Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet | Hacker News Reader

Younger cannabis users have reduced brain function, finds largest study yet

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308 pointsclumsysmurf278 comments

I'm inclined to believe that there is fairly likely to be long-term negative health effects from cannabis use, but that the very obvious correlation many people in this thread can probably identify with their friends in highschool is just that, a correlation, for some reason or series of reasons.

My friends who really got into weed at that time were absolutely addicted to it, and some of them I do believe let it affect their reasoning ability, but it's hard to know what they'd have been like had they not been smoking their paychecks away. I regarded them as stupid at the time, but there were few instances where they weren't stoned, and a stoned person is often dumb as hell. In retrospect, one of them was (highly) likely schizophrenic but also intelligent, and would make shatter with his older brother who was definitely a deadbeat at the time, but they both came from the same conflict-laden upbringing, while another was clearly intellectually capable but raised to be emotionally volatile, and the rest were mostly just having fun and quit shortly after.

I'm thankful I remained friends with them but didn't get heavily into it at that time, but it's much more difficult for me to frame the weed use as a causal factor in anything besides a sort of dampening of their hypothetical willingness to seek a better existence through other means. As South Park put it, weed lets you feel ok about doing nothing, and that's dangerous in aggregate.

A cynical take on many governments embracing weed is Soma [1].

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soma_(Brave_New_World)

>A cynical take on many governments embracing weed is Soma

The marijuana prohibition of the 20th century was a complete anomaly in practically all of human history, driven almost entirely by US policy. Before that humans had used the plant recreationally and commercially without hassle for thousands of years. We'll be just fine.

We will be just fine. Just like cigarette smoking, eventually weed will become unpopular to smoke.

Unfortunately, it does seem like there is a big uptake in users after legalization, which hopefully will subside.

I don’t think Cigarette smoking became unpopular without heavy regulation. In countries that don’t have such restrictions, smoking is still ubiquitous.

Cigarette smoking stopped looking cool to teenagers and young adults.

Bans and advertising and showing smoking in movies did that.

Absolutely.

The things that did the most to drive down use were raising the price of cigarettes (which fund the healthcare costs) and banning smoking indoors, where it affected even non-smoking workers [1]. When we stop subsidizing harmful behavior, we get a lot less of it.

Especially in places that are super-cold.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1155/2012/961724

The data [1] don't really show this. In particular as recently as 2001-2003 35% of young adults (in the US) said they smoked, versus an all-time historical high of 45% across all age groups for some context. By 2019 that figure was down to 10% for young adults. The first bans on advertising smoking went into effect in 1971!

So what happened in the ~2000 era window of time? The internet and social media started exploding in popularity. In fact you'll find that the graph of the decline in teen pregnancy [2] looks roughly similar to the decline in young adult smoking, and probably for the exact same reason.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/509720/cigarette-smoking-rate-s...

[2] - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/02/why-is-th...

A much more obvious reason for the decline in smoking is the popularization of vapes. If you look at U.S. adults, you'll see that the decline in tobacco smoking is almost entirely made up for by the increase in vaping.

Technically, of course, vapes aren't cigarettes. But It's a bit misleading to say that smoking is unpopular, when it's just been replaced by a doppelganger. Especially since vapes are also deeply detrimental to health [1].

[1] - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7348661/

Indoor smoking bans were passed during that period. This was a time period of major pushes to outright ban smoking. That’s when I saw it actually drop off.

“Throughout the early to mid-2000s, especially between 2004 and 2007, an increasing number of states enacted a statewide smoking ban of some kind.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...

[2] - https://github.com/zrm5kfc401t0q1

Brave New World is actually a utopian story told from the perspective of a weird shut-in who only reads Shakespeare and the Bible.

Isn't it great to live in a world where everybody is entitled to their own opinions, eccentric though they may be.

The (western) world today is incredibly divisive, and differing opinions are not only met with hate but lies are rampant and people in power use this propaganda to keep themselves there, sucking resources from everyone else and cause untold amounts of suffering to satiate their infinite greed.

I’m not advocating for a world where people can’t speak their mind, but it does feel like a stretch to call the current situation “great”.

aren't propagating proprietary agendas the foundational problem, constituting the lies and the fraud that both the hate and it's recipients reactive actions result from, not the other way around?

it looks like it's not even a cycle, though it might look like one because the coal is shoved top down into the boiling boiler room, to reward and insentivize, the business and marketing psychologists and the disseminatora of the algorithms that keep the information flows to the population as separate as necessary. all under the auspice of cultural friction and artifical obstacles to keep the convection rate as limited as is necessary to keep political and social leaders in fear so that they don't even have to come running for advice when (some)one sparks a civil micro conflict.

the older cousin of the "small wars theory" ... a knife attack here, a truck into a christmas market there ... and suddenly people don't need to vote Right, AND their conservative party doesn't have to ruin their image by taking the upRight stance ... the situation demands it, after all, the people need protection

I didn’t understand anything about your comment. Please use capital letters to differentiate sentences—they are useful to help readers parse your ideas, they’re not a stylistic choice. You (seemingly) wrote something full of metaphor and covert examples and made it look like a run-on sentence, which is hard to read.

No. I want hundreds of people down at the docks having drug fueled orgies in broad daylight on the deck of a battleship. (Been a few years since I read it but pretty sure that's how the book ends ..) None of that real danger shit for me thanks.

And in another drug-parable 'The Matrix', Cypher is actually the hero, advocating the acceptance of the blue-pill retreat into synthetic chemical fantasy as opposed to the harsh depressing truth of reality.

His failure ultimately leads to 'system failure' and the deaths of billions of adults unable to mentally deal with their expulsion from the dream-world.

The buddy-cop television series Limitless spin off series is superior to the Bradley Cooper movie of the same name.

The recent Matrix movie is certainly bad, but I strongly believe that a single change would have been cool: in the scenes where it's revealed to the viewer that Neo looks like a different man[1], he should look like Cypher. Someone famous, important, struggling to reintegrate, joylessly chewing on some steak, etc. ...

1. https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2021/09/08/46-1631115261242.p...

>Brave New World is actually a utopian story told from the perspective of a weird shut-in who only reads Shakespeare and the Bible.

Moral of the story being that every utopia is, by definition, someone else's dystopia.

Funny how when I read Brave New World it greatly got on my nerves, mainly due to how it's supposed to be a "dystopian" novel. To me it indeed depicted a dream world in so many ways.

Weed might not directly ruin people’s cognitive ability in a dramatic way, but it can definitely contribute to stagnation, especially for people who are already on the edge of disengaging from life

I believe weed should be subsidized and sold so that you really must not be tricked onto buying it & cannot buy it when addicted solely for reason of getting more addicted without any other reason. Otherwise though, why restrict people from being dumb?

What's the opposite drug in the "South Park," senae? I would say methylphenidate+LSD makes one, not in simultaneous use, more acutely aware of need to do things.

LSD probably improves intelligence by increasing the fidelity of one's experience, which makes your subconscious dreams more capable of tying many dreams to a single place you have experienced, though childhood home is hard to beat. Made-up places and places one passed by but didn't feel with senses & are generic too much, DO NOT have as many edges in the directed causal graphs that are the associations through which our subconscious dreams switch from one to another, travelling on granular level one time every edge as we dream single time, "repetitive" dreams's loops actually also having subtle differences in betweenxt.

Re your correlation, if poor areas may have more accessible weed & lower education & more crime, and the exact causal mechanisms indeed require care.

[citations needed], though of course first you will need to define "intelligence". The studies[1] I've seen found increased visuospatial memory and verbal fluency in the immediate aftermath of use, but decreased cognitive flexibility. Given that cognitive flexibility has been founded to have a significant impact on programming tasks [2], that seems particularly bad for this crowd.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09249... [2] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9611030

> As South Park put it, weed lets you feel ok about doing nothing, and that's dangerous in aggregate.

I'd say, this is a huge feature, because in modern society we're losing the ability to just sit and do nothing. Look at old people, sometimes they spend hours just sitting and looking through the window, completely zoned out. I can't do that for five minutes no matter how stoned I am. My life revolves around having a thousand hobbies and activities.

Having said the above, for some reason weed stopped being fun for me. Instead of making me relaxed and giggly, it makes me tired. I don't smoke it, I make edibles. Any suggestions?

> I'd say, this is a huge feature, because in modern society we're losing the ability to just sit and do nothing. Look at old people, sometimes they spend hours just sitting and looking through the window, completely zoned out. I can't do that for five minutes no matter how stoned I am.

In moderation, I agree. Although given that numerous people have asked me why I don't where headphones at the gym, I might be an outlier in terms of my ability to zone out and ponder, sober or not, which I do try and practice.

> Having said the above, for some reason weed stopped being fun for me. Instead of making me relaxed and giggly, it makes me tired. I don't smoke it, I make edibles. Any suggestions?

Nah, I feel similarly, and it probably means it's been too regular of a habit. Even though at most I'd be consuming 0.5g joints or 10mg gummies a few times a week, it feels like it's time to dial it back cold turkey for at least a few months, or keep it to weekends.

I tried using it less, but it's not helping much :/

From my experience with meditation and weed I'd claim that sitting, "zoning out" and doing nothing requires significant effort.

Weed works in opposition to that. It more likely makes the mind wander more, not less. That's not always a negative thing, but I think it's almost the opposite of meditation.

I definitely think it's the opposite of meditation. Imo meditative states come from deliberate effort and shouldn't be encumbered by much else but your mind as it is.

Personal observation and common sense logic are often disregarded as 'unscientific', yet they are more powerful tools for learning about the world around us than sifting through hundreds of papers we are not trained to on scholar.google

Weed make you dumb short term? Probably make you dumb long term.

Friends who smoke weed end up dumb and underachieving? Correlation established.

Life is not a college science test. Sometimed you have to just put 2 plus 2 together.

Funny. I have smoked regularly for two decades, yet also have two STEM degrees, a full time EE job, occasional side work, and I’m fixing up a 100 year old house.

But I started in farm land learning to build with raw materials, fixing tractors and other machines, growing food, while most of my peers sat inside watching TV. My muscle and cognitive memory is well developed from development of electronics products, a life of building homes and barns to stripping cars to frame and rebuilding them.

Weed has nothing to do with underachievement. It’s a contemporary culture that champions low effort fail up office work or asset ownership. Having worked in web apps the last 10 years, the only challenge I’ve faced is keeping pace with low output office lifers who never learned to rotate a tire or grow a potato.

Weed just makes someone more of their inner self. I get stoned and take on a project because that’s what I’ve done my whole life (built new garden boxes and ripped up an old sagging deck last weekend). A stoned couch surfer was already a lazy couch surfer.

> A stoned couch surfer was already a lazy couch surfer.

This is the only part of your comment that I think there's some nuance to disagree with. I don't think it's an untrue statement, but I do think it's partly a matter of whether weed or any of those maladies come into the picture before you learn to do anything remotely ambitious or self-directed. If you're already the type of person who's taking on projects, looking forward to an interesting future, challenge-seeking, etc.. then that's fine it's no problem, that's a state you're going to come back to, but it's also not something you really earned at the outset either, you're more likely to just be pre-disposed to those things early on for some reason or another.

I was and am this type of person, but I didn't really realize it in a tangible way until my early-mid twenties, and if I'd be chronically indulging in weed or drinking or gaming, it seems pretty plausible I'd never have been able to get out of the place and rut I was in, but if I wasn't in a rut, I don't think it would necessarily put me in one. I was in a terribly unambitious state in my late teens, floundering and depressed, it's not a productive personal thing to enable more methods of just dealing with it, much like being a lazy couch potato doesn't encourage a person to start a lifelong fitness journey, and having kids early should reduce your inclination to take unnecessary risks.

Anyway, I just think that while it's not to blame for a person becoming a loser, it's plausible that it doesn't help a person become not a loser if they find the crutch at the wrong time.

>Funny. I have smoked regularly for two decades, yet also have two STEM degrees, a full time EE job, occasional side work, and I’m fixing up a 100 year old house.

Congrats and I don't mean to be demeaming, but you sell it as if that were a peak achievement and it's actually quite mid. The hardest part of those achievements would be studying and testing for calculus and algebra, for which I assume you had to drop the weed to retain some cognitive function.

Here's some predictive power I go on a limb with, you said EE and I bet you mean Electronic Engineering and not Electrical.

Along with physician or lawyer, those would be quite surprising and incompatible with weed because you would be responsible for significant real world risks and responsibilities. Again no offense but you are probably working on something with not much real world responsibility which is why it's compatible with smoking weed.

That's ok, not everyone needs to be a top performing human being responsible for their actions, and if they were you would be working in an industry with drug testing instead of a workplace that values creativity and approves of drugs. And your head would roll if there's an incident you are responsible for and it comes out that you are smoking regularly (god forbid while you make the malpractice)

Was I close?

Cheers

This is demeaning, uncivil, and largely baseless.

Drugs are a sensitive subject

Drugs or not, your comment was rude and condescending. And trying to brush it off as people being 'sensitive' doesn't change it being rude and condescending

This post says far, far more about you than anything the other fellow has said does about him.

Same experience here. Weed doesn’t make you dumb or lazy — choosing to sit on the couch watching reruns of The Simpsons is what makes you dumb and lazy, weed or no weed.

We learned nothing from your casual observation. You took 2 parts and combined them together to form a conclusion based on hearsay. So not better than what you're arguing against.

No of course you don't learn from my observation, and it's hearsay to you.

The idea is that each of us learns from our observation. And of course the observation and judgment of those we trust.

I'm not expecting or caring if you are influenced by my particular observations.

Who is "we"?

The HN audience, you and I.

Some of the smartest and most accomplished people I've met in my life spent their 20s experimenting heavily with weed and psychedelics. But that was not *all* they did and the goal behind this experimentation was not 'get fucked up and have fun' but fuel for their creativity and curiosity.

So it does seem that easy negative generalizations based on superficial correlations are poor models of what is actually a much more complicated reality.

One aspect I’m curious about, especially given the younger cohort, is the causal directionality here - especially when I was younger, I knew a lot of people who were self-medicating with cannabis for things like anxiety and ADHD, which also have effects on working memory and executive function. I’ve known enough heavy users long enough that I do believe there’s long term cognitive effects (whether directly or indirectly), but the specific effects and cohorts they were evaluating here gave me some pause.

> self-medicating

I know this doesn’t add to the conversation but I hate that term, they should just say they’re addicted to weed. 95% of the time the anxiety is either normal or a result of chronic weed use (ie withdrawal)

A great deal of both the psychological and the drug policy communities disagree with you on this point.

95% huh? Lets see some sources

You're right, it doesn't add to the conversation, especially because you're citing at best some anecdotes without any sources.

Plenty of people self-medicate with cannabis. They take regular, measured doses of cannabis products, making sure to pick specific strains or brands that they know to have the needed effects.

“Self medicating” is to “doing drugs” as “expat” is to “immigrant”.

I agree with this in general though of course there are exceptions though from anecdotal experience they're outliers. The amount of people I went through my teenaged and then university years with who adopted the stance of "weed isn't a "real" drug and smoking every day for years on end doesn't make me an addict" when it was clearly affecting their life negatively in a visible way was always baffling. The majority of them didn't start smoking weed to "self medicate", they started recreationally and just got to a point where they didn't WANT to function without it but would begin to associate the "boring" feeling of sobriety as something that needs to be treated.

I had a college friend who claimed it wasn't addictive, and then became addicted. Towards the end of freshman year he quit school for a couple weeks, just to determine he couldn't stop smoking and went right back. Last I spoke to him he was still trying to quit, and he had a new method of locking the weed in a box to limit his use.

His withdrawals included him becoming extremely anxious, which is presumably why so many people think the weed helps with their anxiety. In 30 years we're going to look at weed like a slightly different version of cigarettes and wonder why anyone legalized it knowing what the consequences would be.

Weed isn't physically addictive. Forming habits is a very different thing though - anything can become addictive if you train yourself to need it. I've known heavy smokers who couldn't eat or function normally without weed, but people with less structured and intense habituation who use similar amounts over similar lengths of time without any issues.

My understanding is that THC is primarily indirectly psychologically addictive. I should also add the irony that at least according to some, weed was pushed for bannage at least in part because it was something migrant farmers would use to help get through the simple monotonous work in their day [0].

To that extent it's not that different from the folks I worked with in many industries that had notable yet not directly debilitating habits in the gacha/lootbox, nicotine in one form or another, gambling, adult entertainers, expensive weekend trips, or whatever else happened to hit their dopamine receptors the right way due to past stimuli.

The bigger question is this; I've had colleagues that within a week of stopping work at a toxic place, stop drunk-dialing me at 2AM. Why aren't we asking that?

What are we not asking about cross-correlation? How many people go to darker paths to get their kicks? [1]

[0] - And maybe that's apocrypha, OTOH every productive JVM dev I've met seems ok with the devil's lettuce....

[1] - Wait NVM they become management

no idea how this got so heavily downvoted. sorry, but most of these people don't actually have a reason for using it. it hasn't been strongly evaluated for psychological use; there are a few physical conditions for which it can make a difference but essentially nobody is using it for that relative to the population size of abusers.

criticize it on twitter as harmful and addictive and a dozen people will pop up, inveigh at you with a score of mean replies, then block you. of course they're not addicted though. weed's not medicine, dude, it's, like, harmless, man.

i'll admit i'm personally biased here in that i know people who have had both temporary and permanent psychological issues from overconsumption and i just generally think depressants/downers are bad things in most cases.

I would turn that around and say addiction should be more often seen in the context of self medicating: what issue is the person having that the drug is fulfilling some important need for them, even if it is doing so in an unhealthy way?

There usually is an underlying psychological issue, and this framing gives a path towards understanding and addressing it.

most classical ADHD people I’ve met were slightly/very above average IQ types regardless of their symptoms, so my instinct would be told be that the effect may be even more pronounced- they’d probably have to do some controlling via something like looking at PSATs to get a before/after.

There are studies on that topic and no, IQ turns out just slightly lower than typical for ADHD. Sorry, no link at hand, but maybe someone else has it.

Edit: here it is - https://youtu.be/4_BIaLhdkrw which discusses https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11469-019-00125-x

https://www.adhdevidence.org/blog/smart-people-can-have-adhd...

I'll edit this to say ADHD exhibits across the IQ spectrum. Smart people cope better and it makes it difficult for diagnosis.

I've consumed far more than my fair share of cannabis, starting at age 19. I'm also almost certainly ADHD (according to friend who's a psychiatrist, but says I'm untestable), and have a meaninglessly high IQ.

I've noticed that amongst very slow people, more _seem_ to have started smoking dope at a very young age (9 to 12). The idea that pot could be very bad for adolescents in particular is not a new one. I certainly feel slowed down by it, although as the study says, it's working memory that's affected.

I sometimes wonder what life would have been like if I'd met weed at say 30yo. Would the final stages of "maturing" have played out very differently?

I recommend getting evaluated for ADHD. Both drugs and non-drug management strategies can radically improve your quality of life.

I don’t see how you can be “untestable.” There is no test- they interview you and other people in your life to see if you have the symptoms or not.

and the test is, try ritalin, if it helps you concentrate, it works. If not, no.

All people increase their ability to concentrate when on Ritalin.

I'd think hard about the possible consequences of doing this. It could be challenging to explain if you're ever asked about it when undergoing official diagnosis, you might be forced to lie or risk being labeled a drug seeker.

And I don't think looking out for whether it "helps you concentrate" is a valuable metric. Healthy people also abuse stimulants because it helps them concentrate.

Perhaps a more valuable effect to pay attention to is whether it calms you down? This is a counter-intuitive effect common in people with ADHD.

Living with attention challenges doesn't require a formal diagnosis to start implementing helpful strategies. I was diagnosed with ADHD ten years ago and while medication helped with focus issues, it came with significant side effects.

Instead, I adopted these practices: - Creating daily schedules

- Preparing essentials (clothes, lunch, gym gear) the night before

- Regular exercise

- Meditated daily

- Quitted weed

- Quitted porn

- Reducing screen time

After a while I didn't need medication for my studies and later my work. I believe that if I had continued on medication I would still believe that it was something wrong with me, which I don't anymore. I'm just a person that functions well when there is structure in my life (which I had not learned in my youth), and that's not a disability.

There have been huge advancements in specific life strategies for ADHD- many of them organically from the community, but they aren’t the same things that work for people without ADHD to add structure and discipline- they are adapted to require less executive control. You don’t need a professional diagnosis to try them- but it helps you know what is more likely to actually work, and can be helpful for some people to take it more seriously and deeply investigate and try ADHD specific strategies.

For me, the "Hacking Your ADHD" podcast has been life changing- after trying a number of productivity advice books and not knowing why I couldn't get any to work, this podcast mentions ones that work for me.

Moreover, while not everyone with ADHD does well on or needs medication, for a lot of people it is absolutely life changing... and people end up suffering needlessly for years because of preconceptions that prevent them from trying it. It’s worth trying and finding out. Personally, I think more people would benefit from the less used non stimulant medications and/or lower doses of milder stimulants- most people that have bad side effects are taking heroic doses of amphetamines. I think a lot of doctors are just incompetent when they are starting people out like that.

I do all of the things you listed above plus an extremely low dose of ritalin, and neither would work for me without the other. Structure, discipline, and habits are life changing for anyone- but a lot of ADHD people try the regular advice for implementing them unsuccessfully for years.

> There is no test- they interview you and other people in your life to see if you have the symptoms or not.

This isn't universally true. Over here the evaluation lasts around 6 hours spread over 4 appointments with a specialist (a clinical psychologist) and consists of interviews, questionnaires, and a number of (stress) tests of your focus, impulsivity, and short term memory.

How do you think those final stages of maturing would have been different for you?

I picked up weed in my mid 30s and now in my late 30s am a heavy user. Sometimes I take an edible and hack on a hard problem in the middle of the workday and it turns it into a fun challenge rather than a stressful endeavor. I think finding weed at this stage in my life has made me more introspective and certainly a better husband and person. I also quit drinking a few years ago and weed plus no alcohol has made my life immensely better.

Weed is better than alcohol. But I think you shouldn’t get too rosy with weed. There are a ton of negative things that come with it, including the potential to disassociate with society and long term memory loss.

I’d recommend visiting r/leaves regularly.

I suggest seeing a neuropsychiatric specialized in ADHD diagnosis, there are tests that can be used to diagnose ADHD no matter your IQ, by for example looking at impulse control - you can be diagnosed with an IQ at the edge of testability, that is certainly past the meaninglessly high point.

It's true that it's more difficult with a high IQ, but looking at impulse control tests, variations in subscores, IQ-like tests to detect invalid subscores, attention direction tests, as well as your personal habits and talking to people in your surroundings/who you grew up with, it's very much possible for a confident diagnosis to be made no matter the IQ.

I don't know why people still claim ADHD is "untestable" in adults, when you can just try a non-euphoric stimulant and see if they amp you up or chill you out.

I suppose, that test isn't useful for doctors trying to sort out people who want to get amped up on stimulants from those with ADHD, since it relies on subjective reporting, but if you are curious for yourself it isn't hard to find out.

(Note that there can be lots of other causes of executive function disorder, so not everyone with executive function issues responds to stimulants. But for ADHD in particular we do kind of understand the biological basis now, and the treatment has a different effect in people without that particular dendrite abnormality.)

I had a friend who was self-medicating her anxiety and bipolar disorder (as I understand it, she only found out about the bipolar disorder some time after she quit smoking). She was pursuing a bachelor's degree at the time and was highly promising in her field, according to her supervisors. But after six months of use, all her academic achievements turned into failures. Plus, during depressive phases, cannabis sometimes made her feel even worse. In the end, after a year of smoking weed, she quit because she realized it was seriously affecting her brain and abilities. And that she could end up completely screwing up her life.

Seems like a common story and I’m glad she came into that realization without wasting a decade or more.

I completely agree with you. I'm very happy for her that everything is going well for her now.

"Self-medicating with cannabis" is such a stupid idea since cannabis increase ADHD-symptoms.

Stimulants also 'increase ADHD-symptoms' for individuals that don't have ADHD, so I don't think the sentiment was attempting to address side effects of irrelevant cohorts.

It's a myth that stimulants only work on people with ADHD. ADHD is not a real condition anyway, it's a collection of symptoms that can have many different causes.

Show me a cannabis user without reduced working memory; it's a feature, not a bug.

Why is it a feature and not a bug?

Personally, I like it because it reduces the volume, both spacially and temporally, of the thoughts in my immediate working memory so that I can more clearly identify the pipeline of activity that I actually want to do (whether it's work or self-care).

I think that this is the reason that people who are later diagnosed with ADHD so often use cannabis to "self-medicate".

But it achieves this effect in a way that is superior to stimulants (don't get me wrong, I also adore coffee) in two clear ways: 1) it does not change the balance of imaginative vs. practical thinking (whereas stimulants tend to shift thinking toward the practical), and 2) it provides a much more comfortable and integrative afterglow, rather than a stimulant crash.

You work while high? What will you do when the bossman wants some pee from you?

have you ever been pee tested for work?

That will never happen, unless the test is screened for any and all kinds of medications and drugs, then I have no problem.

dfs can go down one branch forever , bounding the max depth allows a more comprehensive traversal of base branches

This is 100% my own anecdote but I believe it helps me with my autism.

And I believe that my relative who also has autism and never used cannabis in their life has been impeded by not using it. Just looking at us both now in our 40s, I have a stable career and they are a shut-in on disability.

A lot of things lead us here but at the end of the day I think cannabis gave me a release, a way to let things go, not fret too much.

I remember a meme from early 2000s where cb was represented as a pill that said "fukitol" and honestly that's how it works for me. If it wasn't for cb I would be hyperfocusing on things I can't do anything about.

Is your username a play on your INTJ result from the Myers Brigg Type test?

Regardles, I relate to your comment a lot. Research is coming out from the Network of Applied Pharmacognosy that calls this the stoner neurotype.[0]

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/146-pharmacognosy-feat...

...why wouldn't it be a play on the INTP type?

That's a fun sounding podcast, gotta give it a listen.

INTP rather, but I'm probably somewhere inbetween.

Because memorizing things is far from the most interesting aspect of consciousness.

Effect size of -0.3 standard deviations on working memory. P value of .02 corrected for FDR. Not huge. Sounds believable to me.

These studies may also miss categorize heavy/habitual users. Heavy canabis use tends to leave a somewhat functional if unmotivated individual. This is in contrast to heavy alcohol users who quickly lose the ability to function in society due to hangovers and inebriated actions.

That does not match my experience with alcoholics. In my experience they can stay functional in society for a very, very long time.

Not that that has anything to do with the original topic :)

There are some surprisingly functional heavy drinkers. People who consume alcohol throughout the day rather than just at night can largely avoid hangovers and end up with incredibly high tolerance levels.

You don’t want them to operate heavy machinery, but for rote tasks that don’t take a lot of coordination it can be hard to tell.

Not all heavy alcohol users quickly lose the ability to function in society.

Some have lucrative television careers and go on to run the Pentagon overseeing millions of others and trillion dollar budgets.

* https://haderclinicqld.com.au/what-is-a-functional-alcoholic...

* https://www.crestviewrecoverycenter.com/addiction-blog/7-sig...

Politics is seriously a virus.

That's only because politics elevates the worst of us.

Small effect size, and one I'd expect to be comparable to a lot of other things, like similar alcohol use, sleep deprivation, mood disorders, etc.

Hard as it may be for some to believe, not all people are trying to optimize for maximum brain function, evidence suggests that a vast swathe of humanity tries very hard to actively REDUCE their function on a recreational basis.

Just adding my experience/anecdote.

Cannabis came into the picture in my early 30s after years of pain management attempts following an SCI. Opiates and nerve pain meds like Lyrica somewhat dulled the pain but also dulled everything else, turning me into a near-zombie. Even at reduced doses, Lyrica messes with my thinking and lingers long after stopping. I honestly can not express strongly enough just how much high dosage, longer term drug based treatment of ongoing pain barely feels better than not managing it at all in terms of what it costs and it ultimately lead me to eventually cave and try medical cannabis.

Cannabis hasn’t eliminated the pain or worked as directly as opiates, despite what some insist. But alongside a lower Lyrica dose, it’s helped me be a person again. The pain is still there, but instead of dominating my thoughts, I can compartmentalize it and actually function, without losing the majority of my cognitive abilities when taking it. I’m 100% slower than before the injury and its usage, but I am outputting more, of a higher quality than before I introduced it into the mix using more traditional pain management methods.

It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived with chronic pain the benefits it has brought me despite the downsides. And it does have downsides.

Given the benefits it has brought me, and not knowing the lived experiences of others, I feel I am not in a position to say whether or not the downsides or the positives weigh each other out for any other individual. I imagine like most drugs, its probably depdendent on the individual and circumstances I suppose.

I have not read the paper...just reacting to the headline. As a neuroimager I can tell you that having more or less "brain activity" does not tell us much. There are plenty of instances where reduced activity is indicative of more efficient processing or different cognitive strategies.

Smoked a reasonable amount of weed in my life, starting as an adult. I have some issues with working memory, but minor ones; doesn’t effect my day-to-day. I was friends with a lot of top students in my undergrad, we all smoked fairly regularly.

Brain is like a muscle: smoking pot isn’t good for it, but there are plenty of daily ciggarette smokers who can run miles without a break; in the same way, if you need your brain for daily tasks, and you smoke pot every day, yes you would probably be better off without the weed, but you’re not going to be much worse than anyone else at your job.

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25.

All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated The ones who started the youngest are in rough shape mentally. Every single one of my friends who still lives with their parents smokes multiple times daily.

Out of all of them, only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them.

I have no doubt, smoking when you are <21 is a huge problem long term.

dang what about other people outside your sample size that did smoke under 18 and then became successful? what was your control group also?

It would be more shocking if cannabis didn't do this.

Most adolescents who get heavily into any drug generally have issues--this includes alcohol and nicotine, as well.

Yea but what’s the cause here? maybe seeking substances is a symptom itself, and not a cause for the issues.

teen drug use is trending downward and i think thats a good thing so stuff being posted like this just sounds weird to me - as a teen “drug user” that now has a computer science degree, I’d say the kids maybe need a huff of something, they dont seem ok to me. of course thats just my anecdotal opinion, dont do drugs, of course.

If you’re looking controlled study results you could refer to the post.

If you want to provide your own anecdotal evidence to refute the parent comment, fire away.

Well, the vibe I'm getting from these comments is people reacting emotionally, and assuming the study concludes that smoking cannabis causes memory problems. But the article itself says:

> The study has limitations. It was an uncontrolled, cross-sectional study, so the association seen between cannabis and brain function can’t be considered causal.

So even this study doesn't say it's causal, and admits to many other limitations. I agree with your point about evidence and science though, but this is hardly a smoking gun that cannabis makes you dumber.

My own anecdotal evidence is myself and many of my peers smoked plenty well under 18 and many of us became successful or reasonably so. the whole moral panic over cannabis use has been overwrought and fraught with bad science. now, would I want my child to use before they were 25? absolutely not. is it a catastrophe if they did? also no.

Why wouldn't you want your child to use before 25?

because the mind is developing and the science isnt conclusive as to the factors that affect that. the original claim, if im understanding this thread, is that all marijuana use before 25 will make you functionally useless. I am refuting that claim with the anecdotal evidence of myself and many of my peers that that is absolutely not the case - hope that clarified things.

What was the average THC content when you were a teen?

High. Medical state.

It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease. In hindsight it seems so obvious! But building evidence for even obvious conclusions can be surprisingly hard.

> It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease.

It was obvious even back then.

The difference was that the crap you breathed in from air pollution as well as the garbage you were breathing in from working the mills and mines was likely to kill you before the bad effects of smoking kicked in.

Once we had the EPA and got rid of the other garbage, suddenly smoking actually mattered to your mortality.

The EPA came years after the dangers of cigarette smoking were known, and months after the ban on cigarette ads was made in the USA.

Big Tobacco was really good at pushing/buying counter narratives (including but not limited to "think of all the poor tobacco farmers").

Why is marijuana considered so wonderful? Seems more like a grass roots movement ignoring the casualties along the way.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/hi...

> Why is marijuana considered so wonderful?

It isn't considered "wonderful". It's just not worth putting people into prison over. It's still a vice, like tobacco, alcohol, or gambling.

There are also some important differences between it and cigarettes.

1. Way less actual smoking needed. Or not needed at all because edibles exist.

2. It isn't chemically addictive or habit-forming for most people.

3. There are legitimate medical applications for pain or nausea relief. Again, without smoking.

> 2. It isn't chemically addictive or habit-forming for most people.

I've never understood why people claim it's not addictive when there are well established symptoms experienced when withdrawing. Disruption in sleep quality, vivid dreams, insomnia, etc.

I was a nightly smoker for a long time (only after 8pm, never during the day) -- it took extraordinary effort and multiple attempts to quit. Perhaps there isn't a specific biological addiction that can be defined precisely, but it's definitely addictive nonetheless.

"for most people"

If you were a nightly smoker you were already addicted. Most cannabis users don't use it daily. In that way it's like alcohol. This is in contrast to tobacco users, who use it like caffeine.

By the same logic, you could say “cigarettes aren’t addictive for most people”.

You could say that but you'd be wrong.

86% of cigarette smokers are daily smokers. [1]

Only 28% of cannabis users (note: not smokers, users) are daily users. 42% are daily or near-daily users. [2]

Cigarette smokers are 5 times more likely to be daily cannabis users. [3]

Most cannabis users don't use it daily. An overwhelming majority of cigarette smokers smoke (both tobacco and cannabis) daily. There's no comparison.

I'm very sorry for your struggles. They're not typical. I know that's cold comfort for you.

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5934666/

2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38775461/

3. https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/cigarette-smokers...

Touché.

Although those stats about cannabis support the idea that it’s addictive.

Daily or near daily use of nearly 50% of users sounds like it must be habit forming..

> Daily or near daily use of nearly 50% of users sounds like it must be habit forming..

Practically all of those daily/near daily cannabis users (5/6th of them) are tobacco smokers, as I also pointed out.

From the third article I cited: https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/news/cigarette-smokers... says, compared to non-smokers, smokers are 5 times more likely to be daily cannabis users.

Tobacco is intensely addictive.

"It isn't considered "wonderful".

We don't talk to the same people then

> pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated

So, like, stoners?

This has been a stereotype for forever. Would be more surprising if they found weed usage didn't correlate with these things.

All of my friends, including myself, smoked constantly from 16 to 25. We're all now college graduates with a range of successful careers, including staff software eng (me), ER doc, and 2 lawyers.

Ironically, some of the most anti-weed people I knew growing up are either hard drug addicts now, or deeply hateful fundamentalists.

I didn't review the study (wouldn't even know how to do that), but I did read the article and it doesn't say anything about permanent effects. In fact, the participants were aged 22-36, so definitely past high school age.

The title makes it sound like smoking weed causes permanent brain damage, but I don't think that's what they found at all

> The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task.

So they observed reduced memory function during a memory task for people who smoked recently or were "heavy" smokers, but not in any of the other tests. Maybe the heavy smokers have permanent brain damage, but the OP at least don't mention any findings like that.

They did find trouble with long-term heavy use

"The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task."

They theorized that abstention may help long term users, but that wasn't in write-up

Also this is not necessarily a universally bad thing.

For example if I need to work through something from first principles as opposed to instant recall I may develop a more novel understanding.

Anecdotally I have found a number of individuals that are great a remembering and therefore excel in some academic situations are the quite intellectual rigid and unable to think beyond what they are told.

But as a disclaimer I'm not advocating marijuana use as it can have detrimental affects on motivation for example.

You are misunderstanding the meaning of working memory. Working memory is very short-term and small; it's what you use when you read the second half of an equation and still remember what the first half said.

A reduction in working memory is a direct reduction in cognitive capability for some/many tasks.

Maybe, but i also think that the type of people who smoke all day as teenagers probably also have factors that will hurt them later in life unrelated to the smoking.

Its good to have actual data.

The age-old complaint about smoking weed was that it halted people's maturation -- they did not face those factors that will continue to hurt them.

Or "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs"

As someone who was once a young weed smoker, I get the sense that this is more correlation than causation. I know as many failures as I do successes from this position.

Those who have been failures were going to be failures anyway irrespective of whether they smoked weed or not, as was the case for those who ended up successful.

With that said, I don't deny that weed smoking at a young age would likely affect your brain negatively. But I don't think it determines what your outcome will be.

The article does not claim that smoking determines outcomes for any individual. It gives statistical evidence that outcomes (measured brain activity while performing certain tasks) for weed smokers are worse than for non-smokers __on average__, and that this pattern persists in various subpopulations determined by demographic and lifestyle factors.

Thank you for clarifying, but I was responding to the commenter. Not the article

This comment is so strange. You've clearly described a group prone to confounding factors, identified a viable case study outlier, and then just concluded that the dependent variable is causally impactful anyway.

Don't you think it's more likely that the cannabis use in this group is highly correlated with other risk factors?

Snoop dogg smokes it, not that I’m endorsing it

Some of the smartest programmers I know smoke marijuana quite regularly. I don't know if they all smoked at an earlier age but I know that 2 of them did.

I know a few smokers (tobacco only) who lived into their 90s, and some of them were exposed to much worse in their daily lives when they were young (leaded gasoline, solvents, etc.), but I suspect those may be genetic outliers.

Definitely. Conversely I know someone who died young of lung cancer but never smoked.

To be fair lung cancer as the biggest concern to smoking was just the advertising boogeyman to convince people to stop smoking, the vast majority of smokers die from heart attack and stroke, not lung cancer. But telling some 14 year old kid that they might just drop dead at 55 of a heart attack isn't exactly convincing, to them that is old as fuck and just dropping dead from a heart attack sounds like one of the best ways to go at the time.

I did not realize that at all. Thanks for the info!

I knew some top students in college who started smoking weed then and continued. They're still programmers or scientists now, which isn't surprising given their education and talent, but something's wrong every time I talk to them. They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago.

Edit: Forgot to specify, they're in their late 20s now.

Ok, and I know programmers and scientists that used to smoke in college and are just as sharp as ever.

Yep, the effects aren’t permanent. It seems people choose to be scatterbrained for some reason or another. I do smoke ocasionally and that is very little as I don’t like getting the anxiety/paranoia effects and weed is very potent these days. I only do it to zone off creatively, gives me the childhood magic which dampens the day to day stress. All in all it is a very positive experience. I do see kids these days overdoing it but hey, in my day kids were drinking more than today so these habits change over time

Mix with CBD only strains, a 10% THC/90% CBD ratio is vastly different and doesn't give that anxiety/paranoia, in my experience.

> They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago.

I've never used weed and definitely have moments like this from time to time. I think I'm old. And that having 3000 Slack channels piping content into your brain 8 hours a day isn't real good either.

That said, I kind of understand the effect this thread is talking about. My youngest brother was doing a lot of smoking in high school and I definitely wonder about the long term effects.

Some of this is definitely social media use and short-form content consumption. My working memory improved significantly when I limited social media consumption and started reading instead. I personally haven't smoked weed in over 5 years.

Sure but I know plenty of people who are dead sober who exhibit the same behavior.

I behave like that occasionally when I have too many unrelated tasks at once and am a little stressed. I hope people don't think it's because I was high.

We are all like this some of the time. If anyone is like this consistently, then something is wrong.

Did you ever think you’re just really dumb and think they are smart?

Not at all because they are all tech directors or high level programmers who have been paid well to do it for decades.

Yeah, that's not a true measure of intelligence.

I don't disagree but they also don't display any of the symptoms laid out in the original post you are replying to.

Also I was replying to a person who signed up specifically to make a single troll post so I replied in kind.

Probably don't do that then.

You did though

Ah I guess this is one of those "do what I say don't do what I do" situations

Noted

Don't respond to trolls.

Agreed- in fact, I think for the ones I know, it is a performance enhancer. For me, if I have an incredibly boring job to do, smoking weed enables me to keep going many many hours beyond what I could do without it. As I've gotten older, I've gotten used to boredom, so it's not necessary anymore, but still makes it much more fun

My anecdote can beat up yours :D

As opposed to data? What data? Imagine how hard this is to study:

- can we identify groups who regularly use and don’t use - and isolate other lifestyle factors - and follow them for years of the life - and get them to accurately report data - and determine which life outcomes can be attributed to cannabis use

No study like that is going to be compelling. The anecdote is going to be just as useful in your personal life. It’s how humans learn.

Sure, I very much agree. My anecdotes contradict the previous anecdotes.

Is it QED? No, the best that can be hoped for is, "Hmm, that's interesting".

I smoked a lot as a teenager and it had bad long term effects. There is no doubt. Most friends I had, who were upper middle class, did not make it through college.

I could never understand why parents would allow able-bodied adult children to live with them (regardless of marijuana use or whatever). It's not doing them any favors. Some people need a little tough love to get launched in life. Drag them down to the Army recruiting office or something.

>I could never understand why parents would allow able-bodied adult children to live with them

Agreed, just kick your kids out onto the street and let them fend for themselves. I got mine, they can get theirs. Right?

Why don't they just go buy a house or something?

As an able-bodied adult child who lived with his parents for 2 years, it absolutely did me favors in that I was able to save a small down payment for a home. Some people do need tough love, and others don't. It's a case by case basis.

Because a single person doesn't need a separate house. In many countries, the default is for children to stay home until they're married. Now, if that person is like 30 and doesn't appear to be going anywhere, maybe that's a problem.

Hopefully, it's to help enable their success and wellbeing in such a way that it gives them steps towards becoming self-sufficient. Your tone is slightly crass, but you're not wrong that enabling bad behavior in your children is in opposition to your goals as a parent. If you can reason that your nourishment of resources gives them opportunity without becoming a direct dependence and the cost to yourself isn't too high, I don't see it being a problem. Essentially, it varies on how you see your role as a parent and your relationship with your child.

I have plenty of anecdotes in the other direction. Perhaps there are other factors involved.

Weed isn't going to give you a leg up in life, but it's not a guarantee that you're going to end up in a dead end job and live with your parents forever either. Painting it as such reminds me of D.A.R.E.

D.A.R.E. was right

>In 1998, a grant from the National Institute of Justice to the University of Maryland resulted in a report to the NIJ, which among other statements, concluded that "D.A.R.E. does not work to reduce substance use." [...] The evidence suggested that, by exposing young impressionable children to drugs, the program was, in fact, encouraging and nurturing drug use.

>A ten-year study was completed by Donald R. Lynam and colleagues in 2006 involving one thousand D.A.R.E. graduates in an attempt to measure the effects of the program. After the ten-year period, no measurable effects were noted.

>In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States, David Satcher, placed the D.A.R.E. program in the category of "Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs".

>In March 2007, the D.A.R.E. program was placed on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm in clients in the APS journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science.

It was, at best, ineffective. At worst it was harmful.

Kids didn't listen to it, but it was right. It painted weed and harder drugs as pointless and dangerous, which they are.

It literally encouraged drug use through exposure

>It painted weed and harder drugs as pointless and dangerous

It painted weed as something that if you took a single toke you'd end up shooting heroin shortly after.

The hyperbole, similar the parent comment insinuating that smoking weed is a guarantee of a shitty life, is ridiculously counter-productive.

Ok. Personally I think weed saved my life.

Pointless is quite wrong though. Drugs can be dangerous and because of it should require a lot of thought, education about, and respect if you partake on it but they are definitely not pointless.

If used in ways that doesn't affect someone negatively (and here is where the danger, education, and respect part comes in) it can provide life experiences that you could never, ever have by being sober.

Doesn't mean that a sober experience is subpar, it's just different, and it's ok if you want to live that way but it's not the only and "right" way to live a life.

There isn't much to be educated about. Scientific research about the long-term effects of any of these is inconclusive, even on alcohol and tobacco which is everywhere. All they know is smoking increases the risk of lung cancer.

Putting the affects of marijuana abuse in the same category as meth or heroin is dishonest and dangerous. It destroyed their credibility.

One interesting I noticed is that the common sentiment online on "War on drug failed" is "so we'd better surrender to drug".

The related "legalizing weed will make people use it less" was a common argument before it was legal. We were actually taught that in college. Did not seem like a good-faith argument.

You have a bunch of anecdotes where the only successful people from the same school and friend group are the ones that regularly smoked and still smoke weed? They have the best memories of the people you know?

>Weed isn't going to give you a leg up in life, but it's not a guarantee that you're going to end up in a dead end job and live with your parents forever either.

Sure, and smoking doesn't guarantee lung cancer. It sure as hell makes it more likely, though.

>You have a bunch of anecdotes where the only successful people from the same school and friend group are the ones that regularly smoked and still smoke weed?

I have a bunch of anecdotes where people I knew who regularly smoked weed throughout high school now range from successful to wildly successful.

I know a bunch of people that abstained and yet they work dead end jobs, have developed mental issues, and/or live with parents still.

Hence my conclusion that there might just be some other (more important) factors.

Sure, that makes sense. If the risk of something is 1 in 10, 10 people do it, you have 9 examples of people who have no problems and 1 example of someone with an issue.

I was thinking you were saying that you had examples of people who were successful because they smoked weed, where others similarly situated were unsuccessful having not smoked it.

>I was thinking you were saying that you had examples of people who were successful because they smoked weed

No, and I'm not disputing that weed is harmful.

What I took issue with in the parent comment is that it insinuates that smoking weed is a guarantee of a shitty life. I disagree with the weight of the harm they imply.

There is a lot of other factors involved, and a lot more nuance and context to consider.

I have anecdotes of them having good jobs and being successful. I do not have anecdote of them being the ONLY successful. Success wise, they are around the same as everyone else.

> Sure, and smoking doesn't guarantee lung cancer. It sure as hell makes it more likely, though.

And even with smoking it is possible to exaggerate health risks it poses. Just like you severely exaggerated marihuana risks.

How did I severely exaggerate anything? I am not OP

"only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them" - I'd say that's luck and not success :)

The success part is holding them for 10 years through all the ups and downs

This so much. I grew up in Oregon when it was legal for "medical" purposes. You could tell who smoked pot; they were not chill, they were dumb.

> Out of all of them, only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them.

Holy lucky. Bet just about everyone on HN would wish this were them.

I observe the same thing, but I think in a lot of towns and schools, like yours and mine, the kids who chose to smoke weed were the ones who saw themselves as unmotivated losers and screwups. The connection could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think there are enough places like that to skew any study that doesn't somehow control for it. It would be interesting to see if the result holds for kids who didn't see themselves that way, kids who are bright and ambitious or even just average, or if it only holds for kids who already saw themselves as underachievers before they started getting high.

I believe that your perspective is harmful. I'm an accomplished staff engineer who has worked at multiple megacorps and valley darling companies including MANGAFANGA or whatever you call it and am highly goal oriented and passionate contributor. I started smoking weed at 13. I own multiple homes and live a well adjusted life with my wife. I support my parents and sisters. Without weed, I can get tunnel vision, or looped, trapped in the many contradictions and highly irrational layer 8 issues that permeate high stakes corporate decision making surrounding my technical efforts. Weed helps this all bother me less. I vape every day. Often on balconies at work. I'm afraid of schizophrenia, but besides that, weed has been a miracle drug for me. I have a psychiatrist, I've had pharmaceuticals, but really the plant has been the best thing for me and I wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as I have without it.

Yeah well I started smoking weed when I was 16 and I'm a poor man approaching retirement with no family or friends or assets and a tenuous job predicated in my ability to perform manual labor. Now what.

Weed is a drug. Drugs are tools. Weed makes things bother you less. It's obviously possible to take it too far.

Weed is a drug. Drugs affect people differently. The question is: do you want to roll the dice?

This is true for all drugs, legal or not.

True, but with expert medical guidance you can often avoid unnecessary side effects or be aware of them.

It’s like playing a game where the best-case scenario is probably fine

You're statistically more likely to become a burnout drunk than a burnout stoner.

Literally every highly successful person you look up to in tech has been a proponent of weed usage, hell some even went farther with psychedelics.

Like op, I too attribute a lot of my success to being a daily user of weed since I was 12.

Exceptional success is often associated with exceptional behavior. Not as in good, but as in the exception. For instance many/most highly successful tech people also dropped out of university and don't have many great things to say about it. They may well be right, but that's not a path to success for the average person unless they instead plan on pursuing a skilled trade or what not.

I also imagine extreme success drives social issues. It has to suck not ever truly being able to know if somebody is interested in you because they're interested in you, or if they're simply interested in your money/fame. To say nothing of the fact that a lot of these guys can't even really safely walk around strangers anymore. It all seems like a path to various artificial forms of coping, like drugs. Basically the same reason Hollywood types are also screwed.

What was the average THC content when you were a teenager?

So you are just like 50% of everyone else. It isn't unusual or uncommon nor proof that you did anything wrong at all, statistically a lot of people are going to be in that situation regardless of their own personal merits just based on the luck of the draw in life events and choices. That is why so many people are unhappy with current economic standards because obviously a lot of people that deserve better get shafted regardless, and others who are below average make out like bandits.

I am pretty much in similar situation, the contradictions can sometimes drive me nuts, maybe I should try weed

this sounds like a parody comment

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Happy for you, seriously.

Getting this subthread back on topic, the study defines heavy (or medium) use - i.e., the problem categories in the study - as 1000+ (or 11-1000 days of usage). Are you a medium-heavy user?

I don't think you being an exception disproves the parent's generality that on the average heavy weed usage doesn't correlate with people in your position.

Based on the content of their post (started at 13, uses daily) they are WAY over 1100 days

It's 1100 times not days.

Anyone who smokes every couple of hours is averaging around 8 times a day and hits that in under five months.

People who do not smoke weed have no idea how heavy, heavy really is.

I'm not sure what your are arguing here. Even if they are 30 they are well over 1100

I wasn't meaning to argue anything beyond perhaps bringing to light how naïve these studies are. We don't count alcohol consumption this way. Is someone that smokes once per week for 20 years a heavy user? Would anyone consider someone that drinks once per week for 20 years a heavy drinker?

Why do these studies assume weed is cumulative but alcohol isn’t? Is it because most researchers have experience with being drunk but zero to little experience with being high on weed?

It seems likely there is a difference between someone who is buzzed all day every day for years vs someone that smokes several times each weekend, but these studies all group them together as one. Most likely because the researchers don't understand what they are studying and produce results that do not match the lived experience of their research subjects.

Oh I see. Yes I would definitely agree with that.

Thanks for the clarification

Fair point, but not material for the parent's case.

To your point, AFAIK, the study doesn't differentiate potency of weed. Not all cannabis is created equal and the strands commonly available now are way more potent (with more arrows pointing to addictiveness) than "your dad's weed."

I believe his generality has more to do with his friends than the drug itself. I am a heavy user. Remembering names sometimes is hard upon first introductions, but besides that my short-term memory seems to function just fine. I have had many coworkers in similar situations at the organizations I've been a part of. We've stayed friends, they're doing just fine. Some are in happier work situations and no longer consuming to cope. I've been actively trying to find my own balance as well. But generalizing stoner -> loser is a harmful, limited, and ignorant perspective in my opinion.

This sounds like the "my granddad smoked like a chimney and lived happily to 92" argument.

This whole thread is pretty funny to me, because from a group that generally prides themselves on being logical/rational and valuing the scientific method, it just highlights why anecdotes are generally useless in topics like this.

Sure, this is just a forum, and it's not like many folks are performing experiments with statistical analysis on this topic. I just think it's funny how the language that people using imply that they are so sure that their anecdote is the right one: "This is such an obvious problem", "Your position is harmful", "Some of the smartest programmers I know", etc. I mean, the whole reason statistics was invented was to actually bring rigor to observational analysis.

At a previous company I worked at, the server from where we shared A/B test results was named, as an ironic joke, "Obviously". It was done to deliberately highlight the point that it was pretty easy to come to any conclusion (right or wrong) and use language like "obviously" to kind of imply that the experiment wasn't necessary. I think there were even some example where this kind of language was used to argue the exact opposite possible outcomes to highlight why statistical analysis is so important.

You do realize that the comments in replies quoting with counter anecdotes is specifically to point out that anecdotal evidence is just that and nothing more?

I think you might have missed out on some subtleness.

I agree that short term memory loss being a side effect of heavy use is common knowledge to anyone who is or knows a heavy user.

But I think you shouldn't be so confident that smoking when young is a huge problem long term.

I would have been in the 'heavy user' category by the time I was 17, and I've had the odd experience of persistent short term memory loss (e.g., having multiple people tell me 'you just asked me that' with a bewildered look). I also quit smoking when I was 17, and haven't had any noticable symptoms since I was 20 (> 20 years ago). I doubt if anyone who knows me would say I'm not 'successful.'

Not recommending heavy use, to be sure. Just saying that it's not necessarily a permanent, long-term effect.

Interesting your only metirc of success is how much money someone has.

And it’s not just about memory... It’s the whole motivation thing

cannabis is pretty safe for the average person, even heavy users. it's not good for you, but i think most of the effects like this are explained by selection effects. unhappy people use it to self-medicate.

however, using cannabis comes with a very big tail risk. if you are susceptible to psychosis, cannabis can cause it or make it much more severe. this is undoubtedly causal.

people take all kinds of worse risks in life which everyone agrees should be acceptable, so I think cannabis should be legal. but I also think that if people clearly understood this risk, most would choose to avoid cannabis.

When I was younger I had a bout of insomnia and somebody procured me some wee. I did not know how strong it was and had a psychedelic trip instead. It was terrifying, I thought it was the end for me. Nobody seems to believe me that weed could give you psychedelic visuals.

Of course it can, weed is a multiplier. You probably had more than just insomnia like anxiety or ?

> "Biometric information: Sold or Shared ℹ: Yes"

This from the newsatlas.com privacy policy. Sad how "privacy" policies these days don't even try. "Yep we're selling all your data."

As for the study, it doesn't seem confident in its own findings, admitting to various shortcomings of the data in conclusion. But in general it should be no surprise that "heavy use" of cannabis is asking for trouble at any age.

Some will get away with it, similar to functioning alcoholics who still excel in their work. But for most of us, my opinion is to avoid heavy use of any drug, including alcohol. Cannabis is more enjoyable and intellectually or creatively insightful with occasional use anyway, otherwise it's more haze than high.

Even if the worst that happens is you have a 10 year zone-out where you do very little, you still lost that 10 years. There is a small exception: you really wanted to zone out for 10 years!

This prompts questions about influencing kids...

With some generations of kids, you might be able to convince them that the people who want to keep them down... would be happy for them to become spaced-out stoners.

With current kids, it really is true that many would be happy to keep kids down. (Look at the dumbing-down and manipulating behavior of many top tech and media companies.)

But can you convince the kids of that?

And, even if kids thought that the dumbing-down was real, and a tool of oppression and exploitation, would they feel motivated to fight back? And would they know how?

Or is any youth rebellion and fighting instinct already in in some defeated, post mode, maybe counterintuitive to earlier generations. (Like, for example, they're subverting that they're supposed to rebel, and instead leaning towards nihilistic indulgence and indifference?)

It's very true. Having been a heavy user for 4 years in my late teens, I do notice that my memory isn't what it used to be. I'm having to write things down all the time, including people's names and stats.

Well, you know one thing was true and another is also true, but the same thing happened to me long before I started doing much with weed. In my late teens I had a few subjects absolutely locked into memory, and then in my early to mid twenties I struggled to remember names until I'd met them 3 times.

Is it possible, maybe in addition, that this is a side effect of aging, additional stress, responsibility, environmental distractions, etc?

Like for all of those physiological reasons, it’s not even a clear correlation at the individual level.

That said, there’s general scientific consensus that any mood altering substance can have an impact on cognitive function.

Could have something to do with brain maturation (including prefrontal cortex development) not completing until age 25-26 or so...

Seems plausible that cannabis and other things can have a less than desireable effect on the brain growth, especially for the will power, discipline, decision making, motivation that the prefrontal cortex provides.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3621648/

For me cannabis 100 percent effects sleep. You should determine that for yourself, which quite easy to do by keeping a dream journal for 1 month on weed and completely free from weed. That for me is reason enough not to do it. Sleep in critical for high performance, for many people sleep might not be the limiting factor but it is likely a huge factor to being at your best each day.

No offense to OP, but here are a couple of responses

1) Snark Number 1: "Reduced brain function? Sounds like they're chillin'"

2) Snark Number 2: "Reduced brain function? Like a relaxed human being"

3) No Snark: given the following paragraph, should any sentient human ever take posts about cannabis as anything other than provocative and unproductive fight-bait?

"The study has limitations. It was an uncontrolled, cross-sectional study, so the association seen between cannabis and brain function can’t be considered causal. And because the participants were young adults, the results can’t be generalized to other age groups. The researchers also lacked data on typical THC dose and potency, additional components such as cannabidiol (CBD), and how the cannabis was administered."

should any (rot-)content that's this heavily caveated not be auto-removed just like any SPAM would? Again, no offense to the OP or their intentions, but, come on ...

This is a well known thing.

Charles Bukowski said this exact same thing in an interview about alcohol decades ago.

Not every cannabis user is Carl Sagan.

Do we know if Carl Sagan used cannabis as an adolescent?

I knew from my experience that heavy or recent cannabis use can mess with working memory. When I quit smoking, my brain bounced back. So if you need to be sharp for something important, maybe lay off the weed for a bit.

Interesting how many comments here say that a big issue with pot is that it makes you "unmotivated". I suppose this is a problem for people who are in tough spots in life and are using pot as a form of escapism. But besides this, what exactly do we need to be motivated for? Grinding away harder at a corporate job? At a certain level "motivation" can be counterproductive and you might be better off slowing down and appreciating your life as it exists now - something that weed can help with in my experience.

Clickbaity headline and correlation v causation discussions aside, this tidbit is particularly interesting:

> MRIs measured brain activity while the participants undertook seven tasks designed to test emotion, reward, motor function, working memory, language, relational or logical reasoning, and theory of mind or social information processing.

> The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task.

So, as far as emotion, reward, motor function, language, relational or logical reasoning, and theory of mind or social information processing go - no correlation between cannabis use and brain activity in those respects was found? Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence of course, but it's interesting that significant effects were found with memory and only memory.

"on average"? "in mice"?

My heavily pot-smoking friends are among the most brilliant, successful people that I know. They started in their teens. But I'm 60 and so are they. Different weed? Correlation with other things that differ today?

Same. All my good college buddies that smoked weed are successful with families and kids. They all started young. I remember when weed switched to more potent variety in the 90s, you just have to smoke less to get the same effect, like beer vs wine vs liquor.

Are we going back into a reefer madness phase again? Please say no.

I have weeder friends in all walks of life. I know one guys a PHD now.

Very very different weed.

This has been a known thing for decades

Source?

Any brain that has not yet perished.

Google “cannabis developing mind” or “adolescent” and there is a flood of data

Shocking nobody who has ever met one.

I seriously don't know why this is making rounds on HN as if it were some revelation.

It should be pretty obvious that messing with your brain circutry in such an overt manner leads to various unintended consequences, just like every other vice (yes even "benign" things like social media or video game addiction).

I've never done any drugs outside of alcohol, and I didn't do that until I was 21 and I never really drank that much even when I did.

I never smoked weed as a teenager because I had heard horror stories of people spiking illegal drugs with really horrible stuff. I have no idea if those stories were true, mostly likely they were exaggerated by law enforcement, but it worked to make me too much of a coward to try it.

Because I never smoked weed, I've grown a borderline-irrational hatred of it. It always felt like when my friends in high school started getting into weed, they would become insufferable pseudo-intellectuals who thought they were very deep because they watched a few Carl Sagan or Alan Watts videos. I hated how stupid it made my friends and I hated how it seemed to ruin their ability to remember things.

It's not clear how much of this is because of the weed, or just the fact that teenage boys are often just insufferable, by the way I remember it (which doesn't mean it's accurate) is that weed made all my friends in high school into pretentious morons.

I'm kind of glad that I never got into it now. I'm insufferable and pretentious enough as it is, I don't need chemicals to help with that.

sounds like it would benefit you greatly tbh

Agreed. They wouldn't have to use so much that they suffered the negative affects to use enough to get past their borderline irrational hangups

Unironically, the superior tone likely has done you worse than a single joint.

No argument here, I'm definitely judgmental on this stuff. I probably shouldn't be, hence why I said that my hatred was borderline irrational.

That said, I still find potheads completely insufferable.

> That said, I still find potheads completely insufferable.

In all fairness, they may find you equally insufferable. And to think, you’re not even a pothead!

Probably true. I just noticed a strong delta of before and after when my friends in high school would get into weed.

I hope I didnt come off as flippant or discounting your experience. I just more meant that its likely due to the differences that led you both to where you were, that the feeling is mutual. And that neither of you would be "wrong" for potentially feeling that way. Just different streams I suppose :)

All good!

> It always felt like when my friends in high school started getting into weed, they would become insufferable pseudo-intellectuals

My experience is that it temporarily made me and my friends blithering idiots. There seems to be a broad range of experiences.

Always known this. It's making people dumber. More work for me, I guess also qualified positions require drug tests.

Before you go "oh buy anxiety and adhd" I just had another full anxiety crying breakdown a few days ago, yet I manage without drugs.

How about months after? Does it persist?

I want to find such studies on aspirin.

And also on Exhaust Gases would be nice too.

maybe install a delay in vapes or something

"Study [..] found that the drug can reduce brain function"

Causal language in news on correlational (case-control) studies should be a crime.

This is a brazen misrepresentation of the results. The direction of the causal arrow (cannabis -> dumb vs dumb -> cannabis)--or if there even is a causal arrow (other factor(s) -> cannabis+dumb)--is purely editorialization and born of a severe lack of journalistic integrity.

I would be also careful on mixing the word dumb -> lower brain activity. The study focuses on brain activity. We cannot say for sure either if the lower brain activity results into dumber life choices. Brain activity in those areas == intelligence???

Maybe cannabis users become efficient like MoE models, and they don't have to activate as many neurons at each inference step :)

Even worse: proponents of the Neural Efficiency Hypothesis[1] might interpret the "mean brain activation" values reported in the study[2] in the exact opposite manner. :)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_efficiency_hypothesis

[2]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Glad someone said it. Unfortunately we are swimming against the tide...

"Don’t drink, don’t do drugs" is still such awfully effective advice.

Turns out the recreational drugs were never good for you. Is there a single recreational popular >100M user drug that’s good for most? Maybe coffee?

It’s a shame there are so many with reduced brain function and IQ. Next thing will be shocking studies showing regular shroom usage is bad too, lol.

It is a shame we are in a post truth society. People burying their heads in the sand.

>Maybe coffee?

Creatine as well. But yeah, pretty much all the rest of them are bad for you.

Creatine is not a drug.

The definition of drug is quite wide reaching. It isn't a food, it isn't inert, has a very measurable impact on the body, and the stuff you buy in a powder is far more potent than what you'd find in food. About the same as caffeine. Just doesn't have mental effects.

Coffee isn't good either. Probably a lot less bad than weed, though. And it's always brought up, "why is X illegal but coffee isn't?"

Ha. You’re right about that. Coffee can create some weird heart issues, so I think you’re right.

I don't drink coffee because I think it tastes gross, but I've certainly had my fair share of caffeine from energy drinks and Diet Coke.

I'm pretty convinced that caffeine masked the more obvious symptoms of sleep apnea for most of my adult life. I think I was getting very bad sleep but since I had always drunk lots of Diet Coke I was able to ignore the symptoms.

I've gotten treatment for my sleep apnea (using the mouthpiece), and I'm caffeine free now, so I think I'm getting better sleep, but who the hell knows what kind of brain damage I have ended up with because I didn't take it seriously.

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/is-coffee-good-or-bad-for-your...

> “The overall evidence has been pretty convincing that coffee has been more healthful than harmful in terms of health outcomes,” said Frank Hu, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Basically everything performance enhancing is bad because that means use is rewarded yet there's always the cost. This explains why not-yet-banned-for-centuries substances like alcohol, coffee, tobacco, sugar, salt, skydiving, whatever, are preferred over drugs; use is detrimental, so those problems self correct to some degree.

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