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Comment by holoduke | Hacker News Reader

I am interested in any ancient records of the concept addiction. Did people understand that in fact cannabis is making you dumb instead of a mighty creative god? Did they understand the side effects etc. Probably not. But still interesting. I smoked weed for 10 years almost daily btw

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Your resentment is understandable. Though, hardly anyone is led to believe nowadays that cannabis will make you a great person. Lots of people use it to unwind, which is the opposite of pushing oneself further. I think that if you give yourself a chance you'll find that no one is dumb because he or she smoked cannabis in the past. That is, it's not a predetermining factor if anything.

Making you dumb? Did you start before you were an adult? I'm a fairly new user in my late 30s and haven't noticed any effects. That said, I just a weekend user.

Marijuana doesn’t “make you dumb”. There are lots of specific effects and I do not generally advocate that anyone start taking marijuana, but I will say I am a 37 year old robotics engineer and I vape marijuana (doses on the lower end of pure sativa) basically every day, throughout the day. I design circuit boards, do mechanical design, fabrication, assembly and test, and write Python code all with some level of marijuana in my system. (Obv have to be careful about dosage or I will be unable to work until it wears off.) In the last three months I designed a four axis robot arm with four custom planetary gearboxes of my own design.

I know that my marijuana consumption is not ideal for my health and I aspire to reduce it eventually. But I have been doing this for years and I’m getting better at designing and building robots, not worse.

I can (and do) smoke a lot of herb, medicinal reasons. Never has severely stupefied me. My nephew doesn't care for weed, because it does stupifiy him.

Cannabis, more than most other drugs, takes different people differently. Much of the misunderstanding and "talking past each other" seems to come from no one wanting to acknowledge that.

Good for you. But pot does make a whole bunch of people dumb. Not a bad thing though, thats precisely why I use it!

I think dosage plays a role that a lot of users might not understand. I was introduced to marijuana in a college setting and would seemingly randomly have a very hard time with the effects of the drug. In hindsight, I was trying to be macho and take huge hits in a circle of college guys, and I simply had too large of a dose.

But yes I get what you are saying. A larger dose can be nice to kind of shut off for a while, and many users do that intentionally. I just want to articulate this distinction, which is that a large dose (varies by user) of marijuana will make a person pretty slow and forgetful. More controlled lower doses of the right strains can actually have helpful uplifting effects.

In fairness, vaping marijuana and specifically vaping "the lower end of pure sativa" is not at all representative of the wider cannabis smoking public. In places where it's illegal in particular, you're stuck with whatever variant is currently in circulation with your local dealer and those are almost invariably high strength hybrids - because those are just more economical in a black market economy where the cash crop has ideally as little of a footprint as possible.

I hate it personally because I turn into an abject moron when I'm totally stoned - which is hard to avoid when your options are so limited. If I had a choice, I would probably go for a low strength sativa as well and maybe the occasional indica when I'm suffering from pain.

Strong hybrids, CBD-only flower (aka hemp), the possibilities are endless!

Ditto. Utter drooling moron. Unless I am very careful.

Basically all of my friends smoke.

Half seem to handle it pretty okay.

The other half turn into morons but they don't seem to care.

Also have you noticed how you don't remember your dreams after smoking? I've noticed that. And I've heard it from a few other people too.

I pretty much avoid it now.

This is true. What's happening is the THC causes a delay on the onset of REM sleep. Theoretically, this should cause a sudden ramp up of dreams when you take a hiatus from cannabis use. However, this does not happen to me personally which is strange because I do experience this with alcohol - another drug that causes a delay on the onset of REM sleep :shrugs:

Yes, I am in the California Bay Area so we have probably the best selection in the world for weed products.

And I do know whenever someone offers me street weed I suggest they don't, because the indica effects will make me extremely sluggish, i'll get major munchies and eat so much I get a stomach ache, and I can't really do anything productive.

I guess I made my comment to highlight this distinction that it is not true that marijuana makes you unproductive full stop, but that certain strains of marijuana and/or too high of a dose will have that effect.

You are right that this is hard to avoid in places without the selection I have, but that is only an argument for more legalization, not an argument that marijuana has few positive effects.

Any reason you don’t do edibles? I take a black market 10mg gummy every 2-3 hours to help with my anxiety. I’m a software developer and don’t feel “dumb” as my brain generally works that way anyway. It’s just easier to dose and consume whenever wherever when it’s an edible. I’m in a legal state which can’t figure out how to open retail stores so ironically my black market gummies are legal once I crack them out of the mailbox.

I am going for a certain kind of sativa-dominant effect that doesn't seem to be the same with any edibles I have tried. But I should probably see what the latest and greatest edible science has to offer.

I get solventless hash edibles. Full spectrum. I buy cbd pills from hemp too that I take two a day as well. I think that would help tilt the scales towards a “sativa” for you.

When I smoke I too like sativas. Specifically and “blue dream” strains.

Don't want to be flippant but every daily user of marijuana that I knew in my life told me that they wanted to reduce their intake somewhere in the near future.

That's only because we've just met :) I find it helps a lot with my own general sense of well being, and though I've found my personal limits once or twice, I plan to go up from here as time allows. Normal neuro-typical adult, married and employed in the tech trades.

I didn't start until after schooling was over, so that may be part of how it has assimilated into my life gracefully over the last 15-20 years.

That tends to happen with overconsumption, which, many users who light it on fire regularly end up doing.

I believe you but I didn't say the near future. It seems to work pretty well for me, but I hope to reduce my usage at some point. I really only say this because I am making a public comment endorsing a drug and I do not want people to read this and think I am saying it is 100% good and everyone should do it.

You seem to be implying that daily use is too much. However your observation is also consistent with marijuana users simply making light conversation about their fluctuating habits. We all say things like "I think I need to cut down a bit on the coffee" from time to time, but that can mean cutting back from 3 cups of coffee a day to 2. We don't usually consider that evidence that daily use is bad.

Ancient cannabis was nowhere near as potent as what we have today. Even the marijuana in modern times before the widespread use of sensimilla in the 80s was only around 3% THC (compared to 15-30% for dispensary-grade flower today).

Estimates I’ve read on potency of wild strains without selective breeding is closer to 1%. These guys weren’t getting mind-meltingly high, likely just a good mellow and probably not daily.

Everyone's got this pretty well covered, but wanted to emphasize:

SMOKING makes you dumb and less blood-oxygenated, cannabis likely far less so.

Vaporize loose leaf herbs, or use oil/edibles.

Don't listen to the ashtray.

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