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Comment by j4yav | Hacker News Reader

It’s interesting how on HN whenever a topic related to cannabis comes up so many people jump in to say they have anxiety, and that weed makes it worse, and that it must be the same for everyone. Does HN have a higher than normal percentage of highly anxious people? Or is it just the threads attract the kind of people who are likely to be anxious and jumpy around the topic? It’s a really interesting phenomenon. In real life, people may like it or not, may still use it or not, but the discussion seems way more casual and nowhere near as singularly anxiety fixated as when the topic comes up here.

I’m not judging, I’ve been treated for anxiety myself. Just quite curious about how different the conversations are.

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If youre willing to accommodate a highly opinionated take from experience:

Intelligence itself seems to correlate with anxiety, i.e. being able to construct and focus on abstractions, as opposed to your immediate environment, on demand increases likelihood of fixation on abstractions.

Combine that with a lack of forced grounding in computer-based professions, i.e. little human interaction, and you're a heck of a lot more likely to be in your own head, then add weed on top and you're even more likely.

Makes sense! That would align pretty well with my personal experience too.

A thread about anxiety does seem like it would attract people with anxiety who want to talk about anxiety.

Sure, but the phenomenon exists across all the threads about cannabis.

I think it's a recently developed pushback to the widespread love cannabis has received online for a long time. For a long time, it has been either heralded as a gateway drug or a magical cure all that could do no wrong.

Now that it is much more widely available and many more people have actually tried it for extended periods of time, the narrative has shifted.

How does saying you have anxiety when you smoke weed push back against people who were overly positive about it though?

To provide a counterpoint to the, "Weed is good. Weed can do no wrong." view that many have had about it.

I began to notice this phenomenon on internet discussions/forums tied to mental health, physical health, and drugs (illiegal and legal). The discussions themselves attract anxious people who are using the internet to validate and reassure themselves. And I know I used to be the same before I found my own effective treatment for anxiety.

there's also the possibility there is some correlation between autism spectrum and weed anxiety, and that HN naturally attracts nerds who tend to be (mildly) on the spectrum.

there's no particularly major evidence that it's highly correlated but I've heard anecdotal theories along the line before.

Interesting, do you have a reference for the autism to weed anxiety link?

> In real life, people may like it or not, may still use it or not, but the discussion seems way more casual and nowhere near as singularly anxiety fixated as when the topic comes up here.

It’s been common in my circles as we have aged. In our now mid 30s most have ceased its usage other for that reason other than myself who took it up following a spinal cord injury. For what it’s worth, it did seem to give me anxiety at first but time (and mixing with a cbd strain) seems to have solved that.

edit

We do all work in IT for the most part so…maybe that is something.

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