I think that on balance, legalization is a good thing. Certainly it should not be illegal when alcohol is legal.
At the same time, I'm about 30 days into quitting entirely after realizing that I couldn't have a healthy relationship with it. I'm experiencing intense anxiety, dark thoughts, and have struggled with the intensity of REM rebound. My resting heart rate immediately went up about 15BPM on average as my body starts the process of finding its new equilibrium.
I first started using it "medicinally" to cope with poor sleep and depression. It actually helped lower my anxiety (with the right strain). It suppresses REM sleep and dreams, which was beneficial since my dreams tended to be part of the reason I had such poor sleep. For a time, it was incredibly helpful, and it helped me establish some better habits and process some difficult things.
But over time, it crept into more and more parts of my life. I never went full "wake & bake", but found myself wanting to use it earlier and earlier each day. When I did use it recreationally, I started to feel the pull even stronger. It started to majorly impact my short term memory, and I started noticing myself forgetting important things while exploring a new relationship. I started to feel like it was no longer beneficial, and decided to quit. And that's when I realized how hard it was to quit. I tried and failed multiple times before finally building enough willpower to actually do it. And there's this part of me that still worries that I'll fall back into it when things get hard. For better or worse, I'm dealing with some really difficult situations in my life and I'm staying away from it anyway. This gives me optimism, but damn, I didn't think it would be this difficult.
In many ways, it feels like the pendulum has swung too far with legalization. This is not to imply I think it shouldn't be legal, but that the culture around it and the public messaging hasn't really caught up with the reality of the potential for harmful use. The public is well aware of the downsides of alcohol use, and there are well-established methods and institutions to help people deal with alcohol addiction and recovery. If someone is an alcoholic, the public understands the severity of this addiction, and recognizes the challenge that such a person faces in staying sober.
But people who are addicted to cannabis often have a hard time convincing people that this is a real issue. The fact that it's not physically addictive in the same ways as alcohol and other drugs has led to the misconception that the addiction potential is not real and that the difficulty of managing it is not real. The warnings that "using this can be habit forming" don't seem to convey the reality of what it feels like to form that habit, and how hard it can be to break it. Growing communities like /r/leaves and /r/Petioles tell this story over and over.
I think that the extremely high THC strains, and even higher THC concentrations in concentrates and cartridges has a lot to do with this. The stuff people are getting these days isn't your hippy uncle's weed, and while the public consciousness is calibrated on the relatively harmless stuff, the stuff that people are using all day looks nothing like that.
All of this to say: be careful. I have had some incredibly good experiences with it, and I think it helped me open my mind. It helped me through a tough time. It's also really enjoyable. But it has a much darker side than many people realize, and it took me far to long to accept that I might be one of the people who can't have a healthy relationship with it. And the fact that I'd had a "take it or leave it" feeling about it for years lulled me into a false sense of security. The slide towards maladaptive use happened gradually and took awhile to notice.
I hope that with the continued movements towards legalization, there is also an increase in public awareness and support for people who get themselves into trouble. More focus on the safety concerns of high THC strains and harmful use. More growers who focus on medicinally useful products vs. just chasing the highest THC.
Hey, good luck with dropping it, 30 days is already a milestone!
First 3 to 6 months is always terrible. I also had issues with sleep because of dreams, and also used cannabis for that purpose. Getting back to sleeping without THC in the bloodstream is, well... an experience on it's own.
It's funny how all of the adults I've heard/read basically share the same experience of dropping it (REM rebound, heart rate and anxiety/strange thoughts). And, yeah, today's weed is far more potent than weed I initially started to smoke almost 2 decades ago.
Thank you! 30 days has indeed felt like an accomplishment, and I'm looking forward to getting through the rest of this.
I've done a significant amount of processing and have a good therapist now, which has helped me deal with the sleep somewhat. New tools and new habits make a big difference.
> Certainly it should not be illegal when alcohol is legal.
I don't think this argument makes sense. Alcohol could well be a net harm on society, while a ban is not realistic due to its established role in society. This doesn't imply cannabis should have been legalized.
There's a lot implied in that quoted sentence that I didn't expand on.
The point more broadly is that if our society is willing to accept alcohol as a recreational substance with downsides, and more generally the idea that consuming recreational substances shouldn't be a criminal act, it makes no sense to send people to prison for consuming a substance that seems far less harmful in general.
> ...while a ban is not realistic due to its established role in society. This doesn't imply cannabis should have been legalized.
I disagree. Prior to legalization, cannabis already had an established role in society and saw widespread use. The primary difference between it and alcohol is that we sent people to prison for one, and didn't for the other, while also accepting the statistical reality that alcohol seems generally far more harmful. More harmful in terms of individual health outcomes and the downsides of becoming an addicted user, and more harmful to others around those who use it, e.g. deaths caused by drunk drivers, domestic abuse fueled by alcoholism, etc.
At least in the US (not sure about the climate in Germany), the reality was that cannabis use was already widespread, and that people's lives were routinely ruined for using it despite their use causing no harm to others. All while problematic use of alcohol routinely resulted in what are effectively slaps on the wrist, even when people routinely put other people at risk while driving under the influence.
It's against this backdrop that I'm comparing the two. Both were already pervasive. The difference in policy between the two made no sense.
And this is all before considering the clear upsides to cannabis. The medicinal applications are real, and have enabled people to live better lives without the downsides of the other widely prescribed pharmaceutical options.
Altering our mental states by consuming substances seems like a deeply human thing (in addition to be observed in other species), and is deeply embedded in us. I think there are very good reasons to ban some substances for the sake of public health. But I don't think a default stance against mind alteration is a good one either.
In Germany (and not just Germany probably) the use of cannabis, and other drugs apart from alcohol and nicotine, is significantly less widespread and normalized than in the US. It's definitely far from being as normalized as alcohol. (Although cannabis obviously became more pervasive in the past few decades. Perhaps not least due to exported US American TV shows normalizing it.)
Legalizing cannabis in such an environment seems to me like legalizing alcohol in a country where alcohol use isn't already normalized -- like in Iran. A very questionable idea. One would need strong arguments on why the expected benefits are larger than the expected harms.
> And this is all before considering the clear upsides to cannabis. The medicinal applications are real, and have enabled people to live better lives without the downsides of the other widely prescribed pharmaceutical options.
Yes, but using cannabis (THC, presumably) as a specialized medication is very different from legalizing it altogether. It would be no different from other drugs that need approval from a government agency with regards to efficacy and safety, before being available only with a prescription.
(Being available with prescription only makes sense if there is a significant chance of abuse. Which is the case if the substance is addictive. Which suggests non-addictive substances like, perhaps, LSD and psilocybin, could be freely available. Though I'm not an expert on these drugs.)
> Altering our mental states by consuming substances seems like a deeply human thing (in addition to be observed in other species), and is deeply embedded in us. I think there are very good reasons to ban some substances for the sake of public health. But I don't think a default stance against mind alteration is a good one either.
I would argue that a lot of the harm comes from a substance a) being addictive, and b) being significantly unhealthy. To the point where the net harm probably outweighs the net benefit. Caffeine is pretty much the only substance I know that is addictive while being quite harmless. But actually banning things has to consider the real chance of being successful with such a ban. The more people are already addicted or otherwise accustomed to a drug (e.g. to cigarettes or alcohol) the less realistic is a ban being successful and enforceable.
Can I ask where you're from? I'm just curious about worldview based on geographic factors and how that might influence perspective.
> I would argue that a lot of the harm comes from a substance a) being addictive, and b) being significantly unhealthy. To the point where the net harm probably outweighs the net benefit.
I think it's important to point out that cannabis is a plant, and has a drastically different risk profile than alcohol. You keep grouping the two as if they're similar, but they're not. I say this as someone who has clearly experienced the downsides, but who still doesn't think banning it makes any sense, especially if there are criminal penalties involved.
Historically, the bans have been predicated on lies, and associating it with harder drugs that are a clear and obvious danger to public health. The issue I have with your argument is that it presupposes that these are plants to be legalized (vs. legal by default). The burden of proof should lie on why we think they are harmful, and why they shouldn't be legal by default, IMO. And when looked at through that lens, existing policies have clearly not been aligned with reality.
I'd support common sense regulations and requirements around public education, maybe even limits on strength. But there's a wide spectrum of possibility between banning something and making sure that people use it safely.
If we want to focus on banning substances that are addictive and a net harm to society, there is a lot more low hanging fruit across the food industry. Let's start with sugar.
At the same time, I'm about 30 days into quitting entirely after realizing that I couldn't have a healthy relationship with it. I'm experiencing intense anxiety, dark thoughts, and have struggled with the intensity of REM rebound. My resting heart rate immediately went up about 15BPM on average as my body starts the process of finding its new equilibrium.
I first started using it "medicinally" to cope with poor sleep and depression. It actually helped lower my anxiety (with the right strain). It suppresses REM sleep and dreams, which was beneficial since my dreams tended to be part of the reason I had such poor sleep. For a time, it was incredibly helpful, and it helped me establish some better habits and process some difficult things.
But over time, it crept into more and more parts of my life. I never went full "wake & bake", but found myself wanting to use it earlier and earlier each day. When I did use it recreationally, I started to feel the pull even stronger. It started to majorly impact my short term memory, and I started noticing myself forgetting important things while exploring a new relationship. I started to feel like it was no longer beneficial, and decided to quit. And that's when I realized how hard it was to quit. I tried and failed multiple times before finally building enough willpower to actually do it. And there's this part of me that still worries that I'll fall back into it when things get hard. For better or worse, I'm dealing with some really difficult situations in my life and I'm staying away from it anyway. This gives me optimism, but damn, I didn't think it would be this difficult.
In many ways, it feels like the pendulum has swung too far with legalization. This is not to imply I think it shouldn't be legal, but that the culture around it and the public messaging hasn't really caught up with the reality of the potential for harmful use. The public is well aware of the downsides of alcohol use, and there are well-established methods and institutions to help people deal with alcohol addiction and recovery. If someone is an alcoholic, the public understands the severity of this addiction, and recognizes the challenge that such a person faces in staying sober.
But people who are addicted to cannabis often have a hard time convincing people that this is a real issue. The fact that it's not physically addictive in the same ways as alcohol and other drugs has led to the misconception that the addiction potential is not real and that the difficulty of managing it is not real. The warnings that "using this can be habit forming" don't seem to convey the reality of what it feels like to form that habit, and how hard it can be to break it. Growing communities like /r/leaves and /r/Petioles tell this story over and over.
I think that the extremely high THC strains, and even higher THC concentrations in concentrates and cartridges has a lot to do with this. The stuff people are getting these days isn't your hippy uncle's weed, and while the public consciousness is calibrated on the relatively harmless stuff, the stuff that people are using all day looks nothing like that.
All of this to say: be careful. I have had some incredibly good experiences with it, and I think it helped me open my mind. It helped me through a tough time. It's also really enjoyable. But it has a much darker side than many people realize, and it took me far to long to accept that I might be one of the people who can't have a healthy relationship with it. And the fact that I'd had a "take it or leave it" feeling about it for years lulled me into a false sense of security. The slide towards maladaptive use happened gradually and took awhile to notice.
I hope that with the continued movements towards legalization, there is also an increase in public awareness and support for people who get themselves into trouble. More focus on the safety concerns of high THC strains and harmful use. More growers who focus on medicinally useful products vs. just chasing the highest THC.