how often do u have to smoke pot

The thing is, you may not even realize the damage it does.

Dear Shepherd999.

I'm 15. I've been smoking cannabis since I was 11. Yes it's only 4 years but I was one of the smartest students in school and, people always comment on how mature I am for my age. People often mistake me for an 18 year old or at least 16+. My IQ is 10 points higher than the student with the highest IQ in my whole middle school. When I started smoking I did have feelings of anxiety but that was only the first few times. I never smoke around my baby, ever. Never would either. I don't want him to follow my footsteps. But I have my reasons as to why I started smoking cannabis and it made me feel less stressed and safer.

Dear Lucy

Many people do find that cannabis has the relaxing effect that you experience, and that is one of the reasons it is so popular. However research has indicated that IQ falls in later years such that 20 years or so on, IQ has fallen. You could find that your 10 point IQ 'advantage' has all but disappeared well before you are 40.

I am pleased that you have such concern for your baby, and I do not want to under-rate the circumstances that led you to take cannabis in the first place, but the dangers of the drug are still great. I know you want to be and do the best for your child, but psychotic illness or even cancer when you are a bit older will not help your son.

Going through difficult experiences at a young age often makes a person mature quickly to start with. However, that initial maturity 'head-start' can soon be lost, such that the mature teenager becomes relatively immature in their twenties. I've seen that happen. "How have the mighty fallen".

While medication is often needed to help in certain circumstances, it is dangerous to 'self-medicate' where the effects cannot be professionally monitored.

Very often it also leads to more dangerous drugs. It just opens the door.

Lucy, I'll tell you about a family memeber. He started around your age smoking pot. Defends it to this day. His family is really messed up him, his wife and 3 boys are all hooked on all kinds of drugs. It all started from pot. It's ruined all of them. There's no money, bills are always behind, barely any food, all the money goes to drugs. They live for drugs. Please don't let that happen to you and your baby.

I really am sorry about your family but, I will never run out of money and what happened to your family won't happen to me.

Lucy, don't bet on it. He was just an example. I've seen it happen so many times.

I know, but I'm pretty sure. To start off I don't smoke every day anymore since I was pregnant.

Well, in that case all I can do is wish you good luck. Please be very careful. I wish you and your baby the best.

Thank you. I hope your family gets help and better, too. I wish you had a profile so we could be friends.

Written by Shepherd999: "Many people do find that cannabis has the relaxing effect that you experience, and that is one of the reasons it is so popular. However research has indicated that IQ falls in later years such that 20 years or so on, IQ has fallen. You could find that your 10 point IQ 'advantage' has all but disappeared well before you are 40.

I am pleased that you have such concern for your baby, and I do not want to under-rate the circumstances that led you to take cannabis in the first place, but the dangers of the drug are still great. I know you want to be and do the best for your child, but psychotic illness or even cancer when you are a bit older will not help your son.

Going through difficult experiences at a young age often makes a person mature quickly to start with. However, that initial maturity 'head-start' can soon be lost, such that the mature teenager becomes relatively immature in their twenties. I've seen that happen. "How have the mighty fallen".

While medication is often needed to help in certain circumstances, it is dangerous to 'self-medicate' where the effects cannot be professionally monitored."

 

I absolutely can't agree with you more....and I'm a toker.... or as I call it quite honestly, a cannabis addict. However- as is typical to me- I will probably come across as a bit of antagonist, as I want to challenge you on the intelligence theory.

I've been smoking on and off for over 25 years (ahhh, now I've just written that down, it looks really scary!)- more 'on' for the last 13 and for at least 10 of those, it was a daily 8-10 spliff a day habit. The reasons I started smoking were many: peer pressure, a need to escape from my life (I was sexually attacked a year prior to smoking), childhood depression & self-harm, death of a parent. The reputation that weed carried back then was one of a harmless, recreational drug that was slightly better than alcohol and had no hangover! Between ages 11- 16 years old, we certainly had no concept of the harm it could have on us in later life. In fact, even our parents at that time thought it was the lesser of two evils- kids on our estate were either getting drunk, robbing houses & getting pregnant or they were getting stoned and munching their way through bags of crisps and sweets. One friend's parents were drug dealers, so it was easy to come by- never had  to pay for it- and we thought, we were the sensible ones, considering.......

 

Yet I'm STILL smoking it 25 years later! Out of my trio of best mates at school (we all smoked), two became heroin addicts; one is now dead from her habit. I didn't go on to doing anything else more than once or twice (coke & a trip, which turned out to be a decongestant!) and now-a-days, I don't even drink.

My point- When I was younger, the clarity of my intelligence wasn't a problem. While I didn't go to college or university at that age (socio-economic reasons, rather than intelligence!), I was reader and writer, so I thrived on knowledge and creativity. Verbally, I was quick, analytical and artistic in my most situations. But my, I was gulible and didn't have a clue about social 'norms', so despite my sharp perception, I usually ended up falling for a ruse.

When I started smoking regularly, I was self-medicating a mental breakdown after a few years of unsuccessfully trying prescribed medication (this is another story, so I won't elaborate). I certainly didn't have any problems with my intelligence at that point- I did a number of educational courses, including my high school & college exams and eventually enrolled in to university. For the following 6 years while I was at university, I smoked and I came away with a 2:1 degree in psychology. I've also done very well in subsequent educational courses and earned my place at two psychological conventions in a year, with my research in to adult attachment and depression.

 

I know, I'm not really sounding like the poster-girl for not smoking! In the years I've been a regular toker, I've gone from no qualifications, mental health issues and living in debt in a sh**ty studio flat to someone whose CV has a page of educational achievements & awards taking over the first page! No longer in debt & living in a huge Victorian house. I can't say weed has held me back- in fact, it's kept me in; reading & writing, instead of wishing I was out there with the rest of life! I NEEDED to be inside my head in those years. In a way, I needed to be stoned to get where I am.

Yet despite this, I believe it was my attitude that played a huge part in my success, especially my attitude towards the weed. I was determined that if I was going to smoke, I couldn't be a lazy-ar*e stoner. I had to achieve to prove that not all stoners were toast eating, TV addicts. 

 

And now, I don't need it. I need to be out; socialising and actually doing my job instead of studying for it.....but it's very hard! I have a lot of bad habits associated to the weed that I also need to break. 

 

I have found that my mind is a lot slower than it used to be and whether stoned or not, I forget facts very easily. Numbers and digits are also a problem. Symbolic and figurative memory seem to be slower to recognise patterns. I recently had to teach GCSE mathematics. I used to teach statistics and while I had a few issues getting my head around stats, I managed it. GCSE maths was another thing all together! It was freaking hard and eventually, I had to admit I couldn't do it. I have trouble retaining numbers in my head for more than a few seconds. I also have problems remembering algorhythms and recognising scientific mathematical symbols. It took me four hours to complete a worksheet that a bunch of 16 year olds did in an hour!

The problem with weed is that it is not really a social drug; when a person is stoned, their thoughts are internalised and only focus or attend to what the brain recognises. Communication- expressing intelligence- is a social action and because weed slows down social reactions, the brain has a hard time recognising what it should do & how it should tell the body to act. Hence, a stoner who may be quite intelligent will get 'mind block' and not be able to direct their focus from what is in their head to external stimuli and consequently, you get a bumbling fool, rather than an intelligent conversation. Weed blocks the ability to learn new concepts, but enhances the ability to elaborate on existing concepts.

 

However.....there are two major types of intelligence; fluid and crystalized. Younger people- children to young adults (around late 20's) have fluid intelligence. They can think quicker, adapt to new mental concepts quickly and generally, think quicker. Their episodic memories are not so rich, but their procedural memory is. As we grow older, this changes. More mature people have a better crystalized intelligence- they can reflect better, learn from past mistakes a little better and have more depth of knowledge. Episodic memories are rich, yet procedural memories take longer to ingrain.  

Perhaps weed slows down fluid intelligence and, because it is a drug that enhances internally directed thought schemas, encourages more of a crystalized intelligence? Yet a longer period of time enhancing fluid intelligence would ensure a depth of crystalized intelligence- hence, young stoners having relatively lower IQ's when they reach adulthood. 

 

I would interested in the studies you've read.

 

Best wishes

 

V

Dear Violet_Ivy

Have you read the article (on this site) to which I referred in my earlier post?:

"Teenagers Who Smoke Weed Regularly May Damage Their IQ"

www.steadyhealth.com/articles/Teenagers_Who_Smoke_Weed_Regularly_May_Damage_Their_IQ_a2420.html

 

Yo Ho Shepherd999,

 

I admit, I didn't read the article at first, as I didn't see your post with the link. Like a small bull in a china shop, I didn't see that there was another page to this conversation. However, I have read it now- a couple of times- and while I DO agree with what it's stated. Research and pulling it apart is what I've made money from, so I couldn't help but notice a couple of reasons why this article can't necessarily be generalised to all smokers who toked under the age of 18.

The studies in New Zealand in to marijuana use have been going on since the early 2000's. A few universities there and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden were the first to study marijuana use intensively and it's only been in the past 15 years that any research has gone in to the long-term effects of marijuana use.

Right...now on to the article.

The participant number is low and uneven, so comparissons should be made lightly. While  the number of overall participants is good (at 1000), the number of  those starting marijuana use before age 18 is only 52/1000- approx. 5%- (thank goodness really!) and those after age 18 is 92/948- approx 10%- (1000-52, who smoked before age 18). In attempt to get a true result, a pairwise comparrison design between the 52 participants who smoked under age 18 should have been undertaken with 52 out of the over 18 group.

The article doesn't state what kind of analysis was done on the results: it simply says "In what can be termed a significant finding...". If they did a correlation, then no extraneous variables would have been taken in to account. There could have been something else moderating the significance that wouldn't have been seen in the results, as it wouldn't have been looked for. If they did an ANOVA or MANOVA, they would have only been looking at the differences between the three groups and again, wouldn't have picked up on an extraneous variable moderating the effects on the under 18 group.

However, if they did a regression- then I certaintly wouldn't argue with the results. This analysis picks up on moderators, so extraneous variables would have been taken in to account. 

Whatever way they did the results, they should have stated this more confidently. To say "In what can be termed a significant finding..." is not a convincing way to state significant results- it conveys perception, not numerical fact. "In what can be termed as..." can also not be termed as- depending on the amount of significance and how they reached it! I did an experiment last year correlating personality and reaction time with marginal results on a spearman's rho analysis, but 'significant' on a pearson's. The type of analysis is what terms the significance, most of the time, and a determined researcher who wants to back up a theory can often find the analysis to do that.

The article doesn't state anything about the socio-economic background to any of these participants, so there's the possibility that these other variables that could have accounted for the loss of IQ points. If all of the under 18 group were from poverty backgrounds, then there would have been a lack of opportunities in further education and careers developing intellectual qualities. Additionally, there are studies that suggest that those who earn less or are from benefit dependent backgrounds eat less healthier; nutrition plays a big part in the health of the brain. And we don't need a study to tell us that cannabis use is rife amongst the lower classes, do we? Did they look at these factors? It doesn't say they did.

 

Additionally, they have stated IQ, yet they only list the facets of IQ they tested- memory, power of reasoning, ability to process a piece of information and processing speed. Plus they don't say whose theory of intelligence they tested their participants by. There are many theories of intelligence, but most seem to focus on mathematical skills and spatial reasoning. Abilities that boys/men are better at than girls/women. By Gardner's theory, there are other types of intelligence- spatial, kinestetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal, etc, thus, what they tested the participants on may not have been the kind of tests they could do well in- cannabis use or no cannabis use. This is not necessarily a reflection on their intelligence, but proof that we are all different & by testing people as 'subjects', the results are not a true reflection of the effect.

Also- if you were testing intelligence, you wouldn't give the same tests  to a 13 year old as you would a 38 year old. Immediately, there is a flaw- a test for a 38year old would be too hard for a 13/ a test for a 13 year old would be too easy for a 38. However....I have to let this one go. In a longditudinal study- they would have allowed for that.

Going back to gender- the article doesn't state the proportion of either. This would have an effect on the results, not only for the reason stated above, but also because of the group distribution. 

Also- intelligence declines as we get older. This has been backed up with studies too. While I'm sure this study has taken that in to account, it does mean that would have been a margin of decline in IQ by age 38 anyway.

 

It also says "This damage to IQ was not found to be associated with the amount of weed at one go or its potency" but how do they know that? They don't state how they tested this. I would be interested in another comparisson study; a study of those who smoked weed in the 1960's and those who smoked weed in the 1990's and beyond. The reason I say this is because after reading research in to the differences between skunk and naturally grown weed, I'm convinced that skunk is the mind-number.

 

After my review of the article, I don't disbelieve it- not at all. I HAVE said in many previous posts to young smokers not to smoke it as their brain is still developing. I didn't need an article to tell me that- it's common sense. However, I don't take my information from one article- not only do I read around my subject (the for's and the against's), but I'm living with cannabis abuse on a daily basis. I know it's slowed down my brain and made my body 20 years older than it is. Yet I've also gained something from my time as a stoner and it hasn't had a totally negative effect on my life. My biggest issue with it is that it's addictive and now I want to stop, I feel helpless against it.

I wouldn't wish being a cannabis addict on anyone. That's why I'm absolutely sure to tell others not to do as I did. But I also don't panic when I read articles like the one reviewed. I live in a world where cannabis is the lesser of a lot of evils and while in an ideal world, no one would need a drug or drink to feel a part of life, we don't live there and we're a far way off.

 

Anyway, I think this post is long enough and it's really late!

 

Best wishes & thanks for the cat toy!:-)

 

V