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Comment by TrippinTraveler | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal but I'm a "programmer" at BigTech™ and smoke all day every day, and at this point I can't tell if it helps me or hinders me, but when you smoke all the time, most of these stories you are hearing about in the comments don't happen. At this point in my life, it's just a little "pick me up". It's by no means a micro dose as I probably smoke a gram or 2 a day. But when you live high it's a different kind of beast. I'll probably stop one day, but at the moment I don't see a reason to. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, but I like being high and at this point I am addicted for sure anyway.

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> Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn't, but I like being high and at this point I am addicted for sure anyway.

I smoked occasionally since my 20's and by occasionally i mean 3-4 times a year if even. then around 35 I started smoking on my own and it went from a puff or two at 9pm to help sleep to 3-4 j's a day. Like you I cant tell if it does anything any more. Likely I'm just giving myself lung cancer. And I too enjoy being intoxicated. my family is full of addiction so it figures.

Bottom line is YMMV and be careful with self medicating.

It's just lovely to hear how honest you are about your "situation". I enjoy smoking occasionally. I would say that sometimes I dismiss my thoughts too quickly when I'm sober, and rarely engage in thought process about particular details too intensively when I'm a bit off the ground. Otherwise it's great no matter what's being done, just need to be active.

Thanks, hopefully I am being honest with myself. I think weed can be very different for different people. Also it's not really mentioned here but Sativa and Indica strains also can make a difference as well as the THC % and method of consumption. I vape half a bowl from my Pax 3, I am in Canada so it's legal and we have THC % labels, I typically go for 25%+ which is not the "cheap stuff". I'd say if someone smoked my stuff with me at 9 AM, who doesn't normally smoke, it would probably knock them out for a few hours. But for me, it's like booting up in the morning. Nobody has ever mentioned or asked if I am high because I am more "normal" high than sober. Although I haven't been "sober" (clean for 4+ weeks) in many years, so I admit I have slightly lost perspective. It also has other effects on my life, such as my total loss of recalling my dreams, although I can tell they still occur, I just can't recall them at all.

You sound very much like me. Totally happy with my usage, and a chronic user that smokes 2-3 times per day reaching about a gram. It helps with empathy, it helps with creative flow, it helps with many things, but there are downsides of course. From August to December I took a break and it was immensely useful for perspective and for resetting my brain. My dreams were extremely vivid and rich, and going back to smoking was like rediscovering pot when I was 16. T breaks are indeed the key as GP pointed out.

Not going to bed stoned should be a recommended best practice in my opinion, especially given all the research supporting the fact that sleep is impaired by Cannabis much the same way as alcohol.

So many people claim that Cannabis helps them sleep but the science just doesn’t support that idea.

Citations? From what I know cannabis can give you really good "deep sleep." Which is just as good as REM sleep.

I definitely agree that cannabinoids mess the sleep processes, but without cannabinoids at night (even during periods when I'm not adapted to them) I wake up easily 6+ times during the night just to urinate. Its a horrible experience that's easily solved with cannabinoids, but there are likely other solutions to whatever is actually causing the problem. I do stop or slow my water intake a while before bed but this doesn't seem to matter.

Also it should be noted that this is not the primary reason for my cannabinoid use.

It is possible that cannabinoids help with this because it changes the way you breathe - deeper and more active breaths in lower part of the stomach will help to relax bladder and the urge will be much softer. Abs training may help as well like knee raises while hanging on a bar.

It takes weeks after I stop smoking weed for me to start remembering my dreams again. I don't doubt that there are other effects on sleep from acute smoking around bed time. But for me, the loss of REM sleep is definitely mainly a function of cannabanoid tolerance.

After many years of on and off heavy smoking, I would say that the best best practice is actually not smoking weed every day. I think there are some amazing benefits to weed, but for me they all but disappear with enough tolerance.

I’ll take slightly impaired sleep over morbid nightmares and waking up multiple times a night from dying in them.

I'm in a similar situation where I use cannabinoids basically 24/7. But for me I don't like inhalation anymore because it spikes the blood concentration too far and too fast for my liking. Edibles not only provide a more consistent and long lasting effect, but also saves money if you make your own from the flower you would have smoked. Part of this is because a similar inhaled dose compare to eaten, the eaten dose will last longer and be slightly more efficacious due to first pass metabolism.

Yeah the body quickly develops a tolerance when cannabis is used chronically. In stoner culture people talk about taking “T” breaks for this reason. Other people switch strains to try mitigating the effect.

Smoking a gram or two would be enough to get a newbie high as hell for the entire day. For chronic users it’s more like a cup of coffee that wakes you up for the day. And in that respect, many chronic stoners are forever chasing that feeling of the first time they got high. You can feel that way again, just take a break!

Haha ya I haven't taken a T break in years, but you are right that when I did and I finally smoked again, it was like remembering why I smoke in the first place. I am at a point in my life where I have kinda stopped trying to have self control in this regard and just made it part of my life. I'm 36 now and had never smoked weed until a trip to Amsterdam when I was 25. I get something from smoking, but it's muted for sure now-a-days with my tolerance, and I need to smoke the strong stuff.

Personally, I much prefer the feeling of a THC high when I have a high tolerance. Been a daily smoker for 15+ years (with occasional breaks for other reasons) and one single toke still works wonders, and I never take more than a single puff in a session.

Smoking some potent bud after a long break can be unpleasant, like taking big cup of coffee having no tolerance to caffeine. More likely to experience the negatives like anxiety, paranoia and confusion. The only upsides of low THC tolerance are some more intense spells of nonsensical laughter and things like “munchies” which were novel and fun things as a kid experimenting with a group of friends.

But that is quite different from what I enjoy most about MJ as an adult, which is more akin to adult enjoyment of caffeine. A morning cup of black coffee feels great because I have a tolerance, not despite it.

Interesting. That describes me for the past 20 years. But, I am going to turn 60 next year, and have decided that age 60-90 (God willing) will be different than age 30-60. Key in that is that I have returned to my original weed habits prior to age 30: none until evening time. So far, I'm _really_ liking the change. I still like weed, but I'm not allowing it (or anything) to have that much importance to me, and minimizing false 'dependencies' feels very refreshing.

Yeah, I've gone for 1-2 months long period of everyday, to cold turkey and haven't found much issues(even when going cold turkey, like no jonesing).

How do you define being addicted to it, what is your benchmark?

The general benchmark for an addiction is whether or not the substance use interferes or causes issues in other parts of your life. Like continuing tobuse in the face of damaging side effects or damaging effects on one's interpersonal relationships.

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