Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

Getting drunk though, used to be very not appreciated and shameful. Actually it is not very "macho" to be drunk because then you look vulnerable; out of control. The contrary of the cultural form of macho. This goes to the point that there used to be a thing where people who got drunk knew they should either quietly leave or just be very quiet. Hell even I still follow that. The downside of that is that alcoholism in Portugal is a very private matter and often not properly treated. Families break apart, but nobody from the outside sees it. When drunk, leave or shut up.

One thing I have a bit of a difficulty in Poland is that generally people have a very fast drinking rhythm that I know will lead me to drunkenness pretty fast and i come out as a wuss or not a jolly guy, because I reject such rhythm. On the other hand people look at me sideways when if I drink regularly a glass of wine or beer at meals. One of the things that got me a bit sad was losing the ability to drink a beer(20-0.33cl) beer at work break lunch as this is illegal here and very frowned upon. Another thing is the drinking and driving. In Portugal and quite a lot of countries in Europe(Germany for example) the blood-alcohol limit is 0.5, which allows for a single glass of wine or a 20cl beer, but in Poland it is 0.2 which means one is effectively banned from drinking at all if driving. Truth be told I believe the 0 drink and driving is the way to go. I know of too many situations where people start with good intentions and get carried away. Nowadays when i go to Portugal I feel be guilty if i even touch a drink at a meal and drive afterwards(very common due to the restaurant culture).

In Portugal, nowadays there is a normalization of the drunkenness in younger people as a way to signal one is having fun, but it feels an imported thing. Binge drinking is also on the rise, with day to day drinking falling.

Larger amounts of weed tend to hyperfocus me but impair some processing abilities. For me, less is more here.

I'm smoking daily for over 20 years. I don't know how would my mind function without all those trees but I think I'm doing ok. Anecdotal but the single noticeable effect of daily cannabis smoking is the lack of so called "morning wood".

[1] Cannabis sativa ~19% THC <1% CBD, prescribed by a psychiatrist

Addiction isn't about willpower so much as psychopathology and genetics. It's a coping mechanism.

> getting used to a serene state of mind is [...] kind of counter productive

What is suspect about serenity? Is religion equally problematic as a source? How is it counterproductive?

> such substances are not natural and

A naturalist argument is usually invalid. We can't expand upon the rules of the universe. Plastics are just as natural as anything else. Cannabis also doesn't induce any foreign states in our brains.

Even using the narrow definition of "can't be found in the wild": cannabis is a plant, so it very much does exist in the wild. So do alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") or ergotamine (LSD).

When applied to brain chemistry: to my knowledge, drugs don't do novel things to our brains. They promote infrequent states, but that doesn't make them unnatural. Especially not if you consider how alien dream states, meditative and transcendental experiences feel.

> with unchecked use, might put a whole society in danger

Adding a slippery slope to it doesn't improve your line of reasoning. It does tend to whip the masses into a frenzy, like its cousins "Won't somebody think of the children" and "Why should we help those who won't help themselves?".

It also doesn't conform to reality. Have California or Colorado collapsed because weed was legalised? Have the Netherlands?

> I am ambivalent about the whole movement to legalize it

Decriminalisation seems obvious to me as a solution, if coupled with a sorely needed investment in mental healthcare (across the West). The latter is necessary regardless of how we consider drugs - see homelessness, domestic violence, suicide, burnouts, etc. Decriminalisation works (cf Portugal's results), dries up income sources for the cartels, allows quality controls to be put in place, reduces stigmatisation for users, lowers the threshold for seeking therapy, keeps people out of prison for victimless crimes, creates a revenue source for the government through sales and other taxes...

The alternative to decriminalisation is telling the population "we know best". Looking at the so-called war on drugs globally, it's also an endeavour that's bound to fail, strengthen drug cartels, escalate violence and cause more damage than it prevents.

It’s a drug like alcohol. Addiction can have consequences.