Hacker News Reader

Comment by iforgot22 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

> 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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com