Cannabis usage in older adults linked to larger brain, better cognitive function

Now that pot is legal in so many places, it's less likely to gateway to anything - like alcohol.

I think part of it is the crowd you end up in when you smoke weed. Unsurprisingly, drug use lends itself to putting you in situations with other drug users. These users often completely ignore, leave out, or outright lie about the downsides of these drugs, from chronic weed use to LSD.

For me, the downsides manifest as drarticlsly increased anxiety (I naturally have next to none), extremely poor sleep - I sleep but the sleep is so low quality it begins to feel like my brain barely works right, and the obvious one, the effects on your motivation. I naturally tend towards ADHD style dopamine chasing, and weed makes that about 100x worse. Instead of getting my work done, I will procrastinate with any number of cheap dopamine hits such as video games, internet sleuthing, etc.

Have you tried blending in CBD?

Typically I smoke small joints with 90% CBD strains and the rest a high THC strain, only thing I can smoke.

I don't smoke weed but I had a roommate in college that smoked in the apartment 24/hours a day. The first week was unbearable. I could barely breath, my clothes reeked of weed, even my books reeked of it. But, after that first week, I didn't even notice the smell. Yeah, when he lit up I'd notice it for a second but nothing more than that.

Enough time has passed that I'm no longer noseblind to it but I wish I still were. I can smell it when the car ahead of me is smoking, I can smell it when the person on the other side of the bar recently smoked, hell, I can smell it in my car as soon as I start to approach my neighboring state where it's legal. At my last house I was tearing my hair out trying to catch the skunk or fox that made my yard reek every night during the summer. Of course, eventually I realized it coincided with my neighbors college-aged kid coming home for summer break and smoking in their room.

Anyone that says that cigarette smoke, perfume, car exhaust, people's breath in general, smell to any degree that weed does to non-smokers is incredulous. Just because you smoke and you don't recognize it, doesn't mean that everyone around you can't.

Surely edibles work just as well?

Agreed completely on the day drinking point. That’s actually what got me to quit initially years ago. I realized, would I be drinking right now before work? Hell no. So why am I okay with getting high?

https://thereitis.org/mr-x-by-carl-sagan/

He originally wrote about it under a pseudonym for fear of professional consequences. Many such cases.

Yes, I know some of those. But usually they are either very light users or they achieved their success before becoming heavy users.

I also know some pretty heavy users that are adamant that they are doing better than before but their environment does not usually agree. This is a thing that is fairly common with heavy drug users though.

I know lots of people that smoke heavily and I've watched their trajectory over decades. It's a sad story really. I'm pretty sure if you manage it responsibly the benefits may well outweigh the downsides but over the long term it really adds up.

Of course, everybody ages, and people are not usually as sharp as they were in their twenties or earlier. But given that I also have access to a sizeable control group where I don't see that effect I figure it has to have some factual basis too large to be just handwaved away.

Feel free to correct the fact that we haven't met in person by the way, you & yours are always welcome here.

re: the article itself, they concentrate only on brain regions which have high density of CB1 expression and that's reasonable. But CB1 is not the only CNS cannabinoid receptor (CB2 mostly expressed peripherally). There's also GPR55 which is activated by cannabinoids like THC. A little issue which could be addressed in future work.

Do they mean 'That is a slab.' or 'Hand me that slab.'?

Context matters. There is no correct answer. There are no metaphysical truth particles that shake 'True!'. Expressivism, how you feel about the statement, is going to decide what you think.

Anyway, I used to intentionally say things like "I love drugs, although its specifically Caffeine."

Wisdom is understanding that if there was legislation on the matter, and people who ate, produced, or sold non-tomato fruits were hunted and deprived of their freedoms by the state on the basis that fruits are bad for society, then you would likely see similar frustrations expressed about an article title that includes the phrase "tomatoes and fruits" to distinguish them.

https://cheflindseyfarr.com/marinated-tomato-stone-fruit-sal...

(I second the recommendation of adding burrata.)

But that's presumably why the parent commenter spoke up in the first place.

Industry-fueled self-delusion can be intercepted if we make the effort to do so.

Plenty of drugs, used in moderation, are also relaxing and can be enjoyable to the senses.

Alcohol, caffeine, nicotine, and marijuana products ARE drugs, not sure why people insist on making the distinction.

We see a distinction for that one, just like we do for alcohol.

> The nature of the syndrome and existence of CECD as a clinically meaningful condition have been called into question by those who wish to roll back legal access.

I belong to the scepticists although I want cannabis to remain legal.

The symptom constellation of pain and the other mentioned has very complicated basis that almost any theory can be supported. In the meantime in my setting 95% of medical cannabis uses are recreational.