Yanari the Puissant wrote:
Gbaji, I've been partaking off and on since I was 15. I'm not going to mention how long ago that was, but it's been more than 20 years. The only time I ever experienced what the OP did was when I partook of some pot that was much higher quality than I was used to.
Now of course half the regular posters here may consider me a babbling idiot, but I'm actually quite functional, not speech impaired, don't have the shakes, don't hallucinate, have the IQ that at least rivals your average house cat.
Maybe you're talking about what may happen to a person who smokes from morning 'til night, year after year (and yes, I know there are those people), but the average user doesn't fall into that category.
Yeah. That's more or less what I was talking about. When someone starts off the thread with: "I smoke the occasional bowl or joint, and I've always handled it really well.", he could be a "once or twice a month, at a party, with some friends" smoker, but odds are he lights up several times a week.
That's obviously just a guess on my part, but my experience with drug users is that they tend to always downplay the frequency of their drug use. Always.
I'm certainly open to the possibility that the OP could really just be a casual pot smoker, and just got a really strong batch, and had a strong reaction to it. Those symptoms are common to short term effects from high dosages. But something about the way he talks about the drug, and his vehement defense of his pot smoking when it was merely suggested that maybe he should lay off the bong makes me suspect he's a bit more "hardcore" about his pot then that.
As to long term effects. It's actually really really hard to find info (especially on the net) about the long term effects of marijuana. The problem is that every site you are likely to find with google will have a strong agenda pro or con. All studies, mostly by necessity, involve themselves with short term effects (one I found basically listed "heavy smokers" as people who used several times a week over the last 50 days or so). I couldn't find any studies on the net that looked at the truely long term effects (years of pot use at a rate of several times a week).
I'm talking about an effect that is noted by most health professionals when they talk about continual use of the drug though. If you read between the lines, you will see two effects listed on virtually any site you google on the subject.
- High dosages have an increased chance of producing paranoia symptoms, exactly as the OP described.
- Long term use creates a psychological dependance, requireing more of the substance to get the same high.
It doesn't take a genius to realize that as you continue to use it regularly for a long time, those two effects will combine to generate a gradually increasing chance that you'll experience the "psychotic" side effects. That's what I was talking about. It's not really listed as a direct effect of the drug, but when dealing with those users, it's markedly more noticable. Those who use marijuana at a higher then average rate for a number of years, will graducally experience those symptoms more and more frequently. It's something that those who treat marijuana addicts have noted for many years, but you can't really do a study on the effect because it's a really long term issue.
Again. This guy could just have gotten a really strong dose, and there could be nothing to worry about. But honestly, the normal reaction to using a substance that caused an effect you don't like is to stop doing it (or at least seriously reduce the amount you use it). The OP just seemed so strongly determined to just want an answer that allowed him to keep on smoking pot with no fear of consequences. To me, that's a dangerous way of thinking. I smoked pot quite a number of times when I was younger. However, I never really liked the effects on me personally. While I liked the euphoria, I didn't particularly like spending the next several hours feeling like my body was glued to whatever I happened to be sitting on. Over time, I just decided that I didn't like pot, so I stopped using it. That was my personal choice. I just wonder about someone who's had a negative experience with something, but instead of thinking: "Gee. Pot smoking isn't all roses, maybe I should think about slowing down or taking it a bit easier on the bud", he's looking for people to tell him what he wants to hear: That it was just a random bad luck thing and that he shouldn't alter his behavior at all as a result.
I just find that mindset disturbing is all. It's the mindset of an addict. He may not be one today, but the symptoms are definately there. Angrily defending his right to use the substance, even in the face of negative consequences is one of the definitions of addiction. I'm just advocating caution and a bit of forethought is all.
