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Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

People will really try anything to make it seem like Cannabis is perfectly harmless even in the face of cold hard evidence, it's laughable.

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Its not that hard to believe though. When you have used something for a long while, its difficult to face the fact that you may have been doing something to the detriment of your health. I see it as a coping mechanism.

I really don't understand what the allure of cannabis is. For me, an immediate effect was a decline not only in cognitive ability but also short term memory. Like not being able to hold a thought for more than 5 seconds. How is that pleasurable? It should be no wonder long term use trends in the direction of decline. Of course, for older or termininally ill patients, the pain management benefits may be worth the trade-off, but if the choice is living with pain vs. being perpetually stoned, I think I'd try living with the pain as much as long as I can.

(FTR, I am not against legalisation, so no need to accuse me of trying to take away your drug. I just think we need to make these decisions with caution.)

> I really don't understand what the allure of cannabis is.

Everything that exists in reality, from the observable beginning to the projected end, follows a pattern of abstraction that is exact and single. Drugs give you access to "suspension of disbelief" in experiencing fiction that is larger than reality.

> Like not being able to hold a thought for more than 5 seconds.

Not really an effect of cannabis. Heuristically it's more like the opposite, focusing on one thing for hours. The same way people with ADHD take Adderall.

>> Everything that exists in reality, from the observable beginning to the projected end, follows a pattern of abstraction that is exact and single. Drugs give you access to "suspension of disbelief" in experiencing fiction that is larger than reality.

Thats a fancy way of saying it gets you stoned. You can intellectualize it all you want, but its just words. I can think of any number of ways to "suspend my disbelief": try holding your breath, or slapping yourself silly. Try putting your finger in an electric socket. Really, there's no shortage of ways.

> Thats a fancy way of saying it gets you stoned. You can intellectualize it all you want, but its just words.

This is a forum everything is just words. The reality is that not doing things is X and doing things is X+1, and all of you X people are -1.

> I can think of any number of ways to "suspend my disbelief":

Obviously drugs are better than all of those things. What is the argument there? You can jerk off with a knife too, it doesn't feel as good.

Your description of your experience with cannabis is telling. If you're frustrated with not being able to hold a thought for more than 5 seconds, then that might mean that you went into it with expectations of how it should go, and then spent your time being high trying to retain the "control" you had sober and bring those expectations to reality. This is a common mistake. The good parts of cannabis come from letting go of expectations of control. It's in letting go that hyper focused states or creative bursts can happen.

Not everyone is able to "let go" at will, but some can do it intuitively while others may have anxieties regarding control that must be worked through.

But theoretically, the cannabis should have helped that. I also felt a lot of nerve twitches all over. It might have been too high THC, but it was not an experience that I cared to repeat.

For the kind of experience you are talking about, I would think psychadelics would probably be the better fit.

If you have control problems with cannabis, I suggest you stay well away from psychedelics. Everything that you mentioned regarding your cannabis experience is something that you learn to integrate and eventually move past, to super-creative super-introspective states that you can harness for growth and value. You can learn to guide the experience while you're undergoing it.

Psychedelics are in a different class in that there is no guiding the experience while it's happening. The best one can do is prepare the context (set & setting) and hope for the best. In that sense, they're a lot more difficult to handle than cannabis, but also potentially orders of magnitude more rewarding. But to reap those rewards, I feel that one needs to deploy -if only temporarily- a different model of looking at the world: more like a shaman treating the substances like sacraments, with awe and respect, than a cold rationalist.

Sorry I didn’t make myself clear. I think it’s entirely possible cannabis causes problems. I’m saying this study has successfully narrowed down reasonable associations to make direct cause more likely. But this also means if it is caused by another factor, we can use weed use as a signal for whatever that other factor is with high confidence. It’s multi use in that way which is helpful to establish. It shows evidence that people who are smokers of weed now either are doing damage to themselves or have potentially significant issues they need to address because something is doing damage.

It has drawbacks. No one is saying it doesn't, but now we have a gasp on them.

Like, wait until I tell you about how bad alcohol, sugar, or sleep deprivation is for you...

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