The truth about cannabis

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Something just occurred to me. Maybe I did come on a little strong earlier. There is a reason for it though.

I have to admit that even today, twenty years after quitting, there are still days when I really feel like just getting stoned out of my gourd. When I come on strong like that, I'm not really trying to impress anybody but myself. I don't mean it to come across to anyone else.

It's really just me lecturing myself. Me reminding myself why I quit to begin with. It's never meant to be critical of anyone making different choices than I do. Those urges are still very strong sometimes even twenty years later and occasionally require a lot of effort to resist. I find the best defense is a good offense, and and maybe that comes across as commentary on others. It's not meant to be.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8Q7I99zxW4[/youtube]

MrXxx, I'm often more stern with myself than I would be with anyone else. I don't like to repeat things I think of as mistakes. But I try to see other people's reasons for why they do what they do, and that helps me not to judge them. Is that the kind of thing you're talking about? I can relate to that.

Pretty much yeah. I'm thinking maybe I project unknowingly and it comes across as lecturing others. I don't mean it that way. I think it's definitely part of my AS to not see it while I'm doing it, seeing others pissed off who do see it, then wondering why they are pissed. The irony right now is that this happened here right after finding myself on the other side of a similar issue in a different thread. I was the one pissed at a different user who said he couldn't see why I would be. Such is life with Autism I guess. Just trying to work it out, but this is off topic so I'll leave it here.

Cannabis allows egos to lay down, people are more forgiving, often more ethical!! !! less striving and more easy going

Given the choice, I would mostly prefer to deal with a stoner/or ex stoner like Mr Xxx....... than a 'norml' person

i smoke pot daily usually. Sometimes i get tired of it and i stop for a while.

it does nothing but wonders for me, i remember being much more stressed before i started smoking so often.

my thoughts seem to be clearer and i can actually relax!

my mind is not "in a haze" on pot, but is without.
if i get super high, then yes of course.. but i dont typically do such a thing

Border collie avatar!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRm1yqSmsGY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRZSWSe7oU4[/youtube]

One study says one thing, another study says something else, here is the newest...

http://news.yahoo.com/marijuana-doesnt- ... 46886.html

Marijuana doesn't harm lung function, study found

CHICAGO (AP) — Smoking a joint once a week or a bit more apparently doesn't harm the lungs, suggests a 20-year study that bolsters evidence that marijuana doesn't do the kind of damage tobacco does.

The results, from one of the largest and longest studies on the health effects of marijuana, are hazier for heavy users — those who smoke two or more joints daily for several years. The data suggest that using marijuana that often might cause a decline in lung function, but there weren't enough heavy users among the 5,000 young adults in the study to draw firm conclusions.

Still, the authors recommended "caution and moderation when marijuana use is considered."

Marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law although some states allow its use for medical purposes.

The study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham was released Tuesday by the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The findings echo results in some smaller studies that showed while marijuana contains some of the same toxic chemicals as tobacco, it does not carry the same risks for lung disease.

It's not clear why that is so, but it's possible that the main active ingredient in marijuana, a chemical known as THC, makes the difference. THC causes the "high" that users feel. It also helps fight inflammation and may counteract the effects of more irritating chemicals in the drug, said Dr. Donald Tashkin, a marijuana researcher and an emeritus professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. Tashkin was not involved in the new study.

Study co-author Dr. Stefan Kertesz said there are other aspects of marijuana that may help explain the results.

Unlike cigarette smokers, marijuana users tend to breathe in deeply when they inhale a joint, which some researchers think might strengthen lung tissue. But the common lung function tests used in the study require the same kind of deep breathing that marijuana smokers are used to, so their good test results might partly reflect lots of practice, said Kertesz, a drug abuse researcher and preventive medicine specialist at the Alabama university.

The study authors analyzed data from participants in a 20-year federally funded health study in young adults that began in 1985. Their analysis was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The study randomly enrolled 5,115 men and women aged 18 through 30 in four cities: Birmingham, Chicago, Oakland, Calif., and Minneapolis. Roughly equal numbers of blacks and whites took part, but no other minorities. Participants were periodically asked about recent marijuana or cigarette use and had several lung function tests during the study.

Overall, about 37 percent reported at least occasional marijuana use, and most users also reported having smoked cigarettes; 17 percent of participants said they'd smoked cigarettes but not marijuana. Those results are similar to national estimates.

On average, cigarette users smoked about 9 cigarettes daily, while average marijuana use was only a joint or two a few times a month — typical for U.S. marijuana users, Kertesz said.

The authors calculated the effects of tobacco and marijuana separately, both in people who used only one or the other, and in people who used both. They also considered other factors that could influence lung function, including air pollution in cities studied.

The analyses showed pot didn't appear to harm lung function, but cigarettes did. Cigarette smokers' test scores worsened steadily during the study. Smoking marijuana as often as one joint daily for seven years, or one joint weekly for 20 years was not linked with worse scores. Very few study participants smoked more often than that.

Like cigarette smokers, marijuana users can develop throat irritation and coughs, but the study didn't focus on those. It also didn't examine lung cancer, but other studies haven't found any definitive link between marijuana use and cancer.

___

Online:

JAMA: http://jama.ama-assn.org

National Institute on Drug Abuse: http://www.nida.nih.gov

So I attend a few different cannabis clubs now as they are spreading in Auckland, and the cops let them slide and seem to treat them as a social experiment....

Even genetically weaker and very frail people, (sorry if that sounds offensive) appear to have very little respiratory ailments... even consuming (smoking) 5-10grams per week, around 3-6 joints per day

Little affectation in voice tone, coughs, and incidence of colds and flu

I have observed this now for the last 3 years

However, a psychosis, or deeply stoned state, everyday, is common in these individuals.

The biggest problems I see is mute ism. forgetfulness and emotional disassociation... which is why it is an effective treatment for some autisms

The study that the DEA shut down.... and was then replicated on mice in Madrid around 1998, found that cannabis is a cure for cancer

Suck on that
Quack

Yep, I might move back to Europe, Spain this time.

Spanish women has got to be good enough reason, though NT is prolly more common in Spain?

Still, a fine meeting of old and new worlds, maybe a best of both worlds country, with California weather

Funny how it looks and feels like Cali in Spain, with liberal attitudes too

My psychiatrist used to have a poster of brain scans of people who did hard drugs while still teens, and it was eye opening. Some drugs literally burn holes completely through your brain. People get spongy holes in their brain, and it tends to make them crazy, especially if the holes are in the front temporal lobes. Front temporal lobe damage is associated with being totally uninhibited, having religious experiences/a connection to "god", losing the ability to judge whether a situation is bad or good.

Britney Spears likely has front temporal lobe damage as the result of doing hard drugs from the age of 14. She actually has to take pharmaceutical drugs to lessen the permanent damage of street drugs. Talk about hell. I know that some of the really hard core psychedelic drug users in the 60s ended up with fried brains due to the drugs, and had to be institutionalized, or they wandered off into the forest on a "permanent trip" and were never heard from again. I know when I was a teen kids would huff Scotchgard (chemical used to waterproof cloth) and some took one huff and just died, felled by a stroke. Today kids drink cough syrup to get high.

Well i would question if these are literal holes in those brain scans, I've heard extasy use shows that but that its more like depletion of certain brain chemicals not literal holes. Its kind of hard for those not educated in neurology to see much of anything from those brain scans. This is not to say there aren't drugs that cause damage to the brain as there are.

Alcohol is known to damage the frontal lobes, in fact that's why alcohol can make one more impulsive....you get drunk and are more likely to do stupid things heavy drinkers know this and laugh about it and its legal. So yeah some drugs are more dangerous then others, excessive use of any drug is bound to have negative consequences and prohibition does no good.