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Comment by tomc1985 | Hacker News Reader

tomc1985·

So where's the schizophrenia epidemic among pot-smoking hippies? It's had like 50 years to surface, man.

In all seriousness, there are a number of cohorts where this should be showing up with some regularity. Can you point me towards any of them?

All the hippies I know are still out there hippie-ing and living their lives, going to Dead shows, and so on. And, from my experience, they seem to be an unusually vigorous group for being so old.

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I feel like there's some selection bias. Your friends who you know years ago but fell off the grids are the ones who are most likely to be experiencing mental health issues.

FWIW, the homeless encampments and chop shops by me have plenty of people in the ~50 y/o pot smoking hippie demographic. The local paper even did a profile on a dude named Coconut who is 56 years old and has been following the Grateful Dead/Dead & Co. on all their tours since 1992. He was just killing time until their tour came around later this month.

“Nobody knows you when you’re down and out”

Of course, survivorship bias and all that. But when I look at most communities of old folks, everyone else seems a lot more... decrepit

They committed suicide. The suicide rate has been steadily rising in the 44-64 bracket. Or they are reclusive conspiracy theorists. That's my experience at least. I know a (shrinking) number of people I would definitely say are gripped by cannabis psychosis. There's no way it's not a real thing.

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