My experience is similar- It makes me fascinated by things and creative in a way that I was when I was a child. It's like it turns off a part of my brain which years of experience has taught to filter out many ideas before they even reach my conscious mind. Mostly hare-brained ideas, but interesting ones nonetheless, and in entertaining them sometimes something brilliant comes out.
I‘ve only had three experiences with cannabis and one was while in Amsterdam sitting on the side of a canal. I was completely taken by the birds flying overhead, following their flight with unusual concentration. I feel like since then I still have a somewhat milder interest for birds flight.
BTW, you can achieve this permanently with deep spiritual work and most importantly, meditation.
Shinzen Young talks about the different experiments they are now starting to perform with deep practitioners of Zen Buddhism (but other schools can likely achieve the same effect). In one of them they are measuring a certain specific response in the brain, which for a normal person happens when they hear a new unexpected stimuli, like a sudden loud bird chirp outside. For a normal person, if this same stimuli is repeated, the "novelty" response in the brain dampens after 2-3 repetitions, and each subsequent chirp is not registering in their brain in the same way. For them it becomes something old. But when they measure a meditating practitioner in the same way - they exhibit the novelty response unlimited number of times, each time a chirp is played. It is like each time it happens - for them it's like a completely new experience.
It feels like we're heading into the Hype Cycle [1] with cannabis-derived treatments/products/cures, with waves of legalization serving as the classical 'technology trigger'.
I say that mostly because, although this is a solid study with interesting conclusions, 'Cannabis does [amazing thing!]' articles are getting more and more common and mainstream, and I think people are primed to accept them, for want of cures and treatments, for desire to justify existing habits (c.f. the now discredited red wine health studies [2]), and because 'medicine with all these great effects was kept down by the powers!' is a great narrative.
Mostly, I'm finding myself mostly curious what, in 15 years, we'll know these compounds are actually good for, and steeling myself for a lot of bullshit and bad science in the meantime.
I just don't like anything with 'stoned' effect. Pot, too much alcohol, ketamine.. I can`t find the point in being stoned or to lower my thinking capabilities. Stronger opiates I would never ever try because there is no point besides running away from some problem that should be confronted. With the help of psychedelics maybe? :)
My experience is not lowered thinking abilities, but different thinking abilities. If you conceptualize thinking as traversing a graph of thoughts, 'uppers' enhance depth-first traversal, THC enhances breadth-first traversal. This can be a useful mode for generating ideas.
What about dancing? I know for sure that I become an extreamly good dancer when I get drunk :) not to mention my irresistible charm. That's just until the next day when I'm told how pathetic the whole thing was :)
Yes, if I was waffling on about how like, socialism could totally work man.
But I'm talking about:
- coming up with recursive solutions in software for simplicity gains
- noticing and fixing inefficient item placement in my kitchen
- understanding a conflict from the other person's perspective, to reduce my tension
> traversing a graph of thoughts, 'uppers' enhance depth-first traversal,
Interesting characterisation.
I used to describe it to myself as "opening up 127.0.0.1" - i.e. it enabled a level of introspection that had never come naturally to me. I guess I was studying that stuff at the time so it was salient, and the metaphor was readily available.
Good one IMO. Well, depends on the strain of the weed. Indica opens up the localhost and I get to explore a lot and introspect. Sativa's focus me on one thing and I roll my brain all around that thing's area and can produce a ton of code. Other uppers get me thinking about something in depth. Uppers and electronic music in a crowd at 3-4 AM get me focused more than anything.
That sort of question is highly personal. I've heard many, many people espousing the virtues of some strain of weed or other (eg claiming it helps you think and doesn't make you fall asleep so much) but I've never actually found one that doesn't primarily make me sleepy. I do have access to an enormous variety to try (and I've definitely done my due diligence, so to speak). This has led me to believe that for some people, some strains work differently than for others. This meshes well with my observation that everyone seems to have different recommendations.
Absolutely- if I smoke, I will be awake all night with my mind racing with ideas (and not anxious or paranoid ones). It's a wonderful thing, and it saddens me that it doesn't have the same effect for everyone.
I've tried a low dosage via vaping yes. It still made me drowsy. I can't really smoke anything because my lungs respond poorly, so I generally use tinctures/edibles (if I use at all).
Awesome. Well, since we're all trying so hard, I'll throw out one last idea for you: the strain blue dream. One or two hits of that vapor is sufficient for me!
I've tried it with tinctures as well as a host of other things. A tincture is nice because it allows for fairly exact dosing, but for me it appears to range from "0 effect" to "some effect, and that effect is drowsy" all the way up to "you're going to sleep now".
Depends on the person, but for me combining them causes an important increase in anxiety, if you try cut in half the dose of both to be safe. Cannabis when coming down from amphetamines is a different story though.
I feel it enhances my creativity, makes me appreciate the world around me more, makes music and food more enjoyable, makes movies more interesting, makes me more interested in doing something artistic or musical and be more involved in doing those things when I do them. Sex can also be amazing on it.
When I've used it, I've also confronted things, thought about things, and remembered things I would have avoided in ordinary life. So I've really felt it to be therapeutic, especially at stronger doses, and especially when ingested rather than smoked. A lot of people don't realize this, but ingestion of larger doses can often have a psychedelic-like effect (perhaps not so much with the visuals, but emotionally and cognitively, there are some similarities).
That said, I don't like to do it a lot (as I don't want to get addicted), I tend to prefer small doses rather than getting stoned out of my gourd, and I try do do it only with positive, constructive intention rather than just to have fun or get blitzed for no reason other than boredom. I generally prefer to do something creative on it, or maybe go to a museum where it enhances my appreciation of what I see and learn, and gives me a much greater feeling of immersion.
I'm pretty sure that pot is not an addictive substance.
Quitting pot is easier than quitting caffeine. Heavy smokers sober up quite often for job drug tests, for example. I've personally smoked for years and just quit for a while. Some things get a little off because of habit changing: A few days of decreased appetite and a bit of insomnia. The hardest part is dealing with the boredom I get at first. I simply don't want to do some things, and then I also start seriously hating some other things I just did. Like cleaning house. I hate cleaning house, but simply just dislike it when I'm smoking regularly. I eat less healthy without the stuff as well because food enjoyment is different.
But really, quitting is just a bit of a bother even after doing it for years. If you mix it with tobacco, you might be getting tobacco withdrawals... which can be fixed with smoking (Not the healthiest thing, but I do it). It is a habit, not an addiction.
I've known a few folks that have issues quitting - each and every one of these folks I've known have had underlying mental health or physical health issues that were partially self-treated with smoking.
I'm not really advocating daily use, but I'm not against it either. I just don't want people thinking they'll be horribly addicted in the same manner as nicotine, alcohol, or even caffeine.
I used to agree that marijuana wasn't an addictive substance. And within the same post you state it is nonaddictive, you go on to state all the addictive properties of it. I think it is dangerous and wrong for people to tell everyone that marijuana isn't addictive. It would certainly like for you to think so though.
Obligatory, everybody's bodies are different, what works for you might not work for everyone, ymmv, etc. I have used marijuana medically and will state without question that it is an addictive substance. Whether that is the multiple shitty feelings you get from stopping abruptly or the deep unending desire to 'just smoke a little' in the three days it takes to get over or. I think those 'comparatively little' things are enough to consider the drug an addictive substance. I've watched people drop out of college to smoke away all their money, I've watched kids lose all their friends and think nothing of it, I've seen people incur great risk of physical harm to acquire weed when they were out or sit in their house descending into self hate because everyone else was out too.
You may be able to quit easily but it is wrong to apply your experience to broad statements like, "pot isn't addictive". Marijuana is an addictive substance and I wish this anti-prohibition mindset I see so many places would fight for science, not just weed.
Eh, addiction usually implies a physiological reaction to withdrawal. AFAIK it's pretty well established that there is no physical addiction to cannabis. One can very easily feel dependent upon it, though. Then again, if I were to cut off my Wellbutrin or Vyvanse cold turkey I'd be in for a rough ride as well. The fact that something can be habit-forming does not necessarily make it bad.
There are two types of addiction: physiological and psychological.
The kind you get physical withdrawal symptoms from are physiologically addictive. These are drugs like alcohol, nicotine, and heroin.
Cannabis can be psychologically addictive. You can crave it when you stop or have trouble coping with life without it -- much like people who are psychologically addicted to eating lots of food. Both are psychologically addictive.
You can get psychologically addicted to just about anything pleasurable or desirable. I try not to do that with cannabis or anything else.
> I'm pretty sure that pot is not an addictive substance.
That's exactly what they said about coke. You're wrong. If it's not an addictive substance, this is news to me. It's about half way through the year and I've probably tried to quit about 90 times or roughly every other day. It most certainly is addictive in every sense of the word and even has mild physical withdrawal symptoms. Yes, it's not like withdrawing from heroin, and it probably won't make one sell everything to get it, but to say it's not addictive is simply false. I'm not against daily use and I'm not saying it's necessarily negative, but it most certainly is addictive for some people. As the Luniz song goes, "THC ain't no joke."
I really hate being stoned. Really, really hate being stoned. But man, I love being high! You don't have to get stoned smoking weed anymore than you have to get drunk drinking beer. A gram of cannabis can last me a week. And some of my best work in programming and every one of my hobbies comes out of that cerebral sweet spot I get from only smoking a little bit of bud. It helps if you avoid indica strains and stick to sativas, as indicas are known for their heavier couch-lock and sativas for the cerebral high.
Also, I need to put this urban legend to rest. The most common mistake people make about recreational drug use is that drug users fit a universal stereotype. Not every recreational drug user is an addict escaping their problems. I would actually say that addicts are a vanishingly small minority of drug users. Nobody would say that everyone who ever drinks a beer is an alcoholic running away from their lives, and it's the same situation with recreational drug users.
I've always enjoyed any of the above substances (except opiates) specifically because they lower your thinking abilities.
Sometimes it's nice to get fucked up and give your brain an even off from over-analysing everything.
Of course, drinking, smoking, or snorting your problems away isn't a good idea. That's how you form a habit. But if you're in a good frame of mind, it's nice to lose your shit every once in a while.
Also, ketamine (in higher doses) is a psychedelic. Being in a K hole is a unique experience.
I actually see this as beneficial in a couple of ways.
- it's very hard to "self talk" yourself into doing things you don't really want to do
- things you do want to do draw an intense level of focus so you get deeper into them
- yeah it can make you a little sloppy but you learn from these mistakes and they sometimes lead to serendipitous accidental discoveries
- it can cause you to take a no-nonsense expedient approach that can sometimes be better
That said, when you're back in normality again you can sometimes be left scratching your head wondering how you came up with that, or how it even works!
One point is that you may be depriving your mind of the opportunity to build these skills on its own. If you rely on drugs to shift your brain behavior, you may lose (or at least not improve) your ability to reason from first principles, focus into a complex topic, or draw creative connections without entering an altered state. You may or may not care about that, but it's worth considering for others who may read your post.
No, you're right. Your concerns are real but they apply to any kind of external dependency, be it cannabis, alchohol, cars or air conditioning. I wouldn't suggest that you rely on this as a creative process, but altered states can provide a different perspective. I would say though, speaking personally that I mightn't have developed certain ways of thinking at all otherwise.
I'm describing an experience. Which substances are you talking about because I'm talking about Cannabis. The idea that somebody could end up in an ER for smoking weed is laughably remote.
So can getting married, having children, going to college, financial stress, alcohol, and a slew of other things. That doesn't mean that we should make all of these things illegal. To me, it means that we should be upfront and honest about this - but it is going to take some work since we've used scare tactics and misinformation for so long.
I don’t think the person above is saying that weed should be banned, just that it has risks that need to be pointed out. See also in this discussion someone pointing out that even small amounts give them panic attacks, and the response had been variously “ok, just given yourself smaller amounts then” and also “have you considered intentionally giving yourself panic attacks” instead of respecting the decision that smoking any weed may be bad for someone or exacerbate abt mental conditions they have.
Without qualifiers on this stuff, it often reminds me of scare tactics. I did see the bit about panic attacks, and I know it happens - but generally all that is needed for some of this stuff is prudent education. Pointing out, "While most folks tolerate the substance well, some might find it makes a mental or medical condition worse" is considerably different.
It is kind of like Ibuprofen or cough and cold medicine. It is pretty safe for most folks to take, yet a few folks are allergic or have other conditions that makes it dangerous to take. It is worth mentioning the hazards - but if you leave off the safety qualifier, it can scare folks away from taking it. Advice to treat the underlying condition is prudent in some cases, others might be advised to avoid it entirely or take smaller doses - much like the advice for the person that gets panic attacks.
To what extent is, weed giving a person panic attacks a bigger cause of panic attacks such as "being in a crowd" or "occupational stress"?
Nobody is saying that weed is for everybody but they're not forcing it on anybody either. For whatever downsides there are, are they significant when compared to just about anything else?
That person never claimed they were the norm, or even remotely so. They mentioned having plenty of friends who had no ill effects beyond being perceived as lazy by the poster. They shouldn’t have to put a disclaimer on their post saying their negative experience may be an outlier any more than anyone espousing a positive experience should put a disclaimer saying that negative experiences are possible. By arguing that all people espousing negative experiences should also add that they might be outliers, I don’t see how it isn’t merely presenting a skewed view of the situation from the pro-marijuana side.
I should also note that when people have bad experiences with medication like ibuprofen and decide that it isn’t for them, people don’t respond by invalidating their experiences and position in the assumption they just aren’t educated enough about how to use it.
I think much like alcohol it's very easy to dose in excess with cannabis. I'm not sure how many people recognize that cannabis is incredibly effective even at small doses.
These days, I take one hit in the morning and then just move on. The dose is low enough that I don't feel sluggish during or after, but still enough that I feel up and "high".
I think cannabis is invaluable in medicine, but I do think the culture around it, much like alcohol, has pushed using an excess and treating is as a party drug rather than medicine.
There are some medical strains that are purposefully bred to have the least amount of 'high'. And also sounds like a problem of overdosing, if you have trouble concentrating or thinking you likely took in more than a few times more than you actually needed which is very easy to do without tolerance combined with modern weed. One hit of high-quality shit these days will put entire joints from the past to shame.
Also there are more than a few people who have a hyper-sensitivity to weed which can make it worse.
Cannabidiol then? Extracts usually have less than 1% of THC content, and its effects are downright marvelous. I doubt though that the effect on the brain is comparable to the one the OP study observed..
Delta 9 THC is the most common compound in the cannabis plant comprising up to 35% of flower weight. Title is...strange. I was expecting to read about some minor accessory cannabinoid.
You seem to have confused “unique” with “minor”. Delta 9 THC may be common in cannabis, but it is unique to cannabis. The title isn't weird at all.
Also, delta 9 THC may be the most common cannabinoid in cannabis (well, in one of three major chemotypes), but it's not the most common compound in the cannabis plant.
We still don't have flying cars....so I would't bet that much on the tech progress. Maybe in 100+ years we will get something close but I doubt we will discover immortality any time soon.
You're most likely overdosing -- something that's very easy to accidentally do with the crazy strong pot out there these days. It's even easier to overdose for newbies who have basically no tolerance and often mistakenly think they have to smoke a full joint (or even just a full big puff of some strong pot) to get high. That's probably way, way too much.
If you are willing to give it another chance, you could try finding the weakest pot you can find, then smoke the tiniest amount you can. If you feel nothing, wait a couple of days and try again, this time taking a tiny bit more.
Repeat as needed until you very slowly and gradually work up to a dose that gets you very mild, positive effects, and no paranoia or other symptoms of overdose.
I've always found it odd that there has been this quest for stronger and stronger cannabis.
In my experience it all costs the same. That super dank hydo that has had daily love and care sells for the same price as bush weed that was planted in a forest and then harvested a few months later.
I don't really smoke weed, but when I do I much prefer smoking spliffs (tobacco and weed, rolled into a joint). I think the French have the right idea, they smoke weed all day long and are never too high, because they are basically smoking cigarettes with a touch of green in them. Of course, it's terrible for you because you're basically smoking giant cigarettes with no filter.
I bought a vape pen that has a frankly preposterous amount of THC inside each cartridge. It takes like 4-5 good rips to get good and stoned, but one small toke every hour or two keeps me mildly stoned throughout the day like you describe. It's a matter of self control though, because it can get awfully tempting to take those four good rips instead of a small little one.
And it's a vape instead of smoking anything, but at these quantities it almost doesn't matter.
> Of course, it's terrible for you because you're basically smoking giant cigarettes with no filter.
This is a super easy thing to do, but kind of difficult to explain. I'll give it a try anyway:
Disassemble the filter of a cigarette. Split a small part of it (vertically) and fold it in half. Tear off the middle of the rolling paper's filter (about a centimeter in length). Place the small part of the cigarette filter into the middle of the rolling paper's filter, and fold the sides into a "W" shape like you usually would.
Do that once, smoke a joint, and when you're done with it, disassemble the makeshift filter you've made. Once you see how tar turned your makeshift filter almost completely black and realize all of that would end up in your lungs otherwise, you'll never roll a joint without this step.
It makes the process of rolling a bit more complicated (and almost impossible to do properly without having scissors near you), but it's totally worth the effort.
Stronger cannabis probably makes less sense these days with the availability of vaporizers but it I totally understand why someone might want to inhale less burning plant material to achieve the same desired affect.
Thx for the advice, but I haven’t smoke pot since 2012 (was 19 at the time), and I don’t intend to try again.
The first few times I did it back then, everything was cool, but then something clicked in my brain that permanently associated pot with extreme anxiety.
On one hand I’m kinda thankful that this saved me from turning into a lazy pothead in my teenage years, like some of my friends did, on the other hand it sucked being the weird guy who always passes up the spliff without takin a hit. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The point is that the panic attack is most likely not due to the substance itself, but due to how you used it. The experience of others shows that it's possible to use it and not get panic attacks, even if that was the original reaction.
I don't agree with this, even though it's a common opinion. There is something about the combination of cannabis and certain people (their mental makeup? their neurophysiology?) which either inevitably, or randomly, leads to poor outcomes from consuming even very small amounts of cannabis even under ideal conditions.
If you know yourself well enough to understand a substance is not for you, then the solution is simple: don't consume it, and don't listen to people who say you're doing it wrong.
To play Devil's advocate, you don't really know if it's really about one's physiology or just how you used it. I had two consecutive panic attacks back when I was 18 that led to me completely stopping for years before I tried it again years later in smaller doses, and I haven't had panic attacks since. Been smoking occasionally for about 5-6 now.
As someone who is weighing up right this moment whether to buy some weed to break a 37 day streak, I would consider his anxiety attacks a blessing in disguise. Smoking pot under the age of 25 years old is one of the worst habits you can have. Not only are you changing your brain chemistry at a time when it's still developing, ages 18-25 is really a time when you should be focused on developing skills & human capital. With regular pot those years will fly by in an instant with nothing to show for in terms of achievements. I love pot, but I wish I had discovered it when I'm over 30 and settled.
Possible, that his fear helped him, not to turn into a lazy pothead.
But I found, pot can help you a lot figuring out what you want and get new ideas what to do - so if you then overcome the stonedness and actually do it, then it can be good around that time...
Time can also fly away, working like a log on something you don't love and then you equally wasted your time.
It's not so bad. I smoke every damn day since university (10 years+ now), got my masters, switched countries, learned a new language, now have a nice manager position at a fintech company with lots of people interactions and some deep-dives into tech as well. No issues. My only issue is that it's very hard to quit after such long time, because things like chores or working out become tedious and boring, it's hard to motivate myself to do them, and I get irritated easily.
Louis CK has a great story about smoking strong weed [0]. It is really insane how strong some stuff is now. In the UK people used to refer to skunk, but now anything you get is even stronger than skunk. But that's what happens in an unregulated market with potentially dangerous products.
I used to love Louis CK, but after that that whole thing came out about him that he's fucking creep I can't even get myself to watch 1 min of his videos anymore. WHY LOUIS, WHY?!
I have been smoking for some ten years, and a few years back i started becoming afraid of getting high. It's no help that my country is ridiculously behind the times - you can get up to eight years in prison just for having cannabis on you, regardless of amount (and hey, we're in the EU, who would have thought!) - but the thing is that it really becomes very easy to go on a very unpleasant tangent, start overthinking, overanalysing, worrying and finally panicking about things - and my "panic pony" is my job. Once I start thinking about it, it's almost always a guarantee of a bad experience. So I started getting "afraid of getting afraid", and significantly cut down my cannabis use to, well, near zero: I still use it socially maybe once a year or two. However, even though I am a very occasional user, I found that anxiolytics such as xanax in small doses offset the paranoia pretty well. Also, edibles are much more mellow in my experience - you are not just "thrown" into the state, but rather edged into it, and it gives you better control.
oh and also, as with all psychedelics - set and setting are very, very, very important.
Smoke less is good advice. But also, if you’re prone to panic attacks, try giving yourself one intentionally (when you’re sober) when you feel you’re in a good environment. Learning to mentally overcome panic attacks is probably one of my greatest accomplishments in life. Now when I feel one onsetting, I can completely come down from it. The key is in remembering two things: you’re actually going to be fine, and you’re in control if you believe you’re in control.
It sounds like you treated yourself with something like exposure therapy.[1]
Using it, therapists gradually get patients used to tolerating situations and feelings they'd usually try to avoid. It's supposed to be a very effective form of treatment -- probably even more effective when done with the help of a trained professional.
I can’t really describe the process but essentially it’s very similar way of how I learned to cope with constant nightmares which eventually led me to also learn lucid dreaming. When you realize that setting is A, and it’s most likely caused by Z, rationalize that you have dealt with same before and managing the symptoms becomes easier and eventually you don’t even notice them.
Yeah, I raised my eyebrows at that one too. I'm pretty sure I had the first one of my life recently and still am not certain what caused it.
I suddenly was getting massively winded with the simplest physical activity. The only reason I didn't think it was a breathing or heart problem was that my S.O. recognized the symptoms and theorized it was anxiety. About 15 minutes after taking a beta blocker those symptoms disappeared, proving the theory correct.
No idea how to re-create it and no desire to, it was kinda scary.
With that, it can mean that it isn't right for you if it is the only thing that triggers them. If other things do it, you might be fine with weaker highs so long as you get the underlying anxiety treated and learn to get some control when you notice a panic attack coming on.
Similar things happen with other drugs as well. Ibuprofen is pretty safe for most people to take from time to time, for example, but a few folks are allergic to it. Some folks cannot drink with their physical health problems.
And perhaps we'll be able to find strains for folks like you once we are better able to research this stuff. I'm pretty sure finding a strain fit for folks like you would be a major benefit to a company selling it for recreational use... assuming legality for recreational use, that is.
Previous discussions; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14293415, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14583668