this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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I feel like there's been a trend of people switching from alcohol to cannabis as its become more widely accepted but I know a lot of people who have ended up taking it to excess as well. The idea of being addicted to it still really doesn't come up often and looking back that might be viewed as problematic.
I'm not against people using it or anything but I do feel bad for the people who have gotten to the point where they need to smoke to feel like themselves.
People don’t think pot is addictive because it’s not chemically addictive, like nicotine or alcohol are. Those things actually change your body chemistry, and your system becomes reliant on them.
Pot doesn’t do that, but it can definitely be psychologically addictive . Virtually anything can be psychologically addictive, like video games or watching TV. If you feel the need to take a few bong hits every hour of every day, or if your desire to get high interferes with your responsibilities, then yeah, you’re probably psychologically addicted. Get help.
Getting wasted every once in a while is probably okay, though. People need to make sure they’re not like one of those idiots I knew in college, who insisted they drove better when high. They didn’t, and neither does anyone else.
And a thing young folks using cannabis seem to be woefully under informed about is that cannabis use can kick off psychosis/schizophrenia as well as something called depersonalization disorder where basically nothing feels real to you, as well as actually lowering your IQ. I lost a high school friend who smoked copious amounts of ditch weed in the 80s and 90s, who became a paranoid schizophrenic and eventually killed himself as a result. I'm not saying occasional use is a big deal, but chronic heavy use is really not good.
the fact that we’re studying things properly now and regulating what terms and substances mean will almost certainly shake that out and find the specific cause/harmful quantity
anything is dangerous in high enough dose, but that doesn’t mean you stop doing beneficial things because it’s harmful at high dosage … if that were the case we wouldn’t have paracetamol, ibuprofen, aspirin - all much more harmful than CBD/THC at much lower dosages (and let’s not even talk about the harm of alcohol)
100% agree!
As an addition to this I firmly believe medical marijuana is a phase.
Now I've made people angry here's the nuance.
CBD/THC combinations certainly have a role in some patients with chronic pain, especially where it's use can avoid or reduce the use of opioids.
There are clear specific uses such as intractable epilepsy where it is clearly the best treatment. It is effective for glaucoma but there are better treatments available.
I'm highly suspicious of marijuana having any role in mental health and there are, in my opinion, no convincing studies published showing that it is useful at all despite the fact that large studies have been done and presumably file-drawed.
The idea that smoking is an appropriate delivery method for a medication when other methods are available is insane. Very few things are as bad as tobacco smoke but inhaling smoke is bad for you.
My prediction is that in 20 years we will have cannabis derivatives in capsules that fulfil the specific purposes and the idea that any doctor prescribed marijuana to smoke will seem insane to younger doctors.
there are plenty of other delivery methods. our studies in australia are using CBD oil, THC oil, or you can choose to smoke it etc if you’d like… but afaik there are specific studies around using the oils and i can’t imagine if they’re found to be as effective they’d allow smoking - for the obvious reason that smoking being bad for your health, and the less obvious reason that smoking is, by the nature of having repetitive action, addictive
CBD and THC oil has definitely been good for me. it helps me sleep far far better! 0.1ml occasionally if i’m feeling like my brain just isn’t slowing down - maybe once per week on average, sometimes 2-3x if there’s a lot of stressful things going on
At the Cancer institute they offered me CBD pills for nausea. People smoking weed is terrible, like they learned nothing from everyone on oxygen tanks after cigarette smoke destroyed their lungs
Yeah... Even as a third party, I definitely have not been enjoying the smell when I've bumped into it. I don't think it should be a criminal offense, but I hope we can move past "I need to light a thing on fire and just screw up the air for everyone in my vicinity."
Smoking (anything) close to non-smokers is a person problem. Like folk who play their music audibly on transport. It’s selfish and anti social.