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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

#61

Post by userbinator »

ghfhghg wrote: post #51
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.

I know a few smokers (tobacco only) who lived into their 90s, and some of them were exposed to much worse in their daily lives when they were young (leaded gasoline, solvents, etc.), but I suspect those may be genetic outliers.

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

#63

Post by readthenotes1 »

bogwog wrote: post #40
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 didn't review the study (wouldn't even know how to do that), but I did read the article and it doesn't say anything about permanent effects. In fact, the participants were aged 22-36, so definitely past high school age. The title makes it sound like smoking weed causes permanent brain damage, but I don't think that's what they found at all > The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was…

They did find trouble with long-term heavy use

"The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task."

They theorized that abstention may help long term users, but that wasn't in write-up

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by nradov »

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 could never understand why parents would allow able-bodied adult children to live with them (regardless of marijuana use or whatever). It's not doing them any favors. Some people need a little tough love to get launched in life. Drag them down to the Army recruiting office or something.

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

#66

Post by tombert »

I've never done any drugs outside of alcohol, and I didn't do that until I was 21 and I never really drank that much even when I did.

I never smoked weed as a teenager because I had heard horror stories of people spiking illegal drugs with really horrible stuff. I have no idea if those stories were true, mostly likely they were exaggerated by law enforcement, but it worked to make me too much of a coward to try it.

Because I never smoked weed, I've grown a borderline-irrational hatred of it. It always felt like when my friends in high school started getting into weed, they would become insufferable pseudo-intellectuals who thought they were very deep because they watched a few Carl Sagan or Alan Watts videos. I hated how stupid it made my friends and I hated how it seemed to ruin their ability to remember things.

It's not clear how much of this is because of the weed, or just the fact that teenage boys are often just insufferable, by the way I remember it (which doesn't mean it's accurate) is that weed made all my friends in high school into pretentious morons.

I'm kind of glad that I never got into it now. I'm insufferable and pretentious enough as it is, I don't need chemicals to help with that.

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

#67

Post by protocolture »

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?

I have weeder friends in all walks of life. I know one guys a PHD now.

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

#68

Post by to11mtm »

guywithahat wrote: post #7
roughly wrote: post #4

One aspect I’m curious about, especially given the younger cohort, is the causal directionality here - especially when I was younger, I knew a lot of people who were self-medicating with cannabis for things like anxiety and ADHD, which also have effects on working memory and executive function. I’ve known enough heavy users long enough that I do believe there’s long term cognitive effects (whether directly or indirec…

> self-medicating I know this doesn’t add to the conversation but I hate that term, they should just say they’re addicted to weed. 95% of the time the anxiety is either normal or a result of chronic weed use (ie withdrawal)

My understanding is that THC is primarily indirectly psychologically addictive. I should also add the irony that at least according to some, weed was pushed for bannage at least in part because it was something migrant farmers would use to help get through the simple monotonous work in their day [0].

To that extent it's not that different from the folks I worked with in many industries that had notable yet not directly debilitating habits in the gacha/lootbox, nicotine in one form or another, gambling, adult entertainers, expensive weekend trips, or whatever else happened to hit their dopamine receptors the right way due to past stimuli.

The bigger question is this; I've had colleagues that within a week of stopping work at a toxic place, stop drunk-dialing me at 2AM. Why aren't we asking that?

What are we not asking about cross-correlation? How many people go to darker paths to get their kicks? [1]

[0] - And maybe that's apocrypha, OTOH every productive JVM dev I've met seems ok with the devil's lettuce....

[1] - Wait NVM they become management

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

#69

Post by whalesalad »

tombert wrote: post #66

I've never done any drugs outside of alcohol, and I didn't do that until I was 21 and I never really drank that much even when I did. I never smoked weed as a teenager because I had heard horror stories of people spiking illegal drugs with really horrible stuff. I have no idea if those stories were true, mostly likely they were exaggerated by law enforcement, but it worked to make me too much of a coward to try it. B…

sounds like it would benefit you greatly tbh

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

#70

Post by readthenotes1 »

bawolff wrote: post #44
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…

Maybe, but i also think that the type of people who smoke all day as teenagers probably also have factors that will hurt them later in life unrelated to the smoking. Its good to have actual data.

The age-old complaint about smoking weed was that it halted people's maturation -- they did not face those factors that will continue to hurt them.

Or "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs"

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