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More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

theatlantic.com

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Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#231

Post by superbaconman »

nate_robo wrote: post #69
magic_beans wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any daily pot-smoker will tell you that their short-term memory declines after a few weeks of daily/hourly use. It's extremely well known, though perhaps not well documented.

Right, I acknowledge that in my previous comment. I was more referring to the mental sharpness or cognitive ability. I was curious if there was a noticeable difference in critical thinking/problem solving for users while they are not under the effects of the drug itself

Speaking for myself. If smoking regularly yes, there's a decline, even 12 hours after the high has gone. The more I spread things out however, the greater the benefits seem to be, both during and after. Every couple of weeks would likely be most ideal.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#232

Post by Herodotus38 »

iak8god wrote: post #200
Herodotus38 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. When I read articles like this: https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/time/5368243/coro... I feel like we are repeating similar mistakes we made with the tobacco industry. That company will be doing everything it can to try and increase cannabis use to make more money. Just like the alcohol and tobacco companies.

> I feel like we are repeating similar mistakes we made with the tobacco industry. Pot is so much less addictive and damaging to health than tobacco and alcohol, that it makes perfect sense to have it legal and as readily available as those things.

I think that based on the evidence we have you are right about the relative risks. However I 1) think that if we had a do-over, we should outlaw tobacco but keep nicotine legal and 2), based on anecdotal experience I think we will end up finding in 30-40 years the true health/mental health outcomes of cannabis since it will be more easily studied 3) my big worry is less the legalization and more of the perverse incentives companies will have to promote its use through industry funded health studies, advertisements, etc...

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#233

Post by AlwaysRock »

I think a lot of people get too heavy into cannabis when they first start. I did. It took me a while of over indulging to look at my life and realize that there are lot's of things I wanted to be doing and accomplishing that I wasnt because I was spending too much time high on my sofa watching TV. I'm sure there are people who can be productive on weed but I am certainly not one of them.

I still use cannabis but I treat it like alcohol and only indulge once or twice a week. It's really helped a lot with my motivation and getting rid of the, "mental fog" that I felt.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#234

Post by throwaway413 »

PhoenixReborn wrote: post #217
throwaway413 wrote: post #215

Surprised I haven't seen this yet, so I'll leave my experience. Daily (ab)user for ~4 years. No (observed) adverse mental, social effects. Yesterday was 1 month clean, and I quit for mainly 1 reason: my mucus buildup was becoming near unbearable. I'd wake up every single morning and pretty much vomit straight mucus first thing after getting out of bed. When I would smoke, it would clear the mucus right out (by blowin…

I concur, and had almost this exact same problem. I'd be congested all the time and it caused me a lot of problems. Out of curiosity, have you ever tried edibles instead of smoking? That solved my mucus issue almost instantly.

Definitely, I figure the mucus issue had less to do with cannabis itself and more to do with smoking/inhaling/etc and the throat lining itself in a defensive response to the heat.

My personal issue w/ edibles is that I was unable to control dosage, timing, level of my high as well as w/ smoking in my experience. To get to a level of satisfactory stoned, I would have to ingest 75-100mg of THC at one time, but then that is lasting several hours, coming in waves, etc.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#235

Post by dgzl »

froogie wrote: post #179
dgzl wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said in another post, I smoke about everyday, but I don't have any problem pursuing my goals, producing creative works, or excelling in my career. The fine line you're talking about does exist, but it doesn't have anything to do with the frequency of usage. Responsibility can be achieved with or without pot.

Edit: If this sounds like a off-place rant, it was not my intent. :) If you haven't smoked from dawn till dusk day in day out, you can't really say people can achieve responsibility with it. What I am saying is not to disagree, but to state that if you're a person who ends up smoking 12-16 times a day, there isn't much willpower left to handle anything but immediate responsibilities. You may not use much, and you may…

Your message did seem off-putting at first, but I appreciate the clarification.

> If you haven't smoked from dawn till dusk day in day out

There have been several times in my life where this was exactly my behavior, and truthfully, they weren't my best times. In fact I'm not at all proposing that endless and mindless medication, or even limited and conscious medication doesn't have adverse side-effects. That would be a foolish thing to assert.

But then again, I think the point you're trying to address is somewhat absurd. If you take anything (booze, food, sun exposure) to the extreme level of "dusk till Dawn, day in day out", you'll be facing some serious changes to your life. But I know where you're coming from, and I would generally agree.

There's definitely a moment when you start realizing that you're sobering up (long term quitting), and it feels very much like a fog is lifting, and thinking and emotions become easier to direct. Calling it blissful isn't even much of a stretch, unlike relating it to the effects of psychedelics.

> And slowly but surely it all fades away, if you go back to regular smoking

This however I can't agree with. The bliss of sobering up might be real, but it doesn't even come close to the bliss of jumping back into the rabbit hole (true about any drug). That said, this is why I choose marijuana rather than say cigarettes, or booze, or pills, or junk food. Maybe someday I can learn to cut back and be a casual user, instead of the chronic user I am today.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#236

Post by throwaway0255 »

kaoD wrote: post #114
throwaway0255 wrote: post #77

Overdosing on marijuana was probably the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. Certainly by far the worst experience I've ever had on a recreational drug. People always frame the discussion of drug overdoses around lethality, and on that scale marijuana compares very favorably to every other drug, and advocates tend to end the discussion there. But on the scale of how horrific the experience is as the person…

Dude. What? The worst case I've had to assist was a couple that ate a huge space cake (oblivious to its cannabis content) and, even if they got high by mistake (which is the worst case of bad trip) it was nowhere near close to your experience. Lots of fainting involved, but not much John Malkovich. And it didn't last 12h. How much did you eat/smoke? Maybe you're especially sensitive to cannabis? (Genuinely curious he…

> How much did you eat/smoke? Maybe you're especially sensitive to cannabis? (Genuinely curious here, not trying to discredit your story).

Yeah of course, no worries.

It wasn't with edibles, it was smoking. I was doing a form of inhaling that I've never done before, where I exhale very deeply until my lungs are completely empty, and then do a deep inhale. I repeated that many times.

This was about the third time I smoked, and I was doing that because I hadn't really felt much of an effect the first two times, so I was trying to correct that. I guess I overcompensated.

It was absolutely horrific. One thing I remember is I started having really intense auditory pseudohallucinations that kept repeating themselves over and over again. And I kept compulsively repeating them myself in my head over and over again. And I couldn't make either of those things stop no matter how hard I tried. They weren't words, they were just a bunch of different noises stacked on top of each other, like how playing 10 songs at the same time it just gets very noisy, and you can listen to 1 of the songs but only if you focus on it and ignore the other 9. But I wasn't hearing songs, just stacked noises like a glass breaking or a videogame sound or a car horn or a chair sliding etc.

Ten of those sounds all stacked on top of each other, rhythmically like a beat, while feeling an unwavering compulsion to reproduce the sound with my voice in my own head, over and over again for hours, wanting to stop and sleep the entire time and being completely unable to.

I felt like I was descending into psychosis or becoming schizophrenic like Howard Hughes.

And yeah I do tend to be more sensitive to alcohol/drugs than others. My doctors have said so with prescription doses, and I always feel tipsy halfway through my first drink.

I've used it a little bit since and not had the same problem (though at much lower doses of course). Mostly though I don't do anything, other than maybe one drink if I'm around other people who happen to be drinking.

And yeah I imagine bad trips on psychedelics have much more potential to be horrible. I've never done one though.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#237

Post by psychedelic »

01100011 wrote: post #211
insickness wrote: post #17

In the past I was addicted to pot. I was addicted in the sense that pretty much everything felt better when I was high. I was more relaxed and had less anxiety. Sex was better. Food tasted better. I was more creative. I thought about much deeper things. I spent less time online and in front of screens. The biggest downside for me--and the reason I ended up quitting--was that my sober life just sucked in comparison. I…

I went back after nearly 2 years clean. I don't recommend it. Once again I'm lacking in mental energy. I'm all for MJ if you need it, but I think a lot of us are fooling ourselves into thinking it's benign. Sure, it's better than alcohol, but I don't think that's a useful benchmark. Sobriety can be boring, but until someone invents a better drug I think it's my only option until I retire.

As someone who has never smoked, I feel like this is the argument I always had with my friends who all have/do. Ultimately, their argument for smoking basically boiled down to the lack of scientific evidence that there are lasting consequences and that it was nowhere near as bad as alcohol. My argument was that there was a lack in scientific evidence, and that comparing the utility to alcohol was stupid.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#238

Post by AngryData »

dv_dt wrote: post #136
andbberger wrote: post #34

Alternative headline: citizens of deeply broken society turn to least harmful drug available to them to dull the pain of their shitty lives.

Yup, this article should put the use into context of other legal and abused drugs like alcohol and opoids etc, as well as illegal drugs. I would bet that substance abuse is increasing across the board in the US due to the stagsperity of our current economics.

It is no coincidence that all the old decayed manufacturing and mining towns are chock full of opioid and meth addicts.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#239

Post by ibrault »

loblollyboy wrote: post #218
justaj wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is exactly why I quit. I found myself not comprehending technical conversations as well as I used to while sober. This has not been my experience at all. In fact, total opposite entirely. If I smoke up I simply can not absorb any new technical information that is above my current knowledge and skill level. I am however more creative in coming up with solutions or new ideas with the information that I already m…

You’re saying the same thing

It's confusing wording but I think the person he was responding to was saying that he had a harder time comprehending while sober, whereas he has a harder time comprehending while high.

Re: More Americans report near-constant cannabis use

#240

Post by minism »

lowhangingnuts wrote: post #123
minism wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never stop being fascinated by how radically different the experiences of cannabis users are. The idea of weed reducing anxiety and making you feel "fine doing nothing" are the polar opposites of how it makes me feel. Overall it sounds like your experiences were much more positive than mine, though.

> I'll never stop being fascinated by how radically different the experiences of cannabis users are Nothing to be fascinated about. The experience is different primarily from the type of strain they have inhaled or ingested. Sativa only strain - High, euphoria, very social Indica only strain - Sleepy, lethargic, somewhat anti-social Sativa dominant Sativa-Indica hybrid - Not so high, still little euphoric, smooth com…

Yeah, different strains is the most common explanation i've heard. But in my own self experimentation I notice relatively little difference between Sativa and Indica.
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