I'm Just a Middle-Aged House Dad Addicted to Pot | Hacker News Reader

I'm Just a Middle-Aged House Dad Addicted to Pot

nytimes.com

47 pointsrm288971 comments

One of the upsides of legalization is that a lot of the false claims made about marijuana are going to come under heavy scrutiny.

Some of this will be good for marijuana enthusiasts, but some will be bad.

I've lost count of the times I've been told by marijuana fans that marijuana is not addictive, and that smoking it is not bad for your lungs. I expect both of those myths to be refuted in the coming years.

In particular I expect to see studies demonstrate a link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer, followed by years of denial by marijuana producers and smokers, similar to what happened with cigarettes.

Of course, I think the issue here is that inhaling burnt particulate into your lungs is generally not wise.

I don't doubt cannabis addiction is a real issue, just like alcoholism. Still, there are safer ways to ingest it, hopefully those will become more popular.

>In particular I expect to see studies demonstrate a link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer, followed by years of denial by marijuana producers and smokers, similar to what happened with cigarettes.

Perhaps you should examine some of the extensive studies that have already been done, so you could base your beliefs on scientific evidence instead of reefer-madness-based conjecture.

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201212...

Marijuana is not typically physiologically addictive in the sense that you would crawl through a cesspit and inject it into the corner of your eye just to avoid the state of not having any.

There are some withdrawal symptoms from (usually very) heavy marijuana use, but they do not drive people to seek out the drug like nicotine or heroin does, in fact often the user doesn't realise the symptom is related to marijuana. Alcohol is much worse in this regard, both in the harm that comes from heavy use and the severity of withdrawal symptoms.

Dependence is similar to alcohol, so quite a bit less than Tobacco. But it is a lot less harmful than those two because you either smoke it less than tobacco or the damage is less severe than with alcohol.

But smoke is nearly universally bad, it doesn't matter much if it is from someone who heats with wood in the neighborhood, an open fire nearby, smoking marijuana or tobacco.

Luckily there are other ways than smoking to take the drug.

Of course it is addictive, otherwise people wouldn't come back to it after the first try.

And as for harm to lungs – does anyone really think that combustion products (regardless of what's burning) can not be harmful for human body?

> Of course it is addictive, otherwise people wouldn't come back to it after the first try.

So is cheese then. And pens. And fairground rides. And, well, everything.

I'm not disputing that it is addictive, but that reasoning doesn't work. Something can be useful or just enjoyable and people will repeat the experience without that necessarily telling us whether it's addictive.

> otherwise people wouldn't come back to it after the first try.

Just repeating an action a second time doesn't suggest an addiction... am I missing something here?

You're missing that there are plenty of people who want a scapegoat for their lack of personal responsibility, and plenty of people who will enable them because they're already biased against the scapegoat.

A lot of stoners are convinced it reverses the damage or something because "THC cures cancer"

The largest studies to date have found no ties to lung cancer or COPD, however there's still other damage present which can take the form of reduced lung capacity, chronic bronchitis, etc. As for refuting the "THC cures cancer" thing, there's certain forms of testicular cancer which do show slightly increased risk of statistical significance. The lack of worse lung problems is somewhat surprising but I've seen speculation from doctors about other possible causes than a miracle cancer cure.

I'm not much of a pot head, but my country is legalizing in a few weeks so I did some research - Dry leaf vaporizer is absolutely the way to go if you can afford it, full inhalation dose control and speed, no extra shit from flavorings or solvents, far less risk of those lung issues.

And by the way, being an occasional smoker myself, and rather a heavy smoker in the past, I know what I'm talking about, and I know the craving it gives you. Nevertheless I advocate legalisation and find it much less harmful than alcohol, for that matter.

Addictive in the way any form of entertainment can be I guess. It isn’t physically addictive.

Physical addiction (as opposed to psychological) is rarely the one that worries people.

It's not what keeps a drug user dependent for years as their lives unravel. If it was, then a simple detox would "cure" the addiction. We wouldn't have rehab programs and support groups, just hospital beds and observation for a week or two.

The addiction that is hardest to kick is almost always the psychological one. The one that sticks around long after any trace of the substance has gone from your system, and long after any withdrawal symptoms have subsided.

Sorry if I'm picking on your comment, but that phrase "isn't physically addictive" always strikes me as missing the point.

So true.

I got introduced to pot when I entered grad school to do a STEM Ph.D. I was cool with it - I was never an addict. I smoked a couple of times a year at most. It had to be a quite special occasion for me to smoke marijuana, drink, or do other drugs. Like the author, drugs gave me the courage to do things I would regret later. I did things to hurt my very best girlfriend I could have when I was high. She later left me.

Drugs are the demon that I thought I'm good enough to control -- I have a fucking Ph.D. after all. I know the answer for myself now, that is doing marijuana or any other drug is a losing battle. Most of the times when I am sober, I can hide the asshole person I really am. But when I'm high, all hell breaks loose.

Drugs are bad M'kay.

Come on, everyone is different and plenty of people (the majority?) can use them responsibly. And drugs are vastly different as well so classifying them as as such seems fairly counter productive to any discussion.

That your response to his personal, non-generalized story is as such in very, very curious and makes me wonder why you're having such a defensive posture.

It's funny how drugs and alcohol affect people differently.

I'm probably the nicest person that you could be around when I'm high or drunk. I don't get into fights or do anything to harm others (accidental self-harm on the other hand...). I've never managed to destroy a relationship due to my substance use.

I've never woken up in the morning and had to worry if I've left a trail of destruction behind me. Sure I've done dumb shit, but it's never hurt anyone else.

I'm actually more of an arsehole while I'm sober. I'm a nicer and more agreeable person when high, which is its own problem that I've been working through.

Drugs bring out our most base traits. For some that's a good thing, for others it's not.

Had to totally ban it from our house. Too addictive for me, and easy to fall back into stoner routines.

I saw multiple of my most talented high school friends lose their spark to pot. They’ve now made about 2 years of progress in 20 years’ time.

Many of the best engineers I've worked with are daily pot smokers, including my former boss who currently runs a team at Facebook.

Agreed, super anecdotal but I'd be curious to know when your former boss started smoking - in my (also anecdotal!) experience, that is a key determinant to a lot of negative behaviors.

Yeah, I think the key word in the parents post is "high school"... studies have shown people who start early have far more issues than functioning adults.

To back this up:

http://m.pnas.org/content/109/40/E2657.abstract

Persistent cannabis users show neuropsychological decline from childhood to midlife

I didn’t say all pot smokers fail.

Throw in world of Warcraft and it’s 0.23 years time lol

Addiction is highly correlated with depression and is a symptom of loosing connection with something important in one's life. It is a from of escape form this life because missing that connection is too painful. https://thelostconnections.com/ Here are some of the connections we need so that we are not tempted by surrogates: - connection with others, our tribe, people we can confess with when needed, who we can 'share ourselves' with - connection with meaningful work - a healthy value system that is not overly materialistic - being driven by inner purposes rather than outer ones - connection with our own subconscious fears and desires - having hope in the future - etc

One of my coworkers just quit cannabis after having an addiction for several years. Her and her (unemployed) husband were spending upwards of $300 a week on it, more than 40% of her pay. Had never been able to save for a house or anything, they had to buy in $50/$100 lots as they had so much trouble with money.

Forced herself clean on a holiday (that her parents paid for) and she's doing so well, it's great to see.

I wonder how much they would have saved had they switched to vaping long ago. You can get the same effects and avoid part of the lung damage while saving some money by vaping instead.

It is an addictive drug. Much less addictive than alcohol or tobacco, but still addictive.

It's easy for folks like me to slip into using it every day. Never got as far as the author in this, likely because I did always have a day job to hold down, but I spent quite a bit of time baked every evening. I also don't feel it was quite as wasteful of my life as the author does, nor did I embarrass myself like that, but certainly you don't get a lot done whilst constantly stoned.

It's never been too much effort to stop either, the cravings tend to pass very quickly, but if there was any left in the house I'd quickly cave. I do wonder what would happen were it to be legalised here. I'm very, very much in favour of that because the legal situation around drugs in the UK is ridiculous, counterproductive and just stupid. But if cannabis was available at every outlet that currently carries alcohol, would I still be at it every day, making excuses to myself for being tired and groggy in the morning, and in the evening having "well just one more toke before bed"?

Addict is the wrong word. He quit cold turkey after a revelation form looking in a car mirror. This is something a heroin addict or even most smokers would never say. You could replace 'smoking pot' with any number of other bad habits and not otherwise change a word of this story. Although I'm oversimplifying, there are few revelations with true physiological addiction, which is a despairingly tenacious neurological disease.

Some people should just stay away from psychoactive substances. Whatever the benefits are, it isn't worth it for them. This is partly a function of what is going on in their lives, but also partly neurobiological. Unfortunately there is only one way to realise you fall into this category. Maybe one day we will be able to predict who is at risk of abusing alcohol or marijuana well enough that you can actually make an informed decision about usage patterns.

He quit three weeks later. Lots of people will have similar stories about tobacco.

Whether it's physiologically addictive or 'merely' psychologically addictive is somewhat irrelevant - are you going to belittle gambling addiction as just a "bad habit"?

Yes it's hard to generalise of course. But the (lack of) success of quit smoking interventions should tell you that it is different to what is described here.

I don't think it is irrelevant. The point is about how to help someone. Trying to get someone with a physiological addiction to realise the error of their ways is futile, like telling someone to unbreak their leg.

> But the (lack of) success of quit smoking interventions should tell you that it is different to what is described here.

It might tell you that it is quantitively different, but not necessarily that it's qualitatively different.

> Trying to get someone with a physiological addiction to realise the error of their ways is futile, like telling someone to unbreak their leg.

I think your understanding of addiction is probably lacking here. Many people can and do overcome physiological addictions due to some or other realisation. Conversely many people cannot overcome addictions without a physiological component, like gambling, regardless of how much they realise the error of their ways.

It isn’t necessarily black and white. Gambling has a physiological component. Dopamine agonists can cause compulsive gambling in people that never cared to gamble in their lives, due to purely biochemical alterations in reward pathways. I don’t hope to define psychological addiction as you put it. The distinction to me lies between physiological addictions and other compulsive habitual behaviours. Examples of the latter include things which are clearly not addictions, eg cracking your knuckles, checking you turned off the stove 5 times. Marijuana doesn’t have a big physiological component in general. As always, some people quite happily perform behaviours habitually but are not addicted (eg some smokers).

Is a lack of self-control the same thing as addiction?

see thats the thing, when people want to talk about another behavior they don't like, saying addiction is fine, in the context of "friends, families and obligations are neglected for this one thing"

when people want to defend something, they rely on a stricter medical definition about how reliant the body becomes on another source of chemical it would have otherwise produced. This is something that marijuana doesn't satisfy, it is currently accepted that the brain doesn't stop producing its own chemicals, so therefore "you can't get addicted to marijuana", but

With gambling addition, video game addiction, etc, there is no debate about whether this is self control issues or whether there is a drug that offers a chemical that your body now stops producing. its a self control issue, we colloquially call that addiction.

the marijuana scene has needed to draw distinctions to get this far, now its time to quit the semantical debate and help with a solution that doesn't involve locking up parents and taking children through child protective services.

You know it's interesting, I see the same sorts of themes crop up whenever there's an article criticising alcohol on mainstream press websites.

Quite a few people will come out and say that it can't really be addictive, because they aren't addicted. Some say things like "Well I can have a beer every night, but never go off the deep-end and become an alcoholic, so clearly it's not that bad".

The point is that a percentage of people won't be able to control it. They will lose themselves to it. They will suffer for it. This happens with substances that cause physical dependency (opiates, alcohol, tobacco) and activities that clearly cannot (gambling). Cannabis seems to lie somewhere between the two, and be relatively mild.

Good for you if you enjoy it, use it and are not addicted. But that's not everyone's experience (It was mostly mine too, mostly, until it wasn't).

Valid question to be honest.

Life is hard. Everyone knows that in order to lose some qeight all you need to do is exercise more and eat less. Still we have trouble with obescity in the world.

I believe that sometimes we underestimate the struggles of other people due to a lack of understanding. It is a dangerous traphole to fall into.

Lack of self control is absolutely a symptom of addiction.

So is this a symptom of addiction, or just lack of discipline? I smoke plenty, but I know when and how to stop.

This is a test I did on myself to check if I'm addicted to sugar, so please take it in that context.

Reduce your intake by 50% for about a week. Do you see a craving developing in you that's affecting your day to day life? Such as fatigue (both physical and mental), lack of focus, interest etc.,? If the answer is yes then you are probably on the verge of getting addicted. I'm not a doctor but my guess is that next stage is the lack of awareness or the ability to know when to stop which is a clear sign of addiction.

I consider myself addicted to sugar, the good part is that only takes about 3 days of craving to be free of them. After that it's much much easier to keep away from it.

That’s great, but that doesn’t mean other people can’t have different experiences with pot.

Neglecting a child isn't something to take lightly, and it isn't something I could ever imagine doing. But sure, everyone is different so we'll give this guy a pass and attack a plant instead.

How did you get there from my comment? I’m all for legalization but that doesn’t mean that I don’t see that people can develop unhealthy relationships with it.

Good for you. Seems you are one of the 91% (or whatever) who don't are addicted. (Or "dependent".)

No. Addiction is the inability to stop when you want to. Lack of self-control is generally a willpower / just not wanting to stop thing. But there are two kinds of addiction: physical and psychological.

Physical addiction can occur with things like heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine (the more and longer you use them the more likely you are to get addicted... generally speaking.) Your body literally craves/needs more and you can get sick or possibly even die if you stop too abruptly depending on the substance.

Then there's psychological addiction which most of the physically addictive drugs can be as well as things like pot (at least I don't recall hearing any scientific studies indicating it's physically addictive.) While your body isn't dependent on it, whatever it is, your brain effectively gets stuck in a feedback loop telling you that you need that other thing just like you need food or water.

Yes both are a compulsion. The inability to ‘respond’ to a situation and fallback on ‘reacting’ instead.

I am all for legalizing marijuana, but the extent to which it appears to be infiltrating the this generations culture is a bit disturbing.

I have seen all too many people who seem to find an identity in pot. All activities and games they play are centered around pot.

Much like alcohol, but it is even harder to participate if you are not one of them. At least with alcohol, I can grab my cider, pretend to also be drinking 'hard liquor' and be a part of the event. Also, alcohol parties always need a couple of sober people as nannys. (This is specific to college aged people)

With pot heads, even if I don't partake in smoking, I am going to come out smelling of weed and inhaling 2nd hand smoke. At least pot heads have good taste in music.

In conclusion, as legal restrictions to marijuana are lifted, now would be a great time to put the role of marijuana in the societal context under scrutiny. It isn't as bad as alcohol, but it isn't as innocuous as some would like us to believe either.

If you’re looking for like-minded people and a support group, /r/leaves and /r/petioles are good subreddits to check out.

(for a variety of silly reasons all major subreddits that are cannabis related are either botany or lotr puns)

Actually, you're an asshole who likes pot and uses it as an excuse to behave badly. My drug use history reads like War and Peace and I don't have any aggressive or obnoxious episodes that I feel terrible about because I always considered that no matter what strange thing I put in my body I was responsible for for my own behavior, inebriated or not.

This person needs help, and the first thing they need to do is take responsibility for who they are.

> My drug use history reads like War and Peace

I'm curious about unpacking this since I actually read and enjoyed the book when I was in high school.

Which of the following are you saying? These choices are obviously not exclusive, but I'm curious about your original intent. :)

Your drug use history is:

1. Long (I think this is the most popular way to use War and Peace)

2. Boring (Probably the second most popular)

3. Violent (This is probably ruled out since you said you don't have any aggressive episodes [that you feel terrible about])

4. Characterized by peaks and lulls in use

5. Cryptic

6. Other?

1 & 4, perhaps 2 as well (although I find W&P an enjoyable read). I've never gotten into a fight or anything similar under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Probably 1,3, and 4.

He mentions depression. Some of those negative behaviors can also come from that. If that is a factor I think it's much more complicated than "taking responsibility".

He's very publicly being honest with some flaws, I don't think it's right to call him an asshole over it.

Noted, and this is also something where I have a lot of first hand experience. Mental illness can be a valid excuse when someone is suffering from delusions but that doesn't seem to be the case here.

> ... the first thing they need to do is take responsibility for who they are.

Actually, you might want to look in the mirror a bit, buddy.

I'd have agreed with your sentiment in the past, but now it reads as pretty self-righteous. Defining a person by some subset of their behavior is a specific, moral judgement not a factual description.

For a lot of people experiencing depression, it's exactly the kind of 'advice' that's likely to ramp up feelings of worthlessness and suicidal thoughts.

Personally, I find it more empathic and relevant to affirm the person and judge the consequences of an action.

Mental illness, just like drug use, is no excuse for poor behavior unless someone is subject to actual delusions. I'm not blaming him for having a substance abuse problem or wasting his life, I fel plenty of empathy for those issues. It's the violent aggression toward other people that I take issue with.

Thanks for the reply. I think we're sort of on the same page, at least with respect to opposing Neal's violent behavior

What I take issue with and find counter-productive is comingling the judgement of a person with the judgement of their (circumstantial) behavior.

I'm guessing that your original post was a strong reaction against the violence, but I also feel there's room to accept the person while still rejecting their behavior.

Anyway, cheers. Hope you have a good day.

Agreed the behavior mentioned at the beginning of the article sound like stuff someone would do on Alcohol, not MJ.

Getting in fights and acting obnoxious are not typical behaviors.

He seems to have some underlying personality disorder that is not helped by pot. For some, marijuana causes alcohol-like disinhibition. Typically manifests as laughter or risk taking, it is kind of rare.

(In as much as that can be diagnosed from a bit of text.)

I find video games,sugar,caffeine and sex to be a lot more addictive than pot, and I've smoked pot almost daily in 4 years of university

People really love the word addiction. It’s like a safety blanket that keeps you from having to feel responsible for your own behavior. There are sex addicts, porn addicts, and food addicts, among others.

More than likely there is just an underlying mental health issue with poor impulse control and behavioral manifestations.

Marijuana is pure Soma. The people pushing, fighting for legalization are digging their own grave in one form or another, especially as far as sentiments of freedom are concerned - the government wins one way or another.

You cannot argue against sobriety without appealing to inherent weaknesses of human nature. That alone speaks volumes in regards to the value of this drug.

Love what this argument is touching upon, few questions though:

1. What is Soma?

2. How does the government win either way?

Soma is a fictional drug popularized in Huxley's Brave New World, and used to ritually sedate the populace in seemingly benign but pervasive manner. It's closely associated with with consumerism, in the of form of "feelies" (also from BNW), as Huxley was alive to witness the transition from silent films to "talkies", and didn't respond to the perceived gross spectacle. In my mind, soma is a generalization for all that preys upon human weakness, and for something that is justified, even by intelligent, renowned individuals, via illogicality and appeal to human nature ("it's fun", etc). Rather than consider the value of the intoxicant itself compared to the innate conscious state, you typically see defense of it and claims of its banality and harmlessness. This is cognitive dissonance and justification, nothing more.

The government wins by profiteering either way off of legalization or not. Police states enforcing the war on drugs is profit, and tax revenue from legalization is profit. The people celebrating the current trends as a win are delusional.

> 1. What is Soma?

I'm guessing (from a quick trip to Wikipedia) OP means this:

Soma, featured in Aldous Huxley's novels Brave New World and Island, a fictional hallucinogenic drug to keep society peaceful and happy.

It's been a LONG time since I last read BNW, time to put it back on the reading list!

1. Soma is a fictional drug from A Brave New World that keeps everyone happy

It's as close to Soma as we're going to get this century.

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