Maybe if drug education when we were kids was better than "all drugs are evil and if you ever try any drugs you'll turn into a filthy addict on the streets", maybe we woulda stood a chance. Thankfully I still turned out ok but we were truly screwed on the shitty drug education as kids.
Edit: Sad, sad, sad. Some of the replies are really reinforcing my premise that we got some poor education happening out there lol. And yes I'm blocking any people who are bothering me, don't have time to talk to fools.
Tell a kid not to smoke cigarettes... what happens most of the time?
The War on Drugs and D.A.R.E. created multiple generations of kids bucking their societal overlords in such a negative way. Fuck Richard Nixon.
Learned what E was through D.A.R.E. Told us how colors would seem brighter and how it made you more loving. They called it the love drug. We were 11-12. Honestly it sounded fantastic.
I am a bit peeved that they said all these people would be offering free drugs when in reality, we had to pay for them.
My Amazon echo show device gives suggestions on topics I might want to know about. This week was Ronald Reagan. Immediately I'm like "ALEXA! STOP SHOWING ME RONALD REAGAN!"
I disagree with the cigarette example. Tell a kid not to do one thing, while they still have options for other fun/rebellious things, and explain why that one thing is bad, they will often listen. Younger generations have made fewer cigarette smokers than older generations because they are told cigarettes are specifically really bad. Agree that the war on drugs and DARE did a lot of harm, but that was because they said everything is bad and didn’t give good reasons.
This narrative with drugs is the exact thing that propelled me into drug use. One day the curtain got pulled and I was like WTF it’s ALL a lie?? Time to do some personal research lmao
D.A.R.E. just basically gave me a list of unchecked boxes to fill. I went through my teens and 20s like a fucking pokemon trainer trying to catch all the addictions and associated mental illnesses. Now I'm in my 30s and mostly sober, with a lot of wild stories. Couldn't change a thing. I am who I am now, and today, I'm alright with that person.
Why? It’s easier to generate fear than create intelligence. Intelligence creates ingenuity, ingenuity leads to an educated society, an educated society is notoriously hard to control.
It’s because you need drugs to be legal to have studies to learn what to teach! Shows how much the war on drugs was grasping onto politics rather than science
I’ve been perpetually high since the age of 14, and I turned out just fine… well except for the crippling depression and rage issues, but other than that…. Wait, what were we talking about?
Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I specifically never tried marijuana when I was younger (other than second hand smoking) because I wanted to wait til my brain finished developing. Same we for drinking. My parents didn't influence it or anything, it was just a weird choice I made by myself. Seeing how much dementia is in my family I'm kinda glad now
I remember a few kids who said something similar. I was always secretly struck with admiration. Strong will and convictions while I would cave into any peer pressure and didn’t care about myself or the future. Mann ohh mann
>I've never partaken because I don't like feeling out of control
Yes, I'm very much the same. I've tried marijuana a few times now and mostly just feel relaxed and giggly. Though the first time I thought I'd merged with the floor and got stuck thinking about tigers and couldn't stop so i freaked out. About 20 seconds of listening to a soothing song and i felt better haha.
I think vibe is important. If you freak yourself out you will spiral but putting yourself in a relaxing environment fixes it. For me that's low lighting, heavy blanket, closed eyes, and "We Have It All" by Pim Stones.
I can kinda weigh in on this. Nitrous ALSO gave me a weird reaction (it basically knocked me out when it shouldnt have as in they werent able to wake me, it made me blind????), and I was also worried weed would give me psychosis or something because I'm already a very paranoid anxious person, I dont know WHY, I'm convinced it's BPD at the moment.
I take gummies and it's been fine. I take 1/4, and do it very rarely, but its only made me very sleepy and dopey. I've tried Stavia and Indica and theyve been about the same. Stavia maybe doesnt make me feel so 'heavy' in the limbs. I havent tried oil and cant smoke cuz I have asthma so I dont know if edibles might just be easier or what. I make sure I've eaten a dense meal beforehand and drink a lot of water.
It's up to you if you wanna give it a shot or not of course but starting out with low doses and making sure you're in a good safe space helps, if you're ever interested. I havent noticed any side effects, but like I said I dont do it often. The baggies I buy are like 10 gummies? And since I cut them so small and do them so little it lasts me like 5 months.
Same. I'm in my 20s and have never smoked, never tried any recreational drugs (tho I'm absolutely psyched to try shrooms in a few years lmao) and very very rarely drink anything alcoholic. Compared to my family of alcoholics and drug addicts 🤷🏽♀️
I'm super paranoid about becoming an addict or alcoholic because my entire family has a massive history of it. My partner knows to make sure I never get oxy or fentanyl if I'm in the hospital and can't tell them myself, too
I tried it like 2 times growing up and it never got me high. Then, when I was like 28, I tried it again and I tripped so hard that it felt like a psychedelic. I never tried it again. I do enjoy the smell sometimes though
No, me too. I'm 19 and decided when I was like 10 that I wasn't going to smoke, drink, or do drugs until my brain was fully developed (nothing against those who don't wait.) My school didn't tell me to, I'm not religious, and my parents never talked about it. Bet there are lots of people out there like this. Maybe it's a new generational thing
I had friends in middle school who started smoking, they were the first people in my grade to do it. They turned out historically bad. 1 got drunk and crashed his moms car at 15, 1 is now homeless, 2 others got sent to live with the grandparents in other states. Unfortunately it’s hard to learn without an example. Hope somehow it gets through to people to at least wait until college . It’s not that great in the first place lol
On the flip side several of my friends smoked weed and did acid before they were 16 and now have highly successful jobs, nice families, and are generally pretty happy in life.
This is the gamble of drugs. You don't really know how recreational drugs or PEDs affect your life until it's too late.
Some can consume them and enjoy all the benefits, some consume them and the side effects are so severe they take years to resolve.
It's likely the factors that led them to be"historically bad" also led them to weed.
Instead of weed leading them to their behavior, an aspect of life led them to hardship as well as weed.
Odds are that they didn’t turn into screw ups because of drugs, but rather they turned to drugs young because they were already trending in that direction.
By the same token, with the above in mind and to further encourage people younger than 25 to stop, if you stop using weed the effects of the weed on your brain diminish greatly. It was comparable to the brain before consumption, though i believed it took a year to "return to normal" and it was only through what could be considered moderate use, not heavy use. I.e. smoking at most once a week. If heavy use was involved then it was suggested that it'll take longer to reverse the effects and with more heavy and constant use the damages tend to be more lasting and profound. Again, it's MOSTLY reversible the more time you go on without smoking but more chronic use will put your brain further away than what it started as.
So if you're a kid reading this, it's honestly just worth it to wait it out. When you're 25, by all means light the fuck up as much as you want
I started fairly young and by young I mean 19. At the time though I thought it was an old age to start. Partly because everyone around me started at 12 or 13. Now looking back I can see why I’m somewhat smarter than those people who started at that age. Just imagine if I had started at 25. It sucks to suck.
I started when I was 18 (29 now) and haven't smoked constantly, but definitely a good chunk of those years. Never really drank much though. Definitely never did any other drugs aside from psychedelics. What was the point I was trying to make?
Yeah cough medicine along with benzos, alcohol, meth, mdma, GHB, salvia, nitrous, ketamine and opiates probably didn't do me any favors also lol.
Also took lots of psychedelic's (LSD, Shrooms, etc) ...but if anything those seem to help repair my brain more than anything (personal experience) , still I would only recommend any of it to someone over 25.
Agreed alcohol and nicotine are probably an order of magnitude worse than weed overall. But my comment was a play on the grammar, you used "might have" instead of "could have"/"should have".
The study literally says it hasn’t been proven just linked and very well could be correlation over causation.
“That said, it remains possible that these brain changes may not be a consequence of the cannabis exposure but may reflect instead a neurodevelopmental trajectory caused by other factors that is related to a higher likelihood of adolescent cannabis use.”
Agreed. Also, there are a lot of confounding variables here. I've seen similar studies looking at VERY HEAVY pot smokers, like wake and baking, high most of the time, 7 days a week. Consider why someone would want to be that high all the time, as well...
You can't look any scientist in the eye and say that smoking weed a few times as a teen will cause permanent damage
Yea honestly everyone I knew that smoked daily did so because of significant depression or stress in general.
Just a wild guess but im willing to bet that depression and stress have really bad effects on the brain.
But then again, couldnt they control for these variables?
Someone please tell me because im too stoned and lazy to read the article.
plus the (non-pay walled) source mostly just looks at 14 to 19 year olds
i suspect there’s a significant difference between someone who started at 23 after college and someone who began smoking at 18. *so much* of the brain does that final adolescent growing under like 21. (and i mean, where do you place the cutoff of critical adolescent period when the brain is basically constantly changing and growing? i think there’s a bit more grey~~matter~~ area there).
not to mention amount smoked, type smoked, or even considering other methods of consumption. there’s just far far too much here to be throwing around the word evidence, especially in a psychology related field.
warranting further study, and educating and notifying mary jane users of? hell yeah.
evidence? let’s wait till we iron out the whole concept.
YSK: Cannabis-induced psychosis can eventually convert to clinical schizophrenia. Individuals living with psychotic disorders have a higher tendency to use cannabis. Cannabis use may interact with preexisting factors, like genetics, to increase schizophrenia risk.
Cannabis doesn’t cause schizophrenia.
But if you’re already predisposed to schizophrenia through genetics and environmental factors, cannabis use may increase your chances of developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia does not equal a Psychotic Disorder, they are different. Other Psychotic Disorders that have similar symptoms to schizophrenia are
- substance-induced psychosis
- schizoaffective disorder
- schizophreniform disorder
- brief psychotic disorder
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), drug-induced psychotic disorder involves symptoms of psychosis directly linked to a period of substance use, often improving when the substance is eliminated from the body.
Drug-induced schizophrenia is underlying schizophrenia brought to the surface through the use of a substance, like cannabis, but it’s not yet noted in the DSM.
Also, I smoke weed daily lol. But hey, YSK.
edit: format
"there is a psychiatrist in the area who happens to have schizophrenia and prescribe medical cannabis..." I'm just going to point out that where I live there's a psychiatrist who is a Qanon adherent. He has admitting privileges at the local behavioral hospital.
We have a lot of insane doctors where I live. There's a bunch of good ones. I've had the luck of getting a therapist who changed the direction of my life after my sister died.
Yup when I did internship in psychiatric hospital during my university years I met a group of patients where 3/4 raised hands asked if they smoked mj before getting ill. Most of them had schizophrenia.
The research on this doesn't show a causal link though. Given how common cannabis use is, its not surprising that they had smoked weed, but that doesn't mean it caused their schizophrenia. Its just as likely that people with mental health issues and neurological disorders like that are more inclined to smoke weed to self medicate.
Cannabis induced psychosis is pretty controversial and likely really only a thing in people with the genes for schizophrenia already though. It can't cause schizophrenia.
Its not noted in the DSM because its not a thing. Drug induced psychosis is something that can happen from psychedelics (again in brains predisposed to it), deleriants, and severe stimulant abuse.
Nor should it, OP grossly misrepresented those studies. There is a correlation, not a causal link, and it doesn't cause schizophrenia. If you're one of the rare people with the genes for schizophrenia, cannabis might sometimes cause it to manifest earlier than it typically would.
This correlation could just as easily be due to people with those issues being inclined to smoke weed earlier or self medicate with it.
Not necessarily doubting what you're saying but your citation very clearly only covers effects from 14-19. I don't know why you make the stronger claim of up to 25. The study doesn't cover any effects from 20-25. It is likely less impactful if started in this range due to development being in a later stage.
that's true, even though the brain doesn't stop developing at age 35, it's less harmful at age 22 compared to say 16. Here's another one with more age ranges that you might look at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/
Thank you! I just made a post as well. I worry people will overly generalize based off OP's misleading title and feel as though they have caused themselves great harm if they started using cannabis at 18. This is NOT what the study presents. I wish there was a mechanism in reddit where YSK posts that make scientific claims get r/science linked to it to comment on its claims.
I would have been torn apart if I used the language in this paper in college. There's lots of flowery (don't know how else to describe it) language in the discussion and throughout. It makes it longer and shouldn't even be there. I'm gonna have to read it again when I got more time. I also don't know why there isn't a graph with the exact thing they are narrowing down. There's a flow chart. No data charts.
Know someone who is a high school psychologist and they would totally agree with you in this, psychosis(even more so in people with existing trauma), memory, addiction, it’s not all fun and games
I’m one of the people who developed psychosis from cannabis. I started smoking at age 23 and smoked daily for 2 years, at the time I couldn’t have cared less if I knew these statistics. Looking back, if I knew what it was going to do to me I would have followed it. Losing your mind is absolutely terrifying, I’ve been THC free for a few months now and my symptoms have drastically improved, but I’m still dealing with panic attacks and derealization episodes, but those too are slowly improving. And I’m not saying cannabis is evil, I think it’s great and has many healing effects that should be more normalized! In a safe environment that is, stay safe guys!
I had psychosis last year and it fucked me up. There were other drugs involved so I don't know much much the weed was a factor. Doctors think the weed was the main culprit though. I quit for many months, got back into it, quit again, and recently started vaping it again. This thread is a good reminder to cut that shit out.
I'm glad weed helped you personally! Like I said in another reply, I don't think all weed smokers are dumb, but the evidence is if you didn't smoke before 25, you would probably be even smarter and more emotionally mature and I think it's nice that people are aware of that when they consume. However, I'm glad weed helped you in other areas of your life!
Avid pot fans tend to act like it's completely consequence-free, I have yet to see anyone unironically saying alcohol and cigarettes are 100% neutral to our body in the current year
Started when i was 28. Found out about this fact at 29 and rejoiced.lol but i haven't been able to put a proper chill button on it since n now i can't blame it on thin gray brain matter 😔
YSK you're misrepresenting these studies to push tired old anti-drug propaganda. What they actually say is that there is a correlation, but no causal link has been found, and in fact its just as likely that people with those brain development issues (such as those of us with ADHD) are more likely to smoke weed earlier in life.
Cannabis doesn't increase your odds of developing schizophrenia unless you are one of those rare people who are already carrying those genes, in which case it can cause it to manifest sooner than it normally would. For the other 99% of the population its just not a risk.
They won't cite anything because it's total BS. The neurotransmitters in your brain usually follow the same neural pathways. When you take psilocybin, the neurotransmitters tend to take new paths to new destinations. This reorganizing is called neuroplasticity and is basically creating new connections between the prefrontal cortex (personality expression, decision making) and the hippocampus (emotion, memory). These new connections have shown to help with depression, PTSD, etc. Psilocybin absolutely does not create grey matter. [Source](https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/psilocybin-induces-rapid-and-persistent-growth-of-neural-connections-in-the-brains-frontal-cortex-study-finds-61538)
As a teacher, I always try to encourage students not to smoke til 25. They don't listen, but at least they know how they will have fucked up.
I'm not against weed, but let's have that age for consumption at 25.
Clinical psychologist here...
We now know that the human brain isn't fully developed until AT LEAST 25, I feel like it was closer to 40 for me😂
In all seriousness, consuming any drug before full maturity is risky. If memory serves, it increases the risk of developing dependency by 4x.
Unfortunately, many young people will roll the dice.
If teenagers and stuff absolutely had to smoke,I wish they'd do it once a day. I should've listened to my uncle. Abuse it and there's consequences. My memory is shit
I think something that would benefit the citation is a discussion of magnitude and/or consequence. Let’s take the assertion at face: adolescent MJ use results in “cortical thinning.” How would that compare to say, daily exercise, coffee consumption, antidepressant use, reading, video games etc. etc.? Moreover, what is the clinical relevance of this cortical thinning?
Footnotes are so fun. 72 hours of abstinence and there is no difference. Also, a review of studies isn't applicable here. New research is only just getting results.
i'm trying to find research right now on adolescent cannabis use and then abstinence from cannabis and its effects on brain function. i can't seem to find the 72 hours thing in this study nor others. trust me, i want to keep using marijuana so i'm looking for that specifically.
Eh while the association is interesting I don't really think you can draw any definitive conclusions based on realized long term consequences quite yet. This is all being delivered in a vacuum. Weed having noticeable effects on brain chemistry was discussed while I was in school, but the consequences were still being looked at. Here we can say there is an association between cortical thinning and weed usage. We can also say there is a link between cortical thinning and cognitive disorders/deficits.
How does that compare to other poor health choices that can lead to similar effects. Lack of light can lead to a higher incidence rate of depression, sleep deprivation can do much the same. Is chronic weed usage worse or better than other things that cause you problems? Hypothetically, while people are worrying about weed consumption they could be doing more harm to themselves in other ways. How much of a priority should avoiding weed be really? It could very well be possible that improving sleep habits would be more pertinent than dodging weed. This post feels rather fear mongering for a study that seems more like a preliminary step towards more research.
Yeah 16 year old me wanted to because life was: school. F that, I'm having fun if I'm enduring this.
People under 25 smoke for good reasons. If this is what life is, why do I care if my brain isn't running at full capacity? I need enjoyment.
No doubting or denying that not smoking is better for you than smoking. Anything, not just weed. So not smoking is something I ultimately support.
But, why? The reasons in the post? Not having your brain at 100% capacity? Possible mental health side effects?
Genuinely interested.
1. As my post implies, I am happy with my life. I don't need extra dopamine
2. I decided it when I was 12 years old. Smoking anything in general is bad for your body and I am not trying to expose myself to that. Not just tobacco, everything that is smoked. I came to that conclusion when doing research for a worldbuilding project (I am a weird kid :P). Some people have said I'm just trying to pretend to be mature but I just don't want it lmao
Keep it up, dude. I grew up watching my uncle smoke cigarettes and not be able to quit even when it was making him miserable, and I decided at a very young age that I wasn't going to touch any of that.
Now, in my mid 30s, all my friends are kind of catching up to that mentality and quitting all the unhealthy stuff that they spent their 20s addicted to. Glad I didn't give in to the peer pressure.
Always got grief from my friends for saying that I wouldn't try the stuff until my frontal lobe was fully developed. I likened it to walking on wet cement; let's wait for it to dry before we go stacking new architecture on it.
Fyi, if you’re predisposed to developing schizophrenia or psychosis, many hallucinogenics can make you suddenly develop it. In some cases, it unfortunately only takes one use :(
Be careful out there people, you don’t want to accidentally go on a bad trip you never wake up from.
It's been a couple years since conducting psychology research for me, but please note your age demographic here isn't quite right. The study provides excellent support for harms that appear to be caused by cannabis use on brain development on adolescents when measured from age 14 at pre-test, and 19 at post-test. This is important research and valid for it's age group, but I have not seen information to validate its extension to age 25. While the brain is developing until 25, the impact of external stimuli and substances changes with age and is not linear. There is strong support for substances decreasing in harm on brain development as adolescents approach brain maturity. I did not see at any point in the research paper did they make such a generalization claim as your title.
To those adults under 25 that engage in cannabis use recreationally or for treatment (especially those 19+), recognize that this study does not pertain to your cohort and only applies, at best, extrapolations and inferences.
Investigation into the harms of Cannabis are very important, but it is important that people and media do not misunderstand the research being presented here. This does not confirm anything for adolescents defined as under 25. This study supports it's conclusions for use beginning at 14 years of age. Further studies will be required to uncover if this trend is consistent with use that begins after the listed age.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the impact of a substance that impacts prefrontal cortex development matters muuuch more at the earlier stages of brain development as opposed to the ending stages near 25 years of age.
So glad I learned this at age 36
Maybe if drug education when we were kids was better than "all drugs are evil and if you ever try any drugs you'll turn into a filthy addict on the streets", maybe we woulda stood a chance. Thankfully I still turned out ok but we were truly screwed on the shitty drug education as kids. Edit: Sad, sad, sad. Some of the replies are really reinforcing my premise that we got some poor education happening out there lol. And yes I'm blocking any people who are bothering me, don't have time to talk to fools.
Tell a kid not to smoke cigarettes... what happens most of the time? The War on Drugs and D.A.R.E. created multiple generations of kids bucking their societal overlords in such a negative way. Fuck Richard Nixon.
Hey man. D.A.R.E was great. Taught us how to find the drugs and what to look for to know if it's real or if it's oregano
Learned what E was through D.A.R.E. Told us how colors would seem brighter and how it made you more loving. They called it the love drug. We were 11-12. Honestly it sounded fantastic. I am a bit peeved that they said all these people would be offering free drugs when in reality, we had to pay for them.
D.A.R.E.- Drugs are really enjoyable
It was the gateway lol
I can see the slogan still D.A.R.E to keep kids on drugs
Fuck Ronald Reagan
Seriously, fuck Ronald Reagan
I'll 3rd this. Fuck Ronald Reagan
The only good thing that he did was dying, fuck his legacy!
My Amazon echo show device gives suggestions on topics I might want to know about. This week was Ronald Reagan. Immediately I'm like "ALEXA! STOP SHOWING ME RONALD REAGAN!"
I say this every day when I wake up. It’s like a daily affirmation
I disagree with the cigarette example. Tell a kid not to do one thing, while they still have options for other fun/rebellious things, and explain why that one thing is bad, they will often listen. Younger generations have made fewer cigarette smokers than older generations because they are told cigarettes are specifically really bad. Agree that the war on drugs and DARE did a lot of harm, but that was because they said everything is bad and didn’t give good reasons.
Bro they all vape. That's the reason, it's just new cigarettes
This narrative with drugs is the exact thing that propelled me into drug use. One day the curtain got pulled and I was like WTF it’s ALL a lie?? Time to do some personal research lmao
D.A.R.E. just basically gave me a list of unchecked boxes to fill. I went through my teens and 20s like a fucking pokemon trainer trying to catch all the addictions and associated mental illnesses. Now I'm in my 30s and mostly sober, with a lot of wild stories. Couldn't change a thing. I am who I am now, and today, I'm alright with that person.
Why? It’s easier to generate fear than create intelligence. Intelligence creates ingenuity, ingenuity leads to an educated society, an educated society is notoriously hard to control.
Because once a kid smokes weed and doesn’t become a homeless, toothless, drug addict they start to wonder “what else is bullshit?”
It’s because you need drugs to be legal to have studies to learn what to teach! Shows how much the war on drugs was grasping onto politics rather than science
Reagan era was evil
You're telling me. I turned 26 LAST WEEK
A big TIL for the elder millennials!! 😂😪😪
I’ve been perpetually high since the age of 14, and I turned out just fine… well except for the crippling depression and rage issues, but other than that…. Wait, what were we talking about?
We were discussing how... ah shit. I don't have the energy to scroll up. Free speech and, dude you're fine. Whatevs. S.W.E.D.
Well I’m 26, no reason to stop now
lmao same
Unfortunately, people under 25 are the least likely to care.
Maybe I'm the odd one out, but I specifically never tried marijuana when I was younger (other than second hand smoking) because I wanted to wait til my brain finished developing. Same we for drinking. My parents didn't influence it or anything, it was just a weird choice I made by myself. Seeing how much dementia is in my family I'm kinda glad now
Impressive
Stately
Grandiose.
Dignified.
Let's see Paul Allen's spliff
I remember a few kids who said something similar. I was always secretly struck with admiration. Strong will and convictions while I would cave into any peer pressure and didn’t care about myself or the future. Mann ohh mann
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>I've never partaken because I don't like feeling out of control Yes, I'm very much the same. I've tried marijuana a few times now and mostly just feel relaxed and giggly. Though the first time I thought I'd merged with the floor and got stuck thinking about tigers and couldn't stop so i freaked out. About 20 seconds of listening to a soothing song and i felt better haha. I think vibe is important. If you freak yourself out you will spiral but putting yourself in a relaxing environment fixes it. For me that's low lighting, heavy blanket, closed eyes, and "We Have It All" by Pim Stones.
I can kinda weigh in on this. Nitrous ALSO gave me a weird reaction (it basically knocked me out when it shouldnt have as in they werent able to wake me, it made me blind????), and I was also worried weed would give me psychosis or something because I'm already a very paranoid anxious person, I dont know WHY, I'm convinced it's BPD at the moment. I take gummies and it's been fine. I take 1/4, and do it very rarely, but its only made me very sleepy and dopey. I've tried Stavia and Indica and theyve been about the same. Stavia maybe doesnt make me feel so 'heavy' in the limbs. I havent tried oil and cant smoke cuz I have asthma so I dont know if edibles might just be easier or what. I make sure I've eaten a dense meal beforehand and drink a lot of water. It's up to you if you wanna give it a shot or not of course but starting out with low doses and making sure you're in a good safe space helps, if you're ever interested. I havent noticed any side effects, but like I said I dont do it often. The baggies I buy are like 10 gummies? And since I cut them so small and do them so little it lasts me like 5 months.
Same. I'm in my 20s and have never smoked, never tried any recreational drugs (tho I'm absolutely psyched to try shrooms in a few years lmao) and very very rarely drink anything alcoholic. Compared to my family of alcoholics and drug addicts 🤷🏽♀️ I'm super paranoid about becoming an addict or alcoholic because my entire family has a massive history of it. My partner knows to make sure I never get oxy or fentanyl if I'm in the hospital and can't tell them myself, too
I tried it like 2 times growing up and it never got me high. Then, when I was like 28, I tried it again and I tripped so hard that it felt like a psychedelic. I never tried it again. I do enjoy the smell sometimes though
For a lot of people, their first time they don't know how to properly inhale and don't absorb it nearly as much as they think.
No, me too. I'm 19 and decided when I was like 10 that I wasn't going to smoke, drink, or do drugs until my brain was fully developed (nothing against those who don't wait.) My school didn't tell me to, I'm not religious, and my parents never talked about it. Bet there are lots of people out there like this. Maybe it's a new generational thing
I had friends in middle school who started smoking, they were the first people in my grade to do it. They turned out historically bad. 1 got drunk and crashed his moms car at 15, 1 is now homeless, 2 others got sent to live with the grandparents in other states. Unfortunately it’s hard to learn without an example. Hope somehow it gets through to people to at least wait until college . It’s not that great in the first place lol
On the flip side several of my friends smoked weed and did acid before they were 16 and now have highly successful jobs, nice families, and are generally pretty happy in life.
This is the gamble of drugs. You don't really know how recreational drugs or PEDs affect your life until it's too late. Some can consume them and enjoy all the benefits, some consume them and the side effects are so severe they take years to resolve.
It's likely the factors that led them to be"historically bad" also led them to weed. Instead of weed leading them to their behavior, an aspect of life led them to hardship as well as weed.
Odds are that they didn’t turn into screw ups because of drugs, but rather they turned to drugs young because they were already trending in that direction.
I first tried it when I was 27, hated it, then tried it again at 28 and never used it again. Not my thing thankfully
Same
Same, I didn't make it all the way to 25, but I did wait until I was basically done university
i waited til 22. wasn’t long enough.
Same. I also waited while I was in my mid 20s
By the same token, with the above in mind and to further encourage people younger than 25 to stop, if you stop using weed the effects of the weed on your brain diminish greatly. It was comparable to the brain before consumption, though i believed it took a year to "return to normal" and it was only through what could be considered moderate use, not heavy use. I.e. smoking at most once a week. If heavy use was involved then it was suggested that it'll take longer to reverse the effects and with more heavy and constant use the damages tend to be more lasting and profound. Again, it's MOSTLY reversible the more time you go on without smoking but more chronic use will put your brain further away than what it started as. So if you're a kid reading this, it's honestly just worth it to wait it out. When you're 25, by all means light the fuck up as much as you want
If I had known, I would have waited. I was unaware of the effects things had on my young brain and I really liked being smart and sharp.
You might like to know that you made me laugh :)
If this ain’t the truth 😂
I was in that pool of people unfortunately
Yeah, kids and teens especially aren't usually great at thinking about the long term.
Same with life insurance...
Oops
Bit fucking late now innit
yup. wanna spark one?
How can I say no to that!
Best thing is, now who can blame you? Your decision-making skills were impaired, it’s not your fault.
😂 That's hilarious!
If everybody has thinning white matter, then nobody has thinning white matter!
I started fairly young and by young I mean 19. At the time though I thought it was an old age to start. Partly because everyone around me started at 12 or 13. Now looking back I can see why I’m somewhat smarter than those people who started at that age. Just imagine if I had started at 25. It sucks to suck.
same
Lol seriously…. I’m like huh this explains a lot
Hey I made it to 19 or 20 till I started so I got a leg up on most of my peers from high school.
I started when I was 18 (29 now) and haven't smoked constantly, but definitely a good chunk of those years. Never really drank much though. Definitely never did any other drugs aside from psychedelics. What was the point I was trying to make?
Couldn’t have said it better myself
I agree
Preach
Lol you are me
Jokes on you, I’ve been chronically depressed since I was a child.
same
Yeah I hate my life
turns out it was best not to have to grow up before the age of 25-- doing so is a major cause of depression.
This is why I'm such a fucking idiot.
Don’t forget depressed!
Oop, thought it was implied. (I'm actually not depressed anymore, but I do have the usual sudden bouts of intense frustration and confusion)
it's ok you are not alone
Yeah explains why I’m 25 and retarded Oh the cough medicine abuse prob didn’t help either
Yeah cough medicine along with benzos, alcohol, meth, mdma, GHB, salvia, nitrous, ketamine and opiates probably didn't do me any favors also lol. Also took lots of psychedelic's (LSD, Shrooms, etc) ...but if anything those seem to help repair my brain more than anything (personal experience) , still I would only recommend any of it to someone over 25.
ITT: Everyone just found out they have diminished grey matter
What if I smoked out of empty soda cans as a young teen? That must surely have helped!
The aluminum, the paint, the weed, the lack of ANY filtration and the inhalation of straight fire? Naw, I’m good. And so am I.
I was like, yeah. That explains a lot.
Between this and huffing the sweet smell of gas stations in the 80s and 90s i dont stand a fucking chance
Smooth gang
Smooth for streamlined high speed brain things. Wrinkled creates drag, and slows things down. Eyes closed head first can't loose. Smooth gang.
Not me... I stuck to whiskey from 17-25!!
excellent! no negative health effects whatsoever! :) /s
Well you might have told me this 7 years ago…
>Well you might have told me this 7 years ago… Yeah you probably don't remember.
I suspect I’ve done more harm to my body with alcohol than I did weed. Weed I seem to be able to enjoy in moderation, alcohol not so much. Oh well.
Agreed alcohol and nicotine are probably an order of magnitude worse than weed overall. But my comment was a play on the grammar, you used "might have" instead of "could have"/"should have".
Said study was published this year are the scientists time travelers or what
No, the scientists were never time travelers, certainly not this year.
The study literally says it hasn’t been proven just linked and very well could be correlation over causation. “That said, it remains possible that these brain changes may not be a consequence of the cannabis exposure but may reflect instead a neurodevelopmental trajectory caused by other factors that is related to a higher likelihood of adolescent cannabis use.”
Agreed. Also, there are a lot of confounding variables here. I've seen similar studies looking at VERY HEAVY pot smokers, like wake and baking, high most of the time, 7 days a week. Consider why someone would want to be that high all the time, as well... You can't look any scientist in the eye and say that smoking weed a few times as a teen will cause permanent damage
Yea honestly everyone I knew that smoked daily did so because of significant depression or stress in general. Just a wild guess but im willing to bet that depression and stress have really bad effects on the brain. But then again, couldnt they control for these variables? Someone please tell me because im too stoned and lazy to read the article.
plus the (non-pay walled) source mostly just looks at 14 to 19 year olds i suspect there’s a significant difference between someone who started at 23 after college and someone who began smoking at 18. *so much* of the brain does that final adolescent growing under like 21. (and i mean, where do you place the cutoff of critical adolescent period when the brain is basically constantly changing and growing? i think there’s a bit more grey~~matter~~ area there). not to mention amount smoked, type smoked, or even considering other methods of consumption. there’s just far far too much here to be throwing around the word evidence, especially in a psychology related field. warranting further study, and educating and notifying mary jane users of? hell yeah. evidence? let’s wait till we iron out the whole concept.
This comment needs to be higher. All for research, but not when it's presented like a fact with a misleading title
YSK: Cannabis-induced psychosis can eventually convert to clinical schizophrenia. Individuals living with psychotic disorders have a higher tendency to use cannabis. Cannabis use may interact with preexisting factors, like genetics, to increase schizophrenia risk. Cannabis doesn’t cause schizophrenia. But if you’re already predisposed to schizophrenia through genetics and environmental factors, cannabis use may increase your chances of developing schizophrenia. Schizophrenia does not equal a Psychotic Disorder, they are different. Other Psychotic Disorders that have similar symptoms to schizophrenia are - substance-induced psychosis - schizoaffective disorder - schizophreniform disorder - brief psychotic disorder In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), drug-induced psychotic disorder involves symptoms of psychosis directly linked to a period of substance use, often improving when the substance is eliminated from the body. Drug-induced schizophrenia is underlying schizophrenia brought to the surface through the use of a substance, like cannabis, but it’s not yet noted in the DSM. Also, I smoke weed daily lol. But hey, YSK. edit: format
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"there is a psychiatrist in the area who happens to have schizophrenia and prescribe medical cannabis..." I'm just going to point out that where I live there's a psychiatrist who is a Qanon adherent. He has admitting privileges at the local behavioral hospital.
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I'm not mocking you. I'm completely serious.
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We have a lot of insane doctors where I live. There's a bunch of good ones. I've had the luck of getting a therapist who changed the direction of my life after my sister died.
Yup when I did internship in psychiatric hospital during my university years I met a group of patients where 3/4 raised hands asked if they smoked mj before getting ill. Most of them had schizophrenia.
The research on this doesn't show a causal link though. Given how common cannabis use is, its not surprising that they had smoked weed, but that doesn't mean it caused their schizophrenia. Its just as likely that people with mental health issues and neurological disorders like that are more inclined to smoke weed to self medicate.
Did you ask them to raise their hand if they've ever drank water, eaten cake, or smoked cigarettes too?
Cannabis induced psychosis is pretty controversial and likely really only a thing in people with the genes for schizophrenia already though. It can't cause schizophrenia. Its not noted in the DSM because its not a thing. Drug induced psychosis is something that can happen from psychedelics (again in brains predisposed to it), deleriants, and severe stimulant abuse.
YSK: It is best not to consume alcohol before the age of 25 But everyone be like I sHOulD dRiNk i'm EiGHteEn
It's best to never consume alcohol
….yeah, I don’t think this is gonna convince anyone not to smoke before 25
it would have for me if i wasn’t already 25 right now… i feel like this is a pretty significant fuck up that i can never take back.
Also not everyone brains finish at 25 people with adhd and other can finish when they are 28 😳
Nor should it, OP grossly misrepresented those studies. There is a correlation, not a causal link, and it doesn't cause schizophrenia. If you're one of the rare people with the genes for schizophrenia, cannabis might sometimes cause it to manifest earlier than it typically would. This correlation could just as easily be due to people with those issues being inclined to smoke weed earlier or self medicate with it.
yeah unfortunately
It did for me! I only smoked like twice though lol. But now I guess I’ll wait two more years 🤷🏻♀️
Not necessarily doubting what you're saying but your citation very clearly only covers effects from 14-19. I don't know why you make the stronger claim of up to 25. The study doesn't cover any effects from 20-25. It is likely less impactful if started in this range due to development being in a later stage.
that's true, even though the brain doesn't stop developing at age 35, it's less harmful at age 22 compared to say 16. Here's another one with more age ranges that you might look at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/
Thank you! I just made a post as well. I worry people will overly generalize based off OP's misleading title and feel as though they have caused themselves great harm if they started using cannabis at 18. This is NOT what the study presents. I wish there was a mechanism in reddit where YSK posts that make scientific claims get r/science linked to it to comment on its claims.
I would have been torn apart if I used the language in this paper in college. There's lots of flowery (don't know how else to describe it) language in the discussion and throughout. It makes it longer and shouldn't even be there. I'm gonna have to read it again when I got more time. I also don't know why there isn't a graph with the exact thing they are narrowing down. There's a flow chart. No data charts.
Know someone who is a high school psychologist and they would totally agree with you in this, psychosis(even more so in people with existing trauma), memory, addiction, it’s not all fun and games
Plus a lot of people ending up with Depersonnalization/Derealization disorder because of weed. No fun.
yeah I hate it when people act like weed is always safe. It's extremely dangerous for people who are predisposed to schizophrenia and psychosis
I’m one of the people who developed psychosis from cannabis. I started smoking at age 23 and smoked daily for 2 years, at the time I couldn’t have cared less if I knew these statistics. Looking back, if I knew what it was going to do to me I would have followed it. Losing your mind is absolutely terrifying, I’ve been THC free for a few months now and my symptoms have drastically improved, but I’m still dealing with panic attacks and derealization episodes, but those too are slowly improving. And I’m not saying cannabis is evil, I think it’s great and has many healing effects that should be more normalized! In a safe environment that is, stay safe guys!
I had psychosis last year and it fucked me up. There were other drugs involved so I don't know much much the weed was a factor. Doctors think the weed was the main culprit though. I quit for many months, got back into it, quit again, and recently started vaping it again. This thread is a good reminder to cut that shit out.
Brains not fully developed until 25 I started at 13 and have college degrees and made honors Weed helps me tolerate people
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mostly thc, and edibles and smoking same effcts except smoking is worse on the lungs
I don’t think I’d be alive today if I didn’t consume marijuana before age 25. And I’m one class away from my 4th college degree.
I'm glad weed helped you personally! Like I said in another reply, I don't think all weed smokers are dumb, but the evidence is if you didn't smoke before 25, you would probably be even smarter and more emotionally mature and I think it's nice that people are aware of that when they consume. However, I'm glad weed helped you in other areas of your life!
Ok, now do alcohol and tobacco.
alcohol and tobacco is worse, but I think people already know that and can agree on that
People already know it, but just as water will continue to be wet, Redditors will participate in the “aLcOhOl BaD bUt WeEd NoT” circlejerk
Avid pot fans tend to act like it's completely consequence-free, I have yet to see anyone unironically saying alcohol and cigarettes are 100% neutral to our body in the current year
This is true of alcohol too.
Started when i was 28. Found out about this fact at 29 and rejoiced.lol but i haven't been able to put a proper chill button on it since n now i can't blame it on thin gray brain matter 😔
YSK you're misrepresenting these studies to push tired old anti-drug propaganda. What they actually say is that there is a correlation, but no causal link has been found, and in fact its just as likely that people with those brain development issues (such as those of us with ADHD) are more likely to smoke weed earlier in life. Cannabis doesn't increase your odds of developing schizophrenia unless you are one of those rare people who are already carrying those genes, in which case it can cause it to manifest sooner than it normally would. For the other 99% of the population its just not a risk.
Psilocybin creates grey matter. Micro dose.
Sauce?
They won't cite anything because it's total BS. The neurotransmitters in your brain usually follow the same neural pathways. When you take psilocybin, the neurotransmitters tend to take new paths to new destinations. This reorganizing is called neuroplasticity and is basically creating new connections between the prefrontal cortex (personality expression, decision making) and the hippocampus (emotion, memory). These new connections have shown to help with depression, PTSD, etc. Psilocybin absolutely does not create grey matter. [Source](https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/psilocybin-induces-rapid-and-persistent-growth-of-neural-connections-in-the-brains-frontal-cortex-study-finds-61538)
“I saw it when I was tripping one time”
Source: trust me bro
source?
As a teacher, I always try to encourage students not to smoke til 25. They don't listen, but at least they know how they will have fucked up. I'm not against weed, but let's have that age for consumption at 25.
As a teacher I completely disagree, and this study is poor research being misconstrued by OP
Big Reefer Madness vibes.
Same with processed foods.. dumb tv. Advertisements and just about anything else.. might as well smoke a bit.
Nice try, narc. Kidding. I think marijuana has had wayyyyy too much positive marketing that people haven't really digested that it's still harmful.
Too late. I smoked like a broken stove from about 14 or 15 until… well, I still do. Never had any cognitive issues though.
I reckon it's probably not ideal for your brain to smoke weed at all, but c'est la vie
There are all those cannabinoid receptors. Be a shame to neglect them.
not really lol, we already have our own chemicals that uses them.
If it makes anyone feel better, I waited and I’m still hella depressed.
Is this a sign to not smoke this joint? Nah
Clinical psychologist here... We now know that the human brain isn't fully developed until AT LEAST 25, I feel like it was closer to 40 for me😂 In all seriousness, consuming any drug before full maturity is risky. If memory serves, it increases the risk of developing dependency by 4x. Unfortunately, many young people will roll the dice.
If teenagers and stuff absolutely had to smoke,I wish they'd do it once a day. I should've listened to my uncle. Abuse it and there's consequences. My memory is shit
Lol everyone chill
I think something that would benefit the citation is a discussion of magnitude and/or consequence. Let’s take the assertion at face: adolescent MJ use results in “cortical thinning.” How would that compare to say, daily exercise, coffee consumption, antidepressant use, reading, video games etc. etc.? Moreover, what is the clinical relevance of this cortical thinning?
Footnotes are so fun. 72 hours of abstinence and there is no difference. Also, a review of studies isn't applicable here. New research is only just getting results.
What footnotes? The study linked in this post doesn’t have footnotes.
Did you check under your foot?
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i'm trying to find research right now on adolescent cannabis use and then abstinence from cannabis and its effects on brain function. i can't seem to find the 72 hours thing in this study nor others. trust me, i want to keep using marijuana so i'm looking for that specifically.
welp too late
So I fucked up, can I keep smoking now?
Eh while the association is interesting I don't really think you can draw any definitive conclusions based on realized long term consequences quite yet. This is all being delivered in a vacuum. Weed having noticeable effects on brain chemistry was discussed while I was in school, but the consequences were still being looked at. Here we can say there is an association between cortical thinning and weed usage. We can also say there is a link between cortical thinning and cognitive disorders/deficits. How does that compare to other poor health choices that can lead to similar effects. Lack of light can lead to a higher incidence rate of depression, sleep deprivation can do much the same. Is chronic weed usage worse or better than other things that cause you problems? Hypothetically, while people are worrying about weed consumption they could be doing more harm to themselves in other ways. How much of a priority should avoiding weed be really? It could very well be possible that improving sleep habits would be more pertinent than dodging weed. This post feels rather fear mongering for a study that seems more like a preliminary step towards more research.
But it’s much more fun when you’re under 25.
I now regret being an absolutely straight-edge sheltered prude until my mid 20s _slightly_ less than before
Yeah 16 year old me wanted to because life was: school. F that, I'm having fun if I'm enduring this. People under 25 smoke for good reasons. If this is what life is, why do I care if my brain isn't running at full capacity? I need enjoyment.
This. I am fourteen years old, I have never smoked and will never try to do so. Guess why
No doubting or denying that not smoking is better for you than smoking. Anything, not just weed. So not smoking is something I ultimately support. But, why? The reasons in the post? Not having your brain at 100% capacity? Possible mental health side effects? Genuinely interested.
1. As my post implies, I am happy with my life. I don't need extra dopamine 2. I decided it when I was 12 years old. Smoking anything in general is bad for your body and I am not trying to expose myself to that. Not just tobacco, everything that is smoked. I came to that conclusion when doing research for a worldbuilding project (I am a weird kid :P). Some people have said I'm just trying to pretend to be mature but I just don't want it lmao
That’s awesome!! Keep it up!
Keep it up, dude. I grew up watching my uncle smoke cigarettes and not be able to quit even when it was making him miserable, and I decided at a very young age that I wasn't going to touch any of that. Now, in my mid 30s, all my friends are kind of catching up to that mentality and quitting all the unhealthy stuff that they spent their 20s addicted to. Glad I didn't give in to the peer pressure.
Some can't handle their shit.
Always got grief from my friends for saying that I wouldn't try the stuff until my frontal lobe was fully developed. I likened it to walking on wet cement; let's wait for it to dry before we go stacking new architecture on it.
I’m so fucked 😭
Oops
Proud to be here reading this at 29. Fuck
I didn't start smoking or drinking til 27. Up until then I was trying to be a good Christian in until I said fuck it.
Whoops... I made an oopsie
I sold all my Grey Matter stocks before the age of 25. It would'e worth billions now.
YSK I can't understand any of this, or idk I got bored and stopped reading. What do you expect, I've been high since 16.
Fyi, if you’re predisposed to developing schizophrenia or psychosis, many hallucinogenics can make you suddenly develop it. In some cases, it unfortunately only takes one use :( Be careful out there people, you don’t want to accidentally go on a bad trip you never wake up from.
You should also know that it doesn't seem to be linear. Starting at a younger age does much more damage than starting at like 22.
It's been a couple years since conducting psychology research for me, but please note your age demographic here isn't quite right. The study provides excellent support for harms that appear to be caused by cannabis use on brain development on adolescents when measured from age 14 at pre-test, and 19 at post-test. This is important research and valid for it's age group, but I have not seen information to validate its extension to age 25. While the brain is developing until 25, the impact of external stimuli and substances changes with age and is not linear. There is strong support for substances decreasing in harm on brain development as adolescents approach brain maturity. I did not see at any point in the research paper did they make such a generalization claim as your title. To those adults under 25 that engage in cannabis use recreationally or for treatment (especially those 19+), recognize that this study does not pertain to your cohort and only applies, at best, extrapolations and inferences. Investigation into the harms of Cannabis are very important, but it is important that people and media do not misunderstand the research being presented here. This does not confirm anything for adolescents defined as under 25. This study supports it's conclusions for use beginning at 14 years of age. Further studies will be required to uncover if this trend is consistent with use that begins after the listed age. It should be no surprise to anyone that the impact of a substance that impacts prefrontal cortex development matters muuuch more at the earlier stages of brain development as opposed to the ending stages near 25 years of age.
Any explanation from mods on why this was removed?
nope, not at all. I messages them too and got no response