That’s like taking paracetamol for a permanent headache. It’s effectiveness will wane and over time you’ll need stronger and stronger anaesthetics. It’s to treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
And if you were to stop, you might feel a desire to go back on it, due to the lack of free dopamine it gives you. No matter how ‘strong’ that addiction is that psychological want for it can cause relapse
Marijuana is absolutely physically addictive as much as people want to say it isnt. Mind you im someone who smokes the minute they leave work until they go to bed. So im not here to push any kind of anti-marijuana view point, but i do think we as stoners should be honest. Everyone i know who stops smoking weed has two very common side effects.
They have a lot of trouble getting to sleep
Wild/fucked up dreams.
I understand that this is a side effect of lack of REM but you cant say these aren’t physical withdrawal symptoms. Research is needed, but just because we all want it to be legal, doesn’t mean we should ignore the facts.
Marijuana is absolutely physically addictive as much as people want to say it isnt.
I mean it scientifically isn’t though. Physical addictions don’t just give you psychological withdrawals, they are physical. Your body becomes dependent on them to maintain homeostasis.
Cold turkeying drugs like opioids and benzos can kill you.
Just because the withdrawal symptoms aren’t as bad doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I said this before, research is needed. Going off of whats been said over the last 50 years of prohibition seems silly to me. And i for sure use marijuana to keep me in homeostasis. We need to stop saying psychological withdrawal doesnt have roots based in brain chemistry. I think everything we have begun to learn about mental health shows what little we actually know.
Dude those “withdrawal symptoms” are a joke compared to any other drug.
That said, I don’t know a single person who identifies as a stoner that isn’t completely and utterly mentally addicted. And the drug is so subtle, stoners rarely try to stop.
Cocaine, even a 2 day bender is incredibly hard on your body. If you’re a person with any kind of responsibilities in your life, you’ll be strongly incentivized to reconsider the habit in no time.
But weed, it’s meh. Most users can restrict their use to when they’re not at work, so it’s fine.
Which makes it more dangerous.
I’ve watched so many promising futures flushed down the toilet by weed. Motivation? gone. Real hobbies? Indoors in front of a screen only. At its worst, I’ve seen friends totally withdraw from socializing almost entirely. Social anxiety combined with the escape of being high was enough to dampen and deny the very real human need to connect with others.
Every single one of these individuals went through some form of depression that was was extended and exacerbated by escapism and addiction in the form of excessive marijuana usage.
I know that’s not everyone. There are people who use it in a healthy, balanced way.
But there are also a ton of people who get heavily addicted because it dampens the pain of something they’re going through. And that pattern can make it a lot harder to make progress and work through whatever that person is dealing with.
Anyone who’s spent any time around stoners knows this is true. And yeah, for a lot of people, it’s a gateway drug. I’ve seen plenty of buddies in college jump from weed to xans to oxy. It’s ruined lives. It made my best friend drop out.
And yeah, these people clearly already had issues. But that’s how drug addiction works. It preys on people who are going through something and it makes a bad situation way worse.
Weed can do the exact same thing. Doesn’t matter if it’s not physically addicting.
This comment hit the nail on the head. It’s no big deal to spend an evening after work getting high and watching movies. But then it becomes every evening. Now you can’t deal with daily life if you don’t get to smoke between work shifts. Maybe you show up to work high to take the edge off. Now you’re high all the time and being sober feels weird. Spending all your time just sort of floating in a dream because being high is your default state now.
Everything becomes more effort so you just stop bothering. Playing an instrument? This requires too much focus. I’m gonna go lay down on the couch. Socializing? I’m too high to drive, I’ll stay home today (man I’m so freaking lonely). It really truly is a trade-off where you sacrifice a fulfilling life for an easily tolerated one. At some point you start to realize this and increase your intake to try to make those uneasy thoughts go away.
Nobody wants to be on meth-lite every day because it turns you in to a tweaker asshole. Even if it helps with some of the symptoms. Weed being more mild is the entire reason people use it so much.
Meh anytime I take a tbreak the first few days kinda suck but all I had to do was make sure I was getting enough activity through the day and got to sleep just fine. Only times I really felt the sleep issue in a tbreak is if I was just sitting on my ass all day
At least for me is like this: If I have weed, I’m smoking the shit out of it all the time. If I don’t have I really don’t care and could be months before ever thinking on buying.
Because before it my ADHD made it functionally impossible to sleep, since when I’m not on the meds my mind runs too hard and when I am on the meds I can’t sleep either because they’re prescription meth, but weed solves that problem and I enjoy sleeping.
I used it to self-medicate for my ADHD for years. It calmed down all the noise in my head and allowed me to have one train of thought at a time. It also made me high, which was nice. I’m the end, it became a crutch for dealing with the hard aspects of life, and fucked with my brain chemistry a lot. I ended up a paranoid wreck, developed severe anxiety and stopped. Now I enjoy it occasionally but if I smoke too much it makes me feel depressed for days afterwards.
I am not diagnosed but have good reason to suspect I have adhd so I am in the process of trying to get a diagnosis. This is kind of it for me too. My brain never shuts up. Weed slowed my mind down and of course made me feel good like you said. I actually had moments if i didnt overdo it where it gave me motivation to actually do something with myself. Fine line though on the amount, kind of needed to microdose for that affect. Otherwise it just numbed me to my own issues and kind of made me not care. Only reason I quit is because my problems i wasn’t dealing with started to catch up with me and I hit a really bad depressive state that kind of scared me after literally everything was crashing in on me. Maybe eventually I will use it recreational again but for now I’m staying away and trying to get real help.
Basically same as the other dude, but no anxiety beyond the norm anyone would have in their daily lives, and no paranoia beyond the legal consequences of excersing what I see as a right yet the state sees as a crime. Were it federally legal it would mitigate that of course, but that’ll never happen because then nobody could use legalization to get votes so we can’t actually go around solving things, now can we? (Bitter? Maybe. Paranoid no lol.)
“Weed.” And I don’t live in a legal state, so dosage is hard to describe I guess. “Some,” not enough to be zombiefied but enough that I feel it, is the best I can do.
Here’s a balanced take from someone with moderately bad ADHD who very rarely smoked weed (so, not biased).
A mild high feels like a bad ADHD day, but then I had a fewer symptoms after the high is gone. Trace amounts could get me mostly symptomless without any real feeling of “high”, but I’m so lightweight that would be less than what most people call “microdosing”.
A moderate high…well, probably the same as everyone else (except I would get there for less than most). Then the entire next day it was like I didn’t have ADHD at all.
Beyond that, I only did once and I “greened out”, possibly related/causal to the part where I “very rarely smoked weed”. Greening out with ADHD is like greening out without ADHD I’m sure.
@Retirix_YT@ilikekeyboards If that’s truly how you feel, you shouldn’t say you think it doesn’t rock. That expresses disapproval, even if you don’t mean it to.
what you just said about weed is what religious extremists say about being gay - a much more harmful take than being anti-weed, imo. Just using this as an example to illuminate why your OG comment connotes greater judgment / hostility to people who smoke weed.
If it doesn’t rock for you then say that not that it doesn’t rock ya see?
What about caffeine? People act like “drugs are bad” is a reasonable stance, but they mean illegal drugs which just happen to be illegal, usually without good reason. Most adults are drug addicts, it’s just that the drug of choice is caffeine and they don’t see it as an issue because it’s legal and been normalized.
Animals have been doing drugs for longer than humans have existed. There are many benificial drugs that can help us with manually regulating bodily activity. Used responsibly, drugs can be great.
What about alcohol? Rapes, murders, even silly accidents like falling down the stairs and caving your head in is unfortunately quite common for the inebriated.
Loads of people had an argument too many and pulled the trigger during a moment of inebriety.
Yeah, the point is that drugs are fine morally. It’s when they’re abused they cause issues. There is some line that you’ve made up where drugs become “bad” but it is made up. Recognizing that it’s a made up line is important. I’m not saying you need to use drugs or anything like that, just realize that “drugs are bad” is a blatantly dishonest and untrue statement.
There are also plenty of psychoactive drugs that can be pretty helpful to human mental health. Marijuana also can have many health benefits, and it doesn’t cause people to do dangerous things usually. Most of the time it just causes people to sit around inside and not bother other people, unlike alcohol.
Drugs aren’t bad. Drug abuse is bad. Doing bad activities while on drugs is also bad, but the drugs are not.
Straight out of the addicts playbook. Former stoner of 10 years, I see the excuses. Needing drugs to walk through life is like needing a crutch. You are not stronger with them, they are an inhibitor to your natural greatness.
“I don’t need drugs, I want them”
Desire, when the pattern holds, becomes need. I used to think “yeah stopping weed is easy,” then would spend all the time in-between thinking “this situation would be so much better with weed.” So much so that I did absolutely insane things to get hold of it while I was living in China. My desire was very much in the realm of need, but I always made excuses to myself and my loved ones.
I rairly use caffeine (I was addicted at one point, noticed it, then drastically reduced consumption. I have a cup of coffee maybe every three days max.), and alcohol (Also not that frequently). I’ve also used Marijuana a handful of times and that’s it. I’m not an addict. I just recognize drugs have been used throughout history, often to great effect. I also recognize that the modern illegal drugs are political, not practical.
Our data suggest that the cannabinoid system is implicated in the psychoactive properties of caffeine and in the ability of caffeine to reduce the pathological consequences of stress. Chronic caffeine assumption sensitized GABAergic synapses to the presynaptic effect of cannabinoid CB1 receptor stimulation by exo- and endocannabinoids. The synaptic effects of caffeine were slowly reversible after its removal from the drinking solution. Furthermore, although exposure to caffeine for only 24h did not produce measurable changes of the sensitivity of cannabinoid CB1 receptors, it was able to contrast the down-regulation of CB1 receptor-mediated responses after social defeat stress.
I copied the rest from bloommedicinals.com, just the relevant bits. Also added the links to the studies and the pages with additional descriptions.
TL;DR:
Low levels of caffeine can help to maximize the effects of THC, but too much caffeine can lessen the impact of your cannabis
Caffeine and THC can both increase dopamine levels, but too much at once can trigger anxiety, agitation, and paranoia
What Happens When You Smoke Weed and Drink Coffee?
Since coffee and cannabis may offer so many health benefits on their own, you might think it’s safe to assume that enjoying a little bit of weed with your coffee would be okay. The reality is … it might be safe for most, but not for all. Here’s why.
THC and coffee can boost the amount of dopamine in our systems. Although dopamine can promote feelings of happiness and euphoria, too much of it at once can trigger anxiety, agitation, and paranoia. In addition, both caffeine and THC can both increase your blood pressure and heart rate.
This is why many doctors advise that those with heart conditions and those at risk of heart arrhythmia or stroke, should not mix caffeine and THC. So, if you’re new to mixing coffee and cannabis, it’s important to consult your doctor to make sure it makes sense for you. If it does, begin with lower amounts of coffee and cannabis than you would normally consume on their own. Then if needed, you can increase your dosage slowly.
Back in 2014, a study was conducted to measure the effects of mixing caffeine and cannabis on squirrel monkeys. The results of this study were published in the Journal of Neuroscience. (also described here)
The monkeys were given the ability to self administer cannabis whenever they wanted. All they had to do was to pull on a lever. When the monkeys were given low doses of a substance similar to caffeine, they seemed less likely to reach for the THC. But, when they received high doses of caffeine, they seemed to reach for that lever more often.
Then in 2018, a study led by Marilyn Cornelis at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine seemed to back up these findings. This time, the study examined the effects of mixing cannabis and coffee on humans. It found that the more caffeine people consumed, the less cannabis their body was able to metabolize. (also described here)
So, although small amounts of caffeine can help your THC go a long way – too much caffeine can lessen its effects.
Prolonged use of use of weed can reduce you brains motivation system which is something that people with ADHD already have a problem with. Long term use of weed may be risky idea for someone with ADHD. source: my doctor who gave me my medical card and my psychiatrist
Though I did read a thing that did say people with adhd do have a higher occurrence of marijuana use, despite its negative effects on their symptoms (with potential permanent impacts for users under 25)
Used weed for the past 20ish years to make my damned brain shut up and for sleep issues. I quit about 4 months ago after the realization that I might have adhd. Wanted to see if things got better after stopping. They really didn’t. I had no clue that this could be the source of my issues until recently so now I’m over here waiting for an appointment. Self medication and drug/alcohol use is apparently really common with undiagnosed adhd. But damned do I miss it. The first couple weeks where rough, and i do feel like I was having some withdrawal effects from quitting despite people saying it’s not addictive. It was literally giving me easy dopamine so your comment makes alot of sense.
This is where I’m at rn but I’m worried about trying to get medication to treat it.
Since I was a kid I’ve always had issues with motivation and organization. My default state is moderate messiness and disorganization, weed just makes me not feel as bad about it and stop stressing myself out.
I hear you on the meds. I’m not sure I’m to enthused about those but people keep saying they help so I don’t know. I also know I need to change my behavioral habits I’ve developed over the years but it’s not easy. Just going to go with whatever the psychiatrist says and gk from there. I’m just so tired of my own crap at this point. And yeah, weed made it easier to just be. And I don’t think you have to take medication if you don’t want too. Don’t think they will force it on you.
Hate that this has to be a worry. Makes it harder for people that actually need help to get help. If I was drug seeking there are easier options than going for a freaking adhd assessment. Oh well, try not to stress over it, and I know it’s hard not too but you can always go to another Dr. Just makes it a pain in the ass. Good luck of you do decide to go through with it.
Weed def has some mild physical withdrawal, but nothing like opiates/benzos/or alcohol. It’s not soul crushing ftmp.
But I consider anything needed outside of myself to function as an inconvenience, so that’s pretty much life as a whole. Damned if you do damned if you don’t. Gotta consume the world to experience it. I try to limit my consumption these days.
Weed is illegal federally, but it keeps getting produced at a state level. This really worries me, si to try to rectify this situation, I have just been buying and burning as much as I can. I don’t know how much of an effect its having because I just keep seeing more pop up.
I will continue despite it seeming more and more like a fools errand.
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