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your correlations are still false. I grew up thinking the same thing.mrplunkey said:
- pot makes you a stupid and slow
- stoners are losers
- you'll ruin your life if you do drugs
I can understand preaching this to children to scare them the fuck away, children don't have any business with these things in my opinion.
But the facts are quite contrary to the drug war propaganda. Pot doesn't "make you stupid" this has never been proven, alcohol actually damages the brain in a much more dramatic fashion, to the point where with enough habitual use an abuser of alcohol will be unable to control their motor skills.
So I went off to college, where I was one of very few people who came from a lower middle class background. (Indulge me here, I try to give a lot of personal history just to show you where my particular world view comes from). I met Indian people (from India) for the first time in college, as well as my first non fillipino asians. And let me tell you at my college (consistently ranked in the top 50 overall and top 10 public schools) there were a lot of different ethnicities, but surprisingly not all that many different economic backgrounds. Many people came from priveledge. Many people went to private schools.
So I meet my roommate, he's this jewish dude from LA. His moms a school teacher (and get to meet a lot of celebrity parents that way) his dad is a lawyer who has his own firm. Multimillionaires basically. And yes, you guessed it, pot users! They didn't tell their son though until he came to them our freshman year and told them he tried pot (in my room). I waited until the 2nd half of the year to do because I still felt like only losers did it. Until I got to college that was pretty much what the evidence I saw told me as well. But in college I all of a sudde met people who where near geniuses who binge drank, did pot, xtast, coke, anything they could get their hands on even! I'm like dude! How do you pass your classes? They would say things "I blazed up before my SATs!" "oh yeah, what did you get?" "1500" I felt lame with my stone sober 1350.
Anyway, the reality of it is, since college, I've never met a loser pot smoker. Why? Because I generally hang out with college educated, gainfully employeed people. I've met doctors, lawyers, and executives that use pot. This really boggled and blew my mind. I also felt (yet again) lied to. If pot really did make you stupid, then why on earth are these intelligent, successful professionals using it. Something didn't add up, and it didn't take very long to figure out why.
I switched my major to bio psychology and spent a year studying the effects of drugs on the brain and people's behavior. I'm talking college courses taught by M.D.s and Ph.D.'s. I also did a semester of study on alcohol and its effects on asians vs whites. People amazing stuff. We did experiments where we gave people different levels of alcohol and ran them through all sorts of tests and monitoring. I can go into that further if you like but the research was very promising, and aimed at eliminating alcohol abuse/alcoholism.
So yes, I can see where you are coming from, because a lot of money has been spent to convince people that pot indeed makes you stupid and unmotivated, but there have been medical studies done that yield results quite to the contrary. one reason that the goverment lists marijuana as schedule 1 is because its very difficult to get funding for schedule 1 substances as they have "no medical benefit." If we ever did start studyin marijuana in great depth with long term studies I think some of the evidence would really blow people away (and embarass a lot of the pioneers of the "war on drugs").
Marijuana had a long time (hundreds of thousands of years ) to destroy human culture and civilizaion, and it didn't. It only became a source of such debate (and demonized so much) in recent years. Again I'll repeat, this was very deliberate propagana, and also, very baseless. The supposed effects of Marijuana on human brains came from a SINGLE study on primates, and there were only 7 of them, and some of them died of unrelated causes before the study was over. They measured the size of the brains before and after the study and since the brains weighed less after the study was over, it was assumed that marijuana causes brain damage. This is 100% false. In humans and primates after a cerain age (for humans its 2 for primates its earlier) the brain does die, and lose size/weight and continues to do so until you die. This isn't evidence of drug abuse, this is evidence of the natural aging process of the brain.
The fact is, there are MANY drugs that are available LEGALLY by prescription that have much great effects on the brain, specifically keenes of the senses and motivation. Have you heard of benzodiazapenes? They cause people to effectively "care less" about things in the users world/mind. Also classes of drugs reduce people's ability to feel certain ranges of emotion. Of course this is supposed to be a good thing for the people they are prescribed for, but blood letting was also considered good for people when administered by a Dr. because some people reported that they felt better afterwards.
if you want to talk LSD, that's a whole different discussion, it works on the brain in a completely different way than THC/marijuana. I've never done it and don't plan on it, although I have done mushrooms and really didn't think they were much of a big deal.
Ironically in my own life, my salary is strong correlated with my marijuana use. Also my bench press for a long time was correlated with it too. So for me, and granted I'm just one person and can't speak for everyone, I can note great effects that I partly attribute to marijuana. It is great when you have no appetite and are trying to bulk. Its great when you have a high stress job or class and need some down time to relax and/or sleep. Its good for some people who have anxiety. My Ashtma syptoms are far better since I became a regular marijuana user. The list goes on and on.
When i first started smoking weed in college I was real nervous that it changed me, changed my brain. I'd ask friends if they noticed anything different. I'd take IQ tests and what not to see if my mental acuity had changed. If anything I'm smarter now than I was when I first started smoking, mostly because I know a hell of a lot more about myself and the rest of the world.
I guess that you could make the argument that had I never touched a joint I'd be even MORE successful, but that is pure speculation and could be said about almost anything. I can also say that maybe I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today without it.
