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Comment by _jjkk | Hacker News Reader

> they may be contributing very little to society (or maybe a lot), but regardless there's a sense of superiority

A sober individual's brain is operating on standard (often societally installed) reward mechanism, including "succeeding" on certain self-evaluated measures like "contributions to society"

It's commonly said that weed makes you "OK with being bored". i.e. standard reward mechanisms mentioned above don't really matter much when you're high.

It has nothing to do with narcissism or sense of superiority as you call it, just that their reward mechanism doesn't include things like "how much am I contributing to society". Apathy is a better word for it.

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well apathetic individuals still rely on the society they are in, most of the time anyway. I think this is where the narcissism perception comes in.

Most stoners in particular people who smoke a lot and for a long time at least in my experience become apathetic and to a degree dependent on their environment. They rely on others to organize their lives, even get simple chores done, they become sort of lethargic. And when you have an individual like that who also acts indifferently towards it you create (I think a justified) negative perception.

Be careful not to over-generalize from personal experience... Maybe you've just met a few examples of lethargic, dependent narcissists who smoke a lot of weed?

There is selection bias at play, as someone with an admitted negative perception of stoners you probably haven't put yourself in many situations where you might meet counterexamples.

In my experience, I've met many stoners whose driving force is empathy and compassion and not narcissism and apathy.

Anyway, keep in mind any substance abuse is often an amplifier of issues that already existed.

Most of the lethargic narcists I met were weed (and other drug) users. Most weed users I know are not lethargic narcists. People who swing in the direction of personality disorders already have a predisposition to "anti-social" behavioral patterns, and frequent risk-taking. It's just as likely that they get into drugs on account of existing personality constructs as they develop personality constructs on account of using drugs.

I did qualify that I'm talking about heavy users but I don't think I'm over-generalizing. Any heavy drug use, or addictive or dependent behavior in general crowds out other things. That's just a fact of substance use.

Occasional recreational use is one thing but people who are high every day, they aren't able to be as present as they would be if they were sober, and in changes them in I think usually negative ways. Not even because of the particular drug they're using, but because of the patterns of behavior that come with those levels of consumption.

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