...to think that weed can and does ruin lives and isn't 'harmless'?

[madonnawhore]

I know there are people who maintain that cannabis is harmless and they smoke it and they're fine blah blah blah.

I used to smoke it, all my friends used to smoke it, but none of us do any more because, you know what? it doesn't half make you a boring, lazy bastard.

Never mind the whole 'it causes psychosis' debate (my brother and a really good friend of mine both had to receive mental health treatment as a result of smoking weed), but there's a thread over on relationships at the moment about some woman's husband who spends all his salary on weed within the first 3 days of payday and who has actually cut his hours so that he can stay home and play more computer games.

AIBU in presuming that if he wasn't such a pot head, he'd be more inclined to get of his arse and go to work?

Sitting on your backside playing COD all day cos you can't be fucked to do anything else is not harmless.

God, Mal, that's reason enough to feel afraid!

To others: marijuana/cannabis these days is genetically altered to make it stronger, more immediate and to have specific psychogenic effects. I can't believe so many people still seem unaware of this - go on any hash website and you will see how you can shop for different kinds of highs.

The old-fashioned stuff, which came from un-modified plants (as it grows wild, albeit more cultivated) is almost impossible to obtain nowadays. There are NO commercial producers of 'pure' cannabis outside of medical facilities; you can't even buy seeds for it. The very, very few suppliers of illegal 'pure' get it from village growers in inaccessible regions - or are my age, and have been propagating their own plants since the seventies.

Basically, the 'harmless' variety of grass is obsolete. What's called grass now is 100x stronger and has different effects.

sorry cross posts Mary.

maryz That's awful, and I agree, the modern strains are really dangerous. I'd agree with you about not legalising too, except that prohibition is so obviously not working. I may be being naive here, but I think if it were legalised and taxed, all that extra revenue could be used to help people like your DS and it would put the dealers out of business.

Malificence - 'I don't personally know anyone who uses cannabis but my sister had a friend whose 18 month old baby burned to death on her cooker while she we was stoned' I suspect you haven't a clue what you're talking about.

maryz similar probs here,after working with youth for yrs and being dismayed at the increasingly skunk use and its affects i then watched ds1 and 3 start using the stuff,ds1 became so difficult i had to ask him to leave,mostly due to anti social hours he kept and stealing,he sold most of the house contents then moved onto the garage,the younger dcs couldnt even have xmas or b day money.He is better now but will never keep a job and lives a chaotic lifestyle.Ds 3 is a more balanced user,he keeps a good job but despite being a father now,his friends and skunk come before everything and he has a terrific temper if he cant get it when he wants/needs it.I think some people are able to use it as you would use alcohol,occasionally and in moderation. Very sad really.
The cannabis that was popular in the past when we were kids was solids or resin,not the same as the weed/skunk they are on now,very different.

pigtail i can beat that,my dd is 6 days and i woiuld love to speak until 5am....bliss zzzzzzzz

most people put tobacco in spliffs which is very addictive.
i used to smoke loads but stopped when i realised it was preventing me getting on with living my life. i agree with madonna

but i still smoke occasionally, and the stuff I get is the same as the stuff I always got?

Yes, the quality and strength still varies as it always did, some grass is trippier, some is more of a downer, but it's the same sort of stuff! Have I happened on the only supply of "old skool" "harmless grass" still available?

hmmmmmmmm.....

or even sleep till 5am

if you buy a joint ready made from a dealer there could be anything in it, could be dipped in PCP which is certainly likely to induce psychosis, paranoia, violent aggression and suicidal tendencies.

Possibly, Mapley Maybe I used to know your grower!

I stopped smoking grass - well, I didn't stop but stopped making it a regular feature - in my mid-twenties. My career was starting to go really well and I noticed my short-term memory was getting flaky. That was just the 'nice' stuff. I had a spliff for old times' sake about ten years ago - only, of course, it was some random variety of skunk. Gave me paranoid hallucinations.

Apropos of nothing much (but it's not a bad story) - I worked for a tobacco multinational in the 1970s, very handy for a chain smoker! At the time, legalisation seemed inevitable and, to prepare for demand, all the big companies had already started manufacturing ready-rolled spliffs. Then the legislative tide turned - in America and Europe - leaving warehouses full of boxed-up joints all over the world (wherever the contents of large silos were rarely questioned). They were burned down - but not before I received a beautiful, white-labelled, flat pack of 10 lovely, machine-rolled spliffs!

I was only 20, so I smoked them. They'd be worth a bloody fortune now! ... if there were any legal way to sell 'em

Agree with op.

I know someone who had to give it up in his mid 40s (otherwise his partner of 20 years was going to leave him) and it was like withdrawing from smack or alcohol or something. He really suffered, he had to de-tox, after many failed attempts.

I am so glad that, at nearly 50, I just don't know any dopeheads any more.

YANBU

Some people seem to be saying that cannabis is harmless because it can be a very effective drug for conditions which other drugs don't allieviate.

Morphine is another drug that does things for patients which other treatments can't. In fact morphine is known to space you out, affect your eating, make you sleepy and kill pain- much like cannabis is said to. To argue that cannabis is harmless would be no different to saying morphine is harmless.

Morphine and cannabis undeniably have a place in the world, but that place should be as a controlled drug, issued only to people who truly need it and for whom there is no alternative. Not something that any 15 year old can lay hands on at even a half-interesting party and render themselves insensible with.

from talktofrank

"Recently, there has been an increased availability of strong herbal cannabis, containing on average 2-3 times the amount of the active compound, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, as compared to the traditional imported ?weed?. This strong cannabis includes:?sinsemilla? (a bud grown in the absence of male plants and which has no seeds); ?homegrown?; ?skunk?, which has a characteristic strong smell; and imported ?netherweed?. Strong cannabis is grown through processes that can include selective breeding, use of hydroponics and special heating and lighting techniques."

which appears to be what you're talking about, which I knew. I've smoked netherweed, skunk and sinsemilla, and yes, they are lots stronger and trippier. So you go far easier and smoke in moderation. If you smoked several of joints of that a day habitually then you would be totally fucked yes.

But to be honest you could get the same effect from less strong hash, there are ways of getting yourself completely messed up if that's what you want to do no matter the drug you choose. Are you saying that because it's easier to get fucked up with the stronger hash then folk are getting out of their depth's quicker?

Because if that's the case I think there's still going to be people who realise that they are getting out of their depth and get out, and those that don't. For emotional and social reasons, as I said. Not just because of the drug.

But I do totally sympathise and have no wish to upset you by arguing the toss. I hope your relatives all get through it. Are you getting the support you need?

Yeah but, yeah but ... I agree with [forgotten name] the government drugs advisor who was fired for saying 'legal highs' are more dangerous than traditional, classed substances. There's decades worth of research on traditional drugs, even skunk. Nobody knows the possible long-term effects of something that was cooked up in a lab last month.

:-D i like the term "traditional drugs" !

yeah, legality is a total red herring. This is why believing and teaching your kids that legal = good and illegal =bad is complete idiocy.

You should teach them that experimentation for some is a natural human desire, and that it becomes dangerous when not tempered with respect. Respect for yourself, respect for those around you and respect for the drug you're taking. Education is crucial!

poor wee boy mary! If I were you i'd spend that money taking him completely away somewhere for a few months where he can get out of the social scene and find something else inspiring in the world.

best of luck x

Yanbu, my husband wasted ten years of his life on it and took probably another five years to really get over the after effects (panic attacks, depression, anxiety, agoraphobia). He now has a very successful business which he could not and would not have started if he still smoked. I used to be one of those who said it was harmless when I was in my late teens and early twenties.

I take it back.

erm...marijuana develops mental dependency only - so like fat or sugar addiction, not like drugs that caus physical adiction.

psychosomatic withdrawal symptoms can still be bad.

for example: i think most would agree that morphine is a drug that creats dependency and those addicted to it are likely to suffer. yet my Gran took morphine every day for 50 years. when she died she had 3 times a fatal dose in her blood (she died from lung cancer)
It didn't affect her behaviour though, as she worked, ran her own business, etc etc. - as her drugs were on prescription.

i think you need to disentangle the mental problems that make someone want to spend all their time smoking, with the affects of the drug.

think of it this way: when someone is depressed, they are recommended to eat healthily and drink less, if possible not drink at all. when in a bad state drugs make your mind worse. but the bad state isn't necessarily caused by the drug - but by the original problem.

I was a moderate to heavy user (fluctuating) for 15 years.

I no longer smoke, I would love to occasionally indulge but I am an all or nothing kind of person so I have to go for the nothing option.

My short term memory is definitely shot to fuck as a result of weed. Other than that no lasting effects I don't think, though that may change as I get older I guess.

I did have one friend when I was in my teens, a girl who used to smoke between an eighth and a quarter of skunk a day, and had done for maybe 3 years or so. She ended up getting psychosis and sectioned when she got convinced all her friends were out of get her, drove to Wales, crashing through the barrier on the Severn Bridge, and involved in a big police chase. That's an extreme case but I think it is safe to say that it can definitely fuck you up.

I also remember a time in a smokers' cafe in Amsterdam many moons ago when we made a kick-ass spliff out of all the weed we had left on our last day, and after I smoked it the whole left side of my body went completely numb. i couldn't move my arm or anything. That was a bit worrying.

Dope has ruined my marriage as H
deemed it more important than his family. Enough said..

I'm allergic to it, so in a way that answers your question, first and last drug I've ever had.

resulted in laying on the floor feeling like I'd swallowed a cactus, having trouble breathing, throwing up until way past the point of actually having anything to throw up, having back spasms for hours, then subsequently followed by waking up in the night for a few weeks because I kept not breathing while asleep and having panic attacks all most constantly for about 6 months that made me wish I was dead.

I've stuck exclusively to the sweet embrace of the booze ever since.

Mind on the link between cannabis and pychosis:

"As with all genes, people inherit one copy from each parent. The study found that people who inherited two ?good? subtypes could use cannabis without it affecting their mental health; those with one of each subtype were at slightly more risk of psychosis with cannabis; while in those who had two ?bad? subtypes the risk was increased ten-fold"

Who knows knows what genes they carry? When you try your first spliff you don't know if it will be harmless or if it will trigger schizophrenia and leave you disabled for life. That's why I would say cannabis is dangerous.

www.mind.org.uk/help/diagnoses_and_conditions/cannabis_and_mental_health