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Comment by meri_dian | Hacker News Reader

Weed is not a panacea. Some people foolishly think otherwise. It should still be legalized, but we have to be realistic about its negatives

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Humans: still acting like humans, film at 11.

It also shouldn't need saying that this is hardly unique to pot. Also, it won't change. How many millennia have been spent since someone figured out fruit ferments into something that makes you feel good? And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal.

That said, sure, I can see a temporary effect where legal pot is "new" (really, very old, but that's a different discussion), and so trendy, and the media feedback-loop kicks in so certain kinds of parents have something vaguely novel to upset themselves with. We'll be past that in a generation.

> And yet people continue to slide into alcoholism every day, in every culture. Even the ones where it is illegal.

This is a strange thing to "even". You'd expect alcohol to be illegal where it was more of a problem, not where it was less of a problem. In cultures where nobody succumbs to alcoholism, why would alcohol be prohibited?

You know, this isn't a question of philosophy. We're not reasoning from first-principles. You might consider looking to the googles for an answer as to which nation-states currently ban alcohol, and then consider what commonalities they might share.

I'll save you the first half of that effort: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_alcohol...

Those are Islamic countries. Do you think there's a reason the prohibition was made? Do you think there might be a reason it stuck?

Alcohol is also frequently prohibited on Indian reservations. Why do you think that is?

Middle East countries used to have a huge problem with drinking and later caffeine. somewhere around early Medieval era. It so happens that alcohol ban got written into a religion that grew to be dominant and was even more brutally enforced than the coffee ban. Guess which one stuck.

Nobody believes weed will make you better at studying.

Nobody.

Not directly, but many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies.

> many people take weed to relax or relieve anxiety and believe that those things are helpful for their studies

They believe it's helpful to their life in general, which this study isn't measuring. Nobody in their right mind smokes weed to improve their GPA.

Undergrad here.

Plenty of people believe this.

You haven't spent much time in /r/trees. If there's a nutty belief about weed, more than a few somebodies there buy into it.

There can be no opinion so wrong that no one will hold on to it.

https://www.quora.com/Does-smoking-weed-help-studying

But anti-weed will make you better at studying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rimonabant (nootropic but can cause suicide, CB1 inverse agonist)

Nothing is absolute - I'm a medical user (with anxiety/ADHD/depression) and it's been a complete lifesaver for me, working where pharmaceuticals did not. I did not respond well to traditional stimulants (they only made me more anxious and racy) but medical cannabis is literally the only reason why I was able to function through my PhD program which I had completed two years ago at a top-tier U.S. institution.

FWIW, I am very selective with my strains - only certain types actually help, and my dosage is mild enough to not have strong psychoactive effects (higher CBD-strains). Medical cannabis has truly had a significant impact on the trajectory of my life.

only certain types actually help

Out of curiosity, what are those? I'm not an expert and I'm really only aware of the sativa/indica divide.

From the GP: "higher CBD-strains"

Here's a description of how CBD differs from THC: https://www.leafly.com/news/cannabis-101/whats-the-deal-with... and I can attest to what it says. I don't like feeling high, but I do like feeling mellow. It's sort of like the difference between having a glass of wine and pounding shots to me.

Same here. Anxiety + ADHD + depression made college extremely difficult for me. It wasn't until I began smoking regularly after college that I began to gain perspective and control over my life and surrounding environment. Had I started a little sooner college could have been a much more positive experience for me. Agreed that only certain strains have a positive impact, still trying to figure out what works for me but it's difficult when local options are so limited...

Due to it's impact on short term memory I'm not sure it's the best thing for "studying"...but I knew of some med students who would smoke then write R code on datasets until the wee hours of the morning. I guess they were using it as an Adderall substitute of sorts

I do, by personal experience.

I believe what's currently known is that some amounts of THC lead to lower "default mode network" activity in the frontal core. The default mode network - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lsd-may-chip-away... - is associated with daily activities we think of as distracting - anxiety, worrying about the future, going over the past failures, incessant needs to check e-mail, Instagram or respond to a push notification.

Subduing default mode network provides a pathway to concentration, if one's mind is set on it, like reading the book or going over the test question bank. But it could also be squandered on other activities unrelated to learning.

This. I am for legaization, but it feels people start to think it's no drawback drug when it's not.

I hear it can affect spelling.

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