h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... I think about tennis .... I roll a joint ....

(I hate it when that happens - when the page turns over in the middle of a joke)

And of course:

I think about Sunday Lunch - how about roast chicken? No I'll roll a joint...

(shameless plug for British agriculture...)

My favourite mood changing thing is to 'go home from my w*rk place'

Usually a nice mood change and thoroughly addictive, I try to do it at least 5 times a week

Horrid come down on Monday mornings though

Hope they don't make *that* illegal

ahh, someone's finally mentioned my drug of choice - SUGAR.
This stuff is seriously pwerful.
Living most of your life on a sugar high is fun, but it's pretty terrible when you come down...

Having finally read the backlog, I found myself asking some questions.

Blues Shark and Zagreb, among others, discussed whether or not it was acceptable to expect society to ameliorate the consequences of drug use.

Personally, I think it either is or it isn't. Before you think I have finally flipped, I want to explain why I said something apparently as barmy as that.



Firstly a vast number of the illnesses which are treated on the NHS are self-inflicted or self-agravated. Annorexia, heart-conditions, sporting injuries, repetitive strain injuries, and that is before we even get onto injuries in car accidents, almost all of which are avoidable.

So before we start making moral judements about who we should and should not treat, we should be aware that every donner kebab we eat thickens our arteries, stresses our immune system, aggravates our digestive tract and increases the liklihood of bowel cancer. And we have the choice. We could just say 'no'.

Imho, it is impossible to draw the line between innocent illnesses, and ones for which we are personally responsible, and therefore we should not even try.



Secondly it has become fashionable in the US to treat addiction as an illness. It may or may not actually *be* an illness of course, but treating it as an illness rather than a moral weakness is a clear paradigm-shift with observable benefits for the people overcoming the addictions, and for the people who interact with them. Basically you take the self-contempt and self-loathing out of the equation, and - surprise surprise - it makes a difference to recovery levels.



Thirdly, it is clear that there are three separate strands here - the impact of the drug on the mind and the body of the user - the impact of addiction (or use) on the family and friends of the user - and the affect of criminalisation of use in driving people into a criminal context.



Doesn't seem much point in saying more on #3, it has been well covered already.

My fourth point is absolutely serious - there are other physical and psychological addictions, which are not perceived as such.

Annorexia is an odd one, but I think it comes into this category. Suger certainly does, (and sugar contributes to heart attacks, in the same way smoking contributes to lung cancer). Caffiene - now there is a one: my ex spent two nights in intensive care because of caffeine. And mention has already been made of the effects of exercise-induced endorphins.

Where does this lead me? Just to say that this is not a black and white issue.

This is a complex mix of issues: moral, medical, social, and issues of personal responsibility.

And now a lovely-cup-of-tea and a ciggie

Ben

I think if you look at something from so many angles you could argue that a lot of things should be legal or illegal. Everything is in the eye of the beholder

What is the difference for instance between throwing your childhood away to be the best in a sport by pactising, and throwing your adult life away by using illegal substances to enchance your performance (and subsequently living shorter).

Most of the laws we have nowadays aren't the cause of logical thinking or planning, but the cause of taditions and values. Is it reasonable to think this can change? Well legalising canabis is a start at least

Oh dear. I appear to have been yikesed. I should perhaps point out that I was paraphrasing the title of the B side of Beck's 'Loser' single, 'MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack', rather than just making it up. I was trying to make some serious points before then, but my comments were subject to the usual pedantry and taking things out of context while the real issue was obfuscated.



Thanks Ben, for that intelligent and perceptive account. I dont think I need to say anymore.

Jack

that's usually happened before you get as far as the S in cannabis

Thanks Ben - just one point, we used to treat addiction to hard drugs as an illness in this country, allowing doctors to prescribe the appropriate hard drug whilst working with the patient to reduce and ultimately remove thier dependency.

Then some shopkeepers daughter from Grantham decided that this was wrong and we are still reaping the harvest of this change.

Just a personal view, but after smoking the evil weed for 30 years(recent IQ test=148). I still find it the best way to un-wind and clear my head. One small toke and work problems(as cheech&chong said) all those blues go up in smoke.
Rod

Just out of curiosity, was the previous IQ score in the order of 155 or so?
Whatever, I find music is a great way of relaxing, although some may argue cannabis or LSD makes it work better.
But, IQ tests measure knowledge as well as intelligence (they haven't found a way of measuring pure intelligence yet) but don't test short term memory.
And anyway, one sample is poor statisics.

There are four chemicals in that bind to the cannabinoid receptors in a woman's brain.
But at least habitual cannabis smokers can still fit into their clothes and don't necessarily have to take medication to reduce their cholesterol.

Sorry. There was a serious point there. I had summat to say about the self-inflicted illnesses debate. (Unfortunately, due to my complete lack of short term memory I can't remember what it was.)

<aholic>

if i buy a stolen radio (for instance) I WILL COMIT A CRIME reciveing if i buy canabis is this also a crime?

Okay ... I haven't read the whole backlog because my net access is too slow and it'll take me years to do it ... I'll try to in future though.

I think cannabis should be legalised. I don't think it's a good habit, but I don't think it's that much worse than tobacco and alcohol either. Just note that I think tobacco and alcohol are in fact very bad for people. I've known many people who died of it, much earlier than needed be, and I also know of lots of people whose quality of life was very seriously degraded by it.

If cannabis is legalised, it will be possible to study it's effects better and to find out just what it does to people. Right now it seems to me nobody really knows. I've read a lot of stuff on the 'net and in books and it's all rather inconclusive. I've known many people who did/do use it. Most reported no bad effects ... but I do know some people who *did* have some serious problems. I've a psychiatric condition - paranoid schizophrenia - for which I've been in psychiatric hospitals for some time. And there I did see people with drug-related problems. Most of the people there for drugs have used lots of different drugs, but for most of them cannabis appeared to be the drug that they used most heavily. They did use ecstasy, coke, LSD and other stuff occasionally but pot lots of times every day. Anyways, those people were in rather bad shape. From what I hear from my psychiatrists, psychologists, and from my sister who's a medical doctor, it seems that cannabis can cause psychosis in people who use it heavily, or in people who have a predisposition to psychosis. Some of the people I saw in the hospital were psychotic. There was a teenage boy who suffered from 'flashbacks' of people's faces that he couldn't get out of his head. He was also rather mentally confused. He also got raped by a hobo once while he was stoned. Then there was a guy about my age who developed paranoia as a result of a drug cocktail he took at a rave party. He also used lots of pot. I'm not sure what, exactly, caused him to become paranoid, but having become paranoid, he is now messed up badly and it might end up making the rest of his life a living hell. I know, 'cause I'm paranoid myself. In my case it wasn't pot, it was alcohol ... I too have a predisposition to psychosis but without the heavy drinking I might have been able to avoid becoming psychotic.

In hospital there were lots of other pot users whom I didn't get to know that well, and while I wasn't aware of psychosis in them I could see the physical effects the drugs had on them with my eyes. They just don't look healthy. One guy looked as if his bones and muscles and entire body had shrivelled up. But he was an extremely heavy user. He 'boasted' of once having smoked eighteen pounds of pot in a single night ... another pot smoker who was also in questioned that claim strongly, saying it was totally impossible to do that. But anyways, that's what the other guy said he did, and he did look seriously messed up. When he came in he wasn't even able to put butter and jam on a piece of toast and to cut and eat it.

My sister tells me that every week they get about five people coming into hospital who use pot and are schizophrenic. She says that they *became* schizophrenic because the cannabis use upset their mental balance (maybe the balance wasn't that good to start with, but even so...), and that, once they are schizophrenic, they're schizophrenic for life. That's her opinion of it, at least.

My father has also known cannabis users who became psychotic and has told me stories about them. He has also written a story about a young woman who became seriously paranoid and proceeded to kill her baby. Its a rather deeply horrific. story In it she used lots of cannabis and alcohol and it's not clear whether she was crazy before or after starting the drug use but there appears to be a definite link between the drugs and the insanity and it definitely did not *help*. I read that story when I was about ten years old and it made a serious impression on me.

So anyways, I'd like to know if it's really true that cannabis can cause psychosis in people who before that time were in good mental health. If it is really so, then cannabis would in fact be a very bad and very dangerous drug to use, at least for people who are vulnerable to mentally destabilising influences. Psychosis ain't pretty, not even a tiny little bit.

The problem with psychosis is that a person who's psychotic doesn't always know it. That's the whole thing with being crazy - a crazy person usually believes s/he is sane. Also, there are millions of different kinds of psychosis. What exactly is *normal* mental balance and functioning? I don't think *normal* is necessarily *healthy* ... but I think I have some awareness of what *healthy* is. There is such a thing as a healthy mind, though, probably, the minority of humans possess such a thing ... and I think, in people who *do* have a healthy mind, using drugs exposes them to a serious risk of losing the mental health that they have. Now that I no longer have good mental health, I don't - and *can't* - use drugs at all any more, except for the ones I have to use for my problem.

But still I think cannabis should be legalised. It will be easier to research and it will be easier to treat people who develop problems when it's legal. I think though that more people should prioritise their mental and physical health more and take personal responsibility for living healthy... which includes not eating too much fatty/fattening foods, exercising, not using dangerous substances, not working at sh*tty and stressful jobs, and so on. The law can't force people to be healthy, but still, people should try to be as healthy as possible, simply because mental and physical health is a rare and precious thing to have.

That was seriously interesting. I will pay attention to that sort of information from now on.

Thanks for posting it.

Ben

I totally agree with your last sentence. People should just learn not to overdo things. Everything can be a poison if used in to large ammounts. From canabis to alcohol to sugar.

I can't speak as to the cannabis/psychosis debate with any authority, save from what I've seen and heard.
My mate was always...starnge in any event. *I* think he got worse after smoking cannabis, but there are others who disgree.
Most do agree, however, that he is more coherent and rational when he is off Cannabis than when he is on it.

As to the stories of those like Lee Perry and Peter Tosh, well, who can say? I certainly don't know enough about Tosh to be authorative on his life before and after ganja. But everything I've ever read about either of them suggests that long term use was one of the contributing factors to their breakdowns.

What a very interesting post that was, I knew some of the effects of long-term, heavy use, but that's some serious stuff. But yeah, it should still be legalised. At the end of the day, everything should be done in moderation - alcoholics can become equally messed up, but in different ways, of course.

The trouble with legalization is that it would create a foreign policy nightmare: imports can't be legalized without encouraging organized crime in other countries, and large-scale domestic production would inevitably generate exports to neighbours with stricter regimes. The only way to circumvent this headache would be through international consensus, and that doesn't look like it's going to happen for the forseeable future.