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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

#231
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One might consider that an artistic/creative revelation. Weed is definitely good for that. "Why is this code breaking?" Not so much...

For you. Carl Sagan touted pot's ability to help him with abstract mathematics, so YMMV.

Abstract mathematics, and finding bugs, are not terribly closely related skills.

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

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to not rely on government assistance for ANYTHING, including health care, would be a start.

As a young, successful stoner living in Western Europe, I salute your ignorance

Please be civil on Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#233

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…

It's funny because all it has ever done for me is the opposite. I'm a pretty energetic dude and weed has always made me want to get out and move, go and play a pickup game or something. It has also brought a different type of focus on any activity I'm doing. I see a lot of pretty silly takes in this thread that weed automatically makes you happy with boredom somehow, and that apparently leads to a bunch of people sit…

No, but the pharmacological effects are not to be ignored just because you have a different personal experience with the drug.

I am on a balanced schedule of stimulants that keep me productive and not-depressed. This doesn't give me the right to tell people to take these drugs because of my personal opinion; research shows the effects of stimulant use, abuse, and misuse, and it's mostly pretty negative.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"more benign" !== "benign" Everyone I know that smokes daily (a lot of people) is less cognitive than those I know who don't smoke, in every arena except artistic pursuits. And not everyone reacts to weed the same way. I decided to quit when I recognized a lessened ability to solve complex coding questions the day after smoking.

"Everyone I know" Can we just ... not? Everyone I know who consumes cannabis on a regular basis is very successful, smart and thoughtful ... now what?

Jokes on you, some of the people I know who smoke regularly are very successful, smart and thoughtful, and some are morons.

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

#235
post #118

Pediatric neurology and neurology are different specialties in medicine because developing brains are very different from adult brains. I'm all for legalizing pot and it's just natural that young people _experiment_ with drugs. That does not mean that constant drug use during adolescence should be perceived as normal or harmless.

>it's just natural that young people _experiment_ with drugs. Is it?

Why do you think it is so common for little kids to love to spin and spin until they get super dizzy? They are experimenting with altering their consciousness.

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

#236

Is it not related to sleep?

It is definitely related to sleep. Cannabis disrupts NREM sleep, where memories are ushered from short term memory into your hippocampus. Matthew Walker's excellent book "Why We Sleep" goes into this in some detail, highly recommended.

Edit: I should add, many substances disrupt NREM sleep in addition to cannabis, such as alcohol, caffeine, and sleep aids.

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

#237

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.

ITT: people talking about anecdotes and rebuttals to anecdotes using different time scales, time frames, usage scales, age ranges, statistics in different ranges and also totally incorrect information good one, hackernews

Agreed, if these anecdotes weren't stated in the same manner empirical evidence is typically stated I would not be concerned.

It makes for a muddy discussion at best.

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

#238
post #86

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."

[Deleted]

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

#239
post #102

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.

Did you just completely make that up?

Not even a mention of a source?

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I guess looking at movies and books, I could see where you'd get this idea, but it really isn't accurate. There are different types of feeling good, and the purely chemical good isn't particularly rewarding. There are the moments in life where you are happy because you are living the life you want to live, and those are way better than just feeling good from drugs. Sometimes life goals and drugs come together, and th…

Lotta people talking about heroin in this thread, but lets be clear, unless you have tried heroin, or are otherwise intimately familiar with its affects, you are probably not qualified to talk about what it feels like.

Not trying to single out parent, just felt like it should be mentioned.

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