When I was in my early 20s I would probably say I had a dependence on cannabis. Key for me in transitioning away from that was lower THC % products. It's was as if I wanted to enjoy a single beer after work but the only thing available was everclear. Most vape pens are billed as 85%+ THC. Now, I still enjoy cannabis, but I have a single puff of a vape pen that is around 3% THC (the rest is usually CBD) before bed. Or I take an edible that is 1.5mg THC (very low, edibles are usually sold at 5-10mg doses). It's a much different relationship. I don't feel like my mind is racing out of control, I don't build up a massive tolerance. I sleep fine without it. It's startling to think that a single puff of a 90% pen is literally 30x as much THC.
However, these products are disappointingly few and far between. When I walk into a CA dispensary, I actually have to hunt around for them, if they're even available. When I ask, staff members wonder if I'm buying it for my grandmother! It would be great to see the industry refocus on products that are designed to be consumed in moderation.
>It would be great to see the industry refocus on products that are designed to be consumed in moderation.
I feel that the legal weed industry is speedrunning the past decade of craft brewing. Craft beer focused on growing the scene while focusing on higher and higher ABV beers, but now is transitioning back towards beers that are a bit more sessionable and don’t get you blasted after 2 beers. Wouldn’t be surprised to see the weed industry start focusing on sessionable items sooner rather than later.
Underlying assumption is that moderation is the issue, however it's addiction for those that can't quit. In layman's terms, the brain's chemistry has been altered permanently. This can happen for some even after the first use THC, opioids, alcohol and you name it.
Obviously the progression doesn't happen as fast for some. However, the key being they can't quit in moderation or in excess. Some can abstain for 3 months, some for six, thinking they don't have a problem but then find themselves using even a little. There's a self-rationalization as well as self-centeredness that's part of the disease process of addiction. I would say it's not only a disease process but it is a huge factor. Cross addiction substituting one substance for another is also part of that self-rationalization.
I hear this claim often that your brain chemistry changes from substance use and it makes sense when you look at addicts. But with other things relating to addiction, I found claims to be hyperbole. An example is addiction is a disease no different than cancer. We don't want to tell addicts to just cut it out. But is it true? Are there scans of people before and after a while of chronic substance abuse that shows brain differences? Can we scan someone's brain and tell that they're addicts? Honest question, I don't know
I think a nuance that's lost is the difference in addiction between a pharmacological substance vs a behavior. "Brain scans" and their equivalents will do a much better job revealing the former than the latter. That doesn't make behavioral addictions any less damaging from a holistic view of the patient's health (i.e. their overall quality of life).
To me, I feel as though that behavioral addiction is completely disregarded by the medical community. If someone is lighting up every night / having a drink and want to stop, they need an alternative way of closing out the day. Otherwise of course it'll be difficult.
Well what's behavior and what's addiction? Let's go down a thought exercise. Imagine yourself in the following scenarios:
1. Imagine you're going to Walmart. You see a friend. "You say hi and raise your hand to draw attention" However, they walk right past you without even acknowledging your presence.
What is your first thought? Maybe "Jerk!", "he's busy?".
You don't have control over that first thought, but you do have control over that second thought and your actions thereafter. Addiction messes with your first thoughts and attention. Next scenario
2. A wife and a husband are driving down the road. The wife notices Kohl's is having a 50% off and the husband notices that Andy's liquor store has two six pack for the price of one.
In this case, due to addiction, the husband noticed that Andy's liquor store and that's a craving. His awareness was drawn to that sign with a subconscious cue influenced by addiction.
Therefore, someone who wishes to maintain sobriety has to be very self-aware of their thoughts and actions. They have to guard themselves from triggers, situations, people and then manage those other aspects they can't control.
It's important to acknowledge that addiction is a disease as framed in the above scenarios. However, it does require a conscience behavioral change maintaining a certain level of awareness of self to sustain sobriety.
It isn't helpful for people to view themselves as simply a character flaw when going through addiction because their brain is scarred. It doesn't mean they can't make poor choices and not choose to maintain to pursue sobriety. Their behavior matters and their disease matters.
I am not sure about other drugs, but in the case of alcohol the rewiring is certainly not hyperbolic and not even limited to the brain. Humans have a special physiological relationship to alcohol and the human body will literally rewire both its neurological and digestive system to accommodate the increasing intake of long term alcoholics. It takes months to years for these changes to be undone, if they can be undone at all.
You're talking about withdrawal which is semi-related to an underlying diagnosis of addiction. That is to say someone can go through quitting a substance without withdrawals symptoms yet still have an addiction.
Cannabis has an inverse relationship between potency and health as alcohol. Drinking a dozen beers is (marginally) less dangerous than a dozen shots, because it takes longer to process and alcohol is a toxin. THC isn't a toxin. The smaller amount you inhale, of smoke or vapor, the better. I'll take a puff of some 90+% vapor any day over having to smoke an entire joint for the same effect.
What we need is more accurate vapor delivery devices that can meter better.
Disagree. Those 12 beers contain a vast amount of carbs that will not be in the liquor.
Now, sure, if you slam 12 shots of Cuervo back to back you're going to have a bad time - 12 shots is an entire bottle if you're actually getting full pours.
But if you consumed one shot or one beer every hour... no difference in the effects.
Hah I've known a few people to sip shots at the bar. They don't get shunned for it. It just means people don't buy them a shot.
Also most people who take shots aren't trying to get wasted. Drinking a shot the normal way every half hour to an hour alongside always having a beer to sip until done for the night is fairly standard. e.g. about 6 beers and 3 shots over the course of 2 to 4 hours.
And of course there are plenty of zero-cal mixers (like seltzer water) that you can add to the liquor and make it as sippable as you want.
That's the real play... decent gin, soda water, maybe a splash of lime juice, served on ice in a pint glass (usually ordered as a double or else it's too watery).
You up with something as sippable as beer, with fewer calories and zero added sugar. (except a little from the lime, but lime doesn't have that much by fruit standards).
PS: Shot glasses are for college students. A glencairn (good luck...) or a rocks glass are far better. Much of the taste comes from smell so you really wanna get those vapors up your nose... at least if you're drinking something worth drinking, and not just trying to get plastered on the cheap.
When I was younger, I'd have about a shot an hour or so, and simply drink water or soda in between (4 drinks over the night). I'd meet with a group of people pretty regularly for Karaoke night at a local bar. Doing so, I could pretty much go the night without getting drunk (6'1", 280# at the time). In my own experience, when it's social activity, you generally won't be shunned for not drinking as long as you are participating, and aren't talking down to those that are.
Are these UK shots or US shots? A shot in the US is almost twice as much as a shot in England (1.5oz or 44 mL vs the 25mL shots in England).
In California, 6 beers (typical beers averaging 6% abv) + 3 shots (5.5oz of hard alcohol) over 2-4 hours would be straight up alcoholic levels of consumption.
All experiences differ of course, but I am going to be wasted if I drink 6 beers and 3 shots over 4 hours. The same volume over 2 hours would probably end up sending me to bed.
Inconsistency of dosing has, at least in the past, been a significant concern — especially with regard to medicinal use. Doctors for a long time preferred herb vaporizers (and may still) because it’s frankly just the best way to accurately gauge and dose.
Except vaporizing/smoking gives wildly different results depending on the type of plant and its potency. One puff can either do not much or send you spinning, and your supposed tolerance may not even matter. The flower you smoke looks the same no matter if it has 5% THC or 35% THC, so gauging the potency of inhaled THC is practically impossible.
Edibles are very consistent, at least today they are. The problem with them is that people are stupid and don't know how to find the right dose responsibly. They take a gummy, it tastes pretty good, and then after 15 or 20 minutes they don't feel anything so they take another, because yum, it tastes like candy so why not. Then it starts to kick in after 30 or 40 minutes and it's double the dose so they feel nauseated and sick.
The best way to gauge the effects of an edible dose is to take the edible on an empty stomach, wait about 20 minutes, then eat a meal, and do not take a second dose. After eating your metabolism will get that dose into your blood stream right quick and before you're done with the meal you will definitely be feeling the full effect if you took enough. And if you don't feel much, then the dose is too low. Try again tomorrow. Don't double up the dose in the same sitting, because then you're really not getting an accurate result. Take maybe 1/3 more the next day, try again. If it's still not enough then the next day try a little more. When you find the right dose, then stick to it.
> The flower you smoke looks the same no matter if it has 5% THC or 35% THC
I get what you’re saying - but this is not practically true. Weed that contains 35% THC has a lot to do with the conditions it’s grown in which affects a lot of the other physical qualities of the weed. Smell, color, size of nug, density, humidity all are very correlated with potency.
And none of that matters to 90% of people going into a dispensary these days. A lot of people who weren't "stoners" are going to legal dispensaries and buying whatever the girl at the counter is pushing. They can't tell the smell, color, size, density or anything from one strain to another. Then they smoke too much and get "the spins".
This feels like a negative summary with a lot of assumptions chained on.
Alternate take, dispensaries have enabled many people I know to get a reliable product that acts the same each time they buy it and use it, and let them dial in exactly what strain and quantity and method of ingestion works best for them. Before the commercialization one never had the diversity and reliability of product they have now.
Contrast that to the before times where people, as you put it, bought whatever the dealer was selling.
Excellent and well-outlined info correcting my outdated understanding — which is also why I noted “in the past” several times in my comment :). Sounds like regulation has allowed for greater edible consistency indeed. AND that people taking too much too quick is still a thing, regardless.
That being said, the other side of this (in a pre-legalized world) was that the plants you grew on your own tended to be within a certain potency range, which meant 1 puff roughly equaled another — as opposed to baked goods, where butter could end up spread throughout inconsistently. There’s also the swifter intake-to-feedback loop when smoking/vaping, which made “taking too much” easier to see coming and avoid. Thus my old fashioned POV.
Baked goods usually means pot brownies, but it doesn't matter what type. I fell victim to the delicious brown squares a few times. Then I learned that if I'm going to make a batch of pot brownies, that I need to make 3 batches of brownies with only 1 being "magic", or just 1 batch of pot brownies and 3 batches of chocolate chip cookies - because what do you do when you eat some pot brownies? You want to eat more pot brownies, because they're delicious and you have the munchies now.
But you're right, it's way easier to not "overdose" with inhaled THC than it is with edibles. People just need to approach the two methods differently. Inhaling is instant gratification, where as eating is delayed gratification. Not everyone is capable of delaying gratification because so many people are impatient and impulsive. Edibles are still vastly superior in terms of healthiness so long as they aren't just 95% sugar and 5% THC.
Personally, these days I use "Protabs" which contain 0 sugar, just THC and a binder (probably corn starch) and the high is extremely clean and clear and completely guilt-free. And the dosage is very reliable and repeatable. There's no guessing involved now that I know my tolerance.
Regulation has vastly improved the situation for edibles. You can generally get accurate dosages with precise mixtures in any form factor you desire. However different states have diferring regulation.
What you recently ate can have a big impact. I only bought from reputable brands that had consistent dosages, but my diet could make two doses of the same gummy feel quite different night to night.
For me it was primarily how “heavy” the meal was. Eating 1lb of brisket with some bread would result in the edible taking longer to get into my bloodstream than something like a modest salad and some fruit.
The legal status of cannabis, including edibles, varies widely across different countries and regions. In places where cannabis is illegal or tightly regulated, discussing edibles might be avoided to comply with the law or maintain a more conservative stance on the topic.
> Drinking a dozen beers is (marginally) less dangerous than a dozen shots
It's easy to drink 12 shots in succession, but it's very hard to take 12 beers in a reasonably comparable amount of time. This is not a good comparison. It's obviously much easier to poison yourself with strong alcohol.
I've had a severe lung infection for 3+ months due to vaping and am still recovering.
I know its just an anecdote but people YOU ONLY GET ONE PAIR OF LUNGS and they heal differently then other parts of your body (or they don't heal at all - COPD is TERMINAL).
Agreed. Quitting smoking (THC) and vaping have been the two healthiest decisions I’ve ever made. I was also having breathing issues, though thankfully never as acute an issue as you did.
Idk about cannabis but I hear this all the time with cigarettes vs vaping and I just know it's a bunch of FUD.
I can not smoke cigarettes, never liked them, always got headaches from them. With vaping quality liquid I have no issues and I'm a heavy user. Not saying it's good for you but claiming it is worse or the same as literal smoke is just wrong
I won’t argue thar vaping is worse, but I will say that having less immediate discomfort at the time of use is not a solid basis for concluding it is not.
I'm talking about cartridges, which often throw chunks of superhot oil onto the lungs. let's wait for the research in 20 years that says it's also terrible.
Not sure how cannabis vapes work, but for the "I enjoy and/or am addicted to nicotine, but would rather not inhale CO, tars, particulates, etc" type, if you are vaping any oils, you're doing something wrong.
That sort of vape liquid is nicotine in a suspension of food/medical grade PG/VG and likely some small bit of flavoring in the same. It's essentially a tiny version of the fog machines that blast out vapor in nightclubs.
Very much in agreement. Cannabis as a medicine means needing other cannabinoids other than THC. The minors all contribute in ways that we're just now really starting to study for a better understanding of the why.
I wonder what the impact of cannabis being illegal federally has on this sort of thing.
A lot of people went from drinking beer and wine when Prohibition was first enacted in the US and moved to liquor. This happened because many of the speakeasies would rather have a given volume of liquor versus beer because they can serve more customers and there is less of a concern about your product being large and conspicuous.
With illicit drugs you often find the producers making the drugs more and more concentrated so they can move more product in a smaller volume and then step on it to make up the bulk later down the supply chain.
It would make sense to me that dispensaries would be more interested in buying and receiving higher THC product because they can either do more with less or they can have customers come in less often and serve more of them.
When you put metrics on something. You see its limits... then you push them. Every industry does that till they find sky is the limit but its actually about balance.
I dug the initial intense craft beers that started coming out in the late 90s/early 2ks, but got sick of it pretty quickly. A highball with American whiskey is my goto chillout drink, but when I drink beer, I like subtlety-- European pilsners, really mellow dry stouts, brown ales, and things like that. Most US craft beer fans' palates, and the commensurate offerings from craft breweries, are so jacked up that they don't even realize how distant they are from something I'm interested in drinking. The styles of the same name offered by US craft breweries are so extra compared to their namesake styles that they're totally different animals.
I'm not going to lie-- I'm also put off by some vibes in the craft beer scene has taken on in the past 10 or 15 years. When many craft beer fans see me order a classic European pilsner, with shocking frequency they a) attempt to shame me for ordering such a 'boring' beer, b) assume they need to educate me about this amazing thing called craft beer that I've clearly never encountered before, or c) assume my palate is unsophisticated. Like... listen bro... I'm a classically trained chef-- I've spent more time actively developing my palate than you've spent even thinking about it. I can tell you things you didn't know about the beer you're drinking based solely on your breath. Some very big names in craft beer were my multiple-times-per-week drinking buddies for years. I'm glad you've cultivated a passion for a locally-made food/bev product... now go be smug about your foamy bug spray juice elsewhere. lol
An old strip from the newsprint comic Zits has always stuck in my mind. In the strip, the kid takes a sip of his father's wheatgrass smoothie and describes it as licking the bottom of a lawnmower.
That is how I feel about most of the overpoweringly strong IPAs that have been all the rage for so long.
That's wild. Sorry people were negative to you. That sort of reaction is very alien to me. I've had thousands of beers with many hundreds of people and never really encountered that.
No need to apologize for other people's bad behavior. Craft beer doesn't have more snobs than any other group of passionate people-- certainly not more than fancy food-- but the nerdy one-upsmanship is much more prevalent. I think for some of these guys it's their equivalent to trash talking about sports or other kinds of fandom, and for others, it's a way to quell insecurity about their own knowledge level in a realm that they consider competitive.
I worked in bars and restaurants as a side gig for about 15 years and full-time for a few so the sheer number of people I've encountered naturally means I'll have encountered more dinks than most. And because of my food/bev-industry-heavy social set, I've spent quite a lot of time in the more "serious" craft beer bars, and those are magnets for that type. That said, I've also spent a ton of time in high-end restaurants and wine bars and never had anyone make snide comments about, say, ordering a more straightforward wine or a cheeseburger (but in kitchens, I've definitely heard chefs talk shit about people ordering burgers... mostly because they're frustrated more people aren't trying their more creative offerings. And then they go home and eat hot pockets for dinner.) And most sommeliers I've encountered are so worried about coming across like snobs that they almost overcompensate.
I mean, I'd definitely try such a thing if someone offered it to me. You often can't predict how multiple complex flavors will snap together and sometimes weird-sounding things are counterintuitively amazing. That said, the chance I'd drink something like that regularly is zero.
While I'm classically trained, my focus is from-scratch bar food while keeping it at the same price point as the frozen food service shit. I used white truffles, beluga caviar, and things like that when working in fine dining and in culinary school, but never once have I purchased such things for my own menu.
Considering that I'm responding to other people's assumption that they are superior to me based on my beer order, I don't feel the slightest bit bad about taking a dig at them.
As an aside, how often do you offer unsolicited patronizing critique of other people's beer order?
Might be because there's a lot of people like me that only like that style of beer. I don't dislike other types of beer, but I'd rather drink something else than a lager, stout, porter, pilsner, etc. I've found that there aren't a lot of diehards for any other style, but IPA diehards are a dime a dozen.
Agreed, IPAs(west coast, hazy, etc) are pretty much the only beer I enjoy drinking(for taste). Occasionally, I'll take a lager on a hot day when I want something really "light".
I could drink a hazy pale or NEIPA anytime, it would be my desert island style for sure. Never liked the high IBU IPAs that were everywhere for a while because of the bitterness. (And I love all the Campari-adjacent cocktails)
I feel similarly about the store-bought THC products in Canada. They're like high ABV, hopped-up IPAs when really I just want a light, refreshing, repeatable beer with good flavour.
yep. I'm currently pretty fatigued with the offerings at bottle shops and taprooms....increasingly glad I committed to brewing my own a long while back. Currently sipping on a very delightful British Golden Ale - a style I haven't seen commercially available around me, but will now be a standard in my summer brewing.
Why would an industry that sells a addictive and harmful product do that? alcohol is more harmful and cannabis is more addictive (comparing how many say they try to quit), but apart from that they're not so different from the market perspective.
Craft beers are just a niche. I don't trust the industry to self-regulate towards less profit.
Gotta just be blunt here and let you know that yours id an awful take and those are awful reference points you're drawing from there. I'm stunned to find anyone this far removed from the release of "Reefer Madness" who believes that cannabis is more addictive than alcohol.
As a recovered addict who has spent many months in multiple rehabs and many hours at meetings -- with hundreds of other addicts, I can assure you that booze is EASILY more dangerous/unhealthy/addictive than weed. Across the board; worse by every general measure.
Dangerous/unhealth/addictive are three different things! I specifically said alcohol is more dangerous and unhealthy.
Judging from the number of users who say they would like to stop using it but can't, cannabis is more addictive, however. There are plenty of surveys of this, and I've seen even cannabis activists take them seriously, advocating offerings to cut down/quit similar to those we offer to smokers.
I don't know why, and this is just one possible measure of addictiveness, but it is what it is.
It seems difficult to measure this, as it's wildly varying in addictiveness depending on the wildly varying affects each human gets from the substances.
Yes, it's just one possible way to measure. But I think the number of users who say they've tried to cut down/quit and failed, is a pretty practical measure.
CBD is on its own an effective antipsychotic (comparable efficacy to one of the common treatment options in schizophrenia in a 2013 study), and has repeatedly been shown to balance out the psychotic effects of THC.
And I'd say easily 80% or more of the products I've seen in any dispensary I've walked into have ~0% of CBD compared to those heavy THC amounts.
It's no longer "just using something that grows as part of nature" if you completely disrupt the balance of the natural high with extreme levels of selective breeding and processing.
For starters, everyone’s goals for cannabis use are different. A person with Crohn’s for example, who uses cannabis for nausea relief will surely have a different ideal ratio of THC:CBD than a weekend warrior who uses it for muscle pain. There’s no one dosage or ratio that works for everyone and I think that you are greatly exaggerating the importance of weed's so-called "entourage effect" re: THC, THCA, CBD...prolly some terpenes floatin' around in there. I dunno...
Besides, pursuing greater THC "heights" and in process, pushing out CBD has been the way for decades. This is nothing new and those "80% of strains" you sneer at are borne of the same methodology as previous efforts before commercial outfits perfected it.
What's more, "CBD heavy" strains with only 0.3% THC are wildly in demand these days. The more "balanced" iterations with up to ~20-25% THC & ~6-12% CBD are also gaining in popularity.
I have a hard time finding 5mg dose edibles for my wife. Most are 10 plus. Was at the dispensary the other day and a girl who probably weighed 115lbs suggested I try capsules as they are stronger. Capsules are 30mg and she says she takes 2 at a time.
That dosage is insane to me. I'm 235lbs and 15mg is a solid, "I'm not driving" dose for me.
I'm not sure you want advice, but I use edible medicinally. I live in Washington and discussed it with my doctors. I also can pretty much only find 10mg doses. What I've found is that after a year I built a tolerance but because I'm regimented with my doctor, 10mg 1x every night, my tolerance has balanced out. It still affects me enough to put me to sleep but it doesn't drop below that. Before I talked to my doctor I was increasing my dosages and it felt like an endless uphill battle to get to the point I could sleep comfortably.
I'm not sure if you're looking for recreational or medicinal, but if it's medicinal the key is to have a regiment. If not, just cut the edible in half. If you're buying gummies they're well enough mixed that you can track the dosage by portioning them carefully.
Fuckin crazy. In Washington, you cant buy an individual serving over 10mg. Nothing stopping you from eating the whole bag really, but I've heard of other states having edibles up in the 200mg range which seems nuts to me!
Edibles at high doses are a completely different experience. a 60mg dose would be comparable to acid with heavy thought loops and perhaps ego death. Some people are looking for that I guess.
Tolerance varies insanely for edibles. Some people dont process them like others. Ive heard about people just not getting high from edibles at all, even high doses like you described. It‘d be curious if this phenomenon is backed by science or not.
One thing I've noticed is that a lot of edibles these days, especially stuff like the candies, don't have the same 'profile' as old school brownies and whatnot. The requirement for precise dosing means many edibles are made using some sort of extract that's been refined to a specific potency, but that can end up losing some of the other psychoactive compounds. But people are sensitive to different cannabinoids differently, which has led to a bigger variance in tolerance I think.
Edibles don't work for me, I'm so sick of hearing about edibles as the "fix all" to health issues. I vape loose leaf cannabis, I'm also sick of people assuming everyone who "vapes" uses cartridges.
Grow the plant, cut and dry the plant, heat the plant & breathe it in. It's pretty simple.
Edibles can definitely do the same, but not distillate made stuff from the store.
Even trying a firecracker (herb cooked in peanut butter on a tortilla chip) at home with your existing purchase of plant matter can show you the difference.
I'm one of those people for whom edibles don't really seem to work. Knowing this, last time I gave it a go I took 90mg followed by another 90mg an hour later. Didn't feel a thing. Don't think I'll buy any again.
It's so easy/cheap to use low-spectrum cannabis oil in edibles, and most uneducated/recreational users can't/won't feel the difference between how THC feels, compared with all of the compounds you're supposed to have together when using cannabis.
I had that problem too. I can usually eat like 40-60mg without anything... And yet one night I took a 10mg all by itself and had an amazing time! It makes no sense to me.
I've been using recreationally for 20 years and a 10mg edible still hits me plenty hard. 20 would hit me like a donkey kick, 60 would make me extremely uncomfortable to say the least.
Lucky. You can add a 0 on the end of those for me, more than that at the high end. I've done 1000mg over the course of ~12 hours before. Now, admittedly I wasn't DOING a whole lot in those 12 hours (mostly watching movies), but I was functional enough that if called upon to do so I could have had a coherent conversation.
I have to cut the 10mg gummies. 1.25mg is my happy place, and if I take more than 2.5mg the room will be rolling and I'll feel totally sick to my stomach for hours.
If you have a tolerance 50mg is nothing. That doesn't even get me high now, forget about when I took edibles every day (minimum 300mg). I'm not a genetic freak or anything either, my wife developed tolerance at the same pace as me.
Anecdotal, but at sufficiently high doses, I've noticed that you can make contact with extracorporeal entities. I perceive them as distorted cartoon characters. I have taken other psychedelics like LSD-25, but only edibles at very high doses give me this effect.
There is a hemp derived mixture called "purple berry" that is so e proprietary blend of a bunch of cannabinoids. I took a whole one, once, and it was a massive trip, so crazy I don't want to do it again. A quarter of one means I'm doing a movie (or nothing) for the night.
For me, 5-10mg of delta 8 is a good relaxing evening. On the low end, it's an anxiety reducer, on the high end of that, a bit of a giggle and indacouch feeling. 25 mg (one gummy) is a zonk the brain kind of night.
Honestly, for knowing I drink too much alcohol, d8 can be a great substitute on the way to quasi sobriety.
Grey market isolated canabanoids are not at all the same. I would use caution with all of them, and particularly their sources, processing, and purity.
Interesting, my wife takes a third to half of a 5mg edible and is good. I take 10mg and then another 5mg about 45 minutes later. I have taken 50mg over the course of a day before but I think the max single dose I have taken is 20mg and I was pretty high but still sociable. I like to maintain a solid sense of control.
It's easy to build a tolerance if you get high enough. I started smoking after years of not, and I was taking 2.5mg feeling toasssstty. But now I need +100mg to get me stoned off edibles.
Becoming a regular smoker is often a hunt for something that can get you just as high as the first time, but nothing will. (Concentrates can get you very high, though.)
With that said, I want to lower my usage -- and, admittedly, it has been hard. Especially if there's hardly anything disincentivizing me from not feeling good all the time. I also have ADHD and take Adderall every day, so it's a part of a routine that has a designated dopamine hit a least once every 1.5hrs, whether that be coffee, weed, whatever.
Being a regular smoker seems to require regular breaks or your tolerance is going to blow through your budget and you won't even have the advantage of being high while all your money disappears. A week or two off does wonders. A few months off and that first day back is really nice. I've never been very good at regulating my dosages. I find it much easier to switch between consuming all I want / not consuming anything at all than trying to maintain a consistent low dosage.
> Becoming a regular smoker is often a hunt for something that can get you just as high as the first time, but nothing will. (Concentrates can get you very high, though.)
At my peak, I was a half-gram, gram of concentrates a day smoker. There was always the option of taking three or four good dabs in a row and getting past the point of high and into psychedelic panic. The idea that "you can never get as high as the first time" is a total myth peddled by the same people who claim it's a "gateway drug".
Yeah but the first time you get high as fuck, you are high for hours and dont need more than a tiny smoke. Now you need to take 3 or 4 dabs to get that high? Certainly something has changed.
Since you take a single puff of that pen, is it an oil cart you’re hitting that has just 3% THC?
For those who want to try using low controlled doses like you said, I gotta recommend dry herb/flower vapes - the normie portable ones, not the $400 desktop vape with a fan and everything. It’s easier to find low-but-not-0 THC flower than oil cartridges IME, and if you can’t find them, you can just pack less. It’s also a lot easier on your lungs and having to take multiple hits per packed chamber allows you to control your dose a bit better. Low dose edibles also work but they can last a long time in your body due to being metabolized differently and are similarly hard to find.
You can also mix CBD flower with THC flower to reintroduce what has been bred out. People here might appreciate a setup with a dynavap and an induction heater built from parts and a bit of soldering.
Yeah, it's an oil cart. I've been recommended dry flower vapes before, but for me personally it's just more involved of a process than I'm looking for. The oil cart is zero setup, zero smell, zero cleanup. Hard to beat.
Yeah, I’m convinced that the concentration of THC found in products these days is unhealthy. I’m a weed user myself, but since legalization I haven’t had a great experience due to the high THC contents.
Where do you find the 3% THC in California? Hopefully, it’s someplace in the Bay Area.
This reminds me of spice. Synthetic cannabinoids started in 00s as a legal alternative to weed, but in a span of just around 10 years evolved into one of the most frightening drugs out there.
JWH-018, the first very widely available one seemed safer (based on my own limited research) than those that followed, but was banned. it's the same thing every time. chemical gets banned, more dangerous but legal chemical takes it's place, cycle continues.
Myself if I stay away from any cannabis projects for about two weeks I can almost forget that the stuff exists. However, if I have the stuff around I find it almost impossible to say no and I rapidly dose escalate. My guess is that cannabis smoking has both an irritating and anti-inflammatory effect so if I am smoking my breathing is OK and if I am away for two weeks I am OK but my breathing gets bad maybe 4-5 days after quitting. A vape just doesn’t do it for me.
Same for me, I am prescribed medical cannabis for neuropathic pain and by default they gave me 18% THC.
After a year of getting more and more anxious and panic I did some research and ecided to try 5% THC with 10% CBD, this is much better. No more couch lock, better sleep, more productive and waayyy less anxiety. Same if not better effect on pain.
>Look for federally legal hemp derived delta 9 products. They usually max out at 5 or 10mg per serving
So funny that that law didn't account for how edibles work. If you have a baked good (brownie, cookie, etc.) which weighs 100 grams, and it contains 29mg delta-9 THC, thats below the 0.3% legal threshold, and still a solid dose.
I always try to explain this to people, that the Republicans actually unwittingly legalized weed in 2017, but no one ever gets it. Fact is, delta-9 THC edibles are now federally legal (and can be ordered online) in all 50 states due to the Farm Bill loophole.
That's because the loophole doesn't exist. It's an obviously flawed interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill which isn't likely to hold up in court when it's finally tested there.
The prefatory text to Schedule I(c) of the Controlled Substances Act removes all doubt: “[u]nless specifically excepted or unless listed in another schedule, any material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity of the following hallucinogenic substances” is a Schedule I substance.
A 12 mg THC extract infused into a 4-gram gummy consisting of non-cannabis isn’t a “hemp” gummy. It is a “material,” “mixture,” or “preparation” containing “marihuana,” which is a Schedule I controlled substance.
> That's because the loophole doesn't exist. It's an obviously flawed interpretation of the 2018 Farm Bill which isn't likely to hold up in court when it's finally tested there.
It's been tested somewhat (interestingly, in a trademark case which rested on whether the infringed trademark was for a legal product) and it has succeeded at the Circuit Court level. AK Futures LLC v. Boyd Street Distro, LLC, 9th Cir. No. 2-56113 (May 19, 2022):
Importantly, the only statutory metric for distinguishing controlled marijuana from legal hemp is the delta-9 THC concentration level. In addition, the definition extends beyond just the plant to “all derivatives, extracts, [and] cannabinoids.” 7 U.S.C. § 1639o(1). The use of “all” indicates a sweeping statutory reach. See Lambright v. Ryan, 698 F.3d 808, 817 (9th Cir. 2012) (“The common meaning of the word ‘all’ is ‘the whole amount, quantity, or extent of; as much as possible’ . . . .” (quoting All, Merriam-Webster (online ed., visited Oct. 4, 2012))). This seemingly extends to downstream products and substances, so long as their delta-9 THC concentration does not exceed the statutory threshold.
Of course, as this was on an appeal of a denial of a preliminary injunction, the ruling is framed in likelihood of success rather than absolute terms, but its a pretty strong negative indicator for your argument that this is a clearly incorrect interpretation that no court would take seriously, since both the District Court and the Circuit Court very much took it seriously.
Who would waste their time litigating such a case when the legalization trend is so clear? A solid majority of US citizens live in states which have already decided that federal marijuana laws are irrelevant.
As other commenters have said, I think "the train has already left the station" on this one, and considering even conservative states aren't trying to crack down on this, who's going to bring it to court?
For example, Florida recently was about to pass a state law limiting the total amount of THC in each individual edible, which would have killed the "legal D9 THC" market. They apparently got huge pushback from producers/consumers in the state and dropped any limits: https://floridaphoenix.com/blog/florida-senate-approves-hemp...
Edit: BTW, though, that link from Matt Zorn was great, thanks for posting.
>which isn't likely to hold up in court when it's finally tested there.
This is the key. Who will ever bring this in front of a judge? The "anti-weed" lobby has all but ceased to exist. Which leaves basically a small handful of deep red state attorney generals that would even have the standing to be able to attempt it.
And which side do you think has the funding (and incentive) to defend it all the way to the supreme court?
The floodgates have opened, and they're never going back. There's simply too much money and momentum behind it. Even the conservatives are on board at this point now that they've seen the tax revenues.
Apparently, an accused trademark violator, in the hopes of proving that, as it was not in legal use in trade, the trademark they are accused of violating was not valid in the first place.
> I always try to explain this to people, that the Republicans actually unwittingly legalized weed in 2017, but no one ever gets it.
It's because you're using the word wrong. Weed is illegal federally. The problem is that you think THC is weed, and Delta-9 is weed, and CBD is weed. Words have meaning. A caffeine pill isn't coffee, and beef steak isn't a cow. Something being derived from something doesn't make it that original thing.
I think they are using the word correctly in the commonly agreed upon wording. Republicans legalized hemp technically, then set the legal definition of hemp such that THCa flower fit under that definition. THCa flower does not have more than 0.3% THC by weight (well it might but that's another issue of allowing pre harvest testing), it can however have more than 0.3% THCa by weight. THCa converts to THC when exposed to heat (such as combustion in a joint, pipe, oven, etc.). In common word usage of weed as a plant that gets you high off THC when you smoke it then they did legalize 'weed'.
It was funny last year when Minnesota set a limit of 5mg/serving and 50mg/package. All this stuff in the news about MN legalizing edibles, but they just put a limit on potency of products that were already sold there. And now you can get cans of seltzer that have 10mg and call it 2 servings.
These guys are legit. I just toured their production facility last week and I was impressed enough that we chose them as our contract manufacturer for gummies.
Most people don't know about Delta-9 yet. It was brought to my attention when I saw a video about a business selling Delta-9 drinks in an illegal state.
Delta 9 is the long-known active ingredient in regular marijuana. You're thinking of delta 8, which is a new isolate.
This is kind of my point though. When I talk about this stuff, people assume I just mean delta 8, or CBD or whatever. Nope. Straight up delta 9 edibles are 100% federally legal now.
You could explain why it matters, instead of complaining that people don't understand. Delta-8 is also psychoactive and not well known so it's easy to mix up.
CBD has been legal for a while and is completely different than THC products so it shouldn't be compared.
Stating Delta-9 is legal, not Delta-8, is not that big of a difference. If you think it is, you should talk about why it matters because your attitude obviously hasn't worked thus far for dealing with people who just don't understand. Maybe, you're not concerned with people understanding as much as you state.
I was consuming 5-6 grams a day for over a year until 3 months ago after weed got super easy to find in my state. It allowed me to escape from my responsibilities, first thing I thought in the morning and I seriously I thought I could not quit. I then watched a video of myself interacting with my 7 year old with my super bloody eyes and looked like a loser. That and my own mom's "I am scared that you would not be able to quit" were two things that triggered me to stop right there. Weed made me resentful towards people and life, made me criticize everything around me. I am not going to waste my 40s like that.
Congratulations. Your kid will cherish their newfound time with the parent you truly are. I find it can be so hard to show your love under the cloud of marijuana dependence.
Showing love when under the influence of THC is not hard. Relearning how to without it is pretty hard. Conversely, you're so much more present as a parent when sober - even if that means you're more serious.
My parents were both incredibly neurotic, anxious people, and it has rubbed off on me. I wonder how I would have grown up if, instead of my mom's gin & tonic & marlboro lights, and my dad's ever present jack daniels & cigars, they had gone with some weed instead. My parents were not alcoholics, but emotionally absent due to anxiety. I really think things would have been much better.
I've done the same but for ~8 years thinking it helps me to deal with my PTSD.
unfortunately while _calming_ it actually increased my paranoia, anxiety and stress.
I feel stupid to realize this after so much time, but quitting completely and focusing on a more healthy diet and exercise did the trick for me. it took some time but eventually I am weed free and feeling normal again.
it was a really strange feeling to realize how bad it is for me personally.
currently I puff on some occasions, with friends, but never at home without a reason, no paranoia, no stress and no _out of nowhere_ anxiety.
If you don't mind elaborating, I'm curious to hear more about how it made you more resentful/critical, and the implication that things improved when you stopped.
Mood swings. The brain is flooded with serotonin followed by a major sense of depletion. The higher you climb, the further you fall. Recovery can take days.
I'm so happy to hear this and proud to read about it. Good for you.
I could swap weed for alcohol in your blurb and make the same comment. It's obvious in my 40s, as a husband, and a parent of two young kids, that the altered state of interacting on a day-to-day is a "waste." While haven't cut entirely, I am cutting down, and hopefully soon won't waste any time at all.
Not the person you're replying to, but as someone who is... struggling with weed addiction, I can confirm I use it, among other things, to stop flashbacks/simulating past trauma. It's a tradeoff, because it feels like I'm playing life with 30% lower efficiency (shit makes me stupid, yo), but at least the PTSD doesn't make me want to die constantly.
That’s a significant oversimplification. These days, most of humanity has access to many types of powerful potential addictions. For many of them, trauma suppression is not a necessary condition. Reward chasing can exert enormous influence on its own.
You’d actually be surprised how many people have experienced various forms of trauma since they were infants and just don’t remember it, due to their defense mechanisms, and naturally gravitate towards substances and other addictive activities like gaming and porn to suppress past and present emotional pain.
I don't believe I would be surprised and that doesn't change the fact that this is an egregious oversimplification.
What if you remember your trauma but it doesn't effect you negatively and you are still easily addicted.
There are many ways to be addicted and not all of them are trauma related. Modern psychology relies heavily on diagnosing trauma, and connecting trauma to existing behavioral issues because it is useful.
We've got Tiktokers thinking they all have undiagnosed trauma.
Weed is super easy to find anywhere on the planet, any time, thanks to darkweb marketplaces.
I am a raging addict, have been for over a decade now, and I just get small parcels delivered to wherever I’m going to be if I’m away from home. Cambodia, Oman, Finland, wherever, it’s trivial.
Honestly, I wish it weren’t so easy. Then it would be easy to quit, which I would sincerely like to do - but as long as I can punch a few buttons and have weed appear I am well and truly trapped in my little Skinner box.
Hey friend I was in this situation until recently. A decade of trying to stop smoking and drinking wore me down and I’d given up trying. As long as I could get it, I would.
Im sure you are familiar with the seductive compulsion that results in the daily cycle... that feeling that more is always better and yes of course you want some right now even though it’s probably not a good idea and oh whoops I’m high/buzzed already so might as well keep going.
I’m happy to say that feeling is now completely gone. Eradicated like it never existed. I still enjoy the experience just the same, but “that feeling” of, idk, thirst-like need I guess? That became suddenly and totally absent.
What worked for me was my first experience with Psilocybin. I was surprised, likeI said I’d given up trying to quit but was always thinking about it.
I did not take enough to have noticeable visual effects. The experience was more like an extremely lucid drunk. It comes in waves, and each wave took me out of my own perspective long enough for some real talk with myself. Identifying the Skinner box was part of it: seeing myself wanting and responding like a rat. Seeing with new clarity what it really does to me, not how I view it internally though the filter of my self-deluding stories.
All this to say, I hope you can find what I found; the ‘grass’ really is greener on the other side of addiction. I’ve smoked and drank since then without relapse—no continued use after the social event, and no desire to. Good luck internet stranger, my heart is with you and there is hope.
Add custody battle, that made me quit instantly after 25 years of daily weed smoking. Took me near 15 weeks to get all THC out of my body. I bought self tests (urine) to check myself in case I needed to pee in a jar for court. Never got to that, but been 'clean' ever since and I don't miss it. I can easily be next to people smoking weed and have zero urge. Few months later I also managed to quit with regular smoking. Leaving those things, a borderline (diagnosed by doctor not my opinion) ex wife and having my daughter 50% of the time, made me a new man. A happy one.
One related thing I'd like to point out that I think the article gets wrong is that the 2018 Farm Bill, which aimed to legalize just hemp, for all intents and purposes made weed legal nationwide due to some clever workarounds by producers. I live in a state that very, very much still calls all use of marijuana illegal except for some very specific and tightly controlled medical uses (i.e. it's not like "hey doc, can you just write me a 'script" like other states), yet I can still walk into a very nice, clean, well-maintained store in a plain strip mall and:
1. Buy D9 gummies and other edibles that contain up to 50mg D9 THC. Basically, since the law defines hemp as containing < .3% D9 THC, producers just extract all the D9 THC from hemp and inject it into edibles such that the total weight of the edible means there is still less than .3% D9 THC in the edible. These get me just as baked as "normal" weed gummies, they're just a bit bigger.
2. More surprising to me is the recent addition of "THCA Hemp Flower". To me these are just normal buds - I can grind them up and vape them and they get me just as high as "normal" weed. Basically these flowers contain low amounts of THC, but high amounts of THCA. But when you heat it, THCA turns into THC by decarboxylation. The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway, e.g. why they say you can't just eat a weed bud but if you're making an edible you need to heat the oils first.
The gummies/edible workaround I can understand, but the THCA flower "workaround" seems like it's skirting really close to the edge of the law. Not that I'm complaining or anything, but it's weird to me how people don't know that weed is legal nationwide in the US.
> it's weird to me how people don't know that weed is legal nationwide in the US.
Yes, this. I bought some D9 gummies on a whim after seeing a prominent NASCAR driver racing in a full body wrap ad for an online distributor (3Chi). I didn’t really think much of it but figured I’d try it out. And, uh, wow. It’s literally identical to eating a gummy that you might buy in a shop in Cali, Colorado, etc.
I’ve been trying to tell people this, and that weed is effectively federally legal as long as you stick to this set of rules. But nobody seems to believe me.
That's not a good analogy. Chickpeas and garbanzo beans are just different names for the exact same thing. A better analogy would be different wine grape cultivars, e.g. Chardonnay and Cabernet are the same species of grape, but obviously have quite different taste and features.
While hemp and marijuana are the same species, there is a legal definition that is based on a real, scientific difference. Namely, that hemp is a low-THC cultivar of cannabis sativa.
> A better analogy would be different wine grape cultivars, e.g. Chardonnay and Cabernet
I'll take your word. I know literally nothing about wine except that some are red and some are white, and that they all taste like sweetened vinegar with a splash of paint-thinner.
> there is a legal definition that is based on a real, scientific difference. Namely, that hemp is a low-THC cultivar of cannabis sativa.
Do you mean THCA? What is the "real, scientific difference?" Marijuana naturally has high amounts of THCA and low amounts of THC. High THCA hemp has... well, high THCA and low amounts of THC. Their strengths might vary to some degree, but I would say the only true distinction of is just how they are legally defined.
Plenty of hemp is grown in my state, in which marijuana is still very illegal and very harshly punished, yet some of the hemp grown here is coming in at 15%-23% THCA range at the upper bounds. That is not what I would consider a "low-THC cultivar."
If you get pulled over while in possession of high THCA hemp, good luck convincing the police, "it's just hemp." You might be able to beat it court, but like saying goes, "You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."
Yes, it metabolizes to the same thing, which is the point. This is also true for the pure synthetic stuff like Delta 8 and HHC. Even CBD has been known to regularly test hot.
> Further, both the Farm Bill and the USDA specify that analytical testing of samples for total THC must use "post-decarboxylation or other similarly reliable methods
That's interesting. I live in a country where it is legalized, so our gummies are usually 10mg. You can also buy 5mg and 2mg mainly for medical or lightweight use, and usually have an extra dose of CBD.
Having said that eating 2 20mg gummies to get high, or a handful of weaker ones that still add up to 20mg to get high, results in the same thing (as you've mentioned). Most people can easily, and happily, eat a handful of gummies.
I guess that law is why our packaging also includes the concentrations for the whole package as well as the per-unit concentrations - to make some of it saleable in the parts of the US with the type of laws your describing.
Federally legal weed is a cash cow for the government and provinces here alike. Sadly it's hard to profit for the producers, so the stock market value is terrible.
Imagine a government that can make it hard to profit off of weed! Pretty shocking on its own. So full legalization is a "damned if you do; damned if you don't" situation for producers.
Yeah, to clarify, the D9 gummies I see here are always 10mg. 50mg is only sold in things like brownies or rice krispies treats that are intended to be shared or eaten in multiple servings.
Of course, the problem with a pot brownie is that I may start intending to only eat a quarter of it but then somehow it all ends up getting eaten pretty quickly...
It depends on a lot of factors, such as your body weight and tolerance. In university a 10mg edible would put me on a nice high for hours. Nowadays I'd need to consume at least 40mg to even feel it. To answer your question though 40mg is a large dose, especially for someone who hasn't used cannabis with frequency. I recommend most people start out with 5-10mg.
What I find really fascinating is that the route of administration can affect your tolerance even if the potency theoretically should be the same. If you consume edibles often (eg for health reasons) you'll find you increasingly need larger and larger doses until it plateaus somewhere. If you "switch it up" and consume the same quantity via, say, a concentrate you vaporize, it'll hit you a lot harder. Even if you don't change the route of administration but the circumstances (like a new location) there's a similar effect.
I bought a chocolate treat once, and it was small so I ate the whole thing. It didn't occur to me at the time that there was a cross imprinted on it for a reason - it was meant to be divided into 4.
So it was 40mg. I was super high on the bus on my way home, I cannot deny. Thankfully I could still handle and enjoy it. I think if it was 50mg, it would have been a whole different experience.
In my comment above, I meant to say 2 10mg doses, since we were talking about adding up to 20mg. It's the kind of mistake that's fine as a typo, but quite a different thing irl.
Also depends on other factors. If you're partying and have been drinking, you'll probably find it a whole lot less of an impact than if you ate it with your morning McMuffin on your way to work.
> The gummies/edible workaround I can understand, but the THCA flower "workaround" seems like it's skirting really close to the edge of the law.
They both fit the law in the same way; the law defines hemp in an expansive and inclusive way, subject only to the D9 THC limit, so anything not D9 THC doesn’t count against the limit even if it has similar effect. Even the DEA accepts this, though the DEA seems to have adopted a view unsupported by the text of the law that things that don’t naturally occur in cannabis but meet the inclusive description in the law’s text aren’t legalized as hemp, which leads to controversy around some synthetic cannabinoids, where the DEA view and the text of the law (and some emerging case law) seem at odds.
I guess the thing that surprised.me is that I thought the majority of THC in "normal" marijuana was in the form of THCA anyway.
I remember reading an article years ago (well before 2018) that basically said "to make the THC in marijuana available in a way that gives pleasurable effects, it must first be decarboxylated, which is why it needs to be heated before being consumed." So from that I thought that most of the stuff that was sold as weed (again, pre 2018) was in the form of THCA anyway.
I’ll preface this by saying I don’t think there is anything wrong with using cannabinoids in general. I don’t personally, but find the industry fascinating.
The farm bill opened the doors to a lot of other stuff besides legal D9 gummies and high THCA flower. Companies are selling an ever increasing number of cannabinoids. Some are found in tiny trace amounts in nature, others are completely novel. What they all have in common is they are unstudied, unregulated, and created via various chemical synthesis processes from base cannabinoids. It seems like a ticking time bomb.
>The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway
I can confirm, as I had a rather disappointing failure (many years ago) in making some edibles when they didn't get hot enough for decarboxylation when I was using marijuana that I knew to be of excellent quality.
It’s still illegal for federal/military employees or anyone with a security clearance - at some point the government will have to reconcile this discontinuity. Even off-the-shelf hand lotion and soaps have CBD now and might be risky for someone who gets drug tested.
As I understand it, normal marijuana contains 1-2% TCH and the rest being THCA. So the new "high TCHA flower" is not higher TCHA than normal, simply lower pure THC than normal.
Craziest part is you can buy the high TCHA flower and the D9 Edibles online, shipped through USPS, and you just pay standard sales tax (not a sin tax like you would in a legal state).
Thank you for this point this is really interesting. I had a friend who is a recovering alcoholic living in TX. He would talk about going to get CBD gummies, and sometimes he'd say something about "wow, I took too many, I got messed up!". I was thinking "what a crackpot, you don't get high off CBD", I live in a legal state and I've taken CBD-only products. He came to live with me for a while and one day came home saying he'd bought some CBD. I asked him to show it to me, it was just regular 10mg THC gummies. Now this guy had a shaky relationship with the truth, but I thought THC was totally illegal in TX. This explains what was happening, I'm sure he actually was buying THC products.
Also, we smoked a joint together, and it was kind of scary. I've smoked my share of pot with lots of people, and I've never seen it affect someone like this. Not long after he moved away I read something else on here tying THC to schizophrenia. This guy was already bipolar but his affect under THC was different and really bothered me - I wouldn't smoke with him anymore after that one time. I'm no psychologist, but schizophrenic is how I'd describe his reaction to it.
I'll add that skepticism follows most addictions. I do have a problem with alcohol and this is part of the AA literature: only alcoholics understand an aloholic's relationship with alcohol. I've sat through enough meetings to know it. Lots of people in my life have asked "why can't you just stop at one or two?", the answer is that my brain handles it differently from theirs.
"[some peoples] brains handle it differently from [others]" seems to also be describe the weed-schizophrenia relationship.
Like you I've been in my share of situations, and been with a few people who've had that schizophrenic reaction. However, and not to defend cannabis, but all such situations (people) were complex and with many contributing factors, e.g. concurrent alcohol abuse, home and social issues, traumatic events.
I expect that a weight of scientific study can eventually discover the nuance, but legal and moral prohibitions dictate that usage far outstrips research.
He may have misunderstood or lied but I can tell you I clearly know the difference between cannabinoids and I have purposefully gotten very high off of CBD alone many many times. Probably more than a hundred. I don't know if it takes specific conditions, because I don't know why it's said so frequently that it doesn't get you high.
CBD gets you "stoned", or calming, contended effects, more so than "high".
Folks I know who use it medically describe it as "too relaxed". Combine that with a drink and a prescribed muscle relaxer, and you can get yourself into some discomfort for sure.
> The thing that I don't understand is that I thought "normal" marijuana always needed to be heated anyway,
It does. The difference between high THCA hemp and marijuana is merely a legal distinction and not a scientific distinction.
It's somewhat akin to some of the laws in the US about firearms and firearm regulations e.g., some AR-15s can be legally classified as "handguns" and can be openly carried depending on the state despite said firearms clearly not being a handgun.
I've also heard that THCA breaks down into THC over time, so maybe there's a chance that when it's shipped it's compliant with the Hemp bill, but some time later if the cops seize and test it, then you actually now have illegal cannabis in your possession. Not sure to what extent that is true, but seems reasonable.
Ever since it became legal I have friends who spend majority of their day high. Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
It's a comparison problem. It won't kill you like alcohol withdrawals will or make you agitated like nicotine will. So then it must be okay right? These same potheads will quote studies and news articles talking about the benefits or just how risk free it is.
Its very similar to the way a functional alcoholic will justify their drinking. They even use avoidance language. 20 years ago we called it weed, now we call it "cannabis". Oh, you're not addicted to weed you're just using cannabis every hour of every day. I think legalization didn't help, nor hurt, but the re-branding of weed as "cannabis" while biologically correct gave these type of people a get out of jail free card. If you don't believe me, say to yourself "I smoke weed 8 times a day" versus "I use cannabis 8 times a day". One of them makes you sound like a degenerate, one of them makes you sound like you take a medication. That difference is very important in justifying addiction in the mind of an addict.
> Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
this has to be more nuanced, because according to this logic 100% of all humans have this addiction. If you confront a non-addict, they too will tell you that they don't have a problem.
Re-read the full context. He said they spend "the majority of their day high". That's a "very serious" addiction, because their dependence of the drug is erecting defenses in the conscious mind to the denial of the reality that they probably can't stop. On the contrary, if for example I need to take an SSRI to keep depression at bay, I would be perfectly content to tell you that I had a major depressive disorder, and that the drug helps me stay functional - I'm diagnosed, treated, and aware of the fact. Also contrarily, if I smoke a joint every Friday night with my wife after the kids go to bed because we want to relax, but if we can get a baby sitter we'll jump at the chance to go out for a night on the town without weed, then I'm not addicted - I just use the drug situationally because it's my preferred option.
People do weed to combat major depressive disorder to stay functional. Your comment and the original are filled with assumptions and give way too much credit to the pharmaceutical industry to not be screwing us over with these psychiatric meds. I don’t push my anti-psychiatric meds personal feelings on any one except people who are super judgmental about weed. I haven’t looked studies up for any of this stuff but I have enough personal experience to understand what works well enough for me.
A relative drinks tea all day. They tried to compare another relatives cigarette smoking and their tea drinking to my weed usage. Both of those people can’t go a day without their substance. That seems to be an addiction.
Would you say the same thing if we're talking about caffeine? I know many productive members of society that spend all day drinking coffee. They would even suffer actual withdrawal symptoms if they tried to stop.
They weren't talking about a smiling addiction (whatever that means) or any other random addiction. Denying that you have a cannabis addiction says nothing at all about any other addictions you may or may not have.
They were talking specifically about cannabis addiction, and suggesting that denial that you have a cannabis addiction is a sign of having a cannabis addiction. (However, this doesn't really make sense because people who are not addicted to cannabis will equally claim to not be addicted to cannabis.)
> As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
Isn't denying an addiction when told one has an addiction also the first sign of not having an addiction? "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" works well and good for a play, but doesn't really meet the traditional standards for evidence.
Yeah, this sounds like a Catch-22 of substance use: If you deny you have a problem, that proves the problem exists. If you affirm you have a problem, that's also proof the problem exists.
> There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane, he had to fly them. If he flew them, he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to, he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
-- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Or if you prefer the Monty Python version [0]:
> "Will you please listen!? I am not the Messiah, do you understand? HONESTLY!"
Of course (well, there's some arguments to be made here with regard to prescribed drugs, but let's leave them aside for the minute). The only gripe I was addressing here was the idea that denial = guilt.
That’s not quite how I read it. My guess is that the OP meant something closer to “constant consumption paired with the denial that it could perhaps be unhealthy is a strong predictor of addiction.”
Going by that charitable interpretation, I think his point stands.
I don't think the denial relates to the guilt so much as it relates to the probability the person will be able to ditch this habit when they need to. Given that someone has an addiction problem, they're far more likely to overcome it if they acknowledge it is a problem. If they don't currently acknowledge, then things will probably get worse before they can get better. So perhaps OPs statement should be framed moreso as "realization is the first step to recovery", but I get where they are coming from.
I'd think their specific behavior is the sign of the problem.
Is this a non sequential fallacy? I think the worst offender of this argument that I see on the internet is, "if this offends you, it proves that I'm right".
> Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
The first sign of an addiction (at least, the first which is visible to an outside observer) is that it interferes with your life and you won't stop.
Until about a week ago, I was a heavy daily cannabis user for a very long time (more than ten years). If you had asked me if I had an addiction, I would have said no.
Recently I came to believe I had Cannaboid Hyperemesis Syndrome, a disease for which the only cure is to quit cannabis. So I quit - immediately. I have a gigantic pile of weed in the house (I had just bought more when I started having symptoms), and I pass by it everyday. I just shake my head and go, "darn, wish I could smoke that," and go about my day.
That's not a story you're going to hear from an addict.
That's not to minimize the experience of people who do experience a cannabis addiction. I have known people I suspect have a problem. But no, cannabis and alcohol continue not to be comparable as far as their harm and addictive potential.
(And I have absolutely no regrets about my consumption, it was an incredible medication for my anxiety.)
As a fellow anxiety-sufferer, I strongly encourage you to pursue sleep hygiene to the utmost. It doesn't fix everything for me, but it makes things way more manageable
Any feedback on CBD oil? Dosing? Type? I've never used cannabis at all, but I intend to try CBD.
[ES: Personal experience. I am not a doctor or qualified to give medical advice.]
I appreciate the advice.
I'm honestly a terrible person to ask, I preferred THC strains and never tried CBD products, and I mostly bought the most potent stuff which was on sale. It's also hard for me to judge dosage because I have developed a really high tolerance.
When I first started smoking it had a completely different effect on me, including visual hallucinations. Over time & with heavy use (which I don't necessarily recommend) the effects mellowed out a lot. So take things with a grain of salt, my experience may not be indicative of what your experience with CBD products would be.
I would say to make sure you're purchasing from a reputable dispensary, start with the smallest dosage (I've noticed people sometimes even cut up their gummies to get a smaller dose than is commercially available, for example.), and experiment. I know that's very generic advice, but the older I get and the more I learn, the less confident I am that I can understand how cannabis will effect other people. If I had to recommend a starting dose to someone, knowing very little about them, I'd probably say 5mg. But again I have low confidence in my ability to recommend a dose.
For me it had two primary benefits:
1.) As a "rescue inhaler," it could terminate panic attacks and sometimes shorten depressive episodes by helping me escape repetitive cycles of thought. I cannot promise it will work this way for everyone, for some people it could make them paranoid and ruminative.
2.) Reducing the incidence of repetitive anxious thoughts like, "I should have worded that email differently, they're going to think X of me, this is just like that time you did something embarrassing in high school." Again, cannot promise anything.
Okay. I'm having a fairly high rate of anxious thoughts but it's bearable. So far they're of the type that can be shaken off easily. I'm sure if I leave it untreated for a few months I'll have some form of breakdown, but while I haven't tried any alternatives yet, I'm looking for a psychiatrist & intend to find a different medication.
Most of us who drink coffee or tea are in the same boat. We do it every day, sometimes multiple times a day. There is withdrawal. There is tolerance. The half-life is so long that even if we stop in the morning, we are spending the majority of the day high.
Just to add a little more complexity to the equation. Note that there is a weird level of approval for some substances ( coffee, uppers, whatever NY brokers and med students use ), because they help some corporate goals, while those that do not increase bottom line and are even detrimental to it ( alchohol, pot and so on ) are frowned upon, because they lead to downtime.
And if you pay attention to how you actually respond to caffeine, it actually has a HUGE effect on your state of mind and how you react to things. Not always in a bad way, but it easily can affect you as much as weed.
Hearing a friend describe how he reacted to caffeine made me realize that some people have wildly different responses than I do.
Caffeine doesn't make me feel particularly great, and I feel almost no compulsion to have more than one cup, but it made him feel amazing, and he felt compelled to drink more.
I can stop drinking coffee for a week without any annoyance, but if he tries to pull back or stop drinking caffeine, he experiences 2 weeks of crippling headaches.
My takeaway: work your way into any drugs tentatively, and don't listen to people who tell you how much "everyone" responds to it.
For me, caffeine induces a wonderful sense of euphoria (as well as increased energy, increased focus, increased ability to sleep soundly, and decreased appetite), yet I simultaneously feel no impulse to consume it and usually don't.
I have to actively remind myself to consume my caffeine when I really need the boost in focus. The euphoria is a pleasing side effect, but not something I think about when I'm not experiencing it. It's common for me to go weeks at a time without having any, just because I didn't think to.
I think there could be a genetic factor here. Addiction (to alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine, etc.) seems to be fully absent in my family history.
I have an espresso superautomatic, beer in my fridge, and prescribed stimulants, and I often go months without partaking in any of that because it has to be a conscious decision and sometimes it never crosses my mind. I'm uncomfortable leaving my baseline.
It's like wearing fancy clothes. It's enjoyable for a few hours, but I wouldn't want to wear them frequently.
After going off caffeine for a day or two, drinking a strong cup of coffee or tea on an empty stomach will give me a fair bit of a buzz, to the extent that it feels like my head is floating. Two cups and work can become difficult and I can't sit still. If I drink three cups by mid-afternoon, I begin to feel anxious and slightly paranoid, as if I'm forgetting something important. It also impairs my sleep.
If you're a habitual user, you may not even realize how it effects you, and you'll need more dosage to get effects.
I'm a very long way from the folks on r/decaf, most of whom I think need some serious help, but it's much more impactful than you may realize.
Reading just this comment, I'm inclined to think your friend is likely correct. You very clearly have a dangerous bias against THC and it's clear in your rhetoric, for example:
> while biologically correct gave these type of people a get out of jail free card.
Yikes.
I think part of the problem is ever since legalization weed became more mainstream (potentially dangerous) but weed-conservatism (i.e. exaggerating real risks of THC) also became much more common to encounter (also potentially dangerous). The reality is somewhere in between. I do not use THC, but as someone who used it previously and it tremendously helped me, my current mental model and set of anecdotes say you're likely wrong and exaggerating the real risk your friend is under.
> You very clearly have a dangerous bias against THC and it's clear in your rhetoric
On the topic of biases, I wonder why you consider theirs to be "dangerous".
Regardless, their biases to seem to stem from a certain personal experience with marijuana, particularly their friends' habits with it. It's possible this person's "friends who spend majority of their day high" have a substance abuse problem even if not everybody who uses the substance abuses it.
> Because THC is shown to be an effective care for many mental and physical problems. THC itself can be dangerous or even very dangerous (psychosis risk etc) but this doesn't warrant being so overly cautious that we miss the forest for the trees. Facts show THC can be a very effective palliative tool, and it's unclear how much damage you can do with short-term regular use.
To add, it also leads to apologism of (or apathy for) locking people up for consuming THC.
Because THC is shown to be an effective care for many mental and physical problems. THC itself can be dangerous or even very dangerous (psychosis risk etc) but this doesn't warrant being so overly cautious that we miss the forest for the trees. Facts show THC can be a very effective palliative tool, and it's unclear how much damage you can do with short-term regular use.
"Potheads", "get-out-of-jail-free", "degenerate", etc.
"Ever since it became legal I have friends who spend majority of their day high. Of course, when confronted"
Maybe you should quit interrogating your friends to prop up your own puritanical moralities. All I see when I read your post is how much you hate people who use weed.
"Hey man have you tried going a couple days without smoking weed?" is not interrogation. It's concern.
I don't understand this attitude. Do you not care about the people around you? I'm not smashing my friend's joints or tossing their bongs. I'm asking because I am concerned about their health.
What I enjoy about the comments to my comment is it demonstrates how deeply ingrained this righteous indignation is in the "cannabis community". I don't understand your insults. "Puritan", etc. For some reason having concern for friends is now puritanical...what a world. Your focus on dissecting my use of idiom as some sort of in-built hatred for weed smokers is honestly so on point for the HN commenter community its actually almost funny.
"For some reason having concern for friends is now puritanical" -- it's difficult for me to reconcile your claim to have concern for your friends while also vilifying them for being "potheads" or "degenerates"?
Not really trying to insult you, that wasn't my intent, but in an era in society where personal autonomy and agency is becoming paramount to societal influence it makes damn near no sense that you're so worked up over someone else's personal choices.
Notice I don't disagree with the presented findings, how cannabis addiction isn't a boogeyman or false flag, it's can become a chemical dependency, but I do disagree with your stance of wanting to police the behavior of others to fit your own perspective, despite calling it 'concern' or 'caring about the people around me'.
If you were my friend, I'd tell you to mind your own business then eventually lose your number. I'm an adult, I take my own calculated risks and understand the consequences of my actions.
Apologies in advance if I'm taking your comment wrong. Anecdotal here, but I've had two friends in particular who at one point completely blew their lives up because of their inability to stop using THC. At the right time I would bring it up to both of them, and made it clear I would support them and be there for them no matter what. At this time one has been THC free for over two years, while the other is still in over their head. Both have always been appreciative of what I had to say, and I'm still great friends with them.
If a friend is becoming unhealthier and squandering opportunities because of a plant, substance, or whatever, it is completely okay to bring it up to them in a tactful way. The kind of friend who is unwilling to tell you the truth when you may need it most is the kind who's number you need to be throwing in the dumpster.
Visibly worse versions of themselves, according to whose standards? Apparently the standards of someone who doesn’t use cannabis on any level, so thereby doesn’t really have the authority to determine whether his friends who are high are better off or worse off. I just can’t see anything other than someone making value judgements of their “friends”.
This is a reasonable position, which is not something that can be said about the "war on drugs" type of person that I've encountered. That person is much less likely to be critical about why they question the use and, in my experience, will often assume that "use" is "abuse" regardless of the actual effect it has on the user.
The comment rightly calls out that it is a personal take about your friends but that is also something which might be done by someone with more pointed and less honest intentions. Certainly assumptions can be more charitable, however. I don't mean to justify these complaints of your comment but hopefully they're more understandable.
"Hey man have you tried going a couple days without smoking weed?" is not interrogation. It's concern."
Or maybe it is both?
Your friends are probably old enough to no want to be controlled by you. Tell them your opinion, it might do them good, but maybe don't tell them what to do. They should figure that out on their own.
A question of "Have you tried..." might be the precursor to an offered opinion. Maybe their friends have been successful at that exact thing and the opinion is moot. But if the answer is no, perhaps that's the point at which it might be suggested to try.
There's no controlling that is necessarily suggested by their comments. Certainly such questions can be asked in bad faith but it might be assumed that OP isn't doing that.
Well, it is also about intention yes, but my point was just that people do not like to be treated as children (especially when they are acting as such). To reach them, I first have to respect their choices.
> "Hey man have you tried going a couple days without smoking weed?" is not interrogation. It's concern.
It's still telling them what YOU think they should do, no matter how nicely and concerned you phrase it. At some point you have to walk away; they're full adults, they're not your responsibility, they're able to make their own choices, and unless they affect you directly it's ultimately not your job to fix them.
> Your focus on dissecting my use of idiom as some sort of in-built hatred for weed smokers is honestly so on point for the HN commenter community its actually almost funny.
I don’t know about that, I swear that ever since the Reddit drama the temperature has been dialed way up in the comment section if HN. More downvotes, more pithy comments, more line by line comment dissections.
Friends are people you can show concern for. If you only ever have softball easy conversations with then they're probably not a friend, they're an acquaintance. Sometimes hard conversations are necessary.
> Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
No, saying you don’t have an addiction may be a common thing addicts (and non-addicts!) do, but its not even close to the first sign of addiction. Or even a recognized symptom. Or even a recognized danger sign that would call for more intense screening. Its not a useful indicator of addiction at all.
> 20 years ago we called it weed, now we call it "cannabis".
“Weed”/“pot"/“ganja”/etc. are sonewhat vague slang. “Marijuana” and “hemp” are legal categories. “Cannabis” is a correct, precise term that encompasses both hemp and marijuana.
> Ever since it became legal I have friends who spend majority of their day high. Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
Before it became legal, I'm willing to bet those friends spent a majority of their day doing something equally unproductive. Be it playing video games, or watching tv, whatever $couch_potato_activity. And they're probably just doing the same stupid thing while high, because it's even more fun that way.
It's easy to villify a drug for what would happen either way, you're not proving a causal relationship. Pot and being a lazy slob dovetail quite nicely, just like pizza and beer. Nobody blames pizza and beer for the fat stained-shirt slob who never gets off their ass.
> Of course, when confronted, they say it's not addictive and they dont have a problem. As we know this is the first sign of a very serious addiction.
We don't know anything of the sort.
It's common for addicts to think they aren't addicted. But it's also common for non-addicts to think they aren't addicted, because, you know, they aren't.
It's just difficult in many cases to tell whether someone is addicted, and your confidence that you know isn't warranted, nor does it make you particularly helpful to addicts.
From a practicality perspective, a decent litmus test I think is "does the behaviour cause problems in your life?" and a follow-on to that is "do you want to stop but feel that you're unable to?"
I am addicted to tobacco. It causes me social and relationship grief. It's very hard to stop. Health-wise I don't need a lecture on the long-term harm I am doing, but in the short-term I'm generally going pretty good. Great cardio, decent blood pressure, shrug. I low-key want to stop, but it's not urgent.
I am likely addicted to caffeine as well, although suffer virtually zero obvious negative consequences from that other than needing a cup or two throughout the day to feel alert.
Someone else in this this thread mentioned losing multiple jobs because of weed. They're likely addicted to it, or suffering from some other kind of mental condition that results in them having poor impulse control/pleasure-seeking behaviour.
I agree with most of what you're saying here about this being a comparison problem.
The one area of major disagreement is regarding the "cannabis" designation. For me, this term is associated with the opposite connotation. When I started taking its effects more seriously, I started using the cannabis word because I feel it lends more respect to the plant. This wasn't originally my idea, and so I'm not alone in this.
This respect was part of my own mindset shift on usage away from habitual use. A way to remind myself to take it seriously, and to partake intentionally if/when I do.
Most people I know are pretty aware of their "problem" but have no intention of changing it. Calling it one thing over another might be a form of self deception for a few, but self deception will always find some answer.
> It won't kill you like alcohol withdrawals will or make you agitated like nicotine will. So then it must be okay right? These same potheads will quote studies and news articles talking about the benefits or just how risk free it is.
I do think we have major issues with how we paint these different groups. When someone is an alcoholic, they gain sympathy and support from society proportional to their maladaptive behaviors and/or willingness to address the issue.
"Potheads" is almost always derogatory, and I don't think people who struggle with this are seen in the same light as people who struggle with other drugs of abuse, and it's not surprising considering the pretty clear misconceptions the public has about cannabis as a whole.
And I think this is important to note, because one of the #1 emotional factors that leads to continued maladaptive substance use is shame. Society has progressed quite a bit towards supporting and celebrating people who struggle with drugs/alcohol. I don't think society has done the same with cannabis. Attitudes are closer to "they're just lazy and it's not even addictive so what's their problem?".
The status quo is "drugs are bad, m'kay?" and "drinking is fine, everybody does it, just don't drive when drunk".
The way forward should be understanding the following:
* Let's use the word "drug" for any compound that alters your state of mind for recreational purposes.
* Some of these drugs have medical value, but in this context it is about recreational use.
* Everybody is different in how they respond to a drug
* Most drugs are dangerous when consumed to excess
* Most drugs can impair your thinking and should not be used in unsafe conditions
* Some drugs can be dangerous due to adulterants (e.g., fentanyl)
* One should be mindful in how they consume drugs (not under peer pressure, not appropriate time/place, etc)
* If you are going to use a drug, treat it as dessert rather than a meal
* Addiction is possible/likely when one consumes a drug frequently in a short amount of time, or by consistent use of it
* Addiction can be overcome but it requires serious effort and can be *very* discomforting
* The first high is often the "best", and trying to capture that again can lead to addiction
* If you think you have a problem with drugs, you probably do, and should seek help in addressing your problem
* If you are an addict and you break your addiction you cannot return even once to using again
I'm sure there's room for improvement there, but it's a start.
The cultural roots of drinking are deep, and while I agree that alcohol enjoys a seemingly protected status, I don't know that blanket labeling everything "drugs" is a step forward.
I think this kind of abstraction is what gets people into risky situations. I'd rather we raised awareness across the board about the benefits and repercussions of the popular substances of choice. Some general rules of thumb are good, but less compelling than direct information about the ways things can go wrong, and ultimately not useful in the moment of choosing "do I partake?".
I think most people understand that some drugs are dangerous and some are not. But the drug conversation has been so dishonest for so long, that people struggle to assess what is real/true, or what to take seriously. I don't think people will take seriously anything that collapses mind altering substances under that single umbrella.
I think there are strong arguments to be made that psychedelics - especially psilocybin - deserve to remain in a category of their own. To associate them with "drugs" broadly seems counterproductive at a time when we're finally seeing research dollars pour into the field, and the effects of these compounds doesn't seem comparable with other recreational drugs. And no one gets addicted to psilocybin, but there are some very real risks that users need to know about.
I could have done better on the initial definition -- the key context is "recreational" use.
It's incredibly important that we collectively recognize that alcohol is a drug. More so, recent research shows that it has zero health benefits. We need to understand the extensive damage it does to society -- not to demonize or prohibit it, but to give context to when pearl clutching happens about other drugs.
Likewise, people should understand the history of the War on Drugs and be aware of the real reason they came about (spoiler: to oppress their users).
It is true that psychedelics can have incredible therapeutic value, but they can also be a lot of fun (I certainly consumed them in that context when I was much younger). Cannabis can be added to that list, as well as others.
So yes, let's be entirely honest about the subject (which I'm trying to do). We can't wish them away, so let's deal with it like rational adults and minimize the risks of harm.
I'm not arguing for prohibition. The point was more that despite its ills, society does not treat people who consume alcohol as harshly as society treats people who consume other substances that are arguably no worse, or possibly less harmful.
Not a value judgement, just an observation about current attitudes around mind altering substances.
I think this is a great list. I would point this out.
> * Let's use the word "drug" for any compound that alters your state of mind.
> * If you are going to use a drug, treat it as dessert rather than a meal
Consider that your definition rightly includes things like antidepressants, but people for whom antidepressants are working should take them regularly (which I assume is the distinction you're drawing with dessert versus meal).
Maybe not an addiction in the sense that they get shakes and sweats when they quit cold turkey (or risk death), but definitely a dependence that I see in a lot of people; a dependence on weed just to be able to relax.
But the side effect of being high all the time is indifference. Things can wait.
I don't think the wording makes much of a difference, that's like saying "I drink" vs "I imbibe alcohol". Or as South Park said it, "I'm not having a glass of wine, I'm having six, it's called a tasting and it's classy".
But it does become dangerous when people think of it as medicinal, as a kind of self-medication. Some people need it, for sure, but for a lot of people it's self-medicating without dealing with the root issues.
But then there's plenty of examples of self-medicating, ranging from sugar, energy drinks, video games, alcohol, sex, work, etc.
None of this is true for me or a few other people I know.
I had a rough childhood. I didn’t get help. I tried, but I have debilitating anxiety and the system expects you to be able to manage getting help even if that’s what you need help with.
The pandemic broke my brain. The amt of complaining every one did about the lockdowns. All people were talking about was a life I was forced to subsist in because I was never given help. Last year I tried weed and it has helped a lot.
I don’t need to say I smoke weed X a day to myself. I’ll just say it to you or anyone else. Sound like a degenerate to who? You? Judgmental people?
I got tired of proving I’m not a “degenerate”. I would get off weed to prove to people around me I don’t need it, but it’s never enough. If you don’t think weed is medication then that’s on you.
Clearly "weed" is the slang term and "cannabis" is the name of the plant!
> These same potheads
This seems more like branding to me :P
The ultimate denial has to be the people with ADHD, because of course the only cure for ADHD is daily meth amphetamine use. "It actually calms me down"
Do they have a good reason not to get high? Alcohol is different because it’s much less healthy, more expensive, and causes hangovers. I can’t think of any side effects of non-smoked cannabis that last beyond the evening except for the stuff that matters in 30 years
> My eyes are rolling so hard. You convicted them on evidence of their denial?
The behavior of an addict doesn't need a degree to see. If you are in a perpetual haze, need it to get up in the morning, and say you do not have a problem you do have a problem.
> These strawmen are transparent and juvenile, while substance dependency of every kind is a complicated and common problem that requires far more nuance.
This is not worth addressing because it seems like you're just mad.
> Whatever axe you're grinding, it's basically unhinged and socially degenerate in and of itself.
I've noticed people who like the word "cannabis" take issue with it being called avoidance language. It's the same thing seen in vapes, different variations of alcohol, designer drugs, etc. In fact, vapes follow almost the same model as the "cannabis industry" and do quite a bit to dance around the fact it's a drug. Vape stores in particular will sell to 50mg salt nic as a new user. A weed store will sell you medical grade 80% THC hydro as a first time user. Drugs are drugs. If you use them responsibly you probably aren't smoking/drinking/injecting it to feel normal. The path to profitability is to create addicts. You do this by feeding them more of the addicting substance they they realize.
I'm not sure what you're on about but maybe you forgot to toke up before posting.
I don't care what people do. I'm not a "karen". I'm reflecting the OP's post. Addiction is addiction and we are talking about it. I'm sorry my opinion is not to continue to let people who have a problem have that problem. As someone who has been an addict I am intimately familiar with both the pipeline to addiction and the behavior of a functional addict.
You're the one who engaged in childish name calling. Maybe back off and get some context.
From my perspective and my best rationalisation of it, when I'm bored or stressed I reach for a dopamine hit and weed is a great source of one. The next day I'll have a low and there's a 'battle' between the rational and want. The rational side almost never wins and I'll be in a daily usage cycle for months.
That being said I think it's an easier drug to break the cycle of with planning, since it only takes a few days of no use to dramatically improve my chances of resisting and honestly, if I didn't suffer from poor memory performance, I'd be okay as a daily smoker. But working is next to impossible at the level needed as a SDE.
I would say the same for myself. It doesn't interfere with my work performance, and I tell myself it's better than if I were drinking or whatever, but it has definitely become a compulsion and I basically can't regulate my usage if I have it available in the house. Lately I've gotten a little timed lock box to force myself to take breaks which I'm kind of ashamed to have to resort to, but it's helping me keep a better balance.
I will also say - and maybe this is more self-justification - but while I definitely cannot really do focused productive software work while stoned, I really do think that it puts me in a more creative mind-space and helps me see alternatives I wouldn't otherwise. I often go for a long hike after work and get stoned and stumble upon an approach to a work or life problem that's bouncing around in my head that I would not have otherwise.
>... but it has definitely become a compulsion and I basically can't regulate my usage if I have it available in the house.
I just replied to the OP myself, but I can definitely agree with this. When I first quit earlier in the year, I noticed that I'd be sitting on the couch watching TV or chatting with my wife in the evening, and I'd have this innate urge to get up, go to the garage and go smoke. It didn't even feel like I was consciously thinking I needed to get high, it had just become such a habit to do that in those moments. I had to re-train myself to ask, "Okay, why?" before actually doing it, and more often than not I couldn't justify the actual act of getting stoned in that moment beyond, "Well... to just be stoned," and that didn't seem like a good enough excuse to me, making it quite easy to fight the urge.
> I noticed that I'd be sitting on the couch watching TV or chatting with my wife in the evening, and I'd have this innate urge to get up, go to the garage and go smoke
One of the longer lasting effects of quitting tobacco was the urge at random times to get up and go outside. I knew I didn't smoke any more, I wasn't craving a cigarette, but it had been part of my behaviour for so long, that I just get up and go outside sometimes, that it lingered as a sort of tic for a while.
Having a compulsion to go and stand outside your back door for five minutes randomly in the middle of doing something else is not 'natural', no, it's a learned behaviour from smoking.
Yes, we should all get fresh air and sunlight. No we don't need to pause the tv show and head outside for no reason at 9pm when it's dark and cold.
I found that with the pens/oil I have no self restraint. It's just too convenient and easy to take a quick puff anytime I would feel stressed, bored, etc. Whenever I get an oil cartridge I smoke it every day until it's gone.
Lately I switched to gummies only. It helps because I need to be more deliberate. For me they take an hour to kick in and last a few hours after that, so I know I'm making a conscience choice of whether or not I want to be stoned for the next few hour.
This is not necessary a rebuttal, but I definitely have the same experience with coming up with creative ideas when I go walking or hiking without weed. I think walking is a great way to get your subconscious working effectively on something.
It can be programmed to remain locked for anywhere from minutes to many months. There’s no override code. The only way to open it once locked is to take a hammer to it (according to the instructions, haven’t verified!).
>working is next to impossible at the level needed as a SDE.
This is the truth. I can't reason as well or as quickly. Things go over my head. My working memory is so much smaller. I get lost in code all the time. I forget what I'm working on.
> I can't reason as well or as quickly. Things go over my head. My working memory is so much smaller. I get lost in code all the time. I forget what I'm working on.
Is that while being high on THC, or being sober but having consumed lets say the day before?
why if its cost you so much? Are you seeking treatment or is treatment something you even want? This is not an attack, genuinely interested. My sister is bipolar and she saw positives from stopping cannabis use.
Because I don't care. I'm burnt out. I have lost motivation. I used to care but I let my bipolar disorder get the best of me and there were consequences. I fell off the wagon and it stuck. I started smoking a lot in the pandemic and it compounded.
I work a dead end job now. It pays a fraction of google and is nowhere near the prestige of SpaceX. I don't care at this point.
Sorry you reached that point. You are clearly a smart person to have landed those jobs in the first place. I hope that everything works out for you, really do
Personally I care more about continuing to use marijuana than continuing to work. I've made enough money that I don't really need to work at least for the next decade and don't have anyone depending on me being responsible so the motivation to quit isn't really there.
I would guess marijuana only makes me about 10% worse at my job so it's not like I'm being fired like the other guy.
Not the GP, but for me it can be both. Depends a lot on your overall usage pattern.
Right now I only really smoke once a month at most, when the opportunity presents itself. In these cases, I'm obviously completely non-functional under the influence. But I also smoke a lot less because I have no tolerance, I feel pretty much completely fine the next day, possibly even better than usual, because the resulting night of REM suppressed sleep gives me a jolt of antidepressant effect without the downsides of sleep deprivation.
If I'm in a binging mode, it means I have a huge tolerance, smoke a ton more, and honestly it takes at 2-3 weeks of abstinence before I'm back to baseline for working memory, possibly longer.
But paradoxically, if I'm in such a binge, I'm probably more functional if I've had my morning smoke compared to skipping it for the day, because abstaining would then cause me to be highly irritable and unable to focus on anything in addition to the state of temporary dementia I'd be in. And since there's a massive tolerance, one dose won't have acute deleterious effects to the same degree.
This puts what I tried typing out a lot more succinctly than I could, at least as far as my own experience goes (YMMV, of course). At the beginning of the year I went cold turkey after consuming cannabis on a daily basis for about three years straight. At the time, I was plowing through at least ~4000mg of tincture (~150mg/dose) and ~2oz of flower in a single month - my frequent use meant that even one bong rip would do nothing, I'd need at least 5 or so to even reach the point where I'd go, "Oh, I think I'm stoned now, maybe?". Went cold turkey for a month and when I ate 20mg it rocked my world, and a single rip would kick my ass for an entire evening.
>That being said I think it's an easier drug to break the cycle of with planning...
Yep, this is what's worked best for me. I ended up using daily for a week earlier this summer and it was wild to me that I could watch my use go from one bong rip on a Monday rocking my world, to needing 3 or 4 rips the following Friday to get to the same level. Now, what works for me, is buying only a tiny amount at a time and saying, "Okay, this is gonna be used at X event, Y event and Z event over the next two months". If I'm an idiot and use it up before the end of that time, oh well, no more until then.
I'm 20 years deep in at least every-other-day usage (since I was 16), with breaks whenever I have to travel for work. Honestly the idea of quitting is a bit scary.
The only saving grace is that I've very rarely been a day-smoker (now vaper), it's almost always been a post-8pm thing.
I've been addicted to thc for much of my adult life. I know people who smoke much more than I ever did. I'd use every day, only after work, but I never didn't use it after work. I was using it as a crutch, I used it as a cure-all, I used it as a social lubricant. As mentioned in the article, I used it for anxiety, and the anxiety got worse.
I tried to quit a bunch of times, some more successfully than others. But quitting is really hard. I'd successfully exhaust my supply, but there's always bowl- and grinder-scrapings. After a night or two of smoking tar and dust, "fuck it", I'd find some more.
My #1 excuse was always sleep. Weed is the best sleep aid I've ever found. Quitting usually went fine until I wanted to go to bed. Several hours into a sleepless night, desperation sets in.
Eventually, I found a hack in LSD when I first had the determination to use it without mixing THC. I slept like a baby. No cravings the next day, or the next. I started dreaming again, after years of sleeping like a corpse and waking up exhausted.
I've since started and stopped a few times. Picked it back up to be social (and, hey, it's fun!), the habit-driving insomnia comes back with a vengeance. Stopping with LSD seems to work reliably for me. I only allow myself a hit of LSD per year, so that's how often I excuse a social session. But the last couple of times, I haven't needed the LSD. It seems that I finally kicked the compulsion. Although, I don't trust that enough to make it a more regular habit.
Edit reply to jrflowers:
No, I do not take acid to sleep. Taking it once allows me to quit thc cold turkey. I take it first thing in the morning, so I'm hungry for dinner and sleepy for bedtime. Last thing I need is a new habit.
Edit reply to gvedem (an hour and a half later I'm still "posting too fast" to make a second comment):
I bought the acid from a friend. I am aware that "one tab" is not a standardized dose and that adjacent tabs on a sheet can have significant discrepancy. But "one tab" is what I took.
>But quitting is really hard. I'd successfully exhaust my supply, but there's always bowl- and grinder-scrapings. After a night or two of smoking tar and dust, "fuck it", I'd find some more.
I've found my attempts to quit go better when I actually have a large supply of it that I'm consciously choosing not to indulge in. When your supply is exhausted your brain goes into a bit of a panic mode about it and you can't think rationally about how/why you're quitting.
> My #1 excuse was always sleep. Weed is the best sleep aid I've ever found. Quitting usually went fine until I wanted to go to bed. Several hours into a sleepless night, desperation sets in.
Weed and alcohol destroy your sleep. Taking marijuana to sleep is like hitting your toenail with a hammer so that when you stop you feel better, it does not make sense.
I recently stopped after years of using indica strains primarily for sleep. On one hand, I don't feel noticeably more (or less) rested now that I've stopped, but the dreams I have now.. it's kind of incredible how vivid and memorable they are. I'd forgotten what it's like to wake up and just reflect on whatever series of events my subconscious mind constructs.
>My #1 excuse was always sleep. Weed is the best sleep aid I've ever found.
I started smoking weed to get to sleep when I was in a crappy college dorm with those awful cheap Venetian blinds and a streetlight outside the window that birds liked to congregate around and chirp all night. When I got older I found I could achieve the desired effect by lowering the indoor temperature, using a decent mattress, installing curtains and (this part is still hard to manage due to funds and neighbors) having a quiet room.
I had a crappy college dorm with morning birds, not all night birds.
If you can't do a truly quiet room, I've found either an AC or fan can mask most noises effectively (I can still feel cars idling outside, or hear people yelling).
Also see https://mynoise.net/ which has a panoply of sound-generation options. I have spent hours trying various noises.
Yes, be very careful not to accidentally dose yourself continuously during days-long sleep deprivation torture in a CIA mind control experiment. You might break something!
During the times in which they are illegal, there's a certain beauty to the rebellion of a person fed up enough with their unconscious misalignment that they break the rules and heal themselves. (as long as they don't get punished for it. if they're punished for it, the society becomes a degree crueler)
Of course, it would be a lot better if they were legal, but I don't particularly want to see a time in which the only way you can get access to these things is through system-mandated control.
I have had other successes with LSD as well. I assume it is related to mindfulness helping break thought-spirals. Show the brain a way out of the spiral, and it can rewire the escape for future use. LSD increases neuroplasticity: the propensity of the brain to rewire itself. Which is probably why LSD is also incredibly risky.
I take edibles / smoke a few times a week. Never during work hours. I think if I started consuming during work I would label myself an addict. I generally find I am a much better parent / husband when on a low dose of thc. My patience for my kids is infinite. I spend time with them just teaching them chess or showing them how to do pushups, or just talking. When not high, my mind wants to do a lot of other things that are generally unimportant and future focused. THC grounds me in the now. My wife prefers it as I am pretty much agreeable to whatever she wants [I mean this in a good way, not in a "I drug him so I get what I want way"]. I am generally an argumentative person, and sweat the small stuff. Not when I am high. I never drive or do anything risky while high. I'm also not taking so high a dose that I am making bad decisions [besides the next sentence].
If I could just avoid being hungry while high it would be perfect but eating a cake after spending an hour and a half at the gym is pretty dumb.
> When not high, my mind wants to do a lot of other things that are generally unimportant and future focused. THC grounds me in the now.
I had a joint-a-night (occasionally more) phase that lasted for 8 months and this resonates with my experience very much. A side effect that I miss dearly now that I am 6 months off of it. Rarely I succeed in trying to emulate it, but it’s still useful as a reference of a better state of mind, so its easier to spot when I stray away too much
Yes it’s similar for me. It’s strange because before I used to get very anxious when stoned and it was a generally unpleasant time.
But then I spent one year at home getting stoned and playing competitive video game Dota 2. And doing that seemed to melt my anxiety away. I learned how to be confident in my thoughts and perceptions under an alternate state of mind. The proof was winning a a match or seeing some strategy of mine pan out. And I learned when to ignore others and not let their thoughts influence me. I learned how to live in the present.
I don't really like talking about it anymore, I am 6 years sober and still dealing with related issues every day, but yes I feel like I can't talk openly about it. Skepticism is exactly how I would describe it. It's not strictly stigma, like is the case for most people who talk about drug addiction. It's most often a reaction of surprise, disbelief, and then resentment, like I'm a sleeper agent for reefer madness propaganda that they've just uncovered. Normally when you admit to a previous drug addiction that's had lasting impacts on you, the "bad result" is "Wow, I can't believe you're a druggie". With cannabis it's more like "Wow, I don't believe that that happened actually, weed is safe girl, it cures cancer". It is what it is.
I think it's common for people to forget that the substance is not always the addictive part by itself. It's just as easy to become addicted to the side effects, like how it makes you feel or not feel. It seems to compound the judgement problem quite badly.
In my experiences, cannabis is about as addictive as coffee/caffeine.
By that, I mean it's unpleasant to quit after continuous usage due to various withdrawal side-effects but only for a relatively short period of time (3 or 4 days max).
In my experience, quitting caffeine is much harder than quitting weed. I've managed to go from daily use to no use for years with marijuana, and did not notice any withdrawal symptoms. Caffeine on the other hand I have tried numerous times to quit, and failed every time. The longest I've managed to go is 3 months, and the withdrawals are terrible.
I do not really get that bad of withdrawals from either. I only get a headache for about a day or two if I quit caffeine, a bit of sluggishness, and that's it really.
I would agree quitting cannabis might actually be easier though. However, the only side-effect I really ever get that is somewhat annoying is insomnia, but that I why I started using cannabis in the first place.
I had symptoms for about a month after quitting caffeine.
I think your analogy holds. Most people only have a couple of days of symptoms after quitting caffeine. But if you're on 4+ cups a day and/or you have a sensitive physiology, quitting can be rough.
I can't compare cannabis and caffeine because I don't enjoy cannabis so have never become chronic with it; but caffeine is seriously insanely hard to quit. 3-4 days isn't it for me. The one time I kicked it for a chunk of time, it took about 3 weeks before I felt normal enough to feel I'd really kicked it, and lost the craving. I'm very sensitive to the stuff, and I love (good quality) coffee. After a couple months without it, I just ended up back drinking it again.
In comparison, I've smoked cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, and never had a problem quitting. Few days of craving after smoking for a few days, then kicked it. Coffee... brutal brutal brutal
I just took a long break (1.5 months) after smoking every night for 6 months. Going cold Turkey I basically had no withdrawal symptoms other than my pre-existing sleep issues came back.
The body metabolizes strains differently. Same with coffee. Really strong robusta coffee bean crashes hard whereas light roasted Arabica tapers very nicely.
dabbing all day and vaping oil is in no way comparable to caffeine, cannabis is way more addictive, side effects last longer than 3-4 days as well. People are extremely irritable having lost their main crutch for a month or longer. The fog doesn't lift for about a month. This article is talking about people actually addicted, not like they smoke once a day in the evenings or something.
> dabbing all day and vaping oil is in no way comparable to caffeine
That's comparing the extremes of cannabis administration. I do not utilized any of those methods of administration, so perhaps you are right on how badly it affects one. Then again, I imagine if people were snorting caffeine pills consistently, the withdrawals would be worse than a cup of green tea a day.
Oddly enough, I have never really noticed the irritability as a side-effect. I usually trend towards heightened levels of anxiety. The fog you speak of tends to dissipate for me after a few days to a week.
Yes, I have. Though, I have another scheduled break coming up soon.
I didn't start using cannabis until I was in my late 20s almost 30s, and my brain was already fully developed by then (I guess?). So, perhaps that has something to do with it being easy to quit?
I'll say this, cannabis is no panacea, but I do find the benefits profound. There are some negative side-effects, but they are very benign in the grand scheme of life.
I am not anti-medicine by any means, but I will tell you this much. Cannabis has been better in terms of efficacy and side-effects than the one anti-anxiety medication I tried back in the day. Cannabis was far easier to quit too.
The coolest part of this whole discussion is that we can finally compare weed and alcohol.
Before the current weed era, weed was always compared favorably, by smokers, to alcohol with the adage: Weed is illegal, yet I've never seen a bar fight after everyone gets high.
Now we can do a real comparison of the effects of weed smoking on the general public, the same way we've done with drinking.
True story: I was talking to an academic who was doing a study, aiming to get people to fill out a big questionnaire on health and lifestyle. As an incentive, people got a voucher for a gym. "Don't you think you'd get different results if you offered 200 cigarettes or a bottle of vodka instead?" I asked, "Well that wouldn't get past the ethics board!"
And my point is that this is weird and lurid, not "cool". It's like cheering that a smallpox outbreak occurred so you can study the disease progression.
The point seems to be interesting in a way which might be called "cool" if one happens to be so interested. Even if one finds it lurid they may also find it interesting or "cool".
> It's like cheering that a smallpox outbreak occurred so you can study the disease progression.
I believe I understand the point. We don't want to celebrate a negative occurrence simply because there is silver lining. However, it's hard to see past a certain false equivalence that's being made. A disease which propagates ought to be treated differently from personal choices even if the things are equally destructive to the individual.
But I'm a philosopher at heart. Let's say a person chooses to infect themselves with a disease to facilitate study of some aspect of it. Let's also say that they are able to do this in an environment that all but guarantees the disease will not propagate except possibly to other willing volunteers. Should this research be prevented? Would the results of this research definitely not be "cool", meaning "interesting"?
It's more like, suppose people are purposefully infecting themselves with smallpox, and then suddenly the common cold is legalized so people switch to that. I could consider that "cool." Possibly similar story with vaping vs. smoking but the decrease in harmfulness is less obvious there.
I was a heavy smoker through college living in a state where I could only buy through dealers. I was hanging out with one of my dealers once when they said, “if I drank as much as I smoked I’d be an alcoholic.” I realized I was an addict at that point but I didn’t think I had a problem. After all, I passed college with good grades and got a good job. I was generally happy and had few bad experiences on marijuana vastly outweighed by good ones.
Two things really bothered me though:
1. Any amount of smoking is bad for your lungs and I take my health seriously.
2. I don’t like the idea that a substance of any sort had power over me.
I made 2 changes after graduation to get things back under control:
1. I only do edibles except on special occasions like 04-20 or a holiday with friends. So few that I can count the number of times a year on one hand.
2. I only consume marijuana every other month.
I now consider myself a joyful consumer of the product because I prefer marijuana to alcohol on nights out with friends. I feel more in control and less tired the following day. Hitting the breaks every other month resets me. It proves to myself I’m still in control and keeps any cravings and tolerance down at a reasonable level.
I’m not sure if this will work for anyone else but thought I’d share.
To share, a friend of mine has brought some edibles to his doctor and tested positive for small amounts of trace metals. This is from a legitimate dispensary but I imagine they are not really put thru their proper traces when testing for quality control. Its prolly fine once in a blue moon but if you are consuming edibles regularly, it can stack and create worse problems then smoking it. Smoking is a bit more pure in some ways as its only one ingredient VS. who knows how the edibles are made, the process they use, how much it is actually regulated, packaged, etc. Ive had edibles that get me pretty lifted and the next day I'm pretty good and not beat up too bad. Then ill try a different brand and it'll get me just as lifted, but I feel way more sluggish, like it took more out of me. The best I found in terms of taking a toll on your body, is the water-soluble edibles. Those seem to be cleaner.
At the very best, cannabis is neutral. You can have positive experiences but you pay a price with your body over time. Its unsustainable if you are looking to follow a trajectory that is positive over time for your physical, spiritual, and mental well-being. If you are looking to have transformative experiences in your life, I dont think cannabis will help. If you are looking to chill, cannabis really works
>a friend of mine has brought some edibles to his doctor and tested positive for small amounts of trace metals. This is from a legitimate dispensary but I imagine they are not really put thru their proper traces when testing for quality control. Its prolly fine once in a blue moon but if you are consuming edibles regularly, it can stack and create worse problems then smoking it.
Why do you think that smoking the "trace metals" (I assume you mean heavy metals--and if you are curious why there would be heavy metals like lead and mercury in marijuana, it is because the seller's income is directly proportional to the weight of the product, and adding heavy metals adds weight) is healthier than eating it?
The flower didn't test positive for metals, just the edibles. I think my friend said the edibles tested positive for aluminum and fluorocarbons? Dont recall specifically.
My feeling is the body has an easier time breaking down smoke VS. the metals snd flurocarbons which could stay in your system a while and stack. The lesser of two evils?? lol If the edibles are "clean" then they take less of a toll than smoking but if they are not (metals, shitty ingredients) then smoking the flower might be better. I'm not too familiar how much of a toll trace metals and flurocarbons affect the body and how hard/easy it is for the body to get rid and eliminate, for example, aluminum. Seems like smoke might be less of a foreign element to the body and it knows how to break down easier. Either way, drugs are bad but fun =D
Everything can be addictive. My stepsister is addicted to buying things and never opening the item. Her husband enables this because they live out in the country and he had a sort of "warehouse" built for her with huge metal racks that hold hudreds of items she has purchased over the years that have never been opened or had the shrink wrap disturbed. It is of course a type of hoardism. She buys things but if she opens the package and uses the item it ruins it is sort of how she explains it. We know it is a disorder of some sort, she is addicted to buying things and hoarding them. What should we do about it?
Well, if her husband is OK with it, then what is it for us to judge? I am conflicted on this. But, I think, there is some sort of line where something is addicting and addicting and harmful. If this is not disrupting their lives, and they are happy, who am I to judge?
I don't know. To me it is weird, but probably a lot of things I do seem weird to others. I journal daily. Is that an addiction? Probably, of some sort, I don't know. How to navigate. The less harmful it is, the less we should meddle I suppose.
That makes me think I am also probably addicted to buying stuff from Aliexpress. When I get an idea about something, I usually compulsively buy something from AliExpress and then not finish the project, sometimes not even opening the plastic wrapping the thing came inside. I hope it doesn't transform into an addiction.
For example I bought a digital pH meter for 15€ some weeks ago yet I never used it for a thing. I do not even know basic chemistry.
Enough about myself (: Thank you for posting your story.
If a billionaire did this, people would see it as eccentric but not an addiction. Cause you know, he's a billionaire already. Just let him do it. If your stepsis is in dire financial straits or neglecting responsibilities, that's probably where you would draw the line.
If you need a good rationale though, know that archaeologists would have a field day with her collection in 100 years :)
It's clearly less damaging and chemically addictive than alcohol or whatever, but I wouldn't necessarily equate it with collecting Pokemon. I had a roommate who'd been persistently stoned for probably 30 years. A girlfriend convinced him to only use it on a few evenings a week, and he quickly realized that he'd entirely lost the ability to handle urgent negative emotions-- anger, frustration, disappointment, etc. He was still a great guy, but man did that put him through the ringer.
Normally steadfastly mellow, one day I heard him stomping up the stairs to our apartment, then stomped into the living room, looked at me and exasperatedly said "THE WHOLE WORLD IS STUPID. EVERYBODY IS STUPID. EVERYBODY SUCKS" and then went into his room, slammed the door, and literally screamed at the top of his lungs 4 or 5 times. About half an hour later, he came out, apologized and said he got blocked for maybe 45 seconds taking a left into our driveway because someone who'd stopped at the traffic light right there either rudely or obliviously didn't leave an opening, which pushed him right over the edge. I knew what he was going through, and knew he was talking to a therapist about it, so I wasn't worried for him... but I sure felt bad for him!
I want to thank you for sharing this story. I've struggled with my own THC addiction, using it as a crutch for trauma and anxiety, but your comment helped me realize that, like your roommate, the addiction has wrecked my ability to (responsibly and maturely) process negative situations. Enduring those situations is one thing, but seeing how they're connected to other parts of a more complete life is different.
Sometimes it helps to see it described by someone else before you really see what you, yourself are in.
Thanks again for helping a stranger connect some dots. You've given me more to think about in my approach to kick this habit.
That's another element I can add, but didn't want to as it's not something I've experienced and know, but have friends in this area.
Regardless of the drug you use, many are used to alleviate whatever problem you have e.g. Stress, Anxiety, Disorders, and then it becomes part of you, and you no longer have the need to address the root cause of why you need the drug. Again, not a doctor, but I think the poster above put it best as a "crutch". It's ok for short term, but long term, you allow yourself to ignore the root cause, which has long term effects.
check out /r/leaves for community and resources. you're not at all alone, I've been using weed as a crutch since I started during the pandemic and it became habitual--don't think I've quit for more than two weeks since.
it's great that people are discussing this, some people can definitely use weed responsibly and stop easily, but others really, really can't--and the sooner we recognize it as addiction the easier it is to get out.
I've stopped using weed about 3 weeks ago and my first week was rough. The emotional roller coaster I had is exactly what you described in your story. I didn't go as far as screaming or doing anything over the top, but inside I was boiling with anger and resentment.
It's definitely gets better with time but making sure you don't trust yourself and your emotions while going though withdrawal is a key. I didn't have anybody to support me while I was going though this but it's great that some people can understand this and don't take it personally is good to hear.
I am not sure where to start with on this article. There are a lot of extraneous and tired points being trotted out that really clouds the underlying point.
Essentially the point I took is some people could use serious help, and they get laughed at by society and the drug treatment programs they find because their problem is cannabis (and not say meth).
I don't think this is a surprise or that profound. Drug treatment in the US has been generally 'jail' (and still is for most drugs, and for cannabis as well in many regions). Actual drug treatment in the US is something of a joke for any substance, whether you are taken seriously or not. Drug treatment programs are expensive, often not covered by health insurance (if you have health insurance), often not effective - and that is the tip of the iceberg.
US medicine severely struggles for holistic treatments. Drug addiction treatment needs holistic treatment.
For example, detox centers will help a person come down and get over the most intense part of withdrawal. This is super important for alcohol as that withdrawal can kill you. But, this is symptomatic of how US medicine works - treats the chemical and biology, but not the person.
A couple of other notable points I'd like to raise:
> “You smell it in the air when you’re sitting at a stoplight,” Courtney said.
This made me laugh. Try to quit smoking tobacco... Try to give up alcohol. Both are _everywhere_
On a serious point, giving up any substance can be a real challenge, no matter what it is.
> and the potency of the drug has been increased —
This is such a boogeyman. Total amount of drug ingested is quantity times potency. Old school people made up the low potency with quantity. What is more though, there always was high potency strains available (just not as prevalent today). Thai sticks, hash oils, they have been around for a long time. So, the high potency stuff has been around, that is not new, and most people compensate for the high potency by ingesting less.
> This is such a boogeyman. Total amount of drug ingested is quantity times potency. Old school people made up the low potency with quantity. What is more though, there always was high potency strains available (just not as prevalent today). Thai sticks, hash oils, they have been around for a long time. So, the high potency stuff has been around, that is not new, and most people compensate for the high potency by ingesting less.
My supply back when I used to smoke was limited to “what my dealer had available.” There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them. There’s also an issue of “minimum viable dose” - provided you have sufficient time and determination, you can get just as high with shitty weed as you can with the good stuff, but it’s an awful lot harder to get only as high with the good stuff as you did with the shitty stuff. I am pro-legalization and anti-drug war, but I hear this bromide about the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on.
> There may have been better strains available, but I sure couldn’t get my hands on them.
The point is those strains certainly did exist. You are right to point out they were not as prevalent though.
> the enormously increased availability of high-potency THC products not leading people to consume more and I just wonder what world y’all are living on.
This is not quite the same angle as I was getting at. I agree that larger supply generally does drive more usage. There is data that agrees with that too - studies regarding consumption in WA post legalization did find a statistically significant (but still somewhat marginal) increase in overall consumption (let me know if you'd like to see that for yourself, I can try to dig it up, IIRC it was about 10% more consumption).
The angle I'm coming at is two fold.
(1) One of the biggest harms (if not the primary harm) of cannabis consumption comes from the combustion of carbon. More carbon burned and inhaled means more harm. That is different from alcohol. For example, if I were to drink a shot of vodka, or a shot of vodka mixed with a pint of water, it's about the same harm either way because the harmful thing there is the alcohol itself. For cannabis, that is not the case. If we smoke more, it's more harm because of the carbon, regardless of whether we are getting more THC or not. This is almost obvious in some cases with cannabis, scrape a bong and smoke that - it's basically smoking charcoal and the THC output is very low; it's way worse than consuming magnitudes more THC but smoking far less [consuming magnitudes more THC may be unpleasant, but overall health wise you're going to be better off compared to smoking charcoal (aka resin)]
(2) Generally if you give someone cannabis that is twice as strong, they will use about half as much (and perhaps maybe a bit more). This is generally true from my experience, there are exceptional individuals who will smoke as much as they have, always. Regardless of those exceptions, to illustrate, let's say someone is shooting for a 1.5 gram dose of THC per day (at 10% potency, multiply that by 10 for the plant weight, ergo 15 grams of plant weight per day - this is a heavy user). Let's say with greater supply they are now going to smoke 1.7 grams (10% increase, in line with the increase observed post legalization). For the sake of this napkin math, let's say they increase by 20% to 1.9 grams per day (so smoking 19 grams of plant matter total). Now, even at the increased usage, let's say they get some 20% grade weed, they still consume that 1.9 grams of total THC, but now the plant volume smoked is just shy of 10 grams. Even at higher usage, smoking higher potency, it's still a huge net benefit to smoke 10g of plant per day compared to 15g of plant matter per day.
In the above, Q is the thing that causes harm. If Q is limited because there is no supply or no cash, then we have an upper bound of Q due to that factor. Otherwise, 'T' generally has an upper bound, in my experience it is a pretty fixed value, which means if we increase 'P' (potency) we will decrease 'Q' (which is the total quantity smoked, and reducing the total quantity smoked is reducing the harm [at least the harm that is directly related to smoking cannabis, namely the inhalation of CO and other toxic elements that are by-products from the combustion of carbon).
"Not as prevalent" is underselling the transformation that's happened in the marijuana market to an almost laughable degree.
> One of the biggest harms <...> of cannabis consumption comes from the combustion of carbon
> T = PQ
So there's two spots here where we're going to disagree, and I expect the disagreement to be fairly irreconcilable:
The first, primarily, is in seeing THC consumption as fundamentally fine with no downsides in and of itself aside from the potential physical harms from the means of consumption. This has been a primary argument from the legalization community and for good reason - the drug war did far, far more harm to cannabis consumers than cannabis ever did - but it's wrong. There are a whole lot of folks for whom some recreational weed use is totally fine, but I'm sure you already know people who should be consuming less (or you will). Not everyone handles psychoactive substances well, it can get habit-forming, and not everyone is Carl Sagan.
The second is seeing T in your equation as a fixed quantity and assuming people are rationally capable of solving that equation perfectly over time. I think this combines with #1, but I also suspect you've seen enough people who's Ts have crept up over time to know that equation's a bit fallacious.
Again, I do not think marijuana should be illegal. I think it's generally one of the safer drugs out there - in fact, I've got a hard time thinking of many drugs with a better risk profile or even a lower long-term impact to heavy users. That said, I think that the community at large has both oversold its safety and undersold the potential for (psychological) dependency and the impacts on users, and is continuing to do so at potential risk to the movement itself. I understand why that's been the case historically, but I think the community at large needs to move past pretending there are no downsides to the drug at all and to start acknowledging that it's a psychoactive substance, and like every other psychoactive substance out there requires some care and attention to harm reduction.
(And, to be very clear on this: I think by and large most people who consume cannabis recreationally on an even quasi-regular basis will have few to no negative effects. I also don't think that cannabis consumption itself should be dramatically regulated to prevent the few long-tail negative outcomes - but those outcomes DO exist, and we can't and shouldn't pretend they don't.)
> The second is seeing T in your equation as a fixed quantity and assuming people are rationally capable of solving that equation perfectly over time. I think this combines with #1, but I also suspect you've seen enough people who's Ts have crept up over time to know that equation's a bit fallacious.
I omitted a response to this. I totally agree T is a function of time and tolerance. I fully agree even T can become extremely elevated due to tolerance.
My point though is analgous to drinkers. Most people are looking to acquire a certain BAC and they stop when they hit that. EG: if I want a BAC of 0.12%, I'll stop after 2 pints or 2 shots; just because I have a bottle of vodka in front of me I'm not going to drink 2 pints of it.
Thus, the _typical_ effect of providing someone with double potency is they consume half as much. Typically though, there are exceptions (ballpark 5-15% of heavy users, which are already a small subset of all users)
This ties back into the potency thing though, the inverse is true; decrease potency by half and the volume consumed will double. For those that were seeking a very high 'T' value - they were making up for it in quantity. Thus, the average value of 'T' has not gone up to dramatic levels.
I would guess it is likely that generally more people are getting higher, but it's like 10%, something like 0.35 grams of THC or 0.4 grams in a session compared to 0.3 grams. It's only heavy users I've ever met that can do more than that; and believe me that they were getting plenty high smoking absurd quantities
I really appreciate your considered response and the dialog we are able to have. I don't think we actually disagree that much (perhaps only maybe on whether the war on drugs is worse than the drugs themselves); but overall we are at risk of talking past each other.
My point is very simply that the majority of cannabis users are seeking to achieve a desired effect, not smoke a certain volume. Hence the statement (that I'm paraphrasing with some exaggerated emphasis) of "OMG, because pot is so much stronger today, people are getting so much THC! Unprecedented amounts!". I say no, people are just smoking less to get the same level of high. Further, nothing about the high potency is that novel, there _were_ higher potency strains and they were quite available (the availability was spotty due to black market, but the still very available). A really notable example would be domestic production. Generally that has always produced strains over 10%. There has been a _lot_ of domestic production for quite some time running. Certainly not everyone knew a grower, or knew someone that knew someone, but plenty of people did. It would be super interesting to know the percentage of domestic cultivation around the 1960s to 1980s compared to imports, but those numbers will never be known with any certainty. Further though, not all imports were low quality cannabis, people have been rolling Afghani hash-balls for a very long time. In short, smoking hash in the 1960s is very similar to smoking high potency pot of today - and there was quite a bit of hash available in the 1960s and prevously.
Second, and this is really my point - the majority of cannabis users are looking to achieve a desired effect. If it takes less to get the same effect, then less is consumed. It's exactly similar to how people will have 3 drinks, they're going to stick to 3 drinks whether that is 1 pint of beer and 2 shots, or 3 beers and 0 shots. For smoking and the health impacts and toxicitiy, the volume smoking is the dominant factor, not the quantity of THC consumed. Alcohol is not like that, it's the amount of alcohol that drives the toxicity, not the volume that contained the alcohol.
Which also brings me to another point, I failed to convey the nuance carefully, in terms of harm - I'm only talking about chemical toxicity and the biological harm of the drug itself. I'm not at all talking about the societal harm and I do not discount it.
Regarding societal harm - pegging millions of people with felonies, with life sentences for simple first time possesion is immense societal harm. There is only one job in my life I could have had with a felony record. You can't even bag groceries if you have a felony... (that was my first job, and it didn't accept felons). Though, nobody is pretending it's all roses on the other side. The big point though is those suffering from severe impacts because of their consumption - it's not the case that the war on drugs actually did anything to help them. In other words, the war on drugs generally only hurt people further. The legalization movement gained a lot of steam when it was commonly acknowledged that the legal consequences of getting caught with cannabis were the largest risk for cannabis users, not the dealer, and not the person failing school because of cannabis use. That's just saying for 90% of some users during prohibition, their dealers were safe and they were not going to fail school because of cannabis. Legalization really helps for two reasons, it removes the black market and the ties and interactions average users were forced to create (they no longer had to work with someone that also sold other drugs, or dealt with large amounts of cash and the associated violence, etc..); and it removed the legal penalties. This leaves us with the just the societal harms of cannabis use, none of which are helped with black markets.
I have few friends who are seriously addicted. Their lives revolve entirely around cannabis. That being said, I don't think it's a particularly addictive substance. People get addicted to all sorts of things. For instance gambling, it's hard to believe someone can be addicted to that, yet people are...
Why is it so difficult to understand how people get addicted to gambling? I'm pretty sure it causes observable physiological changes, like increased heart rate
As much as I think that Marijuana should be decriminalized completely. I also still think that it causes a ton of problems among those who smoke it. I've had friends change completely after starting to smoke habitually. I don't think it would be a problem if our society weren't so messed up right now. But, like alcohol, I think poverty and isolation just makes it so much worse.
You don't need to reach to poverty and isolation to see its effect. I have some friends in their 30s-40s who daily consume 3-7 joints, and it shows. They are in full denial but you can really tell they are slow. In everything. It screws up your cognition.
As other comments have noted, just like with other addictions, it is extremely helpful/insightful to be able to see someone "further along" and say "I don't like what I see."
I interacted with and heard stories about family alcoholics when I was growing up and that is part of why I'm confident I won't develop a bad relationship with it myself. It's hard to forget what it does not just to the users, but to everyone around them.
Similarily, although I didn't see it growing up, as an adult I have seen some pretty hardcore stoners (high all the time), and I do not like the lifestyle that most seem to fall into. It's really easy to notice the cognitive decline when it happens to someone you know. Even if you want to be charitable, people at the very least behave quite differntly when they go from generally sober all the time to generaly stoned all the time. YMMV but I prefer generally sober people versus generally stoned people.
I think part of the strong correlation between stoners and legalization movements is because they're (rightfully!) self-interested in improving their own lifestyle, so they'll be the loudest and most experienced advocates. As much as I loathe the "marijuana can do no harm" attitude of some stoners, the still reactionary "omg drugs bad!" people are terrible. Making it illegal makes it so much worse for everyone involved, and you're not going to stop people from being involved with marijuana. More or less the same reasons we need to legalize sex work. It's here, it's always been here, and we need to learn how to cope with this reality in a healthy and safe manner. "Abstinence only" doesn't stop babies from being made any better than it stops people from using drugs. Education is the key (as it so often is).
I used to be a big fan of pot and a proponent of legalization but now I am not sure.
The impact of things is at the margins - people whose lives were going to work out well, will probably still be OK even with pot. People who were gonna have big problems probably will have them anyway. But I think there are some people who will be pushed from the "barely OK" to "not OK" category.
The legalization (vs decriminalization) has had a clear impact on the use. You used to smell pot when walking in NYC sometime, now you smell it consistently everywhere. You are constantly in the presence of high people which did not used to be the case.
In my own life there were historically some benefits to discovery of pot, but I also recognize that areas where I wasn't vigilant about it, had negative effects. For example times in my life when I had gotten fat correlate to when I smoked actively. I was vigilant for pot messing me up in obvious ways - eg I didn't let it make me miss work or stop dating etc - but the weight subtly crept on me.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's hard to argue that weed addiction is worse than jail (in the US). Legalization is about ending a practice that has objectively ruined many many lives. And while it's impossible to stop everyone from smoking weed and potentially becoming addicted, it's incredibly easy to stop the government from putting those people in jail.
I think all this makes the decision very easy. There is no option where nobody is harmed, but legalization clearly prevents the most harm.
I understand your argument and there's merit to it but I am not sure I agree with your conclusion.
I am mainly speaking about the friction that exists for the accessibility of the vice, and that you generally want friction for things that are detrimental to the individuals and society.
For example - in the US you have to be 21 to legally consume alcohol. Does that mean that nobody under 21 drinks? Of course not. But it certainly means that the consumption in that demographic is less than it would have been otherwise, since kids can't just roll up to the supermarket to get it, and since they worry about some (non-jail-level) consequences like getting in trouble with the high school dean or the college dorm director, plus the friction of not being able to consume it too publicly.
Legalization has removed the friction from pot. An average individual smokes more now that they don't have to work through a "connection" to get it - so more accessible - and they can now do it out in the open vs discretely. So the consumption's gotta be way up.
Re: your point about jail. I don't know about other locations but in NYC, nobody has gone to jail for pot in a long time unless they were dealing massive amounts. I think that was a better model - it kept the friction higher for use while still enabling folks to consume or sell a small amount as long as they were discrete. That's gone now.
You have to be 21 to buy weed as well, I'm not really sure what you mean. I agree that consumption is up, that's the price you pay for not arresting people (and distracting police who could be doing anything else).
I don't know the details of who was imprisoned in NYC, but I do know they were still making tons and tons of arrests for minor consumption and possession charges just a few years ago, and when you get arrested you might lose your job, fail background checks for the next 7 years, not make rent because you couldn't work while you were dealing with the court, have to pay bail and a lawyer, etc. etc. The consequences can be very bad. I don't understand how you can add meaningful friction (beyond strict regulations that are already in place in every legalized state) without threatening very severe and harmful consequences.
> still enabling folks to consume or sell a small amount as long as they were discrete
This was never true for everyone. NYC police arrested tens of thousands every year before legalization for minor marijuana possession. If what you're saying were true, how could it be effective friction? Who would care if nobody ever gets arrested for small amounts?
So, do you think that people who buy weed while under the age of 21 should face legal repercussions? And likewise for people who sell weed without checking for ID?
If so, then you also believe in legal penalties for marijuana use; you're just disagreeing about who those penalties should affect and what form they should take.
I don't believe that people who buy weed under the age of 21 should face any legal repercussions.
I believe that people who sell weed without checking for ID should face licensing repercussions. This is how regulation of almost every other industry works. Chicken farmers, beauticians, and mortgage brokers obey the rules (usually) not because they are afraid of being sent to jail, but because they are afraid of losing permission to practice their business.
> For example - in the US you have to be 21 to legally consume alcohol.
No, federally, only to purchase or consume in public, and even then there are religious, parental consent (where permitted by state law), and other exceptions.
State laws on private consumption and parental consent vary considerably.
You are absolutely correct, thank you. I think I was aware of this but didn't account for it in the comment you replied to. I think the point I was making still stands in terms of describing the incremental friction from all these things.
Well, modern gangs realized that if they don't go around shooting white people nobody seems to mind them much, so I don't think the 1930s gangs will reappear, modern gangs will just also deal in alcohol.
> You used to smell pot when walking in NYC sometime, now you smell it consistently everywhere. You are constantly in the presence of high people which did not used to be the case.
This argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me. In a big city like NYC there are a) thousands of people who routinely find it easy to get hold of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamines, etc., and who otherwise are perfectly integrated, functioning and contributing members of society and b) thousands of other people who routinely find it easy to get hold of cocaine, heroin, fentanyl and meth, and who are not able to function as part of society on even a basic level (for a whole variety of reasons: involvement in street crime, repeated mental health crises, unstable and scary behavior in public, inability to take care of their own basic needs, etc). It is likely that most of the people who live like this are frequently using hard drugs which remain illegal.
Why does the fact that some people can buy cannabis who couldn't previously change the set of circumstances which determine how safe and convivial a city feels?
- some group of people who previously only used legal drugs like alcohol and nicotine now smoke (a bit of) cannabis. These people are the least likely to be involved in low-level crime or anti-social behavior. They are the people who previously chose not to take a drug merely because it was illegal. They are *more law-abiding* than the average college student, the average cop, the average bass player, the average tourist.
- some group of people who previously frequently got cannabis illegally, now buy it legally. These people are now slightly less likely to get into an altercation with a dealer, slightly less likely to buy coke or pills on a given weekend, slightly less likely to hang out in an unlicensed premises or on a street corner. Apart from those marginal positive effects, not much changes for them.
- possibly some people in the 'chaotic life lived in public' category described above are discouraged a bit from other drugs because they can get weed legally? This is likely to be very very small. If you're suffering from multiple social and health problems, and you're a opiates, crack or speed user, you don't really care much about the legality, and the convenience of legal cannabis is more or less irrelevant to you too.
- some other people whose chaotic lives in which they consume and are addicted to hard drugs now start doing cannabis on top of all the others and their lives get worse (for them or everyone else)? Nah. Crack, meth and fent are used (by this group) exactly because they have the best bang for your buck (if you don't care about enhancing any social or cultural experience, and just want to be off your face). The only people who will move towards smoking legal weed (outside of isolated situations when they can't get hold of any other drug) are people who already have the ability and/or the support to cut down on harder drugs, so the previous category essentially.
People who don't care about the law, or who are unable to live within it, or who are simply unable to function constructively at all, already have unfettered access to drugs (along with the vast majority: people who care about society and generally try to live in a positive way, but who object to or ignore drug laws specifically).
It never fails to amaze me how many people comment on Problem A: "Why aren't we paying more attention to Problem B?"
As though all the people who struggle with marijuana use need to wait in line, and all the world's experts on substance abuse wasted their money getting a degree in something other than nutritional science.
By the way, you're clearly fine minimizing the suffering of people struggling with marijuana use by calling them "pot heads", why not stay consistent and call people struggling with weight problems "fatties"?
> "...suffering of people struggling with marijuana use..."
Suffering and struggling?
From the perspective of the marijuana user, suffering and struggling belongs to others, not them. This means an outsider makes the judgement call about who is suffering and to what degree.
Cannabis users are often willing to pay the price of admission for a struggle-free existence. That's the point of regular use: to take the edge off.
The price of admission can be slower cognitive activity, reduced physical activity, less pursuit of goals, and less interest in meeting social expectations. These things might be measures of a "good productive citizen", but those standards are external and artificial, and pot users conscientiously put those norms on the chopping block.
> From the perspective of the marijuana user, suffering and struggling belongs to others, not them. This means an outsider makes the judgement call about who is suffering and to what degree.
"Belongs to others"? Did you read the article?
> Cannabis users are often willing to pay the price of admission for a struggle-free existence. That's the point of regular use: to take the edge off.
Is it the effect of regular use too? Not the impression one gets from the piece.
> The price of admission can be slower cognitive activity, reduced physical activity, less pursuit of goals, and less interest in meeting social expectations. These things might be measures of a "good productive citizen", but those standards are external and artificial, and pot users conscientiously put those norms on the chopping block.
Marijuana users are not consciously challenging norms when they light up. I don't know what point you're trying to make here. That everyone who uses it does so because they want to?
Marijuana is not begging to be smoked. It is not punishing users with cannabis-specific withdrawal symptoms. If you eat ice cream every day, that's a behavior problem, not an "ice cream addiction".
The help you receive should be about improving life balance, making better choices and moderating the desire to kick back in a haze of relaxation.
> "I don't know what point you're trying to make here. That everyone who uses it does so because they want to?"
Obviously those who smoke weed, want to smoke weed. I thought my point was pretty clear.
Any "struggle" is with themselves and other factors in their life and routine. The noise and sharp edges of sober life in this modern world, is not everyone's cup of tea. Combine that with compulsion and impatience to "fix" (mask) that problem with a quick smoke, and you have substance abuse.
"Marijuana" or "ice cream" plays little part in a person's root issue in wanting to escape reality full time/delight their taste buds full time instead of the more commonly moderated occasional use.
I've been using cannabis daily since I was 13 to treat my own OCD and other autism-like symptoms. I've taken months with no THC over my life and always come back to it. Helps me focus, socialize, and be happy. It, for me, has been a life saver.
I smoked a lot of weed daily (~1gram/day) for almost 10 years. Finally got sick of this life and decided to quit, once I run out of it. First day I was pissed and then I was cured. I always thought that I'm addicted and it will be almost impossible to stop, but turned out I wasn't really addicted.
if the drug helps you cope with things going on in your life and is the only way to cope with them you might as well be addicted. You can physically stop but mentally now coping with life becomes harder. It's like a crutch. Also, anecdotally all people are addicted to something to one degree or another. Some of these addictions are socially acceptable - some are not. Usually when you "quit" what happens is that you replace an addiction with another.
That is one of the “great” things about weed. There really is no physical addiction so once you decide to stop (and avoid the behavior) then you’re pretty much in the clear. The behavior trigger can be strong so I’d recommend not having any in the house and picking up something exciting/interesting to do in the evenings to replace the urge
I have to admit, I once agreed with this position, before I got to a ~5g a day habit. While I was a heavy user (6+ years) I was a strong proponent of legalization etc. "Better than booze", "It's only a gateway because it builds connections with people that have other stuff available".
But there is arguably a physical dependence at that routing usage. First thing every morning, every 1-2 hours another J. I wanted to quit almost every day. I'd have conversations with my partner about quitting every few days. But neither of us could. If we had none we wouldn't sleep for 48+ hours, just didn't happen. Anxiety sets in, stress about everything. You just want to sleep, so you smoke. You go broke you scour the house to find enough coins or bottle to return (EU here) to get .2g to roll once to just get to the next day. You leave the house to do anything and you're so anxious and paranoid you become misanthropic. Only way to deal with it is to go home and "relax" to manage the borderline panic. Just for reference, before I was maybe a bit awkward sometimes but had absolutely no issues with the outside world.
I also don't agree that afterwards you're in the clear. I used to be borderline photographic with my memory. I'd pull random statistics from papers I'd read years earlier in conversation with references that I could use to validate when challenged. I no longer can even remember what I decided to go to the grocery store for, even though it's a ~2 minute walk. I forget what I started a sentence to express while typing. I'm a systems engineer, when I change tabs in an IDE I lose nearly all the context I took with me to the new tab. Sure context switching breaks flow yadda yadda, but it's just different. I don't even remember there was something to remember, just... "why am I here again?"?
I do agree that the behaviour trigger is very strong, so I replaced the urge with League, an arguably far more self-destructive tendency.
The DSM is just a compilation of named clusters of ambiguous and arbitrary symptoms that have been agreed upon by some arbitrary board of psychologist and psychiatrists.
It's not like the DSM is some infallible book of mental disorders backed by rigorous mathematical proofs. Rather, the DSM-V seems to be constantly criticized, lacking evidence, culturally biased, etc., and it mainly benefits health insurance companies more than patients and clinicians.
FWIW, the DSM, ICD-11, Neurology, etc. all have differing definitions of the word addiction.
Any escape from reality or avoidance of it is addictive. And weed is way to normalized for self-medicating, if you said "im anxious im going to smoke" people are way more okay with hearing that than if you said you where getting a beer.
I found marijuana to be incredibly addictive in my 20s, despite the fact that I only liked 1/3rd of its effects.
As I got older I found the undesirable 2/3rd of effects to be overwhelming. This was especially obvious as I improved my health. I eat better and even workout more at 44 than I ever did at 22. Despite a plethora of legal marijuana options now, I have very little desire to use it (or any drugs, I really don't want to interfere too much with my hormones or at all with my dopamine reward system.) If I hadn't taken the path in life that I did, I might instead be desiring or dependent on drugs much stronger than marijuana at age 44.
I feel a sense of gratitude for the training that led me away from drugs and a sense of empathy for those who were not encouraged down the same path. I grew up on the Internet from 1991 (including the various archives of alt.drugs) with an intense curiosity for drugs, and also a sense of danger from the stronger ones (in particular opiates and stimulants.) This also left me with the idea that marijuana was both harmless and low-cost, addiction wise.
It took me quite a long time to understand the negative effects that it had on me. Chief was excessive eating. I could not work off the amount of food that I could eat while high. The negative effects on my body hormones from carrying this extra weight seemed to be reinforcing to the addiction. It's a crazy ride.
Does anyone have ideas or direction on undoing mental harm caused by smoking weed for a long time?
I started at 28 (so not very young) and smoked for maybe five years. I’ve stopped for a year now and while generally feel better, still feel slightly slow regarding memory and word recall. Lacking wit and often umming while looking for the right word or someone’s name.
I’ve seen research suggesting that word recall is one of the main long-lasting effects of cannabis that persists after cessation.
How can you be so sure it was marijuana that caused the symptoms? It's easy to point to on single variable when issues like you mention can be heavily multivariable. Did you have any dietary changes? How's your sleep? Were you ever infected with Covid-19 to your knowledge? Stress levels? Exercise levels?
I am not trying to discount your experiences or anything. You know yourself far better than I know you.
The only reason I even writing this comment is because I have had similar times in my life where I had more cognitive issues than I already do on a daily basis. Even these past two years, I have felt like I have been in a complete mental haze -- I was slow at work, everything required insane amounts of energy and effort to complete, I had issues concentrating, recalling words, etc..
Surely, I thought my issue was Cannabis too. I can say with great confidence that it was not the issue, since I am doing significantly better and my Cannabis usage hasn't changed significantly.
Want to know what my issue was all along? I was apparently depressed and burned out as all Hell. My depression has seemed to spontaneously resolve itself -- like it always eventually does. Now, I feel like I am getting a second chance in life.
My wife got a body scrub at a spa in Oregon recently. The more exfoliating of the two scrub options (I think salt versus volcanic ash) was based on CBD oil. The spa insisted that it was relaxing and folks got it all the time with no trouble. My wife was sick for the better part of three days, puking and nauseous. Apparently CBD poisoning is a thing, and the amount added to these things (especially in consideration of absorption vectors) is pretty much unregulated.
Interesting article that I didn't expect to find on HN. thanks for sharing!
I would like to add that in my own experience (and that of others, it wasn't mentioned in the article), synthetic cannabinoids, like the ones "cannabis" sold by the guys in the park down the road is laced with, is considerably more addictive than medicinal quality marijuana. Also, instead of a slow buildup, it usually hits a few seconds after taking a hit already and doesn't last as long, plus the effects were really paranoia inducing for me, to the point where I had auditory hallucinations and was afraid I gave myself schizophrenia for the rest of my life. But it was so addicting that stopping even for a full day felt like an insurmountable feat. I was already quite depressed before, so the feeling wasn't that much different, but at times I just couldn't wait to get home, light up a joint and blast myself with podcasts (usually reports from other countries and other cultures, something as far away from home as possible), sports broadcasts or the 10th The Office re-watch. Basically retreating into a cocoon where I wouldn't have to deal with the outside world. one time i woke up still wearing my shinguards from football ("soccer") practice the day before.
I finally stopped when I had to go on a trip and be sober for 2 weeks. As long as I wasn't at home, I didn't even think about smoking much (which is crazy when days before quitting seemed so out of the question) and when I came back I didn't have much trouble staying away, fortunately. Now I just take a few hits every couple weeks and actually get to enjoy being high for a change.
"Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome (CHS) is a condition that leads to repeated and severe bouts of vomiting. It is rare and only occurs in daily long-term users of marijuana. "
That is what Cedars-Sinai Research are saying.
And it is not rare as they say it is. Some ten people in my old Baltimore neighborhood came down with it.
And it has affecting someone I know ... daily for 3 years continuous.
Coupled with the how strong the marijuana addiction has been, it is egregious to see how these human beings would check themselves into ER almost weekly; a constructive feedback mechanism is sorely missing within their pre-frontal cortex part of their brain.
While hard to quit, a super long hot shower is often the soothing mechanism to recover from extreme abdominal muscular strains after having worshipped the pearly-white porcelain gods; yet, this relief remains but a platitude.
It was such a sad feeling to watch them cycle this addiction, over and over ... and over.
All 15 participants ... At 12-month follow-up, 10 participants (67%) were confirmed as smoking abstinent. At long-term follow-up, nine participants (60%) were confirmed as smoking abstinent.
At 12-month follow-up 13 participants (86.7%) rated their psilocybin experiences among the five most personally meaningful and spiritually significant experiences of their lives.
I'm addicted to weed and do a lot of mushrooms as well. Never felt the urge to stop weed after a trip. As with all addictions, but especially weed, the only way to stop is to want to. The only really bad thing about quitting is the boredom from not being high. I've quite a dozen times myself, going upwards of a year sober, but I'm much less happy afterwards.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Mushrooms aren't the key, wanting to quit is. Quitting weed is pretty easy if you want to. Not at all like tobacco or opioids.
The success scenarios I’ve heard about involve psilocybin + trained therapist. Some people have undirected transformative experiences, but some people (most?) need help navigating.
Going in without a therapist doesn't necessarily mean the experience is undirected.
Even during an intense psilocybin experience, people typically retain some degree of agency and control over their actions. In most cases, individuals on a psilocybe trip can still make decisions and perform basic tasks, though their perceptions and judgments might be altered.
It's interesting to see mushrooms on the same ride as marijuana 5-10 years ago. Almost identical.
It's illegal -> "This probably shouldn't be illegal, it's not as bad as the government has suggested" -> "___ will cure ____" -> "___ can be used to treat almost anything" -> ___ is legalized in some capacities -> ___ isn't nearly as impactful as the original medicinal claims and also presents its own set of issues.
I'm very curious to see what psilocybin presents in the final phase of this ride.
Aside from the over-generalizations, psilocybin is a potent psychoactive substance. While it might not be "addictive" in the classic sense, it can lead to intense, sometimes challenging, psychological experiences. These experiences can be traumatic for some individuals, especially without proper guidance or in unsupportive settings.
I'll note that "proper guidance" and "supportive setting" are very much undefined terms here and also do not preclude a traumatic trip.
There's no situation in which using a significant dose of a psychoactive substance as powerful as psilocybin is without risks. That's not to say the risks aren't worth it for anyone, and experienced, supportive guidance can minimize some risks, but it's never without any risk at all.
The key with these studies is the associated therapy.
I’ve heard the effects of psilocybin described as (roughly) increasing neuroplasticity for a time, thus allowing changes that would be significantly harder to accomplish otherwise.
But I don’t think unguided trips would automatically have this effect if you don’t already have the necessary tools/frameworks going in.
> Psilocybin is able to instantly turn off an addiction, and it is not addictive itself.
please don't share misinformation like this so confidently. was just yesterday in an AA meeting with someone who tried psilocybin and it made him relapse.
In my experience, cannabis addiction is the definition of insidious. I used it daily in high school and college since the age of 15 or 16. The effects on my learning and memory were profound, but I never noticed how bad until I was off it for 1-2 months. I was flunking Calculus, got busted my parents, then my head cleared, I picked up the subject in a month without even studying and aced the AP Calc exam. Same thing happened in college studying engineering, I’d flunk the first exam, decide to quit, then learned the material easily. Most people aren’t trying to learn STEM so it’s probably impossible to tell how bad it’s impacting you. The withdrawals weren’t so bad, just feeling kind of spaced out and weird for one or two months, but it was just hard to quit because you don’t see the reason to. I haven’t smoked much since school, but my memory is so bad now 10 years later it’s sad.
I think a big thing that's overlooked is the difference between psychological and physiological dependency, as well as the stigma or popular idea of addiction. Weed doesn't feel addictive in the classic sense, especially in comparison to things that are much more addictive, like nicotine and alcohol.
I used to live basically next door to a dispensary, and would smoke multiple times a day. If I didn't smoke, I'd sometimes find it hard to get to sleep the first night or so, but it wasn't as bad as going without a cigarette, missing adderall, or what I've seen people go through on opiates.
Given that many recreational users are into other stuff, too (especially before legal dispensaries that looked like Apple stores came along), along with the pro-cannabis propaganda, it's easy to see how people don't take it seriously.
What helped me trivialize my cannabis addiction was finding an even worse addiction, sugar. Now that's one I truly fear.
Cannabis can be comfortable, it helps me sleep through the entire night without waking up and it makes boring moments fun.
But sugar is insane. Sugar will make me go to the store for some made up reason 15 minutes before they close. Sugar will make me raid my pantry for anything I need to make a cake, and then eat the batter.
And I can't even say cannabis was a gateway drug to sugar, because I was using my moms credit early to buy candy, or even stealing it from the store.
Now almost 40 years of age I'm starting to regret all that sugar in my life. And I still got off relatively easy compared to many others. Probably because I didn't like soda as a kid.
I was waiting for someone to post this clip (was just searching the thread before I did it as well). It's all I could think of when setting the article.
I've been smoking weed almost every day for about 10 years now. When people talk about weed addiction I have mixed feelings about it. I've only had good experiences and effects from weed, and it has sincerely helped me a lot, but I would say almost the majority of my friends have not. Most people I know smoke at parties, take way too much, or use it as an escape from an already troublesome life. A close friend is bipolar and has depression, and weed literally destroys his life.
Every now and then I get the question if I'm addicted. It's a hard question to say no to when you pretty much are a daily smoker. Sometimes I feel like I can't say no honestly, without stopping smoking entirely for the rest of my life. I have had periods where I haven't smoked, for example when working abroad for several months up to a year, and it's never been an issue. I've never felt an urge or a need to get high.
I obviously do see people struggle, and I genuinely feel for those that do, but is also hard to relate when you have never suffered yourself. Even though I smoke myself and it has done so much good for my anxiety, stress, etc, I don't really recommend weed today, just mainly because I've seen so many people struggle with it. I do smoke in low dosages and never understood why people want to get super high, maybe that is a factor as well.
There is one great solution to all of this and it’s to never have a substance at all. I’ve had a few things but now don’t drink, smoke, or consume drugs and life is great.
It really must be nice to not feel the need or want to alter your consciousness. Lots of people I know who frequently use cannabis do so in order to change their perception of reality because for many, reality fucking sucks. Getting high is a great way to escape that.
disclaimer: this is just my experience, your mileage might vary and I don't want to seem insensitive to people having a hard time quitting, just share my experience.
I've smoked mj for about 20 years and in the past year I stoped once for four months, restarted, and now again, since April.
I still think about it sometimes but I don't plan on resuming anytime soon. The hardest part for me is that I now dream at night and I really don't enjoy it. Looking back, I had moments when I was a bit "slow" and a bit distracted. On the other hand, now I'm a bit too tensed and get easily irritated by stuff that previously didn't bother me.
My 2 cents: you should try and quit, if you can. If you think you can't, maybe try asking for help. If you don't want to quit, don't quit.
ps. I'm just a nobody, on the internet, use your best judgement :)
I spoke with a rehab specialist and he mentioned that since cannabis is oil based, there is no physical withdrawal symptoms as there are with other opioid products. This is due to taking weeks to get cannabis out of your system. Thus, it is often argued that it is not physically addictive but rather psychologically addictive.
Forgive my ignorance, but I’ve never been clear on the distinction between “psychologically addictive” and “physiologically addictive”. Surely anything that produces a measurable dependency and withdrawal is just addictive?
This distinction seems rooted in mind-body dualism, further driving my skepticism.
Yes. This distinction drives me up a wall. The way I see it, all addictive substances are psychologically addictive[0]. Some are also physically addictive.
Addiction, by definition, is a psychological phenomenon. For recreational drugs, it's the only thing that keeps you using even when the net effect is harmful to your life.
It's really annoying to see people say things like, "It's only psychologically addictive" as if that's somehow less perilous than the alternative, or easier to overcome if you want to stop.
Most alcoholics have a hard time quitting not just because of the DTs (not that I'm dismissing those!), but because it's bloody hard to break that habit! The yearning for a drink is incredibly strong, long after you've detoxed. The physical withdrawal from alcohol can be managed over just a few days. The psychological withdrawal from it is typically a long-term journey with plenty of opportunities for relapse. Same with heroin. Kicking it is no fun, that's for sure. But once you've done your 30 days or whatever, the physical part is over. The real challenge is just beginning.
[0] Okay, I supposed there are addictions that are purely physical. Some blood pressure medications, for example. I ignore these, because "addiction" is probably not the right term for them. "Dependence" better suits therapies that you really do need to continue, or taper when it's time to stop.
I still don’t understand the distinction between “physical” and “psychological”, especially when the thing being manipulated by the drug is the central nervous system.
Surely psychological phenomena are also physical ones, insofar as they are seated in the brain and the rest of the body? Do you have an example of a pure case of “psychological addiction”? The only thing I can think of is the social aspect of consuming the drug. But then, I can think of a great number of activities that, when removed, cause “withdrawal” in the form of longing for the social interaction, none of which fit the common-sense definition of “addiction”.
So I’m left to conclude that this distinction is a false one. For the purposes of things we generally consider to be drugs, the only possible kind of addiction physiological.
I'm with you here. I think talking about both is important but its a false dichotomy.
I would classify "psychologically addictive" as something that makes a little voice in my head go "do that thing again" and is mainly driven by the speed at which an action(drug or not) receives a physiological response in my body. If I take a hit of a weed vape I feel it so fast that my psychological addiction gets triggered more easily. Whereas when I eat a weed edible the response takes so long that the little voice in my head doesn't say, "eat another one". Unless I eat one every day then that little voice becomes stronger over time.
I can do either of those things one time and only experience the acute withdrawal.
I would classify "physical addiction" as a habit where cessation causes a lengthy (not acute) withdrawal period, caused by some type of brain changes like receptor degrowth because of over-agonization or whatever. I think we qualify ones that have worse withdrawal as more physically addictive. As some have already pointed out, alcohol withdrawal can make you dead and opiate withdrawal can make you wish you were, so we consider these very physically addictive. THC withdrawals exist, but they are so minor when compared to death or opiate-withdrawal hell that we consider it not very physically addictive.
An extreme example: Someone could spike my coffee with opiates every day for a year without me knowing, slowly increasing the dose so I'm not too messed up. I would be physically addicted but have no psychological addiction.
That’s fair. I cringe at the linguistic abuse that is “physiological vs psychological”, if that’s how we’re defining things, but I guess that’s “just” semantics. [0]
To reiterate an important point you make: if we’re going with those definitions, then the only difference between the two is one of quantity. In both cases, physiological effects of the drug are driving the addiction, mediated by behaviors that emerge in response to changes in physiology. So again, the qualitative difference is only the one that emerges from a vast difference in quantity.
I’d also insist that we recognize some of the very-physiological withdrawal symptoms experienced by at least some cannabis users, e.g. sleep disruption…
[0] Part of my reason for asking this question initially is because I’m convinced this is not mere semantics, but rather a linguistic game that people play to argue that cannabis has zero meaningful addictive potential. I find that to be disingenuous.
P.S.: I hope it’s obvious to everyone that I’m not bashing cannabis use in general. Hell, I appreciate the occasional joint.
It's not that you will die but your body will react adversely. Like with alcohol if you quit cold turkey you can get tremors and seizures. Even with caffeine you get brain fog and hardcore headaches.
Basically with hard chemical dependence there will be some kind of adverse body reaction. With marijuana that doesn't exist or is so vanishingly small that you don't feel anything.
I believe it is rather established that cannabis has withdrawal symptoms in the form of sleep and mood impairments. That would qualify cannabis as physiologically addictive, as indeed would be any drug with physical withdrawal symptoms.
Granted, they may be lesser than other drugs, but they are still there.
Ok there are symptoms but my understanding is for many people they're negligible. Also I'd be interested to see the symptoms related to actual chemical dependency on marijuana-specific chemicals, versus generic withdrawal symptoms from denial of expected dopamine release, which you could get by changing how you game, work out, have sex, eat, whatever.
I don't think anyone has ever died because they stopped smoking tobacco. Is tobacco not "physically addictive"? If it's not, this only underscores the point that physically/psychologically addictive distinction is not all that useful. And if it is, that only underscores your explanation isn't a very good explanation of the differences.
> Forgive my ignorance, but I’ve never been clear on the distinction between “psychologically addictive” and “physiologically addictive”.
Quit cigs/caffeine and you'll be irritable and nothing much else... maybe constipated for the first days? Quit heroin and you will likely stop to function, your brain needs it. Same as alcohol, real alcoholics don't stop cold turkey or they will likely die, their body needs it. As the substances have replaced their natural counterparts which the body has forgot how to make.
I should have been more clear: Physical addiction is when sickness, pain or impairment demands that you get your fix or possibly die. Example: "...benzodiazepines can kill you. This type of withdrawal can cause seizures, which increase your risk of life-threatening harm. It can also cause psychosis, which alters your perception of reality."
When an individual, who has chronically misused alcohol, suddenly stops or drastically reduces, they can experience a combination of withdrawal symptoms—both physical and emotional—that can range from mild to severe, and in rare cases, can be life-threatening."
Psychological addiction: "...Psychological dependence on drugs or alcohol is the emotional, motivational, and mental addictive qualities that come with substance abuse. ..."
It's an overused distinction - but certain drugs when used over long periods of time result in such large biochemical changes to the human body that if they are suddenly withdrawn, the person may experience various medical emergency situations that require hospitalization (delirium tremens with alcohol, seizures with benzodiazepines, dehydration due to vomiting and diarrhea with opiates).
These extreme physical effects are seen at the upper end of abuse limits, and the majority of people who legitimately suffer from addiction don't need round-the-clock medical care if they quit - and even those who do can generally avoid such problems if they go through a tapering-off process over the period of about a month.
While I'm not an expert, it's probable some things directly cause addiction by modifying something in your brain, while others don't do it directly with the chemicals but by other means
The divide is probably clearer with non-drug addictions, like gambling. Gambling isn't some drug that modifies chemicals in your brain and makes you addicted, and yet some people are addicted to gambling.
It's possible some drugs function like gambling, where they don't actually modify chemicals in your brain to make you addicted, but you can get addicted anyways, psychologically
this is an emotionally charged topic and people are often not very precise with terminology when discussing it. so I can understand why you would be confused just from reading a couple articles and comment sections.
> This distinction seems rooted in mind-body dualism, further driving my skepticism.
this does not really make sense though, and opioid withdrawal is a good example to demonstrate why. people who abruptly stop consuming opioids usually get symptoms that are similar to a bad cold or flu. it's not just "in their head"; they literally have snot pouring out of their nose and sweat uncontrollably for days. this is typically what people mean by "physiological addiction". sometimes it is also called "dependence" to distinguish long-term pain management patients from addicts. btw, most common recreational drugs cause some degree of withdrawal, but it's often not significant enough to notice.
in the short term, drug with significant withdrawal symptoms are especially difficult to stop consuming for any length of time. but it doesn't take that long for the body to return to homeostasis. a couple weeks is typical, but it might take up to a year in extreme cases.
the learning (ie, what you might call "psychological addiction") never quite goes away though. this is why addicts must be extremely cautious, if not abstain entirely, for the rest of their lives.
I appreciate your example (and level-headedness, btw), but what are we to make of:
1. The fact that these behaviors are learned precisely in response to physiological changes (be it avoidance of withdrawal or chasing the high)
2. The fact that all the supposedly non-physically-addictive drugs like cannabis have well-documented withdrawal symptoms, like sleep dysfunction, that are very much physiological.
If your point is that the physiological withdrawal from heroin is worse than cannabis, then I don’t disagree. I just disagree with the premise that anything can be meaningfully addictive without having a measurable physiological effect. This includes things like gambling, in which the physiological effects are well-documented.
So I’m not so sure that the two forms of addiction can be so well separated. It seems to me that physiology is the mediator of behavior, here, which points back to the very definition of addiction.
I’m left to wonder why people insist on the relevance of this distinction. I don’t believe it’s only to make the point that cannabis is less bad than heroin, as nobody is seriously debating that. I instead get a strong whiff of semantic games.
severe withdrawal complicates the early stages of recovery and probably makes a relapse more impactful (just what I've observed; I'm not a doctor). but in general I agree, the distinction does not matter much within the context of addiction. detoxing is not the hardest part of recovery for most addicts. the hard part is usually "what to do instead" for the next n decades.
there is a useful distinction to be made between what I would call "addiction" and "dependence" though. this is why I included the example of PM patients in my initial comment. just like addicts, these people build tolerance and would experience severe withdrawal if their supply were abruptly cut off. the difference is that these people are (mostly, pill mills are a thing) not chasing a high for its own sake. their lives are actually improved by consuming opioids, and they would be just fine with an equally effective substitute.
to be clear, I am not implying PM patients are morally superior to opioid addicts in some way. the distinction is that addiction is intrinsically damaging to a person's quality of life. dependence is merely a tradeoff that may or may not be worth it.
>the hard part is usually "what to do instead" for the next n decades.
Agreed. And (as you've no-doubt guessed by now), I would argue that this second, harder phase of recovery has very little to do with addiction per se, in both it s mechanisms and coping strategies.
>there is a useful distinction to be made between what I would call "addiction" and "dependence" though.
I'd have to think about this a bit more, but even though I agree the distinction is practically useful for treatment, it's once again a distinction of degree rather than kind. In both cases, there is a physiological habituation to a substance that causes unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Something analogous to the pleasure-seeking behavior of bona fide addicts is still there, I think, when you consider that drug-dependent people will consume a substance to "feel normal".
>dependence is merely a tradeoff that may or may not be worth it.
I'd quibble about merely, since the worm can turn mighty quick, and people are generally pretty bad at knowing how deep in the hole they are. But I take your general point.
> I'd have to think about this a bit more, but even though I agree the distinction is practically useful for treatment, it's once again a distinction of degree rather than kind. In both cases, there is a physiological habituation to a substance that causes unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. Something analogous to the pleasure-seeking behavior of bona fide addicts is still there, I think, when you consider that drug-dependent people will consume a substance to "feel normal".
I've mostly agreed with you up until here, but having known both heroin addicts and a few PM patients, I don't agree with this at all. while there is a significant minority of PM patients that are addicts in disguise, I genuinely don't believe most of them enjoy taking their prescription. at least in theory, the PM patient works with their doctor to find a dose that adequately manages their chronic pain while minimizing impairment and other unpleasant side effects like nausea and constipation. the addict seeks the highest dose they can get away with (not arousing suspicion of employer/family, being able to afford it, etc.). the intention behind the use is very different.
more generally, my working definition of addiction is something like this: a) inability or extreme difficulty in regulating b) an activity or use of a substance that c) negatively impacts one's health, interpersonal relationships, or other meaningful goals. the PM patient clearly satisfies b). but I would argue they don't satisfy a) if they are able to stick to what they've agreed with their doctor and haven't specifically chosen that doctor for being a total pushover. they don't satisfy c) at all: the drug is what allows them to participate in something like an ordinary life. in extreme cases, it is what allows them to exist at all.
btw, I could also have chosen SSRIs as my example for dependence. I think the PM example is better for teasing apart addiction vs dependence, since there is a bit of overlap in reality. but SSRIs are interesting because they do not demonstrate the same tolerance building effect as other psychoactive drugs, nor are they (commonly) used recreationally. nevertheless, people do report fairly nasty withdrawal symptoms from abrupt cessation of SSRIs. you can google "ssri brain zaps" if you're curious.
tl;dr: addiction and dependence can look similar from the outside. one simple heuristic for distinguishing them is how the person behaves after acute withdrawal subsides. the addict will always feel the temptation to go back, and resisting that temptation is usually a lifelong struggle. the person who was merely dependent will stop and never look back if they find an alternate solution to their problem.
You're totally right and it's funny even the comments agreeing with you don't get your point. Humans love to categorize, you can't blame us for making them up most of the time.
And the mind-body dualism is still very much here to stay, culturally.
My interpretation is that physiologically addictive means actual physical changes, such as some receptor becoming downregulated and to feel something again you take the drug again. Whereas psychologically addictive could mean you need something for the identity you have or to cope with life experiences. For example I am physically addicted to nicotine but psychologically addicted to caffeine, I would describe it, since I get an actual craving for nicotine whereas caffeine well I like doing a lot of work and fitting into capitalism but I go weeks or months without thinking about it there's no mechanism in my body which tells me to take an energy drink although some people have it that way
Receptor modulation happens when you play video games, too, but I doubt anyone would claim they are “physiologically addictive”.
Again, this whole distinction is predicated on the idea that something can affect behavior without affecting the brain. I struggle to see how that is even possible.
All roads lead to rome right. But the brain doesn't have to be the first busstop. One avenue is via the gut, bacteria screaming for unhealthy food. Or just the old ghrelin, hunger hormone.
But on a more analytical approach, I just don't agree with your premise. There's a stark difference between the brains lowlevel mechanics such as serotonin receptor downregulation all the way to buying the brand in the supermarket that reminds you of your childhood. What I mean is it's not a mind-body dualism problem, rather, it's a scale problem. Does the mechanism that drives you to behave consist of individual molecules or cells, or unfathomably complex dynamic patterns of neurons firing across every region of your brain that constitute almost a religious reminder of who you are and what you desire. What I'm saying is is it the hardware or the software. That's physiological vs psychological. But if you wish you can turn any topic in the world into metaphysical philosophy, I just think we have a lot of textbooks in any hospital university library already on these topics that don't bring philosophy into it.
This isn’t metaphysics. I’d like to know what distinguishes physiological from psychological addiction. So far, the proposed mechanisms don’t hold up to scrutiny, since the proposed physiological mechanisms (e.g. serotonin modulation) are at play in psychological phenomena as well.
On a related note, I’m not sure what to tell you if you don’t see how espousing mind-body dualism can lead people to propose nonsensical distinctions, especially in medicine. I’d have expected a vehement defender of scientific medicine to agree with this.
Mind-body problem is metaphysics. I could ignore that part, but it would help if you strengthened that initial connection. Currently I'm experiencing a socratic style where I throw information and then it gets deconstructed but I don't have much to go off of. State your case why this seems rooted in the mind-body problem.
Otherwise I really like my scale argument and would like to see you deconstruct it, right above read it again if you feel like it, I don't think your argument that just because physiological mechanisms are "at play" in psychological ones defeats it.
Are you a nondualist? I've had that period so I can understand both sides, if you expand more on your viewpoints with some real detailed fleshing out rather than just deconstructing any incoming argument. Personally I have my criticisms of medicine, but can celebrate a lot of textbook content as true.
So now that you know I'm an ex-nondualist, maybe you can give my scale argument a reread and see if you accept it as a description of the phenomenon? So to be perfectly obvious, there's direct chemical reaction and implicit chemical reaction. I consider it a big difference to flood a bunch of molecules past the blood-brain barrier, versus experiencing something such as a video game and reacting to it.
And hey, I am in a period of my life where I definitely put precedence for the body and let the mind follow. Daily exercise in nature, oh boy that really improves my mind. Reason alone in a dark room did not get me far at all.
But if you feel like we're not getting anywhere or I'm not convincing then that's fine and you can ignore this
I read, interpreted and answered your comment much too hastily, and now I feel foolish. Please accept my sincerest apologies. In my defense, I can only point to the large number of posts that are frustratingly missing the point, and to the fact that I am regrettably not the most patient of persons.
Let me try again...
My response should have been something like "my question is less focused on the metaphysics, and more focused on what I think is an issue of logic, so I am happy to stick to the level of analysis of a university hospital textbook". It seems to be the case that people are attempting to partition the phenomenon of addiction into psychological vs physiological addiction. My issue is twofold:
1. I know of no substance that is well-established as being addictive that does not produce both (1) a physiological response at the time of consumption/engagement and (2) an unpleasant physiological withdrawal symptom of some kind. This notably includes drugs that are popularly described as being purely psychologically addictive, such as cannabis.
2. The psychological (i.e. cognitive and behavioral) patterns that we associate with addiction are driven, in a fairly direct manner, by the physiological responses to the presence and absence of the drug. Addicts return to drugs both to avoid physiological withdrawal symptoms and to pursue pleasurable physiological effects.
Together, these suggest a psychological effect of the drug that mediated by physiology. In all cases, the physiological phenomena are necessary. I am generally quite sensitive to arguments of emergence at a particular scale, but I don't see the necessity for it here. Can you be more precise? The closest you come to providing an example has to do with a "reminder of who you are and what you desire". I am also not-insensitive to higher-order explanations for behavior, including some from the psychoanalytical tradition, but I don't think these negate the causal chain outlined in point #2. Therefore, I don't see how psychological addiction can exist separately from physiology, except perhaps in the trivial case of categorizing psychology as a subset of or emergence from physiology. Certainly, I think, one does not encounter "psychological addiction" without also encountering its physiological counterpart, rendering the ontological distinction questionable. It is further made questionable by the prima facie dualist argument that subtends the psychological-vs-physiological distinction. Certainly, if this is not a dualist position, the argument is not immediately obvious to me, and I would be interested in hearing it.
Moreover, if you'll allow me to stray from the purely logical argument surrounding biology and psychology, my sense is that this dichotomy between physiological and psychological addiction is in large part a semantic game that serves to advance a certain political discourse. Invariably, it serves to argue that cannabis isn't "really" addictive by arguing that is withdrawal is qualitatively very different from that of, say, heroin. To this I can only say, "of course it is!" Nobody is really arguing that cannabis is as dangerous as heroin! But this is indeed the argument of scale; I might be convinced that the severity of cannabis' toxicity, intoxication and withdrawal is minor enough to warrant the drug's legality, but I still contend that for those who are addicted to cannabis, the same commingling of physiological state and behavior is at play.
And in case it needs to be said, of course the difference in degree that separates cannabis from heroin (and other "hard" drugs) is large enough to place the two in qualitatively different categories. Again, my point is that despite this, both produce their addictions in similar ways (roughly: the dopaminergic circuit), as is supported by the scientific literature.
Let's jump into a more structured analytical response using your neat presentation as help. I will exposit a psychoanalytical attempt to obfuscate the dependency on low-level chemical/mechanical action. I do this to kick the purely physiological chair that #2 stands on.
1) All substances produce a) physiological response and b)unpleasant withdrawal. Including substances described as purely psychological.
2) Psychological (cognitive and behavioral) addiction patterns are driven directly by physiological response to presence/absence of the drug. Addicts return to drugs to avoid physiological withdrawal, and pursue pleasurable physiological effects.
#1 and #2 gives #3
3) Emergent complexity not necessary, example needed, even from e g psychoanalytics, still wouldn't negate #2
#3 gives: Therefore, psychological cant exist apart from physiological, except if psychology subset of physiologically which we both agree is boring interpretation.
So why a distinction at all.
My first thought is practical. Does someone need acute help, a patient needing medicine to avoid serious harm? Categorise as physiological, give the medicine, time is of the essence! Does someone need a support group to process their emotions and discuss their situation with others going through the same thing? Psychological!
For these purposes, helping others in an almost economical way to have efficient hospitals, the dichotomy is useful. I, and the literature, you as well, consider physiological and psychological as interwoven. The question is how much and if the dichotomy should be there at all, where we disagree.
It can be dynamic and the one can reinforce the other, maybe even the inverse. Personally, my psychological aversion to being used by unethical companies made me quit nicotine pouches. So it's dynamic. Just a side exposition.
> Together, these suggest a psychological effect of the drug that mediated by physiology. In all cases, the physiological phenomena are necessary. I am generally quite sensitive to arguments of emergence at a particular scale, but I don't see the necessity for it here. Can you be more precise? The closest you come to providing an example has to do with a "reminder of who you are and what you desire". I am also not-insensitive to higher-order explanations for behavior, including some from the psychoanalytical tradition, but I don't think these negate the causal chain outlined in point #2.
Behavior is so complex. If someone read 2000 years worth of literature and behaves in the world inspired by everything from Alcibiades statesmanship to von Neumanns mathematical theorems, whatever one would do in the world hypothetically I would categorise that complex emergent behaviour as psychological, emergent, high level, thinking with words and symbols in highly patterned and reactive ways maybe even different states of consciousness and let's say some delusions like they're possessed by ancestral spirits. That's a VERY weird sentence but bear with me. That can not be understood at a physiological level except by god hypotethically, and psychologically primarily by their older wiser self retroactively, in a compressed descriptive way. So what does this have to do with #2. Well let's say that immense complexity drives them do a bunch of coke over and over, as a rational requirement to orate effectively in front of the populace or whatever. Like dictators have done, drugs for the right state of mind for diplomatic affairs or speeches. The meaning of this paragraph is to inundate you with an extreme example of a psychological driveforce to an addiction. Rather than the physiological craving, the dictator returns to the coke to fulfill their ambitions, perhaps. I don't know man I'm just trying to describe a complex motive, rather than "grug need crazy honey because body uncomfortable".
For a more normal example, let's say my dad dies and we would always drink vanilla tea. I keep returning to the vanilla tea PURELY out of psychological reasons, because I like crying to a new memory of dad each time. I digress this is not a drug with withdrawal.
Let's bring physiological into it. Me and dad would hypothetically always have a newcastle beer at Raulsons pub before he died. I am not interested in any other alcoholic beverage, at any other place, but I get so emotional over that Raulsons pub newcastle beer. It represents all the inside jokes, my towns history, my memories of dad, ponderings of existence, and frankly I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I don't have that psychological safe anchoring to such a stable haven at Raulsons pub with newcastle beer and dad maybe watching over me. It's so safe.
>It is further made questionable by the prima facie dualist argument that subtends the psychological-vs-physiological distinction. Certainly, if this is not a dualist position, the argument is not immediately obvious to me, and I would be interested in hearing it.
So I've only argued with psychological emergence from, partly physiological processes in the brain and body, but also psychological emergence from the rest of all the stuff that happens in the world, other humans, our history, our literature canon, their interactions, the ideas that influence our behaviour that could be even religious, even makes me think of superorganism minds and the mythologies we share in our subconscious, our social desires and so on. All this influences behaviour, if only a nudge when not primary motivation. This sometimes completely removes the physiological causal chain to become sure phenomenally present but causally meaningless. I believe in free will but not infinite willpower. Sometimes we get trapped, but sometimes it's just our mind or collective mind and interaction with the universe and its materials that completely stomps some pattern in the universe with lower causality-rank let's say and lets willpower win.
As for the dualism/nondualism I thought I could answer but I can't, I can't access the state I was in with just my mind to remember how to treat argumentative discussion. But you've already received your dose of philosophical mumbo jumbo, that I've had to resort to since I really actually suck at biology. Sorry. I don't know the inside of those textbooks in the library I just think they on an economical level can improve society and our health
I accept your difference in degree caveat.
All in all, my opinion rests on psychological and emotional complexity and it's emergent behavior. All my exposition I think defeats #2. Sometimes we require certain behaviors to remain sane or achieve our purpose. I agree that they interplay. I just think they are distinct phenomena, and that the categorisation serves a purpose.
Then for the political angle.
I have to sleep so I'll sum it up.
Removing the dichotomy can be good, as some sort of revolutionary resistance to macro scale oppressive structures. If the social effect of the categorisation is bad, then we unanimously decide our collective reality that it's untrue. A delusion, or truth, like good money or bad money. Will the categorisation serve us or not, micro or macro, long term or short term. If the DNA double helix was politically oppressive somehow, we could decide it's a bad model and move on, think of it like a spectrum string, a quantum unison with some other more accurate physical framework that doesn't use atoms but other concepts. We choose. I am aware of alcoholics not being taken seriously, as lacking willpower, I think that's bad and they need support, sometimes social support works sometimes it doesnt, scientific prototypes of various methods or regimens or even drugs are being tested for eventual widespread adoption to help the problem. So there are very real problems that aren't mumbo jumbo that could benefit or be damaged by local beliefs about what is the cause and what could help.
On micro scale I consider it useful, as in the example where help is provided quickly, right support for right person. Some people need to untangle a mess of words, emotions, and stories to change their behavior for a healthier life. Some people just need the right molecules right now or their body breaks.
I took this response as seriously as I could with the limited knowledge I have about the subject, since you responded so nicely. There is no energy at all for continuation though, haha. Nice talking. If you respond I would read it but can't respond in turn
Indeed, and so can smoking shortly before bed. Regular daily use can also suppress your ability to dream (or at least your ability to remember those dreams).
I've gone through periods where I smoke a relatively small amount of flower on a daily basis for months at a time, and then stop cold turkey, over a dozen or so times in my life. One thing I really enjoy about stopping cold turkey to take a tolerance break is that my dreams become profoundly vivid during the first week or so of withdrawal. I can often remember dreams vividly as if they occurred in waking life, for as long as two days after the night I dreamt, and with enough clarity to write them out in detail. I usually look forward to the experience.
Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but I actually enjoy the "come down" from individual smoke "sessions", and the "reset" I experience when stopping cold turkey. It feels refreshing in a way, not really sure how to describe it.
For sure. Head over to /r/leaves and you'll see others complaining about pretty gnarly symptoms when they quit. Cold sweats, loss of appetite, nausea, irritability, etc.
I know of plenty of people who have to fall asleep with the TV on, and if they turn off the TV before attempting to sleep, its massively disruptive to their sleep patterns.
I doubt anyone would argue that that's indicative of a physical addiction to the television, even as there are obviously "withdrawal" symptoms. Thus the grandparent's distinction between physical and psychological addiction.
"rehab specialist" typically means someone who was previously a client of a treatment center, perhaps with or perhaps without a certificate in counseling.
Source: my observations routinely interacting with numerous clients and employees (never a client nor employee myself) of more than a few treatment centers.
An Addictionologist is an M.D. with a specialty in addiction who can speak to the matter on a scientific basis.
I think this distinction really confuses the issue because the actual physiological changes that can make quitting cold turkey actually fatal for certain drugs at certain intensities can appear to be on a continuum if you're not looking at actual cells and organs.
I think a lot of what we understand as "psychological" addictions to drugs are just drugs where the addictive changes are limited to higher functioning portions of the brain. And our obsession with mind-body duality means we understand those differently.
> This is due to taking weeks to get cannabis out of your system.
I doubt it. It's not psychoactive weeks later.
I agree with the "psychologically addictive" vs "physically" though. (I think it's even simpler than that though - you're just addicted to the quick dopamine surge, same as another round of Counter Strike, sex, cupcake, whatever)
yep. this is part of the skepticism mentioned in the article--I have anxiety, depression, hot/cold flashes, appetite loss, sleep issues, and disgusting night sweats for a few days after I stop heavy use, but am often told it's all in my head. the reality is that our own cannabinoids do all kinds of things for our homeostasis that are not well understood. so asserting categorically that there is no physical withdrawal when you stop flooding your body with external cannabinoids is naive.
> I spoke with a rehab specialist and he mentioned that since cannabis is oil based, there is no physical withdrawal symptoms as there are with other opioid products.
Cannabis is not an opioid, and I don't think there is any indication that being oil-based has any impact on whether a substance has withdrawal symptoms. Also, while the substances of interest in cannabis may be in oils naturally and in the easiest extractions, they aren’t actually “oil-based”, anyway. So, whether it came from a rehab specialist or not, this seems to be multilayered misinformation.
When addiction is talked about, it is wise to seperate that which is habit forming from that which is psychologically addictive (such as heroin and meth). Too often they are confused with each other. The later gets it's hooks into your chemical biology in a way that can be torture to disengage from. no wonder... the active ingredient of meth is hundreds of times stronger than the natural dopamine it emulates.
Regarding TFA, From what I can tell, it does not tell us if Courtney is using natural canabis or a synthetic such as spice. If the later, then a quick walk down the streets of central Glasgow will tell you that it is indeed very addictive, and has been as bad a blight to that area as meth has to Vancouver.
Aren't all addictions psychological? My understanding is that an addiction develops because self-medication with some substance or activity to mask some sort of psychological stressor underneath the surface.
Anecdotal as it may be, I have never met someone with an addiction whose only issue was just being physically dependent on a substance. Although, I might make an exception for tobacco. Most cigarette smokers and dippers I know/knew didn't tend to use tobacco to treat underlying psychological issues. Maybe to lower stress levels overall? Then again, a lot of teens and adults with undiagnosed ADHD tend to use tobacco to self-medicate without actually knowing it (I did this with coffee, thankfully).
> Aren't all addictions psychological? My understanding is that an addiction develops because self-medication with some substance or activity to mask some sort of psychological stressor underneath the surface.
I'm sure you are right. But watching someone disengage from a physiological dependency is a different class of experaince. Like watching someone get their arm ripped off.
In this vid: https://youtu.be/KoVOSmSbPMQ?t=553 he states that of all the addictions he has had, meth is the one he can never completely loose. If he was alone in a room with it, he states that he would not last 20 minutes before succumbing.
Marijuana can be challenging to stop, but so can a lot of other things. Daily vitamins come to mind. I used to take a daily combination proposed by my psychiatrist. The days when I didn't, I used to feel like a zombie, was moody and had horrible sleep.
The idea that changing a habitual chemical input that has effects on the brain should be painless is a bit unreasonable. I feel the headline is clickbaity but the core fact remains. Changing habits is hard. Especially when that change results in lost sleep or mood swings. That said, I've seen an opiate addict spend a month rapidly detoxing and weed is a piece of cake by comparison.
Marijuana addiction is a kind of addiction where "just stop doing it" is the solution. Physiological addition to marijuana only develops if you smoke waaaay to much every day and easily fades away with just minor headaches taking just a a day or two of withdrawal. The psychological side of addition is a result of unhappy lives of the people and should be addressed by a psychotherapist and/or life coach.
I can only speak about actual marijuana though, I know nothing about THC vape pens.
People have been ingesting cannabis habitually since before western society even existed. Anything that makes you feel good can be habit forming, but not everything that’s habit forming is addicting. If a person drinks sodas everyday and struggles to quit are they an addict? Or just coping with boredom and under stimulation?
Cannabis is medicine just like every other recreational drug can be, the difference is in the dose and who’s making money off of it.
Right that’s what I’m saying. It’s not the drug it’s the user and dosage. Fentanyl is administered during labor at hospitals but it’s obviously a huge problem in Portland and elsewhere. It’s not the cannabis that’s the problem, it’s the dosage and situational usage.
The negative cognitive effects of weed in its various forms are short term but very real. So continuous use deprives the user of living a much fuller life and reaping all the benefits that go with better overall brain function: financial, social, career, creative and so on. So while the addictive nature of marijuana may be debatable, continuous long term, or lifetime use, whatever the cause, has awful consequences for the user.
>... reaping all the benefits that go with better overall brain function: financial, social, career, creative...
Have all that yet I was an heavy cannabis user from 14 to 40. The reason I stopped is that I developed Cannabis hyperemesis syndrome. The nausea was debilitating and I didn't want it to progress to vomiting.
As long as your passionate by what you do cannabis pose no problem, but I will conceed that it makes doing uninteresting things almost impossible and that this is probably harming some users in the way you describe.
I have struggled with weed addiction more than once in my life. Picking up coding helped me out of the first bout. Switching to edibles and tapering the dosage helped me out of the second. If I had to take a trip somewhere where I couldn't hav any it was pretty easy to live without it, but I did not have the mental discipline to stop when it was available
There's a scene in the classic stoner movie with young Dave Chapelle speaking about weed addiction at an addicts meeting where Bob Saget's character stands, outraged, belittling him about it because he sucked d*ck for coke. It's a salient point about the addiction. Addiction can be far worse, relatively speaking.
Some people will get addicted to anything, does this mean we should forbid it to everyone? I can't stop jer*ing off for instance, God knows I tried, but after a few days or weeks at most I succumb to temptation. Should society outlaw pe*ises just to make sure noone gets addicted to rubbing them compulsively?
If anyone is struggling, the reddit forum the article references is r/leaves (a clever play on the marijuana subreddit, r/trees). It's the marijuana equivalent of r/stopdrinking. Both are wonderful, supportive communities that have helped many people.
Cannabis "addiction" is as problematic as caffeine "addiction". I put those in quotes because neither are what typically comes to mind when a person thinks about drug addiction.
If you think quitting weed is hard, try quitting coffee if you have it every day. For me, suddenly quitting coffee results in severe migraine headaches and I can't do my job well. Extreme irritability and fatigue, it's truly a stimulant drug withdrawal. It takes about a week or so to get through it, and having green tea in its place is the only way I can reasonably taper down.
A similar kind of thing happens if you suddenly stop smoking weed when you use it daily - cold sweats, irritability, but it only lasts about a day. Anyone who has struggled with caffeine, alcohol, or amphetamine addiction (yes, including ADHD pills), who has gone through a cannabis withdrawal will be pleasantly surprised for lack of a better description at how short-lived it is. I believe that's why so many stoners exclaim "I can quit at any time if I wanted", it's not that big of a deal.
I really believe the negative effects of over-consuming caffeine (irritability, cold sweats, heart racing nervousness), and also the effect of withdrawing from caffeine, are both more severe than either with cannabis. Because caffeine is an accepted daily-use stimulant in our society, I compare it to that.
Yes, caffeine, nicotine, sugar, alcohol. They are all massively addictive and one could make the argument that we would be better off without them.
That being said, I believe everything should be legal and the decision to consume or not should be left to informed people. The whole "war on drugs" shenanigans has gone on for too long with crap results.
There would have to be some market regulation around sales and storefronts, at least the level of cigarettes and alcohol in regards to the customer being of age, product packaging, quality control, what-not. There is still a problem where... if you just allow stores to sell amphetamines and opiates, even if they meet the legal requirements, the usage of those drugs will simply go up. Taking that into account, a lot of people prefer it to stay illegal. Even though what you said makes the most logical sense, people would overwhelmingly not want their kids to be able to buy it so easily, and they'd vote to keep them illegal.
Hospitals and doctors of course want them to be illegal too, so they can remain the sole legal distributors of opiates and amphetamines.
I think the cannabis dispensary model could prove out something interesting. Although psilocybin is not my thing, I see they're trying it out in a few locations.
yup. quality control and regulating the conditions under which the drug is produced makes sense to prevent harmful things from happening when you buy and use stuff that is dubious (fentanyl-laced crap comes to mind).
setting aside the normalization of certain drugs like alcohol and sugar that are, imho, very dangerous, the test for me would be: how harmful is drug X to society through the lens of the non-consumer (i.e. everything that only causes harm to the individual that consumes it without causing harm to society should be allowed, no exceptions. stuff that has the potential to cause harm to society members that don't take the drug - e.g. PCP should have some guardrails around it).
in the US people like to talk about freedom this, freedom that, but ultimately they are not free. Free in my opinion is to be able to do whatever the frack you want without impacting others.
While I agree on the withdrawal symptoms, the main differentiating point for me is that drinking coffee doesn't waste time. Marijuana consumption is one of the most unproductive things to do for leisure. I don't do alcohol for the same reason, it's a massive waste of time. Both render the consumer functionally useless for hours, and, if you're older, assures that the next day will be extremely unpleasant.
There's also a big difference on a social level. Have you ever had a pothead as a roommate? The entire house smells like a garbage dump 24/7. Whereas freshly ground coffee actually smells good. Coffee addicts only bothered me with their unwashed V60s lying around in the sink.
With respect, this sounds like a kids show depiction. It's not like an opiate, nor anything like being drunk. People use it while working - coders, writers, artists, etc. in the day time, often along with coffee. I think a lot of people get this wrong about weed, because "functionally useless" is not at all how I would describe it. Some of your favorite music, video games, even coding libraries were created by stoners!
Also when you say coffee smells good and cannabis doesn't - highly subjective right? I love coffee, but some really high quality coffee smells like s*t haha (literally). There are some fruity, piney, lemony, and floral scents from fresh cannabis, just like there is a nice aroma from fresh coffee. In both cases you're talking about a flowering plant, with highly subjective smells and varying terpenoid profiles. However, note that the terepenes "pinene" "limonene" etc. in cannabis are the exact same plant terpenoids in pine trees, lemons, etc. so if you like the smell of pine trees, lemon, mangoes, roses, and other highly floral scents, you will likely also at least appreciate the smell of cannabis.
Liking the smell of pine does not mean I want the smell of a pine forest fire in my house all day long. You don't see caffeine addicts rolling up coffee grounds to set fire to it, do you?
There's nothing subjective about not wanting smoke in my lungs. If someone wants to get pot buzzed, go eat an edible and waste a day of productivity for all I care. Smoking the entire house, and costing me my deposit while justifying it with "George Carlin wrote jokes on weed" is peak pothead narcissism that makes me want to have it permanently banned.
Weed is not addictive. If you think it's addictive I beg you to watch a fentanyl withdrawal. Watch someone sell their mothers ring for a hit of heroin. Weed, um, its a joke. Get over the headache, get over the "crave" and just go play video games.
I would guess it's less than 5% of users in the US.
There are weed addicts. My college dorm had about half a dozen students jonesing when all the dealers (5-6 in our area) went home for the winter holidays. Did anyone lose their job, get in a wreck, end up in the hospital, or die from it? I seriously doubt it.
I'd say alcoholism and binge drinking are far bigger threats. You know, like my roommate who nearly died from alcohol poisoning on his 21st birthday from downing half a dozen shots of everclear and more.
The magnitude of harm, impairment, and life dysfunction for substance abuse varies by said substance. Weed addiction isn't nothing but it's not tobacco, drinking, or meth.
I'd said the biggest harm of weed is people who smoke it unfiltered and inhale microfines and ultrafines more so than filtered tobacco cigarettes. Dabbing could be potentially better, but so much of the market is grey and black that there's not enough research or uniform safety standards on producing healthy inhalation products.
this isn't a measuring contest to see which drug is worse, this is just acknowledging that people can have severe addiction issues with cannabis. Just because you don't die from withdrawals doesn't mean it can't lead to serious quality of life issues and poor mental health.
The phrase "burnt out hippie" exists for a good reason. I was widely regarded as brilliant when I started smoking. After 30 years of smoking almost every day, and about 5 years of smoking a few times a year, I'm noticeably dumber than peers who didn't smoke, who I used to run circles around. With very few exceptions, I've only used weed. For me, the biggest harm was brain damage.
I'm curious what you're really trying to say here and why feel the need to compare yourself to your peers in such a way. Do you feel like you wasted those years because your peers are "smarter" than you now?
Exactly that. It's hard to have any sort of control over a lifetime, but I went to university, have worked in software, and some of the friends I compare myself to did the same. I'm still "smart". But I feel like smoking as much as I did has accelerated my age-related cognitive decline.
I don't feel that I wasted the years, but I do think that the thousands of hours spent stoned were a complete waste and have decreased the potential quality of the latter half of my life.
I learned there is a thing called DIP, or Drug Induced Psychosis. I stopped smoking because of DIP. All my friends seemed evaporate in weeks like a puff of smoke. Quitting pot was probably one of the most depressing times of my life.
I struggle with cannabis addiction on and off. When I'm into it, it means several joints daily for months until I manage to pull my self out of. One day I fear I won't be able to.
One major issue has been over-emphasis on the fact that it’s not physically addictive in the ways that some drugs are. I think this leads to the mistaken belief that it’s not habit forming, and that there are no side effects of stopping after extended use.
While it’s not “withdrawal” in the traditional sense, it can be quite unpleasant. And the thing that sounds most helpful in that moment is…smoking a bowl.
What comes next is a lot of emotion management. Doable. Hard. Help is good.
I think legalization was good. Cannabis has mostly been a good thing in my life. At times, it hasn’t been. I worry about the crazy high THC strains everywhere now, and the misperception that these are completely harmless plants.
I still partake and find it worthwhile for creative endeavors, but had to make drastic changes to my usage habits with a promise to quit permanently if I found myself back in a similar cycle.
A lot of addiction-related messaging has definitely not focused on the mental component of addiction. People who use opiates medically are so much less likely to get addicted than recreational users that I would assume that it's actually the main component of an addiction, while the physical symptoms are less impactful.
This isn't complicated: marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
I'll add that I've also experienced this with caffeine: I've got more than one health reason to quit (heart arrhythmia, anxiety, insomnia), but I had a hell of a time quitting, with multiple failed attempts (now a few months out and hoping it sticks this time). And when I talk about it to the people around me, I get shocked and even defensive reactions. But my life is so much better when I'm not drinking coffee. Which is not to say that's the best decision for everyone.
I've had the same experience with caffeine- I am very addicted and without it the withdrawal includes a bad headache, serious fatigue, and not being able to think about much else except wanting caffeine. Yet lots of people have told me with a straight face that I am "wrong" and caffeine is not addictive.
Interesting, I also have the same symptoms as you, including insomnia even if I limit coffee to early AM. I think these effects are characteristic of "slow caffeine metabolizers," e.g. people for whom caffeine has an unusually long half life. My hypothesis is that for these people blood caffeine levels stay relatively high 24/7, so the body never gets to adapt to functioning without it, making addiction more likely.
It's weird to me that people seem adverse to the idea that peoples bodies and genetics vary, and one persons experience isn't going to be the same as another.
I don't think it's common to claim there's no such thing as caffeine withdrawal -- that's extremely well known and documented. The headaches and fatigue from going cold turkey are the worst.
But at the same time there's valid debate over whether that should be classified as an addiction rather than a mere normal dependence. Because for most people, it's relatively simple to taper down their caffeine intake by e.g. 10% per day and end it after a month and they're fine. They don't find that psychologically difficult, they don't need to go to rehab, they're just slightly tired and maybe intermittent slight headaches during the process. That's all -- which is why it's generally much better than cold turkey.
Addiction is often associated with something that normal willpower has no control over, that adversely affects your life. That's not generally the case for caffeine. Everyone I know who has wanted to stop drinking coffee has managed it when they decided to. Which is not the case with things widely understood to be addictive in some people, e.g. alcohol, tobbacco, heroin.
So there's an important distinction here that I don't think we want to erase. Dependency != addiction.
The DSM-5 does not use the terms dependence or addiction as standalone diagnostic categories. It unifies them under the concept of "substance use disorders," describing a spectrum of use and classifying severity based on the number of symptoms present.
I've always heard "caffeine withdrawal" explained as symptoms of dehydration from people who drank mostly coffee, go cold turkey, and do not replace with water.
I don't know who's been telling you that, but no, that is false.
The main cause of headaches in caffeine withdrawal is believed to be the fact that caffeine affects the blood vessels in your brain, and that cutting out caffeine therefore changes blood flow, and your body takes a few days to readjust to that.
Water is irrelevant here. Which is easily demonstrated by the fact that caffeine withdrawal is the same whether you've been drinking large, hydrating American-style coffees, or tiny Italian espressos, or been taking caffeine pills without water at all.
I'm surprised that people don't know that caffeine is addictive. I'd think most adults have accidentally withdrawn from it at some point.
I just tapered over the last two weeks, easier as an iced tea drinker. I measured what I drank one day in grams and then had 10% less the next day, decreasing by the same mass for the next 10 days. No side effects at all and it's there if I want to go back.
I did the exact same thing you did, except with cold brew concentrate, when I wanted to quit caffeine one time (in preparation for a dental surgery, where I decided I would rather not be taking caffeine while recovering). Would recommend for anyone who is trying to 'kick the habit'.
Funny story: at my first programming job, there was a coworker that had never had coffee before. Then he tried some and started drinking it everyday. Then he realized “he couldn’t stop” after it was time to start paying the coffee club dues (somehow there was an IT shop without free coffee).
It is surprising, but from my experience, there are some people that actually don’t realize it’s addictive.
i think it's very individual. I get a lot of caffeine when i need to work through a bunch of stuff (and probably developed tolerance, etc) but when there is a lull at work or a vacation, i feel 0 need for it, don't take it and feel 0 side effects from quitting for a couple of weeks.
If you want to kick caffeine, I recommend switching to caffeine pills and continue using as many of them as you need to feel normal, then start ramping down the dose. Since pills are discrete it's hard to cheat. When I do this I usually start at 400mg (sometimes 600mg) a day then over the next month ramp down to 100mg a day until finally going to zero. It takes me about a month before I can function normal with no caffeine.
...then a few months later I decide to start again. Oh well. I've done the above about half a dozen times. It's fairly easy to defeat the chemical addiction which I experience as you describe (really awful headaches, fatigue, lack of concentration, etc), but eventually I'll pick it back up to get a little extra edge.
Something I used to do is make a big pot of coffee and sip on it throughout the day, which was very hard to regulate (and it was also just too much caffeiene). Now I make a single cup of coffee in the aeropress and I use 16 grams of beans which i weigh manually. And I only have one cup of coffee in the morning instead of multiples throughout the day.
Point is, weighing beans and using the aeropress helps me keep my dosage consistent so I don't go overboard.
Decaf is pretty good these days; When I don't feel like ditching the actual cups of liquid I swap over. It's certainly what I reach for in the afternoon if I want another coffee for whatever reason. Might be another option if you still enjoy the ritual of coffee making and consumption.
I've tapered caffeine successfully by measuring out instant coffee. This works pretty well for managing the physical effects of caffeine withdrawal, or at least spreading them out. Basically, I 1) committed to only having the same exact amount of instant coffee, at the same exact times, every day, and then 2) every so often, reduced it a bit. Then I switched to a very moderate amount of decaf (which, yes, has a little bit of caffeine in it, but not enough to cause me problems).
I did this because I was getting withdrawal headaches most mornings, which is an unpleasant way to begin the day- I wasn't even drinking that much caffeine!
I never really liked coffee, but I drank it at work just as a pretext to talk to other people.
I didn't have a coffee maker at home at that time. So I started getting headaches on Sunday. I made the connection eventually, after my headache completely disappeared 20 minutes after drinking a cup of coffee with a friend.
It's telling that both people recommending this method have seen it fail multiple times, and are somehow rebranding those failures as successes. Every time you quit again "successfully" was because the previous attempt failed.
While I'm not aware of efficacy studies of different methods of quitting caffeine, cold turkey seems most effective for nicotine and a few other stimulants.
The irony isn't lost on me, but we're recommending a method to safely wean off the substance to prevent having withdrawal symptoms, which have prevented me from coming off from caffeine in the past.
I wouldn't frame starting up again as a failure. Quitting short vs. long term are two different things.
* stopping caffeine ingestion 8-12 hours before you plan to sleep is beneficial to your sleep. Even for people who can drink coffee late in the day and still go to sleep.
* delaying the first dose 90 minutes after waking up can help mitigate the “afternoon slump” many people experience.
I have the same issue, and it originally comes from soft-drinks like Cola, and now I have to drink tons of coffee just to not have headaches and withdrawal syndrome.
If caffeine was illegal you and I wouldn't have acquired such addiction, so there is a very big + to prohibition; it will prevent future generations to fall into the same trap.
Maybe making a law that forbids selling drinks containing caffeine to kids could be a good start.
Moreover, legality doesn’t even necessarily imply reduced cost. I’ve heard anecdotally that in California illegally produced cannabis is cheaper: it’s not taxed and there’s no cost to meet regulatory compliance for the producers.
>Making a product legal increases its availability, affordability and reach. So, the number of people exposed.
Really, a prohibition argument made with a straight face?
North American governments famously failed to maintain a ban on alcohol. How well do you think they'd fare with trying to ban sales of caffeine, given it's reach is greater (and far more socially-accepted) than alcohol?
Much better, because alcohol can be made with any grocery store items (like fruits and bread for example) so nearly impossible to ban, whereas caffeine without coffee beans or tea leaves is going to be extremely challenging.
>Much better, because alcohol can be made with any grocery store items (like fruits and bread for example) so nearly impossible to ban, whereas caffeine without coffee beans or tea leaves is going to be extremely challenging.
Don't forget the vast selection of caffeinated pop/soda, energy drinks, etc. You're talking about a wide ban here, as this is one of the world's favourite drugs, covering a very popular array of beverages. If you're daft enough to propose it, I suspect you'd be laughed out of the halls of legislatures.
Regulation of caffeine levels in energy drinks and pop is probably an easier sell, and some jurisdictions already do this.
Caffeine is long term safe to use, tapering is done easily when its necessary (see my other comment on the thread, I tapered over 10 days with no side effects). And it's a stimulant.
I was happily addicted to it for years and other than a couple withdrawal headaches when my routine got disrupted* the only ill effects was occasional morning crankiness.
I expect I'll become addicted again at some point in the future. Probably in the winter with a nice hot mug on a snowy morning. I'm looking forward to it.
I can't imagine any state or religion banning caffeine. It's the safest, most wonderful drug there is.
*Any restaurant or convenience store could fix my headache for me.
> I can't imagine any state or religion banning caffeine.
Coffee and tea have been banned for practicing Mormons for a long time. Caffeinated soda was kind of an "extra credit" ban for decades until the church more recently started pulling back on that.
> Caffeine is a stimulant, which means it increases activity in your brain and nervous system. It also increases the circulation of chemicals such as cortisol and adrenaline in the body.
Extremely unlikely. Caffeine is one of the most studied substances on earth. It's not a secret that it causes a clear physiological response. There are tons of double blind placebo studies on this.
You got exposed to such substances because the law enforcement failed to apply the rules against controlled substances.
Despite this, the fact that the substance is illegal or controlled, made that less people have been exposed (and eventually addicted) than if the substance was freely circulating.
Singapore was well known to have a strong opium problem. Now they have death penalty, no opium problem anymore.
Clear example:
If cannabis cakes (space cakes) were legal, I'd consume them but they are not, and I do not trust + do not want to fund dealers. So I don't buy them.
Another example:
Alcohol is forbidden to 12 year old kids. Yes, some of them may find a workaround, and a way to buy it, but because of that you are still helping a large segment of the kids to not get early into addiction.
If tomorrow you say to the kids that they can drink wine (in French schools it was possible before for kids!), then they are more likely to get addicted.
Yes, there is still a small % that will get exposed, no solution covers 100% of the population, but if you can save 6 out of 10 addictions by regulating the substance, then you are doing a good job.
You don't understand how addiction works. Most people can try almost any drug and not get addicted. Some people will seek out drugs and get addicted no matter what the laws are. Banning the drugs does nothing to help most people, because they don't need any help, they don't have the genes, the impulsivity, the lack of executive functioning for it to be a problem!. It does plenty to harm the people who are going to get addicted anyway.
And I mean, if you have to use Singapore as some shining example of your vision of the world, you're pretty far into crazy land already. There is no way to meaningfully enforce drug legislation without violating human rights en masse. History has proven this again and again.
I live in a state where sports betting was recently legalized and suddenly a lot of people are addicted to gambling who weren't before. There're also many people who got addicted to legally prescribed pain medication, it seems unlikely all of these addicts would have sought out heroin from a sketchy drug dealer had they not been introduced to the pain medicine first.
You'd be surprised how many heroin addicts have chronic pain problems.
Chronic pain is a strong predictor of opioid addiction, but the opioid crisis is mainly caused by wild overprescription of and over-reliance on these drugs in the medical industry. This is also why it's so specific to the US. This is a question of regulation, not legality.
Gambling addiction is not something I'm willing to comment on, because I've not studied it nearly as much as I have drug addiction. But I can see the same points applying there; regulation is also an important topic, not just legal status.
My country has a state monopoly on gambling. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible either, and I could easily see a completely hands off approach being much worse.
Just because you can effect health improvements by strict government controls, I don't think that means we should.
> Now they have death penalty, no opium problem anymore.
Hardly a policy that I think makes sense in the US.
We could solve 6/10 instances of obesity by a strict governmental intervention into diets. I don't think that would be "doing a good job", even if the health outcomes would be improved.
We could eliminate tons of cancers by banning both tobacco and alcohol. I don't think we should (as a non-user, I hate everything about tobacco; I could easily reduce my ~20 drinks/year to 0).
We could eliminate a lot of greenhouse gas emissions and heart disease by banning the farming, sale, and consumption of animals. I don't think we should.
I'm skeptical that Singapore's policy is working as opposed to driving the drug trade underground. Draconian drug restrictions haven't worked in the US, and the death penalty wouldn't do anything here.
What about personal freedoms? Is eroding our individual rights really worth criminalizing something like coffee just because it might be physically addictive?
> If caffeine was illegal you and I wouldn't have acquired such addiction, so there is a very big + to prohibition
This is true, but this argument can be made for anything with downsides.
If cars hadn't been made legal, maybe commutes wouldn't be so bad. If TV hadn't been made legal, maybe people would get out and get more exercise. If the internet hadn't been made legal, maybe fraud would be less widespread.
Yet a majority of caffeine users don't get addicted, and the increased productivity and freedom seems well worth the trade off on prohibition. There are better solutions to addiction than making everyone else suffer.
I think a majority of caffeine users are addicted, given the prevalence of idioms on shirts/mugs/etc like "don't talk to me until I've had my morning coffee," etc. Most coffee drinkers I know feel at the very least tired if they don't have a morning coffee, even if they got enough sleep; that lethargy is a withdrawal symptom from a stimulant.
That being said it's a very socially acceptable addiction, and the withdrawal symptoms are non-dangerous (and unless you drink a lot of coffee daily, mild), so people may not feel it's an "addiction" in the same way they think of e.g. heroin, alcohol, etc.
I agree it shouldn't be illegal, and that mildly addictive substances with safe withdrawal symptoms should be legal (i.e. not opiates, but marijuana, coffee, etc). Alcohol is a weird one! It's obviously horrible for you, addictive if you drink it enough, and the withdrawal symptoms are lethal, but our societies have socialized it enough that few enough people become alcoholics — and enough people want it — that bans are worse than allowing it legally, because the downsides of prohibition are a strong black market + gang/mob activities, whereas the downsides of legal alcohol are less widespread in their badness.
Exactly, booze is legal, some people get addicted but prohibition does more harm than good. Cigarettes are even worse they really have no benefit of any kind to anyone, its pure, deadly addiction and totally level for adults.
> Cigarettes are even worse they really have no benefit of any kind to anyone
No benefit of any kind to anyone?
Jesus, the arrogance of this guy. What makes you think you can make such blanket statements about everyone's experience like this?
Cigarettes are great for getting a boost of energy, or for having an excuse to talk to a stranger. And sure, both of those are things that we shouldn't need in a perfect society because we should all have enough time and calm to sleep and mental health care to get over our social anxieties. But that's not the society we live in--we live in a society where we can't be arsed to provide insulin for type 1 diabetics or school lunches for children. Giving nurses reasonable hours or high school students realistic dating advice aren't things in our society. So you'll have to excuse people for using the fucked up solutions that are available rather than the perfect solutions that aren't.
I'm not even a cigarette smoker, I just have a basic sense of empathy.
Your attitude to cigarettes sounds awfully similar to what people said about mj 20 years ago. Someone i know actually thinks there’s a link between a crack down on smoking and mass shootings. Just a pet theory, but some folks just need to chill out with a cig behind the maintenance shed.
According to our shared oral mythology about bootlegging gangsters, yes. According to all available crime and health data from the time it was an incredible success.
Crime fell. People got healthier. There was less domestic abuse (people forget that temperance was first and foremost a women's movement). None of this was outweighed by the increase in organized crime.
Prohibition was a "failure" in the sense that people like alcohol and do not wish it to be illegal. It was not a failure by any other definition (boogeyman stories about "organized crime" notwithstanding).
This is easier to see if your baseline is, "excessive alcohol consumption is a societal disaster" (which is the correct baseline). Prohibition would have to generate a staggering level of harm to match the existing harms of consumption.
This may be a long one, but Ill start with simple and see what you think --
The addiction problem is really a dopamine (co)injection problem based on the pychological aspects of earlier experience which created the gates of dopamine/seratonin/melatonin/neural transports desires that affect behavior as you mature.
The pathways that are made for each within the brain structure early form bonds, and then its layers of bonds that keep coming, but just like snow on branches, the growth is bigger, the WEIGHT is bigger on the earlier formed branches... (The pathways are formed by an experience that triggers the neurons to neuron (network) and as they do so, if firing patterns keep happening, certain pathways get higher bandwidth, and these pathways "trigger" behaviour due to high bandwidth and thats how we get/devlop/inherit/build AND CHANGE our "PERSON"-ality.
So when you're traumatised at an early age - whatever triggers in the neuro-pathways are triggered will be stronger growing up - such that if its a dopamine trauma - you'll go after that largely as you mature...
Its reversable, because your biological and physical brain is self aware (conscious, a toroid) - and so you can change your behavior of which neurals get stronger, but will power (desire) has to be the strongest thread.
(But this is how BGP was born through LSD) (look at Ciscos comments re hoffmans 100)
I feel like something that could help would be a limit to the potency. I like weed - but I really just want a 5-10% THC flower with some CBD in there for good measure (still not convinced the CBD isn't a placebo, but it's there naturally so no harm in having it). But most shops near me don't sell anything less than 20% THC. WTF?
Occasionally I can get something 10-15%. And if I'm lucky I can get something less than 10%.
Then look for high-CBD strains. The weed plant that produces lots of CBD will not produce much THC. The inverse is also true. I see CBD strains all the time that are as low as 1% THC.
Yes that's usually what I do. But I think in general the average potency at stores encourages people to do too much. It did for me when I first moved to a legal state. I had no idea what I would enjoy and just expected that the average THC content was a mid-level intensity. In reality it's at the top end.
I notice that routine caffeine consumption brings about subtle personality changes, like tendency towards aggression and neurosis. It doesn’t kick in right away, but more over the course of a couple of weeks. Not sure if this is a direct effect, or whether this is compounded by lack of sleep.
I don't fully agree with the approach of legalizing something because something equivalently dangerous is already legal. If carrying around hand guns are legal, would you allow SMGs?
If you genuinely think existing drugs are dangerous and you were severely addicted to it, shouldn't you call for regulations to prevent that from happening for others?
When questioning whether or not to make something legal, I believe it helps to frame the question as, "should someone be allowed to profit off of yet another addictive substance?"
The companies selling this stuff (yes, companies) are the real winners in Marijuana legalization. I wouldn't say the same for the "users."
Interesting. Always had exactly the opposite with caffeine. Could never tell any effects except for the nice refreshing taste. Normally have 2 cups with breakfast, but can't tell any difference if I skip it (e.g. when travelling).
I can't drink any caffeine either. I'm a fairly large guy, but even 1/4th cup of coffee at 6:00AM causes the same problems - my Apple Watch starts complaining that I have high HR, I get anxiety that blocks me from doing productive work, and my sleep schedule gets completely screwed up.
For me I strongly believe it is other alkaloids in coffee and similar plant products which I’m particularly sensitive to.
Artificially caffeinated beverages have much less of a negative effect than coffee. And coffee preparation method makes a significant difference as well. Espresso is better than drip coffee which is better than cold brew.
> For me I strongly believe it is other alkaloids in coffee and similar plant products which I’m particularly sensitive to.
This does seem to match my experience. Yerba mate doesn't produce the same reaction in me as coffee, despite having more caffeine (and no L-theanine, which could be a confounding factor when comparing with tea).
> marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
By your logic, it's futile to ban harmful products, which is a weird take. Making something illegal influences social norms. It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people." Not everyone will abide by that social signal, but most people will. Banning something where the rest of the culture is trying to normalize it probably is futile. But that doesn't mean that banning things doesn't work, or that legalizing things won't make the problem worse. It's hard to ignore that marijuana seems to be much more prevalent now that it's been legalized in many places.
It’s not weird in context. The alcohol ship has already sailed. It’s deeply rooted in European culture. That wasn’t the case for marijuana. And obviously just because one bad thing is legal doesn’t mean other bad things should be legal.
I’d note that banning alcohol has worked in societies that don’t have a deep tradition of alcohol use. While alcohol is available for non-Muslims in my home country, virtually nobody uses it outside certain westernized elites.
I think Bangladesh is one of Laziza’s biggest markets for nonalcoholic beers and malt beverages. Also don’t Hindus in BD use it as offering along with animal sacrifices at temples?
Alcohol has greater cultural and historical significance than marijuana does as context, despite killing 3 million people each year.
Claiming it's okay to lose a hand because you couldn't stop from losing a leg has never been a very sound argument. There's better premises for keeping marijuana legal than pointing to alcohol.
The societal damage and consequences of having people becoming lazy on their couch after smoking weed is largely underestimated.
This is the real risk with cannabis.
"Randy: Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but… well, son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored. And it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything."
Well, also schizophrenia. Hope you like insane people wandering urban areas and harassing normal people, because you're going to get a lot more of that!
No it doesn’t. This is very very very settled science. Billions of people hVe been smoking the reefer for Millenia.
Withdrawing from alcohol has well documented, and extremely dangerous physical side effects (this is why it’s done in a hospital when possible). cami is does not.
Anyone who claims science can be “settled” immediately discredits themselves. Science is never settled, even the hard sciences, and we have only just begun to study the effects of THC. Lots of things considered 100% true a decade ago (like it doesn’t have physical addiction) have been proven as misguided myths or lies.
“Very very very settled science,” what an absolute joke. No one engaged in the scientific pursuit of truth uses phrases like this.
Weed is stronger and more available now than ever. I've seen people get constipated, get night terrors, cold sweats, etc. from marijuana withdrawals. So I think GP is right, it's left to be seen.
> get night terrors [...] from marijuana withdrawals
This one can be really bad, although it only lasts for about a week. Dreams so vivid it's terrifying, even when the content of the dreams seems mundane. If somebody were already marijuana as an emotional crutch, I think the bad dreams could have them running back to marijuana immediately.
I think you're undwrestimating it quite severely. I've had vivid nightmares every single night for months at a time after quitting weed(really heavy user).
> It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people."
Given the absurd disconnect between US law and anything resembling ethics, I doubt this is true. If you're on the left, you're as likely to see law enforcement as bad people, and if you're on the right, substitute guns for marijuana and you're likely to have very different views. While some people might think this way at a surface level, I suspect the number of people who base their view of morality on laws is vanishingly small compared to the number of people who base their view of laws on their morality.
> Banning something where the rest of the culture is trying to normalize it probably is futile.
Good thing there's no cultural movement to normalize the substance we're talking about.
> It's hard to ignore that marijuana seems to be much more prevalent now that it's been legalized in many places.
Hard to ignore, but easy to explain with explanations other than "it made things worse". Does it occur to you that maybe people just aren't hiding their use now that it's legal?
> By your logic, it's futile to ban harmful products, which is a weird take.
How is that weird? Maybe try ban cigarette and alcohol first see if it works?
I personally don't take any substances except coffee. Really wondering all those ppl who r advocating for banning weed smoke or drink alcohol personally?
But.. banning things doesn't work. People use illegal drugs anyways, and they do it openly. Legalizing weed alone didn't make the problem worse, the shift of the marijuana industry to mass production did. And that shift was caused by states granting business licenses to dispensaries. After that companies decided (just like alcohol until recently by the way) that the only metric to compete on was strength.
> Making something illegal influences social norms. It signals that something is "bad" and for "bad people."
This is often used by totalitarian governments. It leads to "Preference Falsification," an idea developed by Timur Kuran.
Making something illegal for social reasons also degrades each person's sense of autonomy and self-governance. It invites jurisdiction within one's private sphere by removing each person's duty of "Obedience to the Unenforceable." Below is a key description from John Fletcher Moulton's article about it and links to an excellent Econtalk podcast discussing the idea.
Preference falsification is the act of misrepresenting a preference under perceived public pressures. It involves the selection of a publicly expressed preference that differs from the underlying privately held preference (or simply, a public preference at odds with one’s private preference). People frequently convey to each other preferences that differ from what they would communicate privately under credible cover of anonymity.
Follow me in examining the three great domains of Human Action. First comes the domain of Positive Law, where our actions are prescribed by laws binding upon us, which must be obeyed. Next comes the domain of Free Choice, which includes all those actions as to which we claim and enjoy complete freedom. But between these two there is a third large and important domain in which there rules neither Positive Law nor Absolute Freedom. In that domain there is no law which inexorably determines our course of action, and yet we feel that we are not free to choose as we would. The degree of this sense of a lack of complete freedom in this domain varies in every case. . . . it is the domain of Obedience to the Unenforceable. The obedience is the obedience of a man to that which he cannot be forced to obey. He is the enforcer of the law upon himself . . .
Good point. You can expand this to every issue facing society, view it through the lens of a politician trying to grab as many votes as possible and our current state makes sense.
> This isn't complicated: marijuana is addictive to some people, but making it illegal doesn't solve that problem--it should be legal. But it's apparent that's too much nuance for the average politician.
If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted. That might not "solve" the problem but it helps.
I'm not arguing that weed should be illegal, only that making something illegal reduces its use.
> only that making something illegal reduces its use
I'm not sure how that flies with this:
"An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found there was no increase in cannabis use among the general population or among previous users after their states legalized marijuana."
I'm confused by the article/headline, which also states:
Washington state and Colorado became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, after which marijuana use saw a slight increase among Hispanic and white participants, researchers said.
Sample size of one: I never bought weed when it was illegal because I don't associate with the sort of people who'd sell it. Sometimes it would be offered to me and I would try it, but I never had or wanted to have "a dealer". But now that I can just pop into a local store whenever I want, it's no big deal.
Sure, but people like you smoking slightly more often is not actually a real problem. Addiction is a problem, and for people like me who are heavily predisposed to addiction, bans have done nothing to prevent addiction from developing, and done lots to make the lives of those who suffer from it worse, and indeed the drugs themselves more dangerous, even for casual users(it only takes one bad ecstacy pill to kill you...)
Heh, well.. you give me a bit too much credit. I went from one or two bong rips a year to most days of the week.
To be honest I think my point of view is more common than you may think because admitting to it is tantamount to admitting I'm some sort of uncool uptight square, but also that I now use. Saying it won't win me friends with either side of the issue, so people like me are generally disinclined share our experiences.
no, the same public health "experts" say cigarettes should be outright banned for people under a certain age. new zealand recently banned ever selling them to anyone born after 2009, at any age
Maybe if you're going to go down the road of buying illegal substances you're not going to pick the one that is highly addictive, gives you lung cancer and makes you smell like a chimney in exchange for almost no discernable difference in how you feel? Maybe there are better trade-offs at that point, such as cocaine, mdma, ketamine, lsd, etc?
Yes. Supply reduction works in aggregate in almost all cases. Anyone that says otherwise only came to harm reduction via it being a liberal / progressive political talking point. I say this as someone that’s very left-wing and an overall believer in harm reduction. It’s just the way it’s espoused by Joe Citizen is dumbed down to the point where it’s just plain wrong.
If we legalised heroin, more people would do heroin. Gateway drugs are real. Decades of fighting against stupid Reagan-era drug policy have trained so many people to completely throw the baby out with the bathwater and brush the nuances of addiction under the rug in support of their cause, on both sides.
The argument in reality tends to be more that decriminalisation presents a net benefit literally by virtue of mitigating the criminal aspect.
I’d use drugs more than I do now if there was less of a legal disincentive. People that think they understand the tenants of harm reduction often hate to hear that, which I find absurd. It’s just…the truth. Usually I’m told “but you’re not the one we’re worried about” as if those with ‘serious’ drug addictions are somehow ‘other’. A ridiculously narrow view. There but for the grace of God go I.
I live in an area that saw drastically lower drug importations during COVID travel restrictions. We also had social policy that loaded loads of people up with money that kept everyone paid. We got to see first-hand the effects that supply reduction had on drug use, across the aggregate. There was an inarguable correlation. The issue is usually that policing action is just never that effective.
New Zealand health officials locked down the island earlier and for much longer than anywhere else during covid aside from China and they have increased social problems from it. I'm not sure the world should be following advice from that source.
Actually, Minnesota's weed legalization law might face a special session because there's concern that the law doesn't add penalties for those who sell to minors. At this point, all anyone could be charged with is a petty misdemeanor, which- like many other crimes in the state- may go uncharged.
> I'm not sure how that flies with this: "An article published in The Journal of the American Medical Association found there was no increase in cannabis use among the general population or among previous users after their states legalized marijuana."
Simple: there is no possible way that's true. It fails every imaginable sniff test. Anecdotally, I never purchased marijuana when it was illegal and I do now. I know many people for whom the same is true. If marijuana were made illegal again tomorrow I would stop using it. I'm a normie middle-aged dad. The only way I'm buying and consuming marijuana is if I can walk into a shop and buy it legally. There must be millions of people like me.
This doesn't require any deep insight. It would be very surprising if ease of access had no effect on consumption.
given that addictions still exist even for the most illicit drugs, I don't see that correlation.
enforcement is significantly less 'a joke' for heroin and cocaine, yet addicts still exist for the products.
also : is incarceration/penal-justice really the desired outcome here? Is the punchline here : "Would you rather be surrounded by ex-convicts or addicts?"
Anecdotally, enforcement is a joke for cocaine too. I know several people who use it recreationally, sometimes to slightly disturbing excess, and none have ever been in any legal trouble for it.
I never lived in the U.S., but enforcement is a joke in the west in general.
Countries like The UAE or Saudi Arabia don't seem to have any problems with high/drugged people on the streets for some reason, mainly because they actually enforce the rules, you take drugs, even just for personal use, you will go to jail, it's not a joke.
I've lived in parts of the US where "they actually enforce the rules, you take drugs, even just for personal use, you will go to jail, it's not a joke" and yet there are widespread drug abuse problems.
lmfao. UAE and Saudi Arabia have active moral compasses. Sure is active and pointing in some direction.
Would you send your daughter, wife, or mother to live there as a local does -- i.e. without all the special privileges that Westerners get outside of the culture's standard "active moral compass"?
No way, theocratic autocracies have “a more united look” on issues than a pluralistic democracy? That’s a feature of pluralism and a bug in theocracy — not the other way around.
Outdated as of… when?
2018 when the morally advanced civilization of Saudi Arabia decided to let women drive?
Or do you mean way back in 2023 in UAE where it’s completely legal for a husband to rape his wife and, if killed for “a good reason” (like being raped), her killer goes unpunished so long as her father acquits?
Not sure there’s much to discuss here, I think we just care about different things. You care about drug addicts not existing and you’re fine with actively “hunting” them to achieve that, I care about everyone in a society having basic legal rights and protections of law.
UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
> Or do you mean way back in 2023 in UAE where it’s completely legal for a husband to rape his wife and, if killed for “a good reason” (like being raped), her killer goes unpunished so long as her father acquits?
With all due respect, this sounds BS
> UAE and KSA are in fact making a lot of progress, but they are making progress against the direction you are holding on high. Even on the drug enforcement issue!
No they aren't, and their drug enforcement hasn't changed a bit, probably got stronger.
> If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted. That might not "solve" the problem but it helps.
Enforcing the law is not without costs, financial and social. We’ve tested this theory, and it does not help in net.
Society as a whole would do better to take the money fighting against drug use, abuse, and sales, and instead put it towards programs that help people fight the issues that cause addiction in the first place. Mental health programs, along with support for those that have an addiction and wish to be free from it. Addiction is fueled by something lacking in people's lives. There may be an odd case here and there where someone tried a substance and got hooked, but usually addiction is a sign of a deeper mental health issue that needs to be dealt with, rather than the drug use itself.
> There may be an odd case here and there where someone tried a substance and got hooked, but usually addiction is a sign of a deeper mental health issue that needs to be dealt with
I believe it's something to do with a way to self-soothe your pain. A lot of these substances give you a little vacation away from your true self. Marijuana and psychedelics seem to amplify these issues, but people still use them to escape. I think people that use a substance just because they are interested in how it feels, they tend to not fall into the addiction, because they are merely following a curiosity rather than trying to cover up some kind of mental pain.
I think that any drug/substance that changes your mode of thinking has the potential to create mental health problems. I also think those mental problems were latent or even fully present when the user chooses to try a new chemical/drug. Trying to fill a void or fix a mental issue using chemicals doesn't usually work out too well, and I think it exacerbates the problems. You might get a little "mental vacation" from your problems, but when you sober up, those issues are often worse because you decided to ignore them. This is what leads to addiction, chasing the ability to cover up your issues by making yourself dead inside, or changing your mode of thinking to ignore what is really going on deep down.
I'm a believer that psychedelics, including Marijuana, can be helpful. It really depends on the circumstances of why you are using the chemical, and what your intentions are going into the experience.
What matters is that marijuana had a demographic that allowed the government and law enforcement to be both classist and racist at the same time. The severity of marijuana possession was jacked up so that it could disenfranchise people, some of whom just got the vote less than 2 decades earlier.
When you put a law in place under such circumstances, you forfeit the right to talk about what's right and proper. What you did was monstrous, and the only correct response is to give back what you took, let the dust settle for some time proportional to how long you took it away, and only then let some new generation of lawmakers start discussing whether it's right or appropriate to take it away again.
Whether it's worse than alcohol or not hardly matters. It's a dog whistle, and will remain so for decades.
When people are discussing equality and you bring up tangential topics, you're labeled as an enemy. You understand that, right? If not, then it's time you learned about Deflection.
One, welcome to semantic dilution. Two, a hidden agenda that people share without discussing it. And three, not helping.
There's something to that, but I think that there have also been studies that show that regardless of policy, about the same percentage of the population uses drugs and can switch to different drugs when one gets too difficult to acquire.
Lol 40 years of the war on drugs proved that wrong. Can still buy bud illegally just as easy as mum could 40 years ago. If anything there are more users today given its more socially acceptable to be a stoner than an alcoholic.
Being alcoholic is far more socially acceptable in the most of the world outside California. In the UK, most people consider anyone who uses weed a druggy loser
The recent unscientific moral panic about "skunk" has been bizarre to watch. Even conservative Germany is on track to legalize cannabis in the very near future (usage and cultivation, though perhaps not sales quite yet), and in the UK it's just not even a conversation.
Even if, for the sake of the argument, we accept that illegality reduces consumption and that it would thus reduce the number of actively consuming addicts, that is still not a strong enough argument by itself. It depends on the assumption that the reason addiction is harmful to the individual and society is only the drug's effects per se, and not the myriad of other factors that come into play when an addict needs his or her fix, such as trying to get enough money to pay for it, marginality, exposure to criminality, risk of using an adulterated substance—all of which are greatly exacerbated by the drug being illegal.
Does the drop in the number of addicts achieved by illegalising the drug make up for the increased suffering and societal damage caused by the remaining addicts now turning to more desperate measures?
You’re being voted down at the moment, but I’m not sure why.
I think we should view alcohol and cannabis very similarly. Both are potentially addictive and both can seriously harm a person’s life and family.
Both require us to address the same question: how do we handle addictive substances in society?
If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
In this sense, alcohol and cannabis are the same thing with the same problems attached.
> If made legal, then how do we navigate the normalization of a substance which can quite literally ruin a life? It prohibited, how do you manage the safety concerns and crime we know will stem from the ceaseless demand for drugs which are unregulated? How do we manage education in either case?
I believe you underestimate peoples ability to ruin their own lives, regardless of what laws and regulations are put into place to try to help them.
Many people kill themselves with food, legal drugs to name a few.
We’ll be in a much better place if more people become knowledgeable in the workings of their own minds, bodies and emotions so that seeking self-destruction is less common.
I agree. I didn’t want to suggest specifics in my comment, but I think our mistake all along has been top down solutions.
People drink and eat and smoke because they’re hurting and seeking distraction and numbness. There are some anomalies where people fall into addiction more easily, but stronger family and community safety nets seem like a far better insurance against the potential outcomes of this than virtually anything else.
Pretty much every heavy cannabis user, alcoholic, or other addict I’ve met has had deep family issues. It starts early. Regulations and education might make a dent in outcomes, but the only way we’ll have happy people who don’t want to ruin themselves is to make it so they aren’t crushed under the misery and fear of taking on the world in the first place.
The two are not the same. Before the prohibition, alcohol had been legal for hundreds of years, socially accepted and permeated the culture. Can't say the same about weed.
> Your country, and even Europe as a whole, is not the same thing as humanity.
What a strange thing to say, when the previous commenter wasn't saying the opposite. They were citing when weed became legal, socially accepted, and permeating of their culture, which is the topic.
I interpreted “In my (European) country around the 1990s and got common only 15 years ago or so.” as “humans in my country started using cannabis in the 1990s for the first time”. Bringing up the larger history of cannabis use in Europe is a valid point of discussion, as it is very likely that at some point in history it was also legal and ubiquitous.
Edit: As an aside, this whole discussion began with on the topic of prohibition in regard to alcohol, which for a lot of people that term specifically refers to a period in the United States during the 1920s-1933. I’m not sure if the colonel was referring to a different European prohibition or how the rise in ubiquity of cannabis in the 90s has to do with their initial point, if at all.
> “humans in my country started using cannabis in the 1990s for the first time”.
For my point it's irrelevant if people used cannabis thousands of years ago and then stopped.
My point is that weed had no presence in culture or social acceptance pre-1990. Weed is therefore much easier to ban than alcohol and not comparable to the difficulty of banning alcohol.
I don't know the history of weed in US, but my guess is that it's roughly similar.
It didn’t work out well for marijuana, either, which isn’t surprising because alcohol has much more of the features the pro-prohibition argument relies on and yet alcohol prohibition was a disaster.
I dont think making a substance illegal reduces its use. In the town where I live it was illegal to sell liquor until recently and this just created demand for unsafe unregulated products that normally can't compete with legal alcohol. Alcoholics dont really care about things like laws. They dont really care about anything. When a person is far gone enough that he or she will drink hand sanitizer, getting in his or her way will just cause more problems.
Making something illegal also weaponizes the state against an entirely new group of people. It's not something to take lightly. The FBI was just found to have framed four muslim men for a terrorism plot to bomb a synagogue. This is what happens when you make new crimes and incentivize our broken forces.
> The FBI was just found to have framed four muslim men for a terrorism plot to bomb a synagogue. This is what happens when you make new crimes and incentivize our broken forces.
Er, are you arguing that “bombing people” is a new crime invented to weaponize law enforcement against Muslims, or does your example have nothing to do with your argument?
This is what happens when you hire a ton of investigators to fight a sort of crime that only happens once in a blue moon. They start fabricating crimes to justify themselves. They might even do this unintentionally, since the line between prodding somebody into revealing their true intentions can become blurred with encouragement to do the thing.
> "Come on, I know you want to do the thing, you can admit it to me. I want to do the thing too! Here are all the reasons to believe the thing is a good idea... Don't you agree?"
This is a nice pet theory, but all real world statistics have shown this to be false. Illegal drugs have become more widely spread year after year, up to the point where some of them are now common enough to either be or soon to be legalized.
There is a pretty good evidence that making a drug illegal may reduce usage rates, but it does this at the costs of increasing the amount that is used in a sitting. This increase in binging leads to a higher rate of addiction and ODs. So while you might argue that the number of people using can decrease, this is often paired with an increase in the overall harm that drug abuse has on society (even before you account for the harm caused by treating drug abuse with jail time.)
> If weed is illegal and the law is enforced then fewer people will use it and fewer will become addicted.
This isn't really a useful place to start thinking about law and policy from, because the one thing that we have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt is we're bad at enforcing the law as it relates to drug usage.
My sleep is a lot better. There were about two weeks were it was... inconsistent. I would be exhausted most of the time which helped me get to sleep but also more often anxious and irritable which would keep me up. The anxiety and irritability wore off after about two weeks, and the energy came back to what feels normal-ish at about three weeks. I do have ongoing problems with sleep, but it's become apparent that this is due to some bad sleep habits which I wasn't as conscious of when I was drinking coffee because I could just drink a bit extra the day after to make up for staying up late--i.e. I was covering up my bad sleep habits. When I actually discipline myself and follow good sleep hygiene habits, I sleep well, which wasn't the case when I was drinking coffee, even if I drank it only early in the day.
“I’m not addicted, it doesn’t affect me.” Every addict I know. Seen a number of people slowly change from it until they are no longer who they are. Never in a good way. Seen some who got off it.
One because her husband has such a bad reaction (after several years of use) that he can’t ever touch it again. She became her old self again. Not quite as bright as she once was, but personality improved to the loving person I once knew.
Unless you're one of those morons who can't tell apart psychological symptoms from physiological ones.
You won't get flu-like withdrawal symptoms after quitting cannabis, but, if you became psychologically dependant on it (eg. as a way to cope with depression), you will experience anxiety.
I genuinely hate this redefining words just to please today's political direction.
> Unless you're one of those morons who can't tell apart psychological symptoms from physiological ones.
You're about 30 years out of date with the addiction literature. Basically every modern addiction organization defines addiction as a brain disorder characterized by, "continued use in spite of harmful consequences."
Here's the American Society of Addiction Medicine:
> What is the definition of addiction? Addiction is a treatable, chronic medical disease involving complex interactions among brain circuits, genetics, the environment, and an individual’s life experiences. People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.
Here is the National Institute on Drug Abuse:
> Addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite adverse consequences.† It is considered a brain disorder, because it involves functional changes to brain circuits involved in reward, stress, and self-control.
The current "Cannabis industry" is not that different from a "Tobacco industry 2.0" by being in denial of negatives, going on "but alcohol is worse!" whataboutisms, and generally denying responsibility from the negative effects.
That doesn't mean it should be made illegal, but I strongly dislike the current state of the industry and regulation; it's like we learned nothing from tobacco or alcohol.
All of the above applies to psychedelics even more, especially to those who tout the therapeutic effects while denying there are risks (the therapeutic effects are real, so are the risks).
The risks with pot and psychedelics are less easily quantifiable than with opiates, meth, etc. There are no bodies, which of course is good. But, leaving aside the acute or chronic psychosis cases, people who overuse these substances often end up depleted in characteristic ways.
Get addicted to cannabis: You might spend more $$$ per month than you would like to
Get addicted to alcohol: Die a very painful death over a two-month period as multiple organs shut down.
Get addicted to tobacco: Die a very painful death over many years as you develop cancer and try to fight it.
Get addicted to cocaine: You will definitely spend more $$$ per month than you would like and will probably die of a heart attack by the time you are 50
The two biggest 'pot heads' I know both had a severe illness from smoking weed and both of them refuse to acknowledge it's the weed doing it. It's a debilitating condition, they vomit all day, go into shock and have to get thrown into hot showers regularly to ease the pain. I'm sure it's not as common as alcoholism but good god, it doesn't look fun.
> Get addicted to cannabis: You might spend more $$$ per month than you would like to
I can tell you are addicted to cannabis because you are way downplaying addiction to it while exaggerating the other substances. While cannabis will not kill you it can still destroy relationships, make you stupid, and waste 40 years of your life. That sort of behaviour can rub off on your kids too, so when they're adults and also addicted to cannabis and playing it off as "I just spend more money than I'd like", that's on you.
While AFAIK no one had ever died from cannabis use, to be entirely fair, isn't there some impact of long-term use on brain functions? Plus some effect on the lungs if smoking (though, of course, there are other means of consumption).
Also, most certainly it takes somewhat longer than a couple months of alcohol abuse for the liver and other organs to start failing.
Probably most dangerous part is the munchies. If you don’t plan ahead you can eat way too many calories over a long time period and get the usual health issues of that
> THC is destroying mitochondria like nothing else...
Really? I've never heard that.
What source did you learn this from?
I tend to eat weed before running and have for 20ish years. If it really did destroy mitochondria then I'd expect it would show up in my vo2 max or some other measurable health stat.
I'm slightly concerned but given that this is the first time I've heard this, I'm not too worried about it.
I personally believe cannabis + exercise is the most glorious thing on this planet. I've been using it primarily as an ergogenic for some time now, simply fabulous.
If THC was especially good at destroying mitochondria we'd be seeing lots of cannabis users with cases of necrotic tissue due to cells being unable to maintain their metabolism.
Many things can be addictive as that largely has to do with how a person's habits affect their life. One can play card games without becoming addicted.
People commonly say things like this to suggest that it necessarily causes addiction which makes it a Bad Thing. It is true generally that it "can" cause addiction but only true circumstantially that it "does" cause addiction. Again, I may be reading too much into the comment but it seemed to be trying to make the "necessarily does cause addiction" point.
hilarious to see two hundred years of alcohol and tobacco medical cases, make big noises about an herb from the ground. They really have no clue?
being "friendly and creative" does not make good armies. It really does come down to that, doesnt it?
Obviously all kinds of people abuse substances daily. I saw a grown man sniff solvent glue from a bag once! How stupid is that? No one is suggesting that substance abuse is benign. The difference here is that this is a Political Newspaper pointing to "peril." The article is not the entire story, it is a partial story designed to create reactions along a story-line.
get more exercise and relate to people.. not a headliner
The Roman Empire knew about marijuana from the Scythians and some turkic people, and from South Asia. The Romans rejected those cultures and built professional armies instead. Their drug was alcohol. Christian reformers 500 years after the Fall of the Western Empire stuck with that formula, including alcohol in the Holy Sacrament, explicitly rejecting other substances. Hebrews also rejected other substances but included meat and alcohol -- which are explicitly banned in Hindu-Vedic systems with a vegetarian approach.
Calling taking a medicine an addiction is strange, sounds like they do not factor in it being a medicine.
For example, those with autism or schizophrenia have a faulty 'fatty acid binding protein 5' (fabp5)[1] which moves endocannabinoids to where they are needed[2]. Flooding the bloodstream with cannabis seems to help[3] by unlocking receptors that would normally be unlocked by endocannabinoids delivered by fabp5.
Obviously this is just one of many health benefits, such as muscle recovery[4] (who would even want that??? bloody addicts i tell ya!)
