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Comment by sonnyblarney | Hacker News Reader

It's unconventional given the liberal/libertarian aspects of the current movement, but this is a problem. I know at least two people very well, and a few more less well who smoke - all - the - time. They vape it like tobacco. They are basically permanently 'kind of high' - completely functional, you'd never really know it to meet them ... but this is more than a little distressing. One is in finance, the other a healthcare practitioner, the others stay at home parents.

It's a kind of new phenom that we need to grapple with because the 'bad effects' are not going to be so much chemical etc., they're going to be psychological and we're in kind of new territory.

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One in six Americans takes psychiatric prescription drugs, mostly antidepressants. Weed is basically an antidepressant and pain killer.

I think the bigger question is, why are Americans self-medicating so much?

Poverty, loneliness, helplessness, hopelessness, lack of other healthcare options, lack of community, overwork, hate by others (racism, sexism, etc.), lack of any say in government, getting fucked over by companies over and over again, etc. I bet all those are top reasons for self-medicating in America. When you're one accident away from being homeless, alone, and have no hope of changing anything about your life, it's likely you'll self-medicate. When you can't get treatment for your work injury and have to work in pain all the time to keep from being homeless, you're likely to self-medicate. Do I really need to keep going? I think the causes of self-medication in America are incredibly obvious but most people choose to put their heads in the sand and not see them.

With the exception of healthcare options (and then only for a subset of Americans) none of these are problems unique to American life.

I never claimed they were. They are quite ubiquitous in America, however.

Sure, but the discussion is about the fringes. The US has a higher poverty rate than most other developed nations. Poverty isn’t unique to American life, but it impacts a larger percentage of Americans than in French, Brits or Australians.

Is this an American only issue? I was under the impression that marijuana is very popular everywhere.

No, it's merely popular to attack the US.

Iceland - widely considered one of the great societies on earth - uses anti-depressants as much as the US.

Here's next in line on the list of anti-depressant usage (in order of use):

Australia (10% lower usage than the US), Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, UK, Finland, Belgium (30% lower usage than the US)

Most of the countries with the highest standards of living on earth, have the highest rates of anti-depressant use. The sole exception to this are Japan and South Korea, which have particularly low rates of use due to a cultural aversion (even though Japan has a notoriously high suicide rate).

Poor and middle-tier countries can't afford routine anti-depressant use. Income levels map very nicely to anti-depressant usage. US, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden are 6 of the 8 or so highest median income nations (Norway doesn't track as well, it's down the ranking), and they're the top six anti-depressant users.

But actual prescribing of anti-depressants and painkillers is considerably higher in the US than elsewhere.

Chemically, cannabinoids are not really antidepressants (which mostly affect the serotonin system) or pain killers (opioids affect the opioid receptors). Cannabinoids have a variety of effects due to the endocannabinoid system, which is naturally occurring in the human physiology and does affect mood, memory, etc. However, it's simply not chemically accurate to call them pain killers or antidepressants, cannabis lies in a separate category.

The point is that it is how many people use it (and alcohol, and other drugs).

Our society is a hollow shell of the reality of the one we evolved in for millions of years. So we watch sports, porn, and run in place at the gym to simulate the feeling of actually doing something. And we all have our super awesome, super cool tech gadgets to thank

Having first child soon, and i'm thinking big picture about stuff like this. I remember growing up in the 90s , running around neighbor all day until the street lights came on. It's true, we had gameboys (not iphones) so there were some screens we looked at. But i didnt get a cell phone till i got a car. When we went out for dinner as a family you would play with the placemat and crayons. now you just shove an iphone in a kids face and let them use all your 4g data on youtube while the parents stare at their own iphones in silence.

If you'd never really know it to meet them, what about their usage is distressing?

Most people are "basically permanently 'kind of high'" on caffeine, or nicotine, or both. Is that distressing?

They seem to be alluding to some unknown effects of being 'kind of high', but I agree with you.

For one, I also have family members who are very alcoholic and 'you'd never know it' either, i.e. fairly highly functional.

The effects of caffeine and nicotine are mild, and mostly physical. Especially with nicotine, it's a 'maintenance addiction' in that smoking in addicts is mostly to get to 'stay normal' because the body has adjusted dopamine receptors. A little bit similar with caffeine in that we build a tolerance.

I don't think it's a stretch to consider that there might be some issues with a good chunk of society walking around stoned all day. I'd put 'drunk' in a similar category.

The people who I know who are like this are themselves concerned but they can't seem to change their habits. It's not just a matter of 'physical/mental' state - they are basically different people in this mode and they know it.

> The effects of caffeine and nicotine are mild, and mostly physical

The primary effect of caffeine is mental alertness.

Mildly high isn't equivalent to stoned, and I don't think it's a stretch to consider that the might be some issues with everyone self-medicating for motivation and concentration with caffeine all day.

>you'd never really know it to meet them

>this is more than a little distressing

But, I mean, that's just not how our current paradigm of mental health medicine works, afaik. A lot of mental health related diagnoses are entirely based on the effects to people's lives and ability to accomplish what they want in life. The disorder _is_ the effect on your life, it's not like some internal disease that will do it's work unnoticed and then suddenly kill you if untreated or something because your blah-count is abnormal and your foo-readings are off the charts.

>the 'bad effects' are [...] _going to be_ psychological

I don't think it's fair to postulate on future effects of things like this, when we have current, researched problems with society in this area that we aren't addressing, like the attention-rent-seeking behavior of basically all software today.

> but this is more than a little distressing

You are struggling with your own personal moral beliefs.

You even stated they are "completely functional" yet you're significantly troubled by marijuana use while you have no issues with excessive use of caffeine and nicotine.

You didn't list what you think the problem is.

The problem isn't listed because it viewed as self evident to some people. I'd list the problem of having high functional people who use marijuana everyday as:

A - MJ, while a mild drug, is still a drug, and it seems like people who use it everyday are addicts.

B - On the one hand I'm OK with people making their own decisions as to how they want to live their life, but on the other hand if we are talking about the type of society that we want to have, lots of people taking hallucinogens to get through the day doesn't exactly fit the image. Something seems wrong.

C - We don't really know the long term impacts of doing this. It is probably somewhat bad somehow, even if we don't know exactly how.

Small point, marijuana isn't a hallucinogen.

Fair point. It is psychoactive but not exactly a hallucinogen.

While it's generally true that it isn't, some strains may produce quite strong auditory and visual hallucinations for some users.

Recommendations?

Experiences produced by particular strain can vary wildly even for the same user, so it boils down to experimenting with different strains in different settings and finding out what works for you. Some users report that mixing strains of "haze" family tends to produce strong closed-eye visuals and mild open-eye ones.

If your vision is affected by visual snow (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_snow) or you are prone to have noticeable phosphene images with closed eyes, then it may be sufficient to simply focus on them while being high. The drug will greatly amplify your natural "hallucinations", subjectively up to the level of mild dose of psylocibin or LSD. Of course, taking those classic psychedelics is a more reliable way to produce visuals, but they come with headspace which is quite different (and for some less desirable and comfortable) from weed-induced one.

The same focusing technique can work for monotonic sounds - it's quite amusing to observe how fridge's buzz turns into full-blown symphony :).

>The same focusing technique can work for monotonic sounds - it's quite amusing to observe how fridge's buzz turns into full-blown symphony :).

Ooooh yeah I would get that sometimes...crickets playing electronica, window screens playing bluegrass, and shower faucet playing heavy metal.

Why does using somehting everyday make you automatically an addict. Are really people who are prescribed and use anti-depressant addicts. I think its more similar than not.

Using alcohol everyday on the other hand, that can make you addicted in ways pot never can...

Yes, anti-depressants are addictive, and so is weed though to greater or lesser degrees, and in different ways.

You didn't really list any problems either

A society in which most people were walking around stoned, drunk or on hallucinogens is not consistent with what most people would consider a civic or moral society and the negative aspects wouldn't need 'explaining' as it would be self evident.

What are the civic virtues or moral precepts that you believe would have been infringed by such a society?

Show up drunk or stoned to your friends kid's birthday, to a wedding or a funeral, to work, to meetings with clients, to the DMV, to your parents Christmas meet-and-greet, to your kids school play, to the PTA meeting, and then ponder that and you'll have your answer.

If you live in US, it is quite likely that you're interacting with people who are under influence of some drug (usually cannabis) on a daily basis, without realizing that.

Nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol are all mind-altering drugs. It's just society has called those drugs ok.

I would like to have the kind of society that can accept cannabis has no more dangers than many other legal substances because that is the truth. We shouldn't restrict it simply because you feel like other people are addicts.

You're concerned some people might be addicts, I'm concerned that you're comfortable with the status quo of criminalization.

You are telling us you have an intuition that there are more dangers than meet the eye. That’s a valid intuition.

But you’re structuring your comments as if you have an argument and evidence, when you don’t. That’s confusing people and causing fights.

It’s ok to have speculative thoughts, just frame them as such and you’ll get higher quality conversation.

Cross-generation, too--it will take a long time to know. (Usage isn't new, but it will increase.)

The fact that metabolized THC is a THC uptake inhibitor is a part of that.

>they're going to be psychological and we're in kind of new territory.

It may be new territory for you, but I can assure you that grown adults have been smoking pot for a long time, and understand the psychological effects and their limits.

No. I believe staying high all day changes people quite fundamentally, I feel this way because I know people who have changed due to it, and one whom I knew only as 'stoned always' who quit one day for no apparent reason and his life fundamentally changed. You probably have heard of him, actually.

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