Using marijuana may affect your ability to think and plan, study says | Hacker News Reader

Using marijuana may affect your ability to think and plan, study says

cnn.com

18 pointsavodonosov11 comments

From the actual study. The effect is small to moderate and the study did not conclude that it causes permanent harm. Most of the deficit was seen in heavy users and the study at hand was actually a meta-meta-analysis

>Meta-analytical data on the acute effects of cannabis use on neurocognitive function have shown that cannabis intoxication leads to small to moderate deficits in several cognitive domains

>small-to-moderate adverse effects and residual neurocognitive deficits were observed in heavy cannabis-using youths. Results showed no significant difference between cannabis users and non-users on language, and small-to-moderate effects for simple motor skills

Please post the study instead of media reporting on the study, reporters like to overblow things and misconstrue statements

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/add.15764

I thought about posting the study only, but the CNN article has two links (the one you mention and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037578/) and also some comments by researchers, so I desided to post the article.

From the nih.gov publication:

> Cannabis appears to continue to exert impairing effects in executive functions even after 3 weeks of abstinence and beyond. While basic attentional and working memory abilities are largely restored, the most enduring and detectable deficits are seen in decision-making, concept formation and planning.

Reporters pick and choose which quotes from the researchers sound good and attention-grabbing, not ones that best represent their views on the research

Executive function disorder, which is what this article says marijuana causes, is also thought to be a much better name for ADHD. It is not much about hyperactivity or attention, but more a chronic lack of dopamine which affects the executive function system of the brain.

I find this interesting and wonder whether many stoners are self-medicating. I know I've smoked so much I've come to hate it and it's caused what I thought were long term memory and executive issues, yet I've recently been diagnosed with ADHD, to my surprise. Were I self-medicating, or did weed made a part of my brain worse? Honestly, I have no idea. I don't think there's an easy answer yet.

In a similar boat and I wonder the same myself. My current thoughts are that I've had mild executive function disorder for most of my life, and self-medicating has helped in the short term but perhaps caused longer-term effects due to building a dependency on it.

Yes, one necessary requirement for the diagnosis of ADHD is for it to be present since young age. There is no adult-onset ADHD, but there are plenty of factors that can cause ADHD-like symptoms in adults. Perhaps heavy marijuana consumption is one of them, and that same substance is used by people with actual ADHD to self-medicate (getting high -> dopamine increase)

ADHD presents most strongly in childhood, (specifically hyperactivity which diminishes with age, though not everyone with ADHD has hyperactivity) so if you had it you can look back and see it.

Once, I tried teaching math to homeschoolers after a smoke. Nope, and never again. Doesn't exactly help programming either.

Vaporize, not concentrates.

Cannabis without lowering your blood oxygen levels is a different thing.

But, possibly still a bad idea.

Some people are hit differently by THC than others are. I'm lucky that it's never really done more to me than lighten my mood and unclench my stomach. I've known people who couldn't think while high. Some of them saw that as a reason not to smoke, some didn't.

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