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As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

nytimes.com

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Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#471

Post by bennysomething »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #200
mesofile wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, 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 creat…

I think this is largely the problem with mobile phones as well. Like you probably aren't going to go mad or get rectangular eyes or whatever, but you can just sort of sedate that sensation of boredom with scrolling reddit or facebook or whatever, which does all of bupkis for making us happy in the long term.

That's a really good point. I never thought of it that way.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#472

Post by markdown »

com2kid wrote: post #233
dfxm12 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does caffeine have negative side effects, or does caffeine, taken in excess, including in late hours of the day, have negative side effects? It's an important distinction to make in this discussion, which largely boils down to "off label use", whether we're talking about drinking simply too much coffee or people with developing brains getting too much thc.

> Does caffeine have negative side effects, Caffeine has negative side effects. It is an addictive psychoactive drug. Its effects are mild, but, to repeat, it is an addictive psychoactive drug. Even moderate use can cause sever anxiety in some people. L-theanine is a great counter to this. Green tea naturally has L-theanine in it and that is likely why people who drink green tea do not report anxiety (at least in sig…

> It is an addictive psychoactive drug

I just quit cold turkey three days ago and suffered through two days of horrible headaches. I don't want to ever get hooked again.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#473

Post by hirvi74 »

INTPenis wrote: post #359
mesofile wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, 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 creat…

I'm doing what I love buzzed right now, building a cluster for my homelab, creating a hybrid cloud solution to host some services and saving on money by leveraging cheap compute at home. But yes, Randy Marsh was absolutely right. I've had periods of my life where I've abused it and I regret every one of those days.

> I've had periods of my life where I've abused it and I regret every one of those days.

I think I am starting to wake up to this. I do find enjoyment in it, and there is such a sunk cost fallacy I keep factoring in too.

I mean do I take occasional breaks, but probably not enough. It had definitely helped me lower my inhibitions enough to introspectively identity some issues that were deeply hidden under the surface of my everyday life. However, it's killed my motivation and in some ways it's starting to negatively affect other areas of my life. Regardless of my dependence, I am thankful to not feel clinically addicted or anything.

I will say, it wasn't my first choice of treatment. I tried the mental/medical health professional route. I'm still on that train, and it's been 8 years. Nothing has really improved, so I am not sure what else to do and where else to go. I adopted cannabis around the age of 29 with very limited experience prior. The kind I use is not like the variety in this article either. I use 1:1 THC:CBD hemp because high thc products are illegal in my area. So maybe the damage isn't "as bad."

If all the medical/mental health treatments I tried work as well as the medical research and doctors claim then I probably wouldn't have ever began to use cannabis in the first place. But like I said, what else am I to do? It's exhausting and stressful trying to force yourself to be a way your body naturally fights against.

It's apparent that I cannot function well without some sort of chemical assistance. I guess the only difference is where I get it from (doctor vs. plant), the side-effects, and the societal views that accompany said chemicals.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#474

Post by TaylorAlexander »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #206
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point: I am 37 years old. I quit marijuana three or four months ago, but before that I was vaping marijuana nearly every day for four years. During that time I’ve achieved more success in my career than any other time. I think it was good for me to quit. I feel more alert and more productive now. More level and less tired. Maybe I would have been more successful without it, so perhaps you are right. But then,…

Counter point taken. Follow-on question: have you had similar success in your relationships and personal life in the last 4 years? I was a great student stoned, and a decent heads-down coworker. I became a detached boyfriend and family member and even more detached friend. I made my world smaller, so I could "focus" on work. My time on creative/non-passive hobbies fell to zero. I didn't lose friends but I didn't keep…

I wouldn’t describe my relationship style as detached at all. I was attentive and used some of my time in therapy to work on issues that came up with my partner and try to resolve them. It didn’t work out but I think that’s due to a bad fit. And she smoked a lot of weed (more than I did) so we were aligned there.

My creative passions exploded. Personal design projects (3D printing, circuit board design, robotics, programming) all were off the charts high, as I reduced the number of hours I worked at my regular job to under 30 hours a week. It was the most productive hobby time of my life.

I think it makes a huge difference that I smoked relatively small amounts of pure sativa, and nothing else.

Biggest issue I think was how it affected my sleep. I would stay up late getting stoned and designing robots, going to sleep around 4 or 5am. I’d wake up at 12 or 1. Made it hard to visit my Dad for lunch since he lives a ways away. Now without weed I go to bed at midnight and wake up at 8. I like that! Much easier to make plans with my Dad and my new partner (who is GREAT).

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#475

Post by toss1 »

tacheiordache wrote: post #362
toss1 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. The concept in the article shows nothing but ignorance. As far as I know, weed has never produced an actual drug overdose. This is literally something my cat learned by himself as a kitten. He was a stray, raised without a momcat, and very food insecure when he arrived. When we started feeding him full meals, he'd promptly eat as much as he could and about 10 minutes later barf it all out. He learned to not do t…

> Yup. The concept in the article shows nothing but ignorance. As far as I know, weed has never produced an actual drug overdose. While I agree with you and am a casual user myself, there are some problems that need to be discussed. Underage smoking can stunt brain growth and we'd end up in a dumber society than what we already have. Just talking about it may have some positive effects.

Indeed, discussing things is good, but I generally think it's best to start with a basis of reasonable facts, and not a "this happens when people are foolish" (esp when "foolish" closely resembles eating 10 fast-food hamburgers in one sitting - yeah, you're going to get sick).

And that getting sick from foolish use is pretty irrelevant to the brain growth effects you raise, which are truly far more important.

Why didn't they write about that instead?

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#476

Post by dpbriggs »

dfxm12 wrote: post #193
drost wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm struggling with this right now. Using during the day is still an uncommon occurrence, but it's happening more and more. The real issue I'm having with it is that I'm using pretty much every night. I come from the gym, take a shower, and grab the vape pen and sit on the couch. It just makes me so lazy. I stopped cooking and just eat pizza and ice cream nearly every night. Thankfully my weight hasn't taken a hit. B…

Even if marijuana is 100% responsible for your situation, there's no need to create a moral panic and project it onto others, like the parent poster & NYT article is doing.

What is the purpose of this comment? OP is describing an issue they're having with the drug. I imagine it's not an uncommon story.

That italic "if" reeks of a certain sort of sensitivity.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#477

Post by monktastic1 »

swatcoder wrote: post #418
monktastic1 wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is focusing on whether being content with working at Taco Bell is sufficient in life, but I think the more interesting question is whether they truly are content. That's not for me to answer, but if the South Park quote has any truth (and I think it has more than a little), in 50 years' time, they themselves might not be happy with how things went in retrospect. In that case, it's possible they weren't reall…

> in 50 years' time, they themselves might not be happy with how things went in retrospect There are moments in later life where everyone feels that way. Statistically, some paths might be show up in studies as more reliable in terms of late life contentment, but on an individual level, we all end up noticing that we left a lot of doors unopened, and can find ourselves stuck wishing we made different choices or had d…

> There’s no point speculating whether the chill dude at the Taco Bell is doing it right.

I agree, but I think there is value in speculating whether the contentment we feel on weed is really just distraction from discontent. This applies to far more than just weed, of course, but my own experience is that weed is particularly tricky in this regard.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#478

Post by seadan83 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #263
mesofile wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, 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 creat…

Can confirm. Two of my kids use THC pretty regularly and they seem content with a life that is paying the bills but not really leading anywhere. The third does not (AFAIK) and is on a much higher trajectory. All had pretty much the same upbringing, rules, experiences, and discipline. I've never used it, so don't have personal experience.

Correlation implies causation here? That is one place where and why this is all so tricky..

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#480

Post by yeahNo88 »

lacker wrote: post #57

The real danger with cannabis is not that it'll make you sick or have some nasty side effect like this article describes. The danger is simply that you will like it, you'll end up using it every day, all different times of the day, and it won't really hurt your health as much as it will make you live your life in a somewhat dopey, detached, less-intelligent way. As time goes on it won't feel "fun" it'll just feel "no…

Huh as a daily smoker who has held titles like “head of infosec” and currently am self employed (self motivated) as a freelancer, I can confidently say this is BS

It’s like anything else; confusing and obtuse then you learn to live with it

No one learns to code before writing bad code. Some of my best and simplest ideas came to me while high af simply because other routine daily thoughts were out of the way

Kindly stop peddling tropes from a place of ignorance and actually figure it out subjectively for yourself. Other peoples tolerances are not the same as yours. Like everything else it’s gradients, ranges, and distributions

Edit: my only non-typical stoner trope is I did not smoke until I was 27. I had life experience behind me. A non-trivial detail. I am 43 now

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