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Poll: Do you use marijuana

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Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#91
I have a chronic pain condition (fibromyalgia) and a lot of sleep issues. I've tried it a few times, a couple times socially with friends and a few times as attempt at pain relief but it is decidedly NOT for me.

It actually makes my pain worse overall, as a lot of my daily pain management is very mental. Sure, immediately after use, my pain lessens, but I feel too foggy and 'not there' to take advantage of being temporarily pain-free, and as it wears off, my pain increases faster than my brain's ability to wall it off and I wind up worse off than I was before I took it.

Fibromyalgia already comes with 'brain fog', and while high I start to lose the ability to tell the difference between being awake and being asleep and dreaming. It's very disconcerting to feel like you're waking up every five seconds. I definitely do not feel more creative, and there is no way I could code in that state. I just feel lost.

It would probably help my insomnia if I just used it and went straight to bed, but it's too much of a pain/risk to acquire for it to be worth it. And I detest the smell.

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#92
post #7
post #3

Original post: No, never tried it. Instead I put my energy into making my life so good I wouldn't feel the need to escape from it. Comment: Funny how everyone hates on my life choices as if I was pushing them on others! You a-hats are all just bullys! I challenge every bully here to a fight. You want to twist my words? Why don't you try to twist my arm too? Chicken? Of course you are! You're just a bully!

Also into judging others a bit, it seems?

bully!

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#93
post #3

Original post: No, never tried it. Instead I put my energy into making my life so good I wouldn't feel the need to escape from it. Comment: Funny how everyone hates on my life choices as if I was pushing them on others! You a-hats are all just bullys! I challenge every bully here to a fight. You want to twist my words? Why don't you try to twist my arm too? Chicken? Of course you are! You're just a bully!

I'll try putting energy into my life next time I have a killer migraine that nothing else will relieve.

bully!

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#94
post #37
post #3

Original post: No, never tried it. Instead I put my energy into making my life so good I wouldn't feel the need to escape from it. Comment: Funny how everyone hates on my life choices as if I was pushing them on others! You a-hats are all just bullys! I challenge every bully here to a fight. You want to twist my words? Why don't you try to twist my arm too? Chicken? Of course you are! You're just a bully!

If you're not trolling - you do know that most people don't smoke as an escape from their lives, but for whole other reasons, right? Personally I don't like it in recent years, but I used to years ago, and it was certainly not as an escape from anything.

[deleted]

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#95
post #3

Original post: No, never tried it. Instead I put my energy into making my life so good I wouldn't feel the need to escape from it. Comment: Funny how everyone hates on my life choices as if I was pushing them on others! You a-hats are all just bullys! I challenge every bully here to a fight. You want to twist my words? Why don't you try to twist my arm too? Chicken? Of course you are! You're just a bully!

I hope you've never had coffee. Or taken asprin. Or spun around in a swivel chair.

bully!

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#96
I've had trouble falling asleep every night for as long as I can remember, and marijuana is the only thing I've tried that has worked consistently for me. So I smoke every night; frequently at higher-than-therapeutic doses. The only detrimental effect I've experienced over the past 8 years of smoking has been a mild psychological dependence, which in my case can easily be mitigated with a few months' detox when necessary. I don't find that it interferes with my ability to work or pursue my interests outside of work, but that is definitely a concern worth keeping in mind if you smoke regularly. I know several very creative, productive people who really haven't been able to accomplish anything interesting since they started getting high every day. Ultimately, I think that mileage varies from one person to the next, and while I am an enthusiastic smoker myself, I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't completely familiar with the risks they'd be taking.

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#97
post #20

Curious if any developers here would advocate it as an enhancement to creativity or other ability that relates to their work...

The hyperfocus I experience while mildly stoned leads to some incredible breakthroughs, and many happy hours of progress. I find it allows me to keep a much larger amount of state in my mind at any given time, and makes my state memory more resilient to distractions like Facebook notifications and emails. It also dramatically improves my patience (a quality I normally lack), so I can hack away at a difficult problem for hours at a time.

Many of my favorite personal projects come from (or at least start during) a marijuana session.

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#98
Living in a country where this stuff is practically legal (although not really is): yes, did smoke it like once a week during uni. Not that much any more, more like once or twice a year. Can't imagine developing "on it" though :s

I guess having it available in ample (i.e. Cheap) takes the excitement/suspense/mystery away...

Re: Poll: Do you use marijuana

#99
post #20

Curious if any developers here would advocate it as an enhancement to creativity or other ability that relates to their work...

I don't see it as an enhancement but rather a tradeoff. It's harder to focus on specific ideas when stoned but easier to build relations between ideas, both are equally important. I also find I easily diverge in depth on every concern of the problem at hand, which may or may not be useful depending on the time frame.

Being stoned is a state of mind halfway between dreaming where you subconsciously imagine everything and being awake where you consciously see everything. If you play music you already know this as being in "the zone". Over time you get a feel for this state of mind and can easily get back there without smoking.

I suspect people who feel anxious when high are those trying to control everything as if they were fully awake. The big paradigm shift comes when you learn to give up control of your own thoughts to your subconscious. Just like the musicians who try to control everything about how they play and end up thinking about what others might think instead of imagining the sounds they should be playing in the first place.

Weed can most definitely help with your work by changing your perspective over it and thus exposing new relations between ideas. But in doing so you will also get a new perspective on yourself. This in turn expose the mental barriers currently blocking your creativity and there lies the paradigm shift. Being creative is something we all do from birth but lose as we grow up depending on our life experiences. Being high is a ticket for introspection where you revisit what caused the barriers to exist in the first place, accept it and then move on to be freely creative.

You might also want to check out Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner. He talks in depth about the psychology of our own mental barriers and how to overcome them.

If you think of weed as a magic thought enhancer, it's not. It's a magic introspection device and the results of that introspection is enhanced creativity.

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