[sarojmoh1]

I let marijuana destroy my life. For about a year, I experienced all the benefits ppl use it for. Then all of a sudden I would get panic attacks and full-on psychosis. I would not wish these episodes on my worst enemy.

The smell of it is so ubiquitous now that it's legal and it's a great deal of anxiety for someone like me.

I acknowledge its benefits and that I'm probably a rare case. But it is disturbing to me how mainstream it's become. Certainly..some ppl will face the same repercussions I went through and I don't want that to happen.

I still think it should be controlled medically and not as available as lotto tickets

[gnulinux]

> [I personally abused something that's proven to be extremely helpful to millions of people, but because I had a uniquely bad experience with it, I vote for people having harder access to it.]

I deeply apologize for saying this but what an absolutely bizarre opinion. Let people enjoy what they enjoy.

[haswell]

Most people safely enjoy alcohol. No one is pushing a narrative that alcohol is universally healthy and safe, and pushing accounts of alcoholism and other forms of maladaptive use under the rug. Nor do we blame alcoholics for the genes that make them susceptible.

I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the downsides that many experience are described.

I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.

If someone describing their own negative experiences and belief that those experiences warrant more controls is so bizarre, it might be worth exploring why that is.

That doesn’t mean one has to agree that controls are needed, but this notion that “well that’s just your problem, leave me alone” is an unhelpful attitude that does very little to illuminate the reality of the situation.

The reality is that some people form a habitual/addictive relationship with cannabis. The reality is that cannabis severely disrupts REM sleep. The importance of REM sleep is a growing concern as we learn more about the process of sleep and how a lack of it predicts serious mental deterioration later in life.

To be clear, I use cannabis regularly and find that it helps me deal with some aspects of C-PTSD. At the same time, I also find that it reduces the quality of my sleep.

This is a tradeoff I accept because the alternative is less sleep overall, which is worse than the degraded sleep I’m getting now. But if I could otherwise sleep normally, adding cannabis to the mix is something I’d be more cautious about.

The point behind that anecdote is simply that using cannabis involves tradeoffs.

I don’t think access should be further controlled, but I do think education needs to be prioritized.

[jeffwask]

>I strongly believe that cannabis should be legal, but also find it quite >problematic that many users and advocates will quickly bristle the moment the >downsides that many experience are described.

>I think the horrific levels of injustice prior to legalization has had a >pendulum effect on conversations about safety and downsides.

I think you hit the heart of the issue. The negatives have been used as a cudgel and amplified beyond reason over the years to block progress on legalization. It's create a knee jerk reaction to anyone who talks about their negative outcomes. (This isn't exclusive to MJ legalization. Try talking about quitting alcohol in a group setting over drinks. Something I had to do because I had negative outcomes with alcohol.)

Very often these points are parroted by organizations that want to block legalization for reasons that have nothing to do with the issues of abuse or health, for example the Private Prison system which is one of the biggest lobbies against marijuana reform.

While at the same time, society happily brushes aside the same concerns about alcohol which proportionately has worse side effects and outcomes. We also still sell cigarettes with glee for the tax dollars while they essentially have nothing but negative outcomes. People pay 8-10 dollars a day to murder themselves and cause undo excess cost and burden on healthcare but no one give a shit anymore.

It's all so performative, inconsistent, and driven by capitalist motivations tangentially associated with the actual issue.

[yucky]

People should be able to smoke in their house, but there is no good reason that every park and beach and other public space has to reek of weed smoke.

[slibhb]

It's not a bizarre opinion.

Consider substances like weed or alcohol that can ruin lives but usually don't. How should our laws treat these substances? I'm not sure but there's nothing absurd about thinking they should be illegal.

Also consider: what are laws for? To some degree they're about discouraging certain behavior. It would be nice to think that we could discourage weed/alcohol without making them illegal but it's not clear that we can do that.

[notch898a]

>Also consider: what are laws for?

Whether laws are here to protect and/or ensure prosperity of society, or whether laws are there to maximize freedom seems to be a huge source of contention in our modern society. Ultimately I think the two ideals, while overlapping many places, are incompatible. Hopefully we can rewind the consolidation of federal powers to allow people with different ideals to move to different states to achieve something closest to their desired way of life. Federal drug laws controlled by unelected beuracrats are an example of making this selection impossible.

[AlwaysRock]

I think this is more common than is really known at the moment. I had a similar experience. So have at least three other former regular users that I know. We've all stopped using almost entirely now.

That being said, any drug when abused will have negative side effects. If marijuana is legal it will be easier to actually test, regulated, and provide guidelines for safe use.

Everyone knows taking 6+ shots of some form of booze will likely cause you to be drunk. How much weed will cause you to be incapacitated? One puff? One joint? A dab? Half an edible? It's not clear. That feels like the real problem currently.

[monetus]

Anxiety is being nailed down to fewer chemicals, as far as word of mouth goes - I have a friend who tries to increase the CBN to avoid anxiety.

[jerrygenser]

> I still think it should be controlled medically and not as available as lotto tickets

You could make the same argument for alcohol... it can destroy lives and yet is still legal.

[droopyEyelids]

The public health case for restrictive regulation of alcohol is actually much stronger than for marijuana

[lotsofpulp]

Would the public health case be due to alcohol’s effects on others, or one’s self?

If it is one’s self, then sugar, carbs, and sat fats are surely up there also.

Although, one could define healthcare paid by other taxpayers as an effect on others, and that would encompass everything.

[red-iron-pine]

Alcohol is pretty terrible for your body and is carcinogenic. Then again, so is sunlight, or, as the parent pointed out, sugar, sat-fats, etc. The difference is I need some amount of sunlight and saturated fat to live.

Alcohol also heavily correlates with assaults, rapes, domestic violence, and murder. Something crazy high like 60% or more of assaults. Ditto for things like car accidents after 9pm -- overwhelmingly alcohol related. DUIs kill a non-trivial amount of people.

[aaomidi]

Drunk driving is a huge one.

Meanwhile CDC hasn’t been able to create actual evidence that driving while high causes more accidents. https://www.cdc.gov/marijuana/health-effects/driving.html

I’m not saying it doesn’t but alcohol causes so many unnecessary deaths in society due to drunk driving. Note: I’m not advocating for alcohol to be banned.

[lotsofpulp]

Phone use while driving probably eclipses any other risk factor these days:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-03-14/deaths-bro...

But I bet it would be very politically unpopular to address phone use while driving.

[mrguyorama]

It isn't. My state is looking into making the penalties stronger and people are generally favorable for that because they still see people driving every day with their face glued to their phone.

The only people against distracted driving penalties are people who are entitled and think they should be able to put others in danger for their minor convenience or libertarian assholes who think seatbelt laws are oppressive nanny stating.

[andersentobias]

I know that psychosis on alcohol happens, but I have never personally seen a person get psychotic from alcohol.

Cannabis on the other hand...

[lotsofpulp]

What is psychosis defined as, and how is it any worse than the effects of excess alcohol consumption?

On 30+ years, I have never seen someone get violent from cannabis, but with alcohol, it is a regular occurrence.

Worked at a hotel when I was younger too, and you can bring me a hotel full of people high on cannabis, and the worst they ever did was buy a ton of snacks.

Alcohol, on the other hand, was responsible for noise complaints, broken televisions, furniture, sexual assault, violent assault, cops being called all the time, etc.

[andersentobias]

Look. Maybe I'm crazy, but being unable to control one's emotions is a much less severe condition than not being able to know what is real and what is not for the individual in question.

As an aside, my father was an alcoholic and a pathetic loser indulging in as much alcohol as self-pity. I am not defending excessive alcohol consumption.

My point is: Even if you think weed is relatively better than alcohol from a big picture societal POV (we can agree to disagree here), don't underestimate the bad effects of weed. Don't be a weed-smoking loser just because it's legal.

You have one body. Take care of it.

[red-iron-pine]

> I know that psychosis on alcohol happens, but I have never personally seen a person get psychotic from alcohol.

I was a bartender for a while in college and off-and-on afterwards. I've seen dozens of barfights, several with people ending up in hospitals. No shootings, thankfully, but that absolutely happens outside of bars and clubs.

There were at least 3 fatal DUIs that were traced back to coming from bars that I worked at; it led to the closure of one of them.

Alcohol correlates directly to levels of domestic abuse, rape, assault, and murder. Most traffic accidents after 9pm are alcohol related.

But weed makes you crazy and psychotic.

[iancmceachern]

Because you've never seen it makes it so it never happened?

[TremendousJudge]

I know that driving while high accidents happen, but I have never heard of anybody being ran over by a high driver.

Alcohol on the other hand...

[andersentobias]

It would be interesting to see larger samples of weed smokers vs alcohol drinkers, and the effects of each.

I guess all sample sizes of weed smokers are small in public health studies.

[bitcoin_anon]

Have you ever been to a bar?

[Scoundreller]

Been to Oktoberfest. All of the Brit, Irish, Canadian and Australian members of the crew could not believe that much alcohol in one place without any barfights/disputes/blah.

“This event wouldn’t be possible in Ireland”

[red-iron-pine]

I've been to Oktoberfest, too. My brother lived in Bavaria for a while.

There were several fights, some blatant abuse of cocaine, and one of my female friends had someone get a hand down her pants and squeeze her butt without permission.

No one got shot or stabbed, but it certainly wasn't a peaceful hangout.

[aaomidi]

Or literally any city at 2 AM on Saturday/Sunday

[riffic]

you've never seen an angry drunk? you're very privileged.

[kentrado]

Alcohol can literally kill you.

Cannabis on the other hand will not.

[valenaut]

Likewise for lotto tickets.

[xyzwave]

I could say the same thing about running, overdo it and you’ll hurt yourself.

We don’t need gatekeepers to prescribe these things only when a legitimate medical use demands it. There are countless examples in society where we allow people do things that are dangerous purely for the fun of it. Just because these are drugs we don’t need to justify their use as medicines.

Instead let’s inform the public and have them make their own choice. The regulation should be in proportion to the extent of the harm. In both cannabis use and running, it’s restricted to the individual (and temporary), so we should regulate minimally.

[posterboy]

That's a slippery Sloap argument, and an absurd one. The benefits of running to the cardio vascular system are generally seen as a positive, contrary to smoking. The threshold to overdoing it is orders of magnitudes out of proportion. And there is no common opinion on psychological impairment from running, again in contrast to the psychadelica related substance abuse.

[xyzwave]

I don’t think this is a slippery slope [0], I’m only drawing a comparison.

Additionally there are health benefits to cannabis (and psychedelics) as well. Whether it’s stress, anxiety (ironically), depression, etc. so the comparison remains apt.

0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

[posterboy]

Here's a cthird comparandum for you. Breathing is rather beneficial for literally everybody and not doing it is very detrimental, actually fatal. How do you feel about the slippery slope now?

[aaomidi]

Running has a significant negative impact on your joint health since most people run with the wrong techniques.

[gamblor956]

When I was a public defender representing the mentally disordered, literally all of my clients' mental disorders had been triggered by marijuana use. Cannabis (along with other psychoactive substances) is known to trigger latent mental disorders (like schizophrenia, etc.). This is one of the justifications given for continuing to keep it illegal at the federal level.

This doesn't mean that marijuana causes mental disorders; it only triggers latent disorders, meaning those already present in the brain due to genetics, environment, or brain damage (caused by concussions, drug use, etc.).

Other psychoactive substances (especially meth) can actually cause mental disorders due to the structural brain damage they inflict.

[notch898a]

It's my understanding in some jurisdiction claiming a drug nexus makes you eligible for certain more attractive sentences or diversions, such as going to a treatment facility in lieu of jail.

Could it be that some of your clients would have, say, benefitted from claiming a drug triggered nexus to take advantage of this?

[gamblor956]

No, the meme of "drug nexus" being a "get out of jail" card is just an internet meme. It only applies to drug possession or drug use cases (like intoxication). It doesn't apply to crimes where drug use is irrelevant to the charges (such as larceny), or a lesser charge (such as compared to assault,, etc.)

For most of my clients, the cases were about whether they had mental disorders. And the consequence of being deemed to have a mental disorder that caused them to offend was involuntary commitment to a mental hospital for at least as long as their original prison sentence (and for violent offenders, theoretically for the rest of their lives).

[notch898a]

Ah damn. Is RDAP just a scam? I had thought for instance non-violent federal crimes are often eligible for reduced time, often even if they weren't drug crimes. (you're only eligible for this program if you had substance use)

  Federal law allows the BOP to reduce the sentences of non-violent offenders who complete the RDAP program by up to one year. The RDAP program is voluntary and takes 500-hours, nine- to twelve-months to complete. The RDAP is authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3621, which directs the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to provide residential substance abuse treatment for all eligible federal inmates.

Guessing the feds just lie and don't actually take the time off then?.

>only applies to drug possession or drug use cases

Yeah but these are pretty common charges no? Seems relevant. For instance, my understanding is in some instances if you have a drug disorder with possession you're in a better position than merely found in possession and don't even use drugs (or use them without having a "disorder"), as the drug-nexus'd disorder might make you eligible for some programs.

I gotta say I didn't realize these programs were just memes, must be a lot of attorneys lying to their clients.

[gamblor956]

In theory RDAP is open to all (federal) offenders. In practice, only those with drug-related offenses make it into the program, and the wait list is years-long and most eligible inmates complete their sentence before their spot on the wait list comes up. The reduction of sentence is applied against the drug-related sentence. The prisoner is moved to a halfway house up to 1-year before the original expiration of their sentence, and can be returned to prison for violating the rules of their transitional release.

Yeah but these are pretty common charges no? Seems relevant. For instance, my understanding is in some instances if you have a drug disorder with possession you're in a better position than merely found in possession and don't even use drugs (or use them without having a "disorder")

Yes, they're quite common. But pure drug offenses (other than dealing) generally get sent straight to diversion if they qualify (and space is available). Most drug offenses in addition to other crimes and this generally makes the defendant ineligible for diversion. Given two similar defendants whose only difference is that one is substance dependent and the other is not, the dependent defendant will never get a meaningfully shorter sentence than the defendant who is not and is more likely to end up with additional restrictions on their parole that make it easier to send them back to prison.

must be a lot of attorneys lying to their clients.

The programs are not memes, but your understanding of them, and how they are actually discussed by attorneys with their clients, appears to be based on internet memes of these programs.

[notch898a]

So not only do you now acknowledge you were lying about these programs (not) existing for non-drug offenses, now you're expecting me to take on your (shot) credibility that only drug-related offenses make it into the program. This is WRONG as evidenced by BOP's report which shows significant underlying offenses for RDAP participants in fraud, immigration, firearms, and "other" offenses.

https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...

>he dependent defendant will never get a meaningfully shorter sentence

Up until the BOP report showed to me you were lying about the programs, I probably would have take your word on this. Now I'm not so sure. Would be interested in seeing the evidence that this never happens.

I have no idea what you're talking about regarding me operating off of "memes." They may exist, but they're not something I've looked for nor noticed.

[somedude895]

I had the same experience. I fought with regular debilitating panic attacks and resulting anxiety for a year. It was horrible.

That being said, I'm still for legalization, simply because it being illegal didn't keep me or you or anyone else from trying it. It just doesn't make sense for law enforcement to spend all those resources on fighting a battle that's already lost. Plus, in the US, all the lives ruined and money wasted on incarcerating people for marijuana-related offenses.

I will say though, that legalisation leads to positive public health outcomes sounds like just the sort of bullshit cherrypicked study that Reddit would jump on instantly. I don't know why this is on HN at all.

[havblue]

David Foster Wallace talked and wrote extensively about marijuana addiction/withdrawal. A lot of responses to this tend to be if someone has a negative outcome they were prone to mental illness anyway and besides, it's not as bad as alcohol. I'm personally skeptical as to whether the negative outcomes with recreational, high potency weed are being quantified sufficiently and whether we're digging a hole for future generations.

[9999px]

People will get defensive and kneejerk some vague response about how it doesn't affect _them_ that way (science!), but I agree 100% with you. It's a drug and it feels like it's being pushed on us these days by states and corporations.

[gnulinux]

Are caffeine and alcohol also pushed by corporations? Alcohol is many many orders of magnitude more destructive and toxic than THC, do we really want to go back to prohibition days? Illegalized drugs do not work. Period. The solution to all drug problems is legalizing it. Yes, including crystal meth and heroin. The absolute worst a government can do for substance abuse is to ban addictive, toxic drugs, which makes them so much more destructive. The opposite is shown to work: https://substanceabusepolicy.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...

[misja111]

> The solution to all drug problems is legalizing it. Yes, including crystal meth and heroin

There have been a few cases in the past were heroin use was allowed, or at least not actively prosecuted. They were absolute disasters. E.g. Zurich, 1986-1922: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8044118/

[worksonmine]

Cool! I never knew heroin helped them invent the time-machine. Why isn't this more known?

[djcannabiz]

the stranglehold big-clock has on the press and government...

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

Can you elaborate on why you feel like it's being pushed on you?

I've visited several US jurisdictions where it's legal. While it's still illegal in my area, I'm adjacent to fully legal and medically allowed areas. The only time I've felt any pressure was visiting Las Vegas, where every cab/uber/etc driver volunteered a recommendation for a pot store.

I found the recommendations useful for knowing which stores are overpriced.

[ashwagary]

>it feels like it's being pushed on us these days by states and corporations.

We can say the same for every popular consumer product.

I personally prefer people choosing what they consume over criminalizing the ?billions? of people that find it harmless.

[whalesalad]

Live and let live.

[eurasiantiger]

Did you consume other drugs? Alcohol, coffee, tobacco?