[bb123]

I'm not really surprised by this finding. My anecdotal experience has been that pretty much everyone knows a friend or a friend of a friend who smoked too much pot and had their life go off the rails. It is pretty clear to me that it is not a harmless herb despite that being the commonly held belief on places like Reddit.

[Retric]

Implying causality there is often misplaced. I’ve noticed some people smoke more after things start to fall apart from issues they have no control over, just as others binge eat when stressed.

It’s not a helpful coping mechanism, but there’s a reason double blind studies are considered so important. Untangling complex mechanisms especially when they have feedback in both directions is inherently difficult.

[RhysU]

Some drunks drink more as they approach bottom. Is it the booze? Is it being the sort of person who becomes a drunk? Does it matter? More booze ain't helping.

You're really going to call for a double blind study here checking if excessive cannabis is bad for people conditional on their lives falling apart? How do you propose to get that past an ethics board?

[dgacmu]

It doesn't matter because you can't do a double blind study on pot. Double blind -> the patient doesn't know what they got. "Hmm did I get cannabis or oregano? I just can't tell". :)

You can still do a randomized trial and that's the one that wouldn't pass the IRB.

[RhysU]

Heh. Can one eliminate the high from THC without removing its other impacts? This would be akin to taking pills preventing alcohol inebriation.

(Or, use high school freshman for the study and really convincing upperclassmen as actors to convince them it is a real bag.)

[lbotos]

It's a great question. You can get high CBD strains now (it's getting dubbed "type 3") and you get the body relaxation and calming effects but none of the mental impact.

There aren't many studies on what are the real impacts of CBD.

[BugsJustFindMe]

> Can one eliminate the high from THC without removing its other impacts?

Are we to presume that the high itself isn't potentially a causative factor?

[Retric]

I’m not calling for double blind study here, I’m not even sure how that would be possible.

Sometimes we’re stuck with “I don’t know” and recognizing that is IMO important.

[RhysU]

Anecdatum: I personally know a mother who has a restraining order on her son, whom I also personally know, due to a psychotic episode. And the son's been smoking way too much weed for a long time. Heartbreaking.

So, I know.

[Retric]

People who don’t smoke also have psychotic episodes, so no you don’t know you assume.

[RhysU]

My Bayesian prior has been sufficiently updated to effectively know: I don't know a single mother with a restraining order for a son who doesn't smoke too much weed. I have met a bunch of mothers and sons in my life. In a Popperian sense we can all only assume so stop splitting hairs.

Clearly, smoking a shit ton is bad for people with marginal mental health or marginal emotional health.

[bawolff]

> Some drunks drink more as they approach bottom. Is it the booze? Is it being the sort of person who becomes a drunk? Does it matter? More booze ain't helping.

I mean, it kind of does. If you want to design intervention, it helps to know which causes the other to a greater degree.

[RhysU]

"My friend, I see your life is falling apart but don't put down the bottle" is something no rational person says.

[prophesi]

If it's severe enough, quitting alcohol cold turkey can be life-threatening. And for some, they don't take longer than a day from drinking to realize they're on the path to delirium tremens.

[bawolff]

Of course not.

But, should we (the gov) spend 10 million dollars on social services to prevent people's lives from going to hell, should we spend 10 million dollars on anti-alcohol addiction services or should we spend it half and half, are questions we as a society need answers to.

[Aurornis]

> My anecdotal experience has been that pretty much everyone knows a friend or a friend of a friend who smoked too much pot and had their life go off the rails

Sadly, I’m seeing a new trend of people taking too many psychedelics and going off the rails.

The way they’re being pushed as cure-alls for depression is getting scary.

One of my friends developed severe problems after following the microdosing trend. It developed slowly over a long period of time, but he thought he was okay because he was following one of those protocols from one of the biggest microdosing experts.

[Rendello]

Syd Barrett and Peter Green always come to mind, as well as some local examples who wander the streets aimlessly. The appeal of psychedelics for depression –Or rather, what I thought was depression– tempted a younger me, until I observed that the people I knew who swore by it were quite strange and not exactly exemplars of good mental health.

[Loughla]

Pot is one of those things that makes things worse if they're already going badly.

Like alcohol or opiates will make your good life bad if you fuck too hard with them.

Pot, in my experience, won't really ruin your life unless you're already on that path.

My thing is that it's mostly harmless, but the problem with it is that young people can become complacent with it. It won't necessarily ruin your life, but you'll be content to sit and veg your life away. So not bad, but not good.

[bongodongobob]

I don't think I do. I do know a lot who have fucked their lives with alcohol and opiates though.

[HackerThemAll]

Drinking too much coffee or even water can kill you. Too much sugar can kill you (albeit not too quickly). Obsessive eating or shopping can derail your life pretty quickly. Obsessive use of social media can induce depression. Some people kill themselves because of what they read or see in social media.

So it's not the legalization at fault, it's people who are overdosing any stuff that's available to them. Casual smoking a weed once a week won't harm you that much.

[LoganDark]

While I also have anecdotal experience that suggests early-life cannabis abuse can lead to short-term memory loss, I have not seen any evidence that it leads to much else. I would imagine that people with a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia would only not have it by chance, and that altering their brain with pretty much anything can risk upsetting that balance. Doesn't matter if it's weed, LSD, opioids... SSRIs, stimulants...

[Aurornis]

> that altering their brain with pretty much anything can risk upsetting that balance. Doesn't matter if it's weed, LSD, opioids... SSRIs, stimulants...

Of course it matters. Different drugs and doses have completely different effects on the brain.

Trying to to equate different drugs and claim they’re all similarly risky goes completely against everything we know.

[throw__away7391]

Conspiracy theories. Every heavy pot smoker I know has ended up believing in multiple conspiracy theories. Back in the day before YouTube my friends were burning DVDs of 9-11 Truther documentaries, a chick I dated became obsessed with UFOs and alien abductions, a close family member began to believe they had found a way to develop psychic powers, and the boomers who got their medical marijuana cards deserve their own category based on the number of right wing conspiracy theories they repost on Facebook. The only exception I can think of got heavily into sports betting with a similar level of obsession and belief that they had deep insights that escaped everyone else.

I suspect that it triggers part of your brain that rewards you for making connections or something like that.

[ryandvm]

Or people that are willing to engage in counter culture or illegal activities are more likely to reject cultural doctrine.

[throw__away7391]

This is definitely not the case. Half these people had no connection whatsoever to “cultural doctrine” and a number were extremely conservative and completely mainstream before they started smoking late in life. As I mentioned one takes this same attitude to sports betting, another family member is always passing me some highly unconventional investment tip he’s just learned about from some random guy.

I’ve seen this pattern emerge time and again over decades in people with completely different backgrounds. It expresses itself in different ways but smoking absolutely rewires your brain, makes you more receptive to “secret insider information”.

[anon84873628]

It puts the brain in our "art enjoyment mode" which also means lowered epistemological immune system. Cannabis should be used occasionally to play outside, make music, watch movies, etc. Not used daily when thinking about politics or stock trading :-/

[LoganDark]

Pretty sure there is a difference between cultural doctrine and the scientific method.

[stevenAthompson]

My life experience matches yours perfectly. I would love to see a study.

Maybe one that examines the rise of the alt-right and it's relation to legalization. The timing seems correlated.

[AnthonBerg]

That seems to be the case. In the literature it’s studied under the concept of aberrant salience. A Google Scholar search turns up seemingly interesting (salient, haha) papers: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cannabis%20salience&btn...

From one of the papers: “the Aberrant Salience (AS) construct […] refers to an excess of attribution of meaning to stimuli that are otherwise regarded as neutral, thereby transform them into adverse, dangerous, or mysterious entities. This leads the patient to engage in aberrant and consequently incorrect interpretative efforts concerning the normal perception of reality and its relationship with our analytical abilities. AS appears to play a significant role in the onset and perpetuation of psychotic disorders. The internal conflict arising from aberrant attributions of significance leads to delusional thoughts, ultimately culminating in the establishment of a self-sustaining psychosis.” — https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1343...

[t0lo]

That sounds... pretty fun