. If you spend a long time smoking you'll end up permanently slower in the brain. Also, let's not forget our friend lung cancer.

> Unfortunately not. If you spend a long time smoking you'll end up permanently slower in the brain. I'm sorry, but what? You can't make claims like that without providing evidence to back it up.

Here you go: https://www.drugabuse.gov/news-events/nida-notes/2016/09/reg...
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