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Comment by milkshakes | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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'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

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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