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Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

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Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#51

Post by ghfhghg »

bearjaws wrote: post #22

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25. All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated The ones who started the youngest are in rough shape mentally. Every single one of my friends who still lives with their parents smokes multiple times daily. Out of all of them, only one is suc…

Some of the smartest programmers I know smoke marijuana quite regularly. I don't know if they all smoked at an earlier age but I know that 2 of them did.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#52

Post by Clubber »

intrasight wrote: post #42

"on average"? "in mice"? My heavily pot-smoking friends are among the most brilliant, successful people that I know. They started in their teens. But I'm 60 and so are they. Different weed? Correlation with other things that differ today?

Same. All my good college buddies that smoked weed are successful with families and kids. They all started young. I remember when weed switched to more potent variety in the 90s, you just have to smoke less to get the same effect, like beer vs wine vs liquor.

Are we going back into a reefer madness phase again? Please say no.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#53

Post by op00to »

throwaway314155 wrote: post #38
bearjaws wrote: post #22

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25. All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated The ones who started the youngest are in rough shape mentally. Every single one of my friends who still lives with their parents smokes multiple times daily. Out of all of them, only one is suc…

[flagged]

We don’t do personal attacks here, please.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#54

Post by nicce »

claiir wrote: post #30

"Study [..] found that the drug can reduce brain function" Causal language in news on correlational (case-control) studies should be a crime. This is a brazen misrepresentation of the results. The direction of the causal arrow (cannabis -> dumb vs dumb -> cannabis)--or if there even is a causal arrow (other factor(s) -> cannabis+dumb)--is purely editorialization and born of a severe lack of journalistic integrity.

I would be also careful on mixing the word dumb -> lower brain activity. The study focuses on brain activity. We cannot say for sure either if the lower brain activity results into dumber life choices. Brain activity in those areas == intelligence???

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#55

Post by readthenotes1 »

bsder wrote: post #31
legitster wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease. In hindsight it seems so obvious! But building evidence for even obvious conclusions can be surprisingly hard.

> It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease. It was obvious even back then. The difference was that the crap you breathed in from air pollution as well as the garbage you were breathing in from working the mills and mines was likely to kill you before the bad effects of smoking kicked in. Once we had the EPA and got rid of the other garbage, suddenly smokin…

The EPA came years after the dangers of cigarette smoking were known, and months after the ban on cigarette ads was made in the USA.

Big Tobacco was really good at pushing/buying counter narratives (including but not limited to "think of all the poor tobacco farmers").

Why is marijuana considered so wonderful? Seems more like a grass roots movement ignoring the casualties along the way.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/hi...

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#56

Post by jMyles »

onemoresoop wrote: post #47
codr7 wrote: post #3

Show me a cannabis user without reduced working memory; it's a feature, not a bug.

Why is it a feature and not a bug?

Personally, I like it because it reduces the volume, both spacially and temporally, of the thoughts in my immediate working memory so that I can more clearly identify the pipeline of activity that I actually want to do (whether it's work or self-care).

I think that this is the reason that people who are later diagnosed with ADHD so often use cannabis to "self-medicate".

But it achieves this effect in a way that is superior to stimulants (don't get me wrong, I also adore coffee) in two clear ways: 1) it does not change the balance of imaginative vs. practical thinking (whereas stimulants tend to shift thinking toward the practical), and 2) it provides a much more comfortable and integrative afterglow, rather than a stimulant crash.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#57

Post by EdwardDiego »

bearjaws wrote: post #22

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25. All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated The ones who started the youngest are in rough shape mentally. Every single one of my friends who still lives with their parents smokes multiple times daily. Out of all of them, only one is suc…

My anecdote can beat up yours :D

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#58

Post by brailsafe »

racked wrote: post #28

It's very true. Having been a heavy user for 4 years in my late teens, I do notice that my memory isn't what it used to be. I'm having to write things down all the time, including people's names and stats.

Well, you know one thing was true and another is also true, but the same thing happened to me long before I started doing much with weed. In my late teens I had a few subjects absolutely locked into memory, and then in my early to mid twenties I struggled to remember names until I'd met them 3 times.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#59

Post by Gigachad »

amazingamazing wrote: post #16

Turns out the recreational drugs were never good for you. Is there a single recreational popular >100M user drug that’s good for most? Maybe coffee? It’s a shame there are so many with reduced brain function and IQ. Next thing will be shocking studies showing regular shroom usage is bad too, lol. It is a shame we are in a post truth society. People burying their heads in the sand.

>Maybe coffee?

Creatine as well. But yeah, pretty much all the rest of them are bad for you.

Re: Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

#60

Post by ldjkfkdsjnv »

bearjaws wrote: post #22

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25. All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated The ones who started the youngest are in rough shape mentally. Every single one of my friends who still lives with their parents smokes multiple times daily. Out of all of them, only one is suc…

I smoked a lot as a teenager and it had bad long term effects. There is no doubt. Most friends I had, who were upper middle class, did not make it through college.
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