Hacker News Reader

Comment by portaouflop | Hacker News Reader

I think the same when I see people chugging a fat black coffee the moment they wake up. I wouldn’t be able to focus at all, constant jitters - how can these people all work effectively while being strung out on caffeine?

The answer is it’s all about tolerance and what drugs are social acceptable. The guy who smokes all day just gets back to baseline with his first joint in the day, he’s not actually high as you would be if you did that - same as with the caffeine addicts.

I think in a free society everyone should be able to put in their body what they believe is good for them - it’s a bit more complicated in real life but still…

View on HN

Smoking on the streets affects everyone else walking on the street. Drinking a cup of coffee on the street affects no one else.

It seems like you may have been making a more general social commentary, but I think this is pretty separate, since this is specifically about . If you're smoking in your home - more power to you.

See my other reply - this is not about what other environmental factors play a role - the question was how this person is able to function, not how their consumption impacts others.

I’ll take the whiff of locally grown weed over beans picked by poor people, processed and delivered by criminal oil companies.

I think it's sad that's all.

I don't think weed and caffeine are equivalent. One is a downer and the other a stimulant. You might get jitters with too much caffeine but that's not the same as being baked productivity wise. Sure you don't have to be productive 24/7 but chances are if you're lit at 7am, you're not being productive even when you sober up, and you'll just keep smoking.

In regards to "functional potheads", I've met a few in my life and without exception they greatly overstate their ability to function. Almost all addicts claim they're functional. Plus it can lead to psychological effects.

I think you should be able to put most things in your body. But I can still have an opinion whether it's good for you or society if people engage in this behavior. Not everything I think is bad should have a law against it.

I've met some functional potheads and I legitimately cannot tell when they're high, even after they smoke a lot. Their tolerance is so unbelievably high that smoking does very little to them. They manage to function in life because they're typically not-really-that-high along with having careers that are just not cognitively difficult, at all. One does sort of data entry stuff, stuff they've done for years without much change in their work. They also do sort of simple wix website development stuff. I know another that just works the floors at Target.

Why do they smoke if it doesn't affect them? Is it just at this point they feel terrible if they don't? Is it worth just going through detox so you're not dependent for the rest of your life?

It does something, just not a lot. I think many/most weed smokers can quit cold turkey without many or any physical problems. Even very high tolerance smokers can still get pretty high, they just have to use tons of weed/high density forms of ingestion

Source on weed being a "downer"? I think this is just your personal bias on weed and how it makes YOU feel. Weed doesn't slow heart rate or respiration like proper downers. The effects are almost always in the eye of the beholder. Being un productive or "baked" is not a given.

Most people don’t get jitters when drinking coffee?

I can’t drink coffee because the caffeine affects me terribly but that’s not true for most people.

If someone drinks coffee in public, nobody around them gets "passive coffee drinking", in order to be a public nuisance like smokers.

The question was how this person is able to function not what other environmental factors play a role.

Growing coffee also has an impact on the environment, I would argue much more than growing weed - conveniently out of sight for the consumer. But that’s not really my point here.

Just so we're clear, you're talking about weed smokers like the GP?

You've gotten passively stoned?

It’s hard to do but if you would be in a locked room with a bunch of lit joints going around you probably can get moderately passively stoned.

That's a bit different than the public nuisance claims.

I suppose you'd want to avoid a cannabis sauna if you want to avoid getting passively stoned.

Yea I wrote it more to illustrate that the “getting passively stoned from smoke on the street” argument is kinda ridiculous

Reply on news.ycombinator.com