Regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Better yet, “Stoned Teens Don’t Listen” hah.
Can’t paste all the nuances in the title, so checkout the actual link.
>After correcting for multiple testing, a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory.
I thought the bad grammar was just a typo, but it was due to you cutting up the sentence to mean something different than what the paper actual states.
"a greater frequency and earlier onset of regular cannabis use were associated with poorer cognitive performance, specifically on tests of verbal memory"
For me, that's a flag. If I'm using flagging wrong, someone should tell me. :)
They’ve collected a group of urban kids whom the vast majority are using cannabis, many starting years prior to this survey.
I know it is chic to be skeptical, but this is one study where I think it is also correct. The study leads the reader to believe that there is a biochemical link between cognitive performance and cannabis as a substance [0]. On the other hand, the evidence they present is that a small minority of kids aren’t using and are performing better. The number of confounding variables is much, much higher than simply alcohol use (Which in the second wave was at 99%, not much to normalize for) and family situation. For example, drug use can result in being kicked off sports teams, suspensions, things that could hinder intellectual development.
Is anyone convinced by the study and would stand to offer support for its conclusion?
[0] To me, the following quote can be read to support this assertion: “ Moderate adolescent cannabis use may have adverse effects on cognitive functioning, specifically verbal memory, that cannot be explained by familial factors”
Drug use can also be a symptom of a poor mental state, for example that induced by social exclusion or poor mentorship.
In such a situation the casual graph would look like:
/¯¯¯ Kid uses drugs
Kid not feeling great ---
\___ Kid does bad in school, allowing cognitive skills to languishMaybe there are introverted individuals or closed-group social circles that are just performing better, one descriptor of those groups being the lack of substance use (Or use of a more limited set of substances, like alcohol only).
Irrespective, I think these types of questions are more useful in helping kids grow up intelligent than this study is (If we assume their focus on measuring intellect references is actually out of concern for how well students are doing)
That's how we know about cardiovascular health. Framingham cohort study.
Your overall comment is spot on, just because designing a good study is hard does not mean we should accept poorly designed studies as good science. Agency risk unaddressed, science should seek to find the solution to a question rather than an answer.
I think if I had a different kind of job, that didn’t require me to figure out a lot of details, it wouldn’t matter.
I understand that others have a totally different experience and can code while stoned. But I’m not surprised that the average results would show lower performance if a chunk of the population is like me.
When I talked about pot, I wasn’t taking about cbd, although I apologize if that causes confusion.
I have volunteered for these because I have always felt that marijuana does not diminish my cognitive performance for certain tasks -- and definitely does not diminish my memory recall abilities.
Some of these tests involved listening to short stories, and re-telling then an hour later, and other memory games.
I like to think I aced them, to keep the bell curve wide.
On one occasion, the researcher did indicate this to me, well after the experiments were over.
You simply can't concentrate when you're high the same way you can when you don't smoke. Reading is more difficult, exercise is more difficult, that's just the literal effects of weed.
If you're high all the time you're not going to perform the way you can when you're sober, and this is just my anecdotal observation, with people who started smoking young it becomes a sort of personality trait. You just become less sharp, less active, and when there's habit less interested in doing things not-high. Studies aside, that just can't be helpful.
But it does not affect me in this way. The code I write when stoned compiles just as well as sober code, and I remember everything I read when high just fine.
It enables me to achieve a deeper and longer focus when performing solo tasks that involve a certain level of concentration, than I can do otherwise.
However, it is most definitely detrimental to team orientated or social tasks -- especially to starting them at all.
It is possible that I have conditioned myself to be this way, but it was also the reason I started using it in the first place.
I have no formal education beyond high-school, so it is not too hyperbolic for me to state that nearly everything I have ever taught myself (from coding to hardware design), I have learned while high.
I do not believe I have been handicapping myself but rather the opposite.
If it were theoretically somehow proven I was still experiencing a negative effect despite cessation for over a week, that would be enough for me to rarely or never use it again. As far as I know, there isn't any convincing evidence of that, but if there ever was, I'd definitely want to know about it.
In my anecdotal experience, I definitely notice difficulty with conversations, deep reading, etc for ~2 weeks after stopping. It takes about 1 month of sobriety for me to feel 95% back to normal and 2-3 months for 100%.
It could certainly be some combination of both, too.
Some strains make you highly focused. Others more social. Some make you more creative. Some might make you scared and hearing things.
It's like thinking all food is the same. One person eats chocolate bars all day and another carrots but are treated as a baseline.
I won't argue against that being your personal experience but it's certainly not mine.
Mine is quite the opposite and has been for a long time. I've been smoking for 47 years taking a puff and getting to work is routine for me.
Weed is the only "drug" I've ever used. I snorted a few lines back in the 80`s but I never liked that crap. I don't take any prescription drugs and never have but most of those I know my age do now. I'm not saying weed is the reason why, but it's worth noting.
Pardon my ignorance here but, does this mean they only studied kids with "delinquent behaviors"?
> From 2001 to 2006, 245 probands/257 siblings from San Diego and 351 probands/373 siblings from Denver were recruited via substance abuse treatment programs, alter- native schools and juvenile probation departments (see [30] for ascertainment details)
Citation 30 is:
30. Gelhorn H., Hartman C., Sakai J., Stallings M., Young S., Hyun Rhee S., et al. Toward DSM‐V: an item response theory analysis of the diagnostic process for DSM‐IV alcohol abuse and dependence in adolescents. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psy- chiatry 2008; 47: 1329–39; https://doi.org/10.1097/ CHI.0b013e318184ff2e
I'll admit I'm wary of the potential neurotoxic damage I'm doing to myself through my Vyvanse prescription...
Weaning-off it is far more preferable.
> Overall, the potency of illicit cannabis plant material has consistently risen over time since 1995 from approximately 4% in 1995 to approximately 12% in 2014.
In the `70s most of what was available was crappy "dirt weed" (called so because it tasted like dirt when you smoked it) and it was full of seeds.
The strains they have now can tastes like all kinds of things, fruity, spicy, etc. I'm not an expert on that, but I've done a few "tastings" and the different flavors are really pretty amazing.
Also, anyone who says pot used to be weaker back in the day is a cop.
In reference to spliffs (but not joints) then I can see them having more tobacco content in the past compared to today - and pre-ground baggies being cut with weed look-a-likes compared to buying a bag of pre-ground from a dispensary today.
And strains like "Alien Ass-hat" are definitely new - and they have really high THC/g.
However weed strains back then had a different CBD/THC ratio than the ones today.
One could also eat half of a 1mg edible, which provides even more precision dosage.
I know of only a few vendors that sell "medium" flower - and retailers only let them in because they have some hi-test product too.
In any case, thank you, it's nice to know I'm not the only one.
Their menu lists 9 CBD flower products and 97 CBD edible products, not to mention topicals, concentrates, etc...
The product I wish I could find is very rare, I've almost never found it. Something more akin to the "dirt weed" I grew up with, THC around 4-5%. There just isn't enough of a market for "I want to get a little high". There's a high THC market, and a high CBD market, with not much in between.
I would assume any grower going for high pecentages in tests are going to pick the biggest choicest top buds to have tested.
Meanwhile, you buy some of that weed from the store and you may end up with some lower buds that barely got any light, or some that was in the back corner of the room while drying and didn't finish properly, or that bud the workers kept brushing against while it was growing knocking crystals and resin off, or maybe the grower sold it before curing properly to make a quick buck so every seller that ends up with it ends up either curing it themselves in different ways or just not bothering at all and selling it as is. The seller may just sit on it for a while and let it degrade.
All of those factors, and many more, have an affect on the amount of cannibinoids and terpenes in any specific bud you might end up with.
Just because a specific strain or even crop was tested as one thing doesn't mean the weed you actually buy will be that.
Concentrates tend to have less variation within one batch, but that again depends on how their made.
A lot of it in the end is just marketing. Even most strains you buy are likely not what they're sold as. Even if a grower is able to maintain a stable line, over time after successive generations of clones, genetic defects and other undesirable things begin to occur and the grower needs to introduce fresh genetics, thereby changing the original strain.
Cannabis genetics, breeding and growing is a pretty fascinating subject. There's so many factors that go into the final product and just so much variation and endless new discoveries every day.