Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What things do you have very different personal preferences and policy positions on? Do you have any area that you didn't even realize that until the policy changed and lined up with your stated position?
The biggest one that I have been having a difficult time with lately is marijuana. For my entire life, I thought marijuana should be legal and that it's pretty hard to justify having a substantially different control scheme for marijuana than alcohol (tobacco is quite different and I think the comparison is pretty stupid). I still hold this position due to everything I can figure out objectively. There are a few caveats, such as the potential for marijuana to trigger schizophrenia, but really, I doubt it does more harm to a typical person than drinking. I even smoked a decent bit when I was in my younger, party years, and pretty much just had harmless fun.
Nonetheless, it turns out that I don't actually like legal marijuana much. I didn't really notice it when it was mostly illegal, but weed culture is fucking annoying. I get that some people feel that way about alcohol, and I can certainly think of all-out drunkenness scenes that I don't like, but there are big chunks of drinking culture that I do like - craft beer, good bourbon, wine-tasting, cocktails, tailgating, food-drink pairings, this stuff is all somewhere between lowbrow fun and genuinely interesting culture. Pot though? Just fucking annoying. Stupid aesthetics, lazy slobs, constant whining about how pot is actually good for you, man. I don't personally dislike the smell of pot but smelling it on my state's capitol square on a weekday morning is just utterly degenerate. None of this convinces me that it should be illegal, my annoyance doesn't suffice to want something banned, but damn, it turns out that I find stoners way more annoying than I ever would have thought when they had to just smoke at their houses.
Always found it interesting that the studies on marijuana use focus on health and not whether the person is being as productive, forming memories of positive experiences, or engaging in a social community. i know a dozen people who used marijuana and then had to stop because it essentially drained their vital life force — they stopped doing anything worthwhile and stopped being motivated toward things. With tobacco it’s the opposite — it’s unhealthy, but no one’s ever been like “this tobacco is really ruining my creativity and preventing me from bonding with friends”. Perhaps the state cares more about a docile population that is not costly for medical services?
This is literally me. I used marijuana to self-medicate for anxiety and depression. It seemed like a miracle drug: it helped me quiet my mind enough to sleep and provided a relaxing buzz similar to alcohol but without the hangover or calories and significantly cheaper. But fast forward 5 years and I found myself socially isolated, intellectually stunted, and boring. I realized that I didn't do anything after work other than watch tv and play video games, and the underlying issues weed allowed me to ignore just slowly got worse until I was able to force myself to make a change.
Alcohol is definitely more acutely worse for you, but the insidious, underappreciated danger with weed is that you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments. There's no overdose risk, it's not disruptive enough to prevent you from putting the minimum effort in at work, and there are few, if any, negative physical side effects associated with over-use. Like you said, it just slowly sucks your vital life force away. And you don't even notice it's happening.
Funny you mention the insidious part because I immediately noticed that being a failure mode the second time I smoked weed in my life.
I've noticed that I lose my literal and figurative mojo when I jack off too much, and that loss of mojo felt exactly the same when smoking weed. So maybe I'm primed to notice subtle changes in mojo.
Seems different for everyone. My social circles as a teenager were intensely invested in smoking weed, with all the accompanying weed culture one pictures. But weed just never did anything for me. Maybe I did it wrong? It just seemed to have no effect whatsoever. But my friends at the time all seemed increasingly passive and isolated in their little smoking enclaves, not going anywhere where they could not smoke all day long, and only spurred to action in order to acquire and consume more weed. The negative effects of either the drug or the culture seemed very obvious. Some of those people got better, some stayed the same, some went under, and most I just lost track of because I got tired of their antics and they of my insufficient participation.
Slingerland, in Drunk, makes the point that Alcohol has remained the universal social solvent across cultures and history because alcohol has fairly predictable effects on people. People may be lightweights or have a hollow leg, and they may be angry drunks or sad drunks or horny drunks, but the basic frame of alcohol--suppressed impulse control--impulsive behavior is fairly universal. While he specifically calls out marijuana as having unpredictable effects on people, causing a variety of impacts at a variety of intensities for what seem to be genetic reasons.
Some of my friends who smoked too much weed turned into doctors and accountants. Some of them seem to have had mental breaks and went from successful high school students to wash-outs.
But we're really bad at handling the idea that X works well for some people and doesn't work for others.
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I used it to self-medicate for insomnia. Worked better than some other off-label stuff which caused insane weight gain. It was actually great...for a year. Lost weight, maintained regular exercise regimen for months...
And then...it crept up on me but now the motivational hit when I toke is insanely noticeable. I thought I used to slack off at work, no I was working in bursts. Now I slack off. Even basic "lazy" shit I used to do - blast through an audiobook of a book I really should sit down and read - is harder.
Lucky you. Now I get the self-loathing and the lack of impetus to change.
So...yeah. I think the other side was right on this one.
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It's funny that weed actually did give me one of those moments, albeit because I was already often doing nothing while sober before I started using it regularly.
It was just that (since I was using edibles) I was having to make a conscious decision to be alone doing nothing of value for several hours and the highs were punctuated by moments of stark self reflection. Before I started using them, I was instead regularly making the decision to do nothing without really thinking about it and without getting caught up in my own thoughts.
I haven't fully quit weed now, but I have cut down from my peak while also trying to be more social + productive while sober.
Similar story here.
I stopped smoking weed because that was literally the only effect it was giving me. It became like a boredom magnifier where instead of zoning out and happily wasting time I'd zone alllll the way in and get frustrated about the lack of progress on my ambitions. Made worse by smoking it at the end of the day when there was no opportunity to make any concrete progress on those projects beyond ruminating on how I could do them if this, which I would do if that, which I can't do because...
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