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Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

addictionjournal.org

311–320 of 568 posts

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless incredibly severe I think the consequences should not impact it’s legality. People will use it legal or not. If it’s legal you can charge taxes and spend that money on addiction prevention and treatment. Help people with addiction problems instead of putting them in jail. Addiction is often a symptom of underlying mental health problems, you don’t solve those with punishment. And that’s even disregarding the a…

Being legal adds a whole lot of marketing push and general acceptance in the population, especially young ones. Time and again I see so many stories of young people fucking up their lives, and wasting so much of their lives trying to correct mistakes. Something which should have been guided by elders and well-wishers. But US society is neck deep into "individuality" at their own detriment. A society that is taught fr…

As the others mentioned; Advertising should be banned.

I do agree though that general change is needed.

Imo it comes down to education on drugs, facilitating safe use, and treatment of mental health issues and addiction.

"Don't do it, but if you do; do it as safe as possible. If you get into trouble; get help." is imo the only sensible drug strategy.

It's one thing to say "drugs are bad mkay" another to actually explain what the risks are and just provide basic practical tips on how you can reduce risk if you do take drugs.

Things like not using too much of anything at once, getting drugs tested, making sure you do it in a safe environment, not mixing drugs, clean needles (although really don't do those types of drugs), etc etc.

Also make sure people know the difference between weed and for example heroin, meth and fentanyl. Not all drugs are equal, weed is relatively harmless.

Lastly testing; It should be facilitated. Here it's quite common to get your pills and powders tested. It's free and facilitated. It saves lives as you make sure people don't OD on pills that contain fentanyl instead of whatever the user expected it to be. Same for legal weed btw, I believe in the US the quality is much better because of legalization. These things work, they literally save lives.

You can prevent so much pain and suffering by simply accepting the fact that people will use drugs and adjust your policies based on that fact.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#312
Before anyone freaks out too much:

"Persistent" means up to one week. From the actual paper: "However, results were not significant for an abstinence period of more than 7 days."

Basically, science has proved that stoners behave like stoners. And if you stop it takes a few days for everything to wear off.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To cut it short, I think a tiny amount of alcohol can be a superb bargain. It allowed me to stay a bit neutral in parties (instead of crippled by anxiety and phobia). And being around people, even like a wallpaper had strange positive effect on my moral. I don't know if doing that long term (even tiny amount of beer) would harm your body, but having zero social life is also very very damaging.

Perhaps slightly TMI, but it's HN so let's share some fun ideas I have about this. __Stress is most likely super linear__ Not a doctor, but from what I know, the biggest negative effects of alcohol occur with binge drinking. From a logical perspective it makes sense that the negative effects are super linear, because that is the case with many forms of stress. When it comes to stress, there is always some threshhold…

> Another thing that I have learned is that alcohol is an upper at low quantities (1 to 2 standard glasses of beer), it gets your heart rate up, etc. It is a downer at larger quantities (e.g. drunk people at 10 standard glasses of beer). If you don't drink much alcohol, then you are most likely experiencing it as an upper, it doesn't continue that way.

> I like to drink 1 to 2 glasses as well because of what you said, but also because it's an upper.

This part of your comment reminded me of a very relevant and topical sketch from That Mitchell & Webb Look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTSCppeFzX4

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#315

I see a lot of people defending cannabis and I hate to be that guy but: be freaking cautious with cannabis. Yes it cannot make you an addict, yes it can help you to have a good time with people. But it can also fuck you up. I have PTSD since 2018 because of an accidental over dosing of cannabis oil. Weed is really high on THC nowadays, which can easily make you panic or make you paranioac. As for most people it's bou…

Can you give more details about what happened? I took way too much many many times the worst that happened was: vomiting+awful headaches then falling asleep/"passing out". At which point can it cause PTSD?

I'm not sure exactly what OP means, but depersonalization disorders are PTSD symptoms, often linked to trauma, and can be induced from cannabis[1].

My personal opinion is that legal states are making a mistake at treating concentrates (and edibles to a degree) as being as benign as their flower counterparts.

1. https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp-rj.20...

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#316
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting! I never heard of caffeine withdrawal before, but it makes sense when I think about it. I know a lot of people who say they that can't function with caffeine. I'm not a big coffee drinker (and usually mix it with decaf, because too much makes me feel weird). So I'd probably be okay on that front. How much coffee do you drink daily? I drink maybe one cup, and that's mostly for the taste (hence the d…

I drink about 6-9 cups of coffee per day. The withdrawal journey that is published in the lying internet is not true (at least for me). I get all sorts of diffuse pain in the legs and lower back area. Not to speak of the killing headache and depressed mood.

How can you actually sleep with that much coffee?! A single cup after ~1600 and I can't fall asleep until 0200 or later...

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#317

My personal experience certainly agrees with this. I definitely shouldn’t smoke on a work night, and it’s not a good idea on Sunday either. The more hours until I need to perform cognitively, the better. I abstained for months before the last time I did job interviews. On the other hand, I know people also gainfully employed at top companies who code while high and claim to have no issues. Your mileage may vary, I gu…

> code while high I sometimes feel I code better when I'm slightly mentally impaired, because my mind stops getting in the way of getting things done and over analyzing problems. But then I'm very rarely mentally impaired, as I normally neither drink nor consume cannabis or anything like that, so idk. EDIT: Oh, just realized the answer is probably simple => less stress.

You would probably achieve the same effect by meditation and practicing attention control.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#319
post #78

I've known many people in silicon valley who smoke cannabis regularly (several times a week if not daily). They all seemed to be cognitively normal. Some of them function on a level I only wish I could attain. I think regular cannabis use attracts a certain type of person. That type of person can vary in their ability and intelligence, just like any type of person. This is also true of say, hardcore fans of fantasy f…

> I think regular cannabis use attracts a certain type of person. That type of person can vary in their ability and intelligence, just like any type of person.

This matches my personal experience as well. I’m good friends with someone that holds a high-level FAANG position and consumes weed every day. While working. Attending meetings, coding, managing large teams, the whole she-bang. It’s unbelievable. They say it “calms their thoughts” and allows them to focus.

If I tried to code while high, I would end up wasting 3 hours just fiddling with the text colors in the IDE or just space out in a wormhole of deep introspection.

Marijuana really affects people differently.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#320
post #3

> The study found that cannabis intoxication leads to small to moderate cognitive impairments in areas including > making decisions, > suppressing inappropriate responses, > learning through reading and listening, > the ability to remember what one reads or hears, and > the time needed to complete a mental task. I've no first hand experience here, but I can imagine there being tradeoffs. For example, I think creativi…

That is my thoght to. One function (like some type of memory)goes down in performance cause it’s performance was based on a trade of with some other aspect of thinking.

For example performance on learning through reading could be a local maximum for that function but part of a local minimum for some type of larger scale thinking like creativity or imagination.

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