Drugs vs Alcohol: What's Better for You?

[Pengwuino]

He was just a big bouncing baby boy - our dearly departed Dr. Who.

It looks like he's dressed up in a jogging outfit. I looked closer and saw what it actually was... maybe i'll be use to it now aha.

 

[russ_watters]

The only reason pot is expensive is because it is illegal.

Right, so when Penguino asked about how legalizing it would make people use less of it...that would seem to provide a good argument for why people would use more of it if it were legal.

 

[JaredJames]

Surely legalising marijuana would initially cause a price increase, and this is just a hypothesis, but for this reason:

Drug made legal, only people mass producing (initially) would remain to be the big gangs/cartels. Taxing it (providing they paid the tax) would cause them to increase the price to cover the tax. Otherwise the price would remain the same until there was some form of competition from a commercial company.

Again, just a hypothesis on my part, anyone have any similar ideas?

 

[Monocles]

Look at Portugal - they legalized possession of all drugs in the early 2000s and all of their drug related problems have plummeted since then.

 

[Civilized]

Most of you have seen Dr Andrew Weil M.D. on TV or in Time magazine (he was named one of Time's 100 most influential people). Here is an article he wrote about cannabis:

http://deoxy.org/pdfa/marijuana.htm"

A few excerpts:

What pharmacologists cannot make sense of is that people who are high on marijuana cannot be shown, in objective terms, to be different from people who are not high. That is, if a marijuana user is allowed to smoke his usual doses and then to do things he has had a chance to practice while high, he does not appear to perform any differently from someone who is not high. Now, this pattern of users performing better than nonusers is a general phenomenon associated with all psychoactive drugs. For example, an alcoholic will vastly outperform a nondrinker on any test if the two are equally intoxicated; he has learned to compensate for the effects of the drug on his nervous system. But compensation can proceed only so far until it runs up against a ceiling imposed by the pharmacological action of the drug on lower brain centers. Again, since marijuana has no clinically significant action on lower brain centers, compensation can reach 100 percent with practice.

In other words, people who use cannabis regularly can function at 100% capacity when under the influence of their normal dose (which can be easily ten times smaller than Russ' "smoke a whole joint").

These considerations mean that there are no answers to questions like, What does marijuana do to driving ability? The only possible answer is, It depends. It depends on the person - whether he is a marijuana user, whether he has practiced driving while under the influence of marijuana. In speaking to legislative and medical groups, I have stated a personal reaction to this question in the form of the decision I would make if I were given the choice of riding with one of the following four drivers:

(1) a person who had never smoked marijuana before and just had;

(2) a marijuana smoker who had never driven while high and was just about to;

(3) a high marijuana smoker who had practiced driving while high; and

(4) a person with any amount of alcohol in him.

I would unhesitatingly take driver number three as the best possible risk

In other words, a person with any amount of alcohol (even the one or two drinks that Russ keeps mentioning) is more dangerous behind the wheel than a marijuana smoker who is puffed up to his heart's content at his normal dose, in the opinion of Dr Weil.

Like most drugs, cannabis users will over time develop the ability to better tolerate the negative effects of the drug. The bottomline is that unlike alcohol, and more similar to tobacco, a regular cannabis user can learn to tolerate any and all of the negative effects of the drug so that it is reduced to merely harmless enjoyment. Anyone who "despises" harmless enjoyment does not understand the US constitution in the sense that it was intended by its authors, and in my opinion the country would be better off without them.

 

[JaredJames]

...

Does marijuana not slow reactions then? People I know who smoked it said it makes them feel like everything is going really fast.

 

[Civilized]

Does marijuana not slow reactions then? People I know who smoked it said it makes them feel like everything is going really fast.

The exact opposite subjective effect is sometimes reported e.g. "whoa dude, it felt like we were hanging out for hours but I looked at the clock and only 5 minutes went by." There is no doubt that in a relaxed setting mj can effect the subjective perception of time, in terms of objective performance (e.g. reaction times) there is no impairment for a regular user.

 

[Civilized]

Surely legalising marijuana would initially cause a price increase, and this is just a hypothesis, but for this reason:

Drug made legal, only people mass producing (initially) would remain to be the big gangs/cartels. Taxing it (providing they paid the tax) would cause them to increase the price to cover the tax. Otherwise the price would remain the same until there was some form of competition from a commercial company.

Again, just a hypothesis on my part, anyone have any similar ideas?

The price would plummet because cannabis is so easy to grow, it has the nickname weed for a reason, because it grows like one. Unlike tobacco, for which someone would need to do a lot of work to grow their own (each big floppy tobacco leaf dries out to give a small amount of smokable material), a single properly cultivated cannabis plant can provide months worth of smokable/edible material.

Someone said that growing the plant stinks, but for people who like it is one of the best smells they could have around (I think it smells a lot like ground expresso beans, which are one of my favorite smells).

Growing can be as easy as putting down seeds in the backyard, and three months later with ~4 hours / week of enjoyable gardening labor there will be small bushes to harvest.

Perhaps the government outlaws cannabis because if they legalized it and taxed it heavily people would just grow their own.

Look at Portugal - they legalized possession of all drugs in the early 2000s and all of their drug related problems have plummeted since then.

I hadn't heard of that, but it's good info:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

 

[JaredJames]

Do you not need specialist heating (infra red lamps) to grow it? (that is in the UK of course), making it more difficult to grow. Whenever you see drugs raids on the houses they are totally blacked out and have a massive thermal signature (actually how they catch them). Does no one factor in the cost of electric when it comes to growing it?

 

[Civilized]

Do you not need specialist heating (infra red lamps) to grow it? (that is in the UK of course), making it more difficult to grow. Whenever you see drugs raids on the houses they are totally blacked out and have a massive thermal signature (actually how they catch them). Does no one factor in the cost of electric when it comes to growing it?

Yes, the highest-grade canabis is grown using blueish lamps for vegetative growth of the plant and reddish lamps for the reproductive growth (budding) of the plant. This also works for growing most types of flowering plants, these colors of lamps. Here is an example of an indoor super plant:

But all of this is done mostly because having the plant outside would lead to an obvious bust by the cops. I don't know how the sunlight is for growing plants in general in the UK, but in california or western Canada the following can be grown outside:

http://www.vancouverseedbank.ca/catalog/images/MP%20BUD%20resized.JPG

(P.S. I'm super sorry to the mods if linking these photos is not allowed, please disable the links and forgive me)

 

[Pupil]

That only makes sense if marijuana sales account for a large majority of the profits drug dealers make. When you're talking about organized crime, they aren't just selling marijuana. They'd still be in business if marijuana were made legal unless marijuana doesn't account for all their profits. Organized crime didn't just disappear because alcohol became legal again.

Even if marijuana accounts for only 1% of the cartel business profits, it's too much and we can end it (and I'm sure Cannabis accounts for much more of the profits). We shouldn't be fueling their business with ignorant laws. How much safer would the trade of this product be if it were regulated instead of left to the whim of massive cartels?

 

[Pengwuino]

I hadn't heard of that, but it's good info:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=portugal-drug-decriminalization

The article states nothing of the claim being made. Nowhere does it say "All drug related problems have plummeted". It says HIV infections due to used needles and fatal overdoses dropped, hardly "all drug related problems".

 

[Monocles]

Yeah it had been awhile since I read anything about it, my mind must have exaggerated the details :)

 

[moe darklight]

Does marijuana not slow reactions then? People I know who smoked it said it makes them feel like everything is going really fast.

There is a difference between a casual smoker and a heavy user (a heavy pot smoker smokes more than once a day. my stoner friends [and I used to be one] smoke pot many times a day-- pretty much as soon as the high from the last time they smoked wore off).

After you do this for a while, the whole "whoa man" effect wears off. You're still high-- you don't build resistance in the same way as other drugs like heroin, which essentially stop working, so the user must keep increasing his dosage-- but you don't "act" high, because your brain has become accustomed to being in that state. You become so used to the way your brain processes information while high, how your body responds, etc. that being high is now when you feel normal; and when you're not high you feel... sluggish? I don't know what word to use. Less than normal.

The irony here being that real stoners don't act like stoners. Some of you might have stoner coworkers and not even know it. One of my high school teachers (shop teacher. yes, his job was to operate heavy machinery) was a stoner, and only some of us knew it. I've known my friends since high school, and I still can't tell for the life of me when they're high and when they're sober.

This is not to say that there aren't side effects to such heavy usage: short term memory problems, depression, feeling unmotivated. But I don't think there's any question over which is more detrimental to the health of a heavy user. Talk to a heavy pot smoker who's been smoking it every day for 10 years, then talk to someone who's been drinking every day for just one year, and you tell me.

 

[Kronos5253]

After you do this for a while, the whole "whoa man" effect wears off. You're still high-- you don't build resistance in the same way as other drugs like heroin, which essentially stop working, so the user must keep increasing his dosage-- but you don't "act" high, because your brain has become accustomed to being in that state. You become so used to the way your brain processes information while high, how your body responds, etc. that being high is now when you feel normal; and when you're not high you feel... sluggish? I don't know what word to use. Less than normal.

Correct! You're one of the very few people I've come across who actually knows that. It's called a reverse tolerance.

The reason for this is that the human body has natural delta-9 tetrahydrocannibanol (THC, the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana that gets you "high") receptors in the brain (that's right, you're BORN with them). We also only have a set number of these, which is why it's impossible to overdose. Anything over what those receptors can absorb goes into the fat cells in your body.

 

[Moonbear]

After you do this for a while, the whole "whoa man" effect wears off. You're still high-- you don't build resistance in the same way as other drugs like heroin, which essentially stop working, so the user must keep increasing his dosage-- but you don't "act" high, because your brain has become accustomed to being in that state. You become so used to the way your brain processes information while high, how your body responds, etc. that being high is now when you feel normal; and when you're not high you feel... sluggish? I don't know what word to use. Less than normal.

The irony here being that real stoners don't act like stoners. Some of you might have stoner coworkers and not even know it.

The flaw here seems to be your experience with those addicted to other drugs. What you've described is similar to the "functional" alcoholic, or other addicts who are still managing to hide their addiction. What you describe is, in fact, the definition of addiction. The user no longer gets the pleasurable effect from the same amount of "drug" and instead, experience more negative effects when they are not taking it...they take more to counteract the negative effects just to feel "normal", and need more to feel the positive effects.

Now, one of the arguments FOR marijuana use are the medicinal effects of THC, the active compound in marijuana. I would argue that it should be as legal as morphine, which is to say that it is legal but highly regulated by prescription, and only in purified form, not cigarette form.

Frankly, if someone is dying of cancer, I don't care if they want to live out their final days stoned and oblivious to what's happening around them, be it on marijuana or morphine. But, I do not want them putting others at risk of developing cancer or being exposed to the drug just by walking into a room filled with smoke. The glaucoma arguments are far less convincing. There are perfectly good medications available to treat glaucoma without the mind-altering side effects of marijuana.

 

[Moonbear]

Correct! You're one of the very few people I've come across who actually knows that. It's called a reverse tolerance.

The reason for this is that the human body has natural delta-9 tetrahydrocannibanol (THC, the psycho-active ingredient in marijuana that gets you "high") receptors in the brain (that's right, you're BORN with them). We also only have a set number of these, which is why it's impossible to overdose. Anything over what those receptors can absorb goes into the fat cells in your body.

NONSENSE! There is no such thing as reverse tolerance. What was described IS tolerance. You're born with receptors for the other narcotics too...mu, delta and kappa opioid receptors. If you didn't have receptors for them, you would have no effects at all of any of them. Your post only demonstrates the level of ignorance of the general public regarding the physiological interactions of drugs in the brain.

 

[cristo]

Look at Portugal - they legalized possession of all drugs in the early 2000s and all of their drug related problems have plummeted since then.

Let's remember the PF rules, shall we (and this goes for all; not just this post): any and all claims must be backed up by a reputable source. Any statement not backed up with such a reference will be presumed to be speculation, and treated as such. Just because Evo's busy doesn't mean you can get away with murder in GD! (*Stamps down foot*).

 

[Kronos5253]

NONSENSE! There is no such thing as reverse tolerance. What was described IS tolerance. You're born with receptors for the other narcotics too...mu, delta and kappa opioid receptors. If you didn't have receptors for them, you would have no effects at all of any of them. Your post only demonstrates the level of ignorance of the general public regarding the physiological interactions of drugs in the brain.

Prove it. :)

I don't take people's claims without supported evidence. If you can prove me wrong with legitimate cites and examples, I'll accept that. But until then everything you just said is only opinion. I've learned to not feed into peoples "claims", I listen to supported evidence, which is why I do my own research, and LOTS of it, from trustworthy sources. Not just any site I find on the internet.

P.S. - If there's no such thing as reverse tolerance, why do I have a college psychology book that states the opposite?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_tolerance

cited sources at bottom

 

[binzing]

No - at least I've never heard of anyone ever smoking pot without the intention of getting high. AFAIK, there is no other reason to do it.

To medicate, for pain relief, help in relaxation and removal of anxiety, increase of appetite (to help with cachexia, anorexia, etc). There are many uses for it other then just getting "high".

 

[moe darklight]

1) The flaw here seems to be your experience with those addicted to other drugs. What you've described is similar to the "functional" alcoholic, or other addicts who are still managing to hide their addiction.

2) What you describe is, in fact, the definition of addiction.

3) The user no longer gets the pleasurable effect from the same amount of "drug" and instead, experience more negative effects when they are not taking it...they take more to counteract the negative effects just to feel "normal", and need more to feel the positive effects.

4) Your post only demonstrates the level of ignorance of the general public regarding the physiological interactions of drugs in the brain.

1) No: The alcoholic or cocaine addict eventually deteriorates and there comes a point when it is no longer possible for him to be functional and "hide" his addiction. As I've pointed out, someone who has been drinking every day for even just one year already starts exhibiting erratic behavior. Stoners remain "functional" throughout their lives. There are side effects such as depression and short term memory problems, but they never become erratic and irrational like other addicts.

2) No argument there. Potheads are addicts.

3) This is wrong. The stoner still gets the pleasurable effect; what goes away is the novelty, the giggling, the stumbling, etc.. After a certain point he reaches a plateau and there is no upping the dosage like with other drugs, there is no spiral downwards and viscous cycle or chasing that feeling the drug no longer provides like there is with heroin. There are no withdrawal symptoms at the level you see with other drugs. I felt stronger functional withdrawals when I stopped drinking coffee than I did when I quit pot: trouble concentrating, headache, etc. This doesn't happen with pot.

4) The public is highly misinformed about a lot of things. This is why the key is education, not scare tactics. If kids aren't objectively educated on drugs, both positive and negative, they will make their decisions on such faulty assumptions. The truth is that drugs are not as bad for you as the anti-drug people think, and not as good for you as pro-drug people think.

I still haven't heard a convincing argument as to why they should be illegal, and why informed people who enjoy them responsibly should go to jail for doing so.

 

[binzing]

He was just a big bouncing baby boy - our dearly departed Dr. Who.

I for one, love the picture. Having lost two dogs this year, I feel your pain.

 

[binzing]

I have plenty more to say on this subject, but I value my PF membership too much...

 

[Pupil]

Frankly, if someone is dying of cancer, I don't care if they want to live out their final days stoned and oblivious to what's happening around them, be it on marijuana or morphine. But, I do not want them putting others at risk of developing cancer or being exposed to the drug just by walking into a room filled with smoke. The glaucoma arguments are far less convincing. There are perfectly good medications available to treat glaucoma without the mind-altering side effects of marijuana.

This is at best an argument that the patient should use a vaporizer or consume marijuana orally.

 

[binzing]

This is at best an argument that the patient should use a vaporizer or consume marijuana orally.

Exactly, many people don't know of, or worse, refuse to recognize, the other methods of use of marijuana.

 

[Kronos5253]

This is at best an argument that the patient should use a vaporizer or consume marijuana orally.

Agreed.

Smoking it is the most popular form, but it's also the least effective in terms of the psycho-active properties and benefits of the drug. Digesting it is the most effective by far, in which case she should have no problems with it in that case.

Bet that cuts down on the whole cancer part of it too eh? lol

 

[JaredJames]

Prove it. :)

I don't take people's claims without supported evidence. If you can prove me wrong with legitimate cites and examples, I'll accept that. But until then everything you just said is only opinion. I've learned to not feed into peoples "claims", I listen to supported evidence, which is why I do my own research, and LOTS of it, from trustworthy sources. Not just any site I find on the internet.

P.S. - If there's no such thing as reverse tolerance, why do I have a college psychology book that states the opposite?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_tolerance

cited sources at bottom

Just a quick one here, it is not up to someone to prove something doesn't exist, you must prove it does (I don't like wikipedia so it means nothing to me although I will look at the sources at the bottom you claim). It is IMPOSSIBLE to prove something doesn't exist.

 

[moe darklight]

I think what he misunderstood is that just because there are receptors in the brain that respond to THC, it doesn't mean that that's what they're for.

 

[JaredJames]

Well I've just read about the reverse toleration. It does sound very much like another word for addiction. Where a person takes the drug to feel normal, or they feel worse without it. I think that saying 'I'm reverse tolerant to [whatever]' is just a polite way of saying I'm addicted or reliant on.

This link here: http://www.steadyhealth.com/encyclopedia/Reverse_tolerance
Shows four facts, one being Reverse Tolerance is a late stage of alcoholism.

Everything else I've read on reverse tolerance says quite simply, it is when your body is SO DAMAGED by a substance you get more effect from a small dose. So the substance clearly damages the body?
http://hamsnetwork.org/reverse/

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

1) No: The alcoholic or cocaine addict eventually deteriorates and there comes a point when it is no longer possible for him to be functional and "hide" his addiction. As I've pointed out, someone who has been drinking every day for even just one year already starts exhibiting erratic behavior. Stoners remain "functional" throughout their lives. There are side effects such as depression and short term memory problems, but they never become erratic and irrational like other addicts.

...

3) This is wrong. The stoner still gets the pleasurable effect; what goes away is the novelty, the giggling, the stumbling, etc.. After a certain point he reaches a plateau and there is no upping the dosage like with other drugs, there is no spiral downwards and viscous cycle or chasing that feeling the drug no longer provides like there is with heroin. There are no withdrawal symptoms at the level you see with other drugs. I felt stronger functional withdrawals when I stopped drinking coffee than I did when I quit pot: trouble concentrating, headache, etc. This doesn't happen with pot.

...

I've known several stoners, some tweekers, and have gone through alcohol education where I have met people who did other drugs.
In my experience the alcoholic is the one most likely to stay under the radar. I personally am a fairly heavy drinker and most alcoholics would consider me to be one. One of my old bar tenders used to say she worried about me because she could never tell how intoxicated I was and whether or not she should cut me off. Most of the alcoholics I have met have also been able to function normally even while legally over the limit. One of the guys in my AE class said he used to both drink and do coke, he apparently didn't even like the coke he just did it to be able to drink more. He apparently used to go into work both drunk and spun and apparently no one ever really noticed. If you talk to many alcoholics and their families you will find that they had a really hard time primarily because they were so damn good at hiding their problem.

Stoners are a different story. I've known a few stoners that you would never have known smoked primarily because they only did so occasionally and in private. By my standard they weren't really stoners. I have known green panthers, hippies, beatniks, and just plain hardcore stoners. They smoked all the time everyday. Someone in the thread said that they had a hard time telling the difference between their stoner friends stoned or sober and the biggest reason I can think of for that is that they always act like stoners. Every person I knew who was a stoner I could tell nearly at a glance if they were stoned no matter how much of a tolerance they had acheived. They generally acted very much the same either way but it was worse when they were stoned. They were also very definitely impaired. They may have been able to do most things that they did normally without much trouble but their critical thinking skills, their ability to pay attention, and their ability to react appropriately in unexpected circumstances were incredibly deminished. This often seemed to carry over into their time while sober as well depending on how much and how often they had been smoking.

The only guy I knew who reacted differently had ADD or ADHD and the primary effect of smoking marijuana was that he was able to slow down and think more clearly.