Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review • Hacker News Board

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#181

Post by otherme123 » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:16 AM UTC

mellavora wrote: post #139

agumonkey wrote: post #132

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.

Well, we are social creatures. Even the most introverted of us (finger points at self). So no surprise that being around parties/other people has a positive effect on moral. The health benefits of the social contact almost certainly outweigh the negative health impacts of a tiny amount of alcohol.

A lot of drugs make you more social, but sadly they are all outlawed except alcohol. MDMA was used for years to lubricate psicotherapy sessions, until the FDA found out that some people was having "too much fun", banned the thing, and denied it has any possible positive effect. Only two years ago it seems that it is going to be reseached again.

Thomas Szasz has some books about drug history and the paths that turns a substance from legal to illegal. It only takes a high level guy to find the usage, made up some "facts", and illegalize it. Sadly, society is quick to buy those lies. E.g. someone claimed that some guys on LSD stared the sun for too long and got blind. It was a hoax, but so many media repeated the story that it got ingrained in the society that LSD is highly dangerous.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#182

Post by kumarvvr » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:16 AM UTC

serial_dev wrote: post #76

kumarvvr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another view, is that, except for the extremely strong willed, getting used to a serene state of mind is addicting and kind of counter productive. Perhaps, addictive is not the right word. But it seems to me (purely from a human nature perspective) its similar to obesity (Eating food is not "addictive", but there is a definite element of "craving" and inability to overcome that craving). All in all, such substances a…

> All in all, such substances are not natural... But they are natural, aren't they? No less natural than the watermelon we are all eating (it might be cultivated), and I don't see anyone wanting to criminalize eating watermelon. Weed, tobacco, alcohol, coca leaves, poppy, they are all natural. Also, even if it's natural, it has nothing to do with its dangerousness, so I don't follow your argument. With regards to leg…

By natural, I meant, natural for regular human consumption. Not as in natural from mother earth.

Alcohol and tobacco are extremely dangerous and detrimental to any society.

What blows my mind is young teens, barely out of education, harping and celebrating the ability to drink. To me, that's insane. Why does a young person need to drink alcohol? When studies after studies have show how it affects human life in general. From health issue to societal problems to relationship issues.

In my view, alcohol should be shunned and should never be glorified.

When you bombard a child with images, videos, movies and acts of drinking day in and day out, you normalize it. And that is terrible.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#183

Post by misja111 » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:16 AM UTC

iRobbery wrote: post #160

misja111 wrote: post #147

I can confirm, I have known some people who smoked Cannabis basically the whole day long for several years. They lost certain cognitive abilities, e.g. they were not really able to do calculations in their head anymore. They also got severe problems with their biorhythm by the way.

I stopped cold turkey smoking weed daily after 25 years, i can tell you from personal experience this does not apply to everybody. It also seems rather strange to take one property of their lives and use it to explain their in your eyes loss of abilities. Not doing something for a long time also has this effect, so perhaps they for many years didnt need to do calculations in their head, or use their high school frenc…

Ok, let me give you some more details. The first guy I knew was a friend when I was studying. He studied Electrotechnical engineering at university level, a highly mathematical study and when he started he was quite good with it. However at the same time when he started the study he also started using Cannabis a lot more, up to the point that he was smoking all day long. I used to play games with him like poker and backgammon, both games where you can use both your intuition and your rational brain. Over time he basically gave up trying to calculate or reason things, he just relied on his intuition, which didn't improve his game. At the same time his study results started to crash as well. This all didn't happen at once, it took several years.

The second guy I knew was a guy I met when I was playing backgammon in a café. I tried to explain him some things about the game that involved some very basic probability calculations but he stopped me and told that he had been smoking weed for 20 years and had lost capability to do calculations in his head.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#184

Post by erulabs » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:17 AM UTC

kunai wrote: post #143

erulabs wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways you're not wrong, but this was the mentality of East Germany as well. Why waste time with Jazz and jeans? Much more efficient to be reading didactics or working in a factory. Maybe China is the best anyone has ever been at social engineering and maybe this time they'll get it just right. I'm not so sure.

> Why waste time with Jazz and jeans? Much more efficient to be reading didactics or working in a factory. Considering the level of social infrastructure in the former DDR exceeded that in the BRD at the time of reunification, they might have had a point there. More public hospitals, more research facilities, better public transportation, more affordable housing. Sure, none of it had the flashy elements of Western ca…

Oh absolutely and I hope my tone captured that it’s not clear if the bets work out. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Vienna spending all its economic output on art and science sure didn’t help against a country who spent its entire output on tanks.

The Soviet space program comes to mind as well - the state can do plenty!

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#185

Post by mrleiter » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:18 AM UTC

From my short 1 month experiene working in a clinical ward: if young people got brought in due to a psychosis, in the case that it was drug induced, at least 50% were long term cannabis users (followed by alcohol abuse, then some psychoactive drugs, and heroin/crack).

Cannabis definitely is not the vanilla drug so many people make it out to be.

*EDIT: I get the selection bias now, sorry.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#186

Post by andreyk » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #63

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #59

I used to wish to be a professional drummer. When I was 14 I attended a drum camp for a week to meet and learn from some of the world’s best drummers, along with other children and adults from around the UK with similar ambitions. I became friends with one kid who was exceptionally talented as a musician, but also had a chronic marijuana habit. He was a better drummer than me at the time, but the drum camp was held e…

I'm not sure how a suicidal heroin junkie fucking up their life with hard drugs is relevant in a thread about cannabis. The whole "gateway drug" nonsense was debunked decades ago.

yup. It's an interesting story, but the article is about generalizable impacts of cannabis, and this person in the story is certainly not an example of that. Granted, it was acknowledged that this was an extreme case.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#187

Post by FrozenSynapse » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:19 AM UTC

jabbany wrote: post #162

gumby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exercise and a healthy diet. I typed this in jest but instead of closing the tab I realize that yes, this is a good alternative, perhaps the best, if you can do it . Not everyone can, and typically it’s not their fault if they can’t.

I'd say it's really a time tradeoff. In my experience, the main reason to not eat healthy or exercise is because doing those things takes time, easily a LOT of time (e.g. cooking and cleanup easily account for 2-3 extra hrs/day and the numbers are similar for exercise [both active (dedicating time to it) and passive (walking around everywhere)]). In the same vein, use of psychoactive substances is probably also a tra…

> In my experience, the main reason to not eat healthy or exercise is because doing those things takes time, easily a LOT of time

Instead they waste the time that would've made them healthier and happier on bullshit.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#188

Post by kumarvvr » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

revax wrote: post #155

rex_lupi wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not "natural" in the sense that humans don't consume ethyl alcohol to survive, in fact it is often quite damaging to biological systems. Apart from some microbes I'm not aware of any other organisms that use alcohol as their energy source. Alcohol/thc/caffeine/nicotine (you name it) do not fall in the "natural" diet of humans. Most psychoactive substances are metabolites which plants/fungi store in them to d…

>Alcohol/thc/caffeine/nicotine (you name it) do not fall in the "natural" diet of humans. Well Sapiens likely consumed naturally fermented fruits even 200.000 years ago, after all we evolved to produce certain enzymes to digest ethanol. Alcohol have shaped human cultures for thousand years, hardly unnatural. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/alcohol-...

Your argument is absurd. Sure, some caveman consumed alcohol that happened to occur naturally a gazillion years ago. So? You think huge factories producing alcohol and all the issues associated with it are justified?

By what you say, if whole of humanity consumed only naturally fermented fruit, I would half-heartedly agree.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#189

Post by geocrasher » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #72

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #4

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.

"I drive better when I've had a few" is something I have actually heard from people in my past. Far, far past. And they think that because they no longer have that voice in their head that tells them they're doing something stupid.

"I code better when I'm high" is something that can only be judged by those around you. If somebody else judges your code to be better, fine. But your self assessment is fundamentally flawed.

Re: Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review

#190

Post by yreg » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 8:20 AM UTC

plasticchris wrote: post #166

unobatbayar wrote: post #157

Random thought: If there is a plant that can impair cognitive function, there must be a plant that can improve it.

Coffee?

Caffeine has less of an effect on you the longer you consume it. With cannabis it would seem that this particular effect gets stronger.