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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

#91

Post by brailsafe »

I'm inclined to believe that there is fairly likely to be long-term negative health effects from cannabis use, but that the very obvious correlation many people in this thread can probably identify with their friends in highschool is just that, a correlation, for some reason or series of reasons.

My friends who really got into weed at that time were absolutely addicted to it, and some of them I do believe let it affect their reasoning ability, but it's hard to know what they'd have been like had they not been smoking their paychecks away. I regarded them as stupid at the time, but there were few instances where they weren't stoned, and a stoned person is often dumb as hell. In retrospect, one of them was (highly) likely schizophrenic but also intelligent, and would make shatter with his older brother who was definitely a deadbeat at the time, but they both came from the same conflict-laden upbringing, while another was clearly intellectually capable but raised to be emotionally volatile, and the rest were mostly just having fun and quit shortly after.

I'm thankful I remained friends with them but didn't get heavily into it at that time, but it's much more difficult for me to frame the weed use as a causal factor in anything besides a sort of dampening of their hypothetical willingness to seek a better existence through other means. As South Park put it, weed lets you feel ok about doing nothing, and that's dangerous in aggregate.

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

#92

Post by Guthur »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #63
bogwog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also this is not necessarily a universally bad thing.

For example if I need to work through something from first principles as opposed to instant recall I may develop a more novel understanding.

Anecdotally I have found a number of individuals that are great a remembering and therefore excel in some academic situations are the quite intellectual rigid and unable to think beyond what they are told.

But as a disclaimer I'm not advocating marijuana use as it can have detrimental affects on motivation for example.

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

#93

Post by uejfiweun »

Interesting how many comments here say that a big issue with pot is that it makes you "unmotivated". I suppose this is a problem for people who are in tough spots in life and are using pot as a form of escapism. But besides this, what exactly do we need to be motivated for? Grinding away harder at a corporate job? At a certain level "motivation" can be counterproductive and you might be better off slowing down and appreciating your life as it exists now - something that weed can help with in my experience.

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

#94

Post by Gigachad »

kazinator wrote: post #36
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…

> pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated So, like, stoners?

This has been a stereotype for forever. Would be more surprising if they found weed usage didn't correlate with these things.

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

#95

Post by ziddoap »

iforgot22 wrote: post #90
ziddoap wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of anecdotes in the other direction. Perhaps there are other factors involved. Weed isn't going to give you a leg up in life, but it's not a guarantee that you're going to end up in a dead end job and live with your parents forever either. Painting it as such reminds me of D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E. was right

>In 1998, a grant from the National Institute of Justice to the University of Maryland resulted in a report to the NIJ, which among other statements, concluded that "D.A.R.E. does not work to reduce substance use." [...] The evidence suggested that, by exposing young impressionable children to drugs, the program was, in fact, encouraging and nurturing drug use.

>A ten-year study was completed by Donald R. Lynam and colleagues in 2006 involving one thousand D.A.R.E. graduates in an attempt to measure the effects of the program. After the ten-year period, no measurable effects were noted.

>In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States, David Satcher, placed the D.A.R.E. program in the category of "Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs".

>In March 2007, the D.A.R.E. program was placed on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm in clients in the APS journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science.

It was, at best, ineffective. At worst it was harmful.

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

#96

Post by calimariae »

stanislavb wrote: post #79
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…

"only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them" - I'd say that's luck and not success :)

The success part is holding them for 10 years through all the ups and downs

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

#97

Post by JohnMakin »

frogpelt wrote: post #37
JohnMakin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dang what about other people outside your sample size that did smoke under 18 and then became successful? what was your control group also?

If you’re looking controlled study results you could refer to the post. If you want to provide your own anecdotal evidence to refute the parent comment, fire away.

My own anecdotal evidence is myself and many of my peers smoked plenty well under 18 and many of us became successful or reasonably so. the whole moral panic over cannabis use has been overwrought and fraught with bad science. now, would I want my child to use before they were 25? absolutely not. is it a catastrophe if they did? also no.

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

#98

Post by ghfhghg »

userbinator wrote: post #61
ghfhghg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely. Conversely I know someone who died young of lung cancer but never smoked.

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

#99

Post by iforgot22 »

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 knew some top students in college who started smoking weed then and continued. They're still programmers or scientists now, which isn't surprising given their education and talent, but something's wrong every time I talk to them. They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago.

Edit: Forgot to specify, they're in their late 20s now.

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

#100

Post by dgacmu »

Guthur wrote: post #92
readthenotes1 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Also this is not necessarily a universally bad thing. For example if I need to work through something from first principles as opposed to instant recall I may develop a more novel understanding. Anecdotally I have found a number of individuals that are great a remembering and therefore excel in some academic situations are the quite intellectual rigid and unable to think beyond what they are told. But as a disclaimer…

You are misunderstanding the meaning of working memory. Working memory is very short-term and small; it's what you use when you read the second half of an equation and still remember what the first half said.

A reduction in working memory is a direct reduction in cognitive capability for some/many tasks.

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