[thestranger]

A large number of my friends in High School smoked. Many of them were not accepted into college, or are now on academic probation. I always assumed that marijuana was at least contributing to their poor performances in school.

Now I am in the honors college of a fairly good public school, and I am surprised at how many of my fellow honors students smoke.

Nevertheless, I believe that smoking pot is still a bad habit. Many of my friends say that it makes them feel happy and that it makes them relax. That's all well and good, but to me it seems that they became dependent on pot to make them happy and relax. I see first-hand how stressed out many of them get without it, and I can't help but wonder if pot is the problem.

Regardless of whether it makes you dumber, it can kill your motivation because it seems like you've found what makes you happy and you no longer feel like working hard.

Note that I have never used marijuana and am basing my opinion on observations of my friends who do/did.

[dkersten]

It goes both ways, I think.

I know people who smoke and get completely mashed and disfunctional. I also know people who are successful and produced some of their best work while high.

I think it really depends on the persons attitude. The people who are successful would have been successful anyway while the people who aren't wouldn't be if they didn't smoke weed. I think weed acts as an amplifier, good and bad. Of course, this doesn't account for the people who are successful in what they do, just not while smoking weed, I guess they exist too.

Also, I think there's a danger that the person smoking may not notice when the positive effects start turning negative. One person I know very well used to work really well while smoking, but recently has become more agitated when not smoking and the weed really just brings her to normal performance, rather than above normal performance like it used to. Note that I noticed this after she had been smoking very regularly for maybe five years, so I possibly long term, the negative effects begin to overshadow the positive, though one person is hardly a scientific observation.

[cbs]

Now I am in the honors college of a fairly good public school, and I am surprised at how many of my fellow honors students smoke.

The only ones you notice are the ones who fit the stereotype. How would you even spot the rest? Thing is, the ones who fit the stereotype are already a group on their own, it just turns out that getting high fits their lazy style really, really well.