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Don't take this as a disagreement but I wonder from reading your comment: Is there a right way to live life?

Your statement appears to be passing judgement to an adult using marijuana as a coping mechanism. Do you also have the same feeling for someone who takes a prescribed medicine for similar emotional regulation? I get there is a line here with certain mental disorders but if someone finds themselves better off (in their own opinion) by using marijuana who are you, or I to judge?

Similarly, I don't judge the person who picks up their monthly Rx at the pharmacy, if it makes them feel good. At the end of the day people are just trying to live their life and be comfortable.

So long as they are choosing to live in such a way that improves the lives of the people around them to some degree of their abilities rather than burdening the rest of us then it's fine. Do all the drugs you want.

As Tom Cruise[1] is wont to say, it masks rather than solves. I suppose it’s up to the user to decide the acceptance of not addressing the root cause, but hiding it with chemicals.

[1]Sure, he’s out there with religion and stuff but he’s pretty clear-headed there.

I don't think it's equivalent.

If you're taking something like an antidepressant or something, it's because a mental health professional has indicated that they think you'll be better-able to deal with your issues with this thoroughly-tested, regulated item. At least in theory, the professional will be much better-suited to find the exact medication that will help you emotionally regulate.

I've never done weed, but I have gotten drunk plenty of times when I was young (though not in quite awhile), especially when I got dumped by a girl that I really liked. Alcohol can be great in a very temporary sense to make you feel better and ignore your problems, but it's terrible at actually addressing the core issues, and it has a ton of other awful side-effects that might even make the underlying problems worse.

I already said that I have a hatred of weed culture, and I stand by that, but as someone who does take mental health meds for depression, I do understand how appealing coping mechanisms can be, and I absolutely sympathize, but I think there are enough differences between prescribed meds and recreational drugs to where I don't think it's fair to claim that the former is a coping mechanism.

I think it is equivalent. It's not by default, a bad thing to take drugs in order to help control your mood. I am certainly an enjoyer of alchohol on rare occasions.

It just becomes a problem when your dependence on it causes you to become anti-social and/or generally a burden upon the people around you. For example you end up in the psychiatric hospital, costing the tax-payer 100's of thousands of dollars to baby-sit you whilst you recover from your latest meth bender.

>Don't take this as a disagreement but I wonder from reading your comment: Is there a right way to live life?

This question has had a clear answer for millennia, although one too uncomfortable for modern feelgood relativists: confronting your problems with strength and willpower.

That's a lot of words to just say "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the stoics."

> Your statement appears to be passing judgement to an adult using marijuana as a coping mechanism. Do you also have the same feeling for someone who takes a prescribed medicine for similar emotional regulation? I get there is a line here with certain mental disorders but if someone finds themselves better off (in their own opinion) by using marijuana who are you, or I to judge?

I think there's a point where it becomes clear use of the drug is leading to sufficiently negative life outcomes that the drug's doing more harm than good. Alcohol's an easy case here (and a trigger word, so: I'm not comparing alcohol to weed from a health perspective) - many of us will have a pint or a glass of wine now and again to relax, but when you start drinking enough that it's regularly preventing you from meeting your obligations (or desires), you should re-evaluate. It can happen with prescription drugs, as well - a friend of mine was prescribed something for anxiety that wound up effectively rendering them homebound. At that point, it's not really serving its purpose as a coping mechanism.

> Do you also have the same feeling for someone who takes a prescribed medicine for similar emotional regulation?

We don't need to go even that far. Upwards of 50% of people in the US, and some 20-30% people on the planet[0] are emotionally self-regulating with coffee. 13% of the world[1] regulates themselves emotionally on tobacco. And let's not even look at alcohol consumption rates. Or sugar.

This is not to demonize any of it - just to point out that approximately every adult[2] uses some mind-altering substances in a ritual of emotional self-regulation. The drugs I mentioned above are some of the more potent ones, but they're so deeply embedded in our cultures, that we don't even notice it.

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[0] - If we go with random stat I found here: https://coffee-rank.com/world-coffee-consumption-statistics/. I'm taking it at face value, since it feels close enough, and the exact number doesn't change my argument, unless it's a fraction of a percent.

[1] - As of 2019, via https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6..., going with 1 billion smokers over 7.7 billion people on the planet.

[2] - The numbers I gave above may not feel impressive, but note that the averages in the west are much higher, and then all those numbers are dragged down by including people aged 0-18 in the denominator.

I definitely feel like caffeine can absolutely be used as a coping mechanism; if nothing else it can help you ignore the "why am I not getting enough sleep?" question, for decades if you let it.

I've never really drunk coffee because it always tasted like an ashtray to me, but I've had other things that gave me an unhealthy dependence on it. I don't drink caffeine anymore and it did force me to acknowledge a lot of bad sleep habits (both physiological and self-imposed) that I was able to (mostly) solve them as a result.

This is my experience within my high school class. Those who used alcohol and weed tended to be frustrated without them.

First heard that from a hippie in the 1980s. For regular consumers who started in their teens, it seems definitely more right than wrong

I agree with everything you're saying; I think pretty much all non-prescribed drugs make it really easy to ignore underlying problems; it's why I don't drink caffeine anymore, since I feel like it allowed me to mask my symptoms of sleep apnea for around fifteen years.

I still think there's a physiological element to the weed stuff as well, and I do think that the research seems to indicate that, but I don't know anything about medicine so I don't really know what I'm reading with the research.

Dont kid yourself, prescribed drugs are even worse in many cases. I was given adderall as a teen and it absolutely wrecked my ability to develop normal routines for hygene, diet, excercise, and socialization.

I got off it fairly recently and am slowly rebulding giod habits. But yeah fuck amphetamines.

Similar deal with xanax, opiates. They often mask underlying problems.

That's fair.

I guess I just think that self-diagnosis is usually a very bad idea, that's what I was trying to get at. At least if a doctor gives you the drug, there's at least some trained professional that believes you'd be better off with the drug than without. Obviously there's a ton of abuse that happens with the medical system and it leads to people getting addicted ending up really fucked up, so I'm not claiming it's perfect, I just think it's better than people randomly grabbing their own drug to get some temporary relief.

I didn't try adderral until I was 31 (prescribed), and it really messed with my sleep, which is bad enough as it is; even taking a relatively small dose at 8am, I wouldn't be able to get to sleep until 3:30am. Not entirely sure why I had such a horrible reaction and I decided it was definitely not worth it for me, but I could also see why people get hooked on it. In a way, I'm kind of glad I didn't like it.

You didnt have a horrible reaction thats just how the drug works. You get used to it eventually and ur body adjusts but your sleep remains low quality.

And yeah I agree self diagnoses and self medication is pretty bad

> My pet theory is that people relying on substances to emotionally regulate can neglect to develop the regular skills that everybody who doesn't rely on substances use for emotional regulation.

As I understand it, this is basically taken as a given in substance use therapy - there's some reason you're using this (to the degree it's having a negative impact), and it's probably to deal with some kind of emotional or psychological issue, and part of reducing substance use is working through those issues and building up strategies for dealing with them that don't include the drug.

What are the “regular skills” that everyone develops if they don’t use substances?

“Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorism, but, well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored, and it's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or being creative. If you smoke pot you may grow up to find out that you aren't good at anything.”

― South Park, Season 6 episode called "My Future Self n' Me"