...we're gonna have to re-evaluate old concepts of free speech and democracy.
Everyone's on anti depressants/sleepers/speed, the chuds are blasting testosterone out their ears until they stroke, weed is everywhere and as potent as heroin.
Add the perfect dopamine delivery system, a political internet economy modeled on the addictive technology of vegas slot machines.
It's gonna have an effect on the national psyche.
Is it a partial explanation for Q?
Shout out to the divorced, biker, small business tyrant, dad...caught with test injectables and thc edibles, and guns, after the Capitol. Just the only man for the moment.
edit: gotta step away for now. will come back to this. Feels like this post was misunderstood, or I just didn't make enough sense. Hope it won't make things awkward when i slide into selected PMs asking for a plug 😀
I can have little a figure of speech.
Shit is 30% THC compared to 10% in the sixties and we're finding ways to get higher daily.
On the macro level it's gonna have an effect.
Just the wildly increased availability is gonna have a societal effect.
It was much lower than 10% in the 1960s too, more like 1%
But THC at any concentration is not more potent than heroin, both because they have different effects & mechanisms of action but also because heroin is a semisynthetic & far more physically addictive & potentially deadly in small amounts
shit, that just adds to my point
it was a figure of speech, but when I'm fully couch locked the outward appearance is the same. Inward too probably.
the weed in the 1960s wasn't very potent, but that doesn't mean the weed now is more "dangerous", just better
no one has ever been recorded to overdose on THC in thousands of years, still... even with these 35% strains. the same is not true for heroin
heroin as a chemical today is not "better", because it's the same chemical first synthesized in the 1800s, but international cartels & global trade routes definitely increased the purity of street heroin since the "French Connection" period
it's good that cannabis today is stronger & more hybridization & selection has occurred, that means people are using these plants & getting benefits from them and human desire for aesthetics & finding new uses of the plant mean more potential for therapeutic breakthroughs.
opium poppy plants also have important uses, but making heroin is not one of them
angry afghan farmer noises
bhang & hashish are always potent because they are concentrated forms, but the average cannabis plant potency until the 1970s was less than 2%. Even in the mid-1990s, studies show that cannabis percentage was less than 4% on average in samples confiscated by the DEA
Indica strains from Afghanistan & Pakistan & elsewhere were more gooey and have other unique characteristics from sativa & ruderalis, but it wasn't until indoor growing & hybridization really took off in Northern CA & then in Holland in the 1990s that cannabis THC percentage skyrocketed, and much of that within the last 20 years
think you're missing the point. I never said dangerous, just massively more psychoactive, with all the good and bad that comes with that.....and people are smoking it erryday from age 15.
the point is that it's likely gonna have an effect on the national psyche that may be initially intangible, but, when mixed with other factors, could manifest as something like Qanon.
drugs aren't weapons or evil spirits. the drugs themselves can't be "good" or "bad", only the psychological reaction that individuals have... reactions which are largely individuated & dependent on personal & societal/cultural & many other factors
drugs can be triggers for psychopathologically predisposed individuals with these issues, but so can bad break ups or employment issues or physical health issues or family trauma.
we as individuals are reflected in these things just as much if not more than the drugs themselves. Much of the real "permanent" or lasting psychological impact on those who use drugs is just cultural baggage & stigma & personal input. we never step in the same river twice, and we take the grand total of our entire lives & impressions & assumptions into all of these experiences.
many nations have high usage rates of cannabis. people were having "freakouts" on the 1% cannabis of the 1960s too. psychological issues aren't skyrocketing in recreational marijuana states
i honestly think that more potent cannabis& more pure/safe drug use in general leads to psychologically and physically safer people.
in fact, much recent research has centered on evidence that cannabis use actually improves people's mental health & outlook & life satisfaction levels
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2018/12/marijuana
"These studies have found that the patients, who used cannabis to treat a range of medical problems including anxiety, had largely improved cognitive performance, reduced clinical symptoms and anxiety-related symptoms as well as a reduced use of conventional medications, including opioids, benzodiazepines, and other mood stabilizers and antidepressants."
Meaning strong weed helps people get off the other less helpful legal/illegal drugs
you can just smoke less of the strong stuff lol... that means less illegal/legal purchases & less smoke in your lungs & more use from the commodity
we also can't stigmatize people's consumption of these things, I don't agree that a heroin addict should turn to crime & violence to satiate their habit, but I also don't want to criminalize or demonize the individual stuck in that situation.
drugs don't cause QAnon. In fact I think a dose of some potent entactogen & a real struggle session is overdue for some of those people
You're focussing on a narrow point.
I'm talking about a much broader phenomenon, if I'm correct.
Recreationals are only part of the picture. For example, testosterone use is widespread among middle aged chuds now.
Test makes you more aggressive, energetic, irrational, unpredictable etc etc. Men that normally would chill out after forty are maybe much more likely to storm a Capitol when they're jacked on it.
Individually, it's not an issue, but when it reaches a critical mass in society it's gonna have unintended consequences.
Instead of the normal proportion of men in society behaving like 20 year olds because of high test, you now can add a large cohort of middle aged men to that proportion. Trump and all the other ancient ghouls too. It's what all the "anti aging"/vitality clinics prescribe.
cannabis use isn't the same as testosterone misuse.
testosterone misuse & illegal use of steroids isn't something I personally condone, but I am not going to call the substance itself evil. testosterone is just a hormone, it's inert on its own. and not all juice heads are violent. CTE & brain injuries are more correlated with that
When we're talking about psychoactive drug use, then we should talk about the legal drugs first. Caffeine & alcohol and nicotine are all drugs & all have marked effect on temperament & produce addiction in varying degrees. Yet they are completely accepted today within the culture, and newer methods are found all the time to repackage & resell the same old drugs. We have to look at the cultural context here and see that individuals are influenced by inculcated "demands" & "wants" that are transmitted from society
"Low T" in America is a marketing ploy lol, and I think a lot of these boomers just aren't culturally or emotionally equipped to go peacefully into their golden years, because our maddening & self-deluded consumer society prevents this.
The cultural context around stigmatizing& prohibiting cannabis & psychedelic drugs is a 180degree about face from how things like Testosterone & Oxycodone & Paxil & thalidomide other "legal" drugs were pushed on Americans
much more potent and available recreational psychoactive drugs + widespread test use + widespread SSRI use + endemic ONLINE political dopamine addiction + LSC alienation + white status anxiety + plummeting education levels
add these together and it may be an explanation for the crazy quick adoption of Qanon by the chuds.
thats the point.
not whether weed is "evil."
safety, as in a Brave New World eutopia
Cannabis use is entirely consistent with neoliberal mindfulness, that's why it's BAD
we know that prohibition leads to no reductions in drug use & unsafe/impure drugs & increases in organized criminal elements violently cornering the market
cannabis use isn't anything about mindfulness lol, what are you talking about? seems like a bit hehe
cannabis use is over 5,000 years old
cannabis is just as vital to humans' agricultural history & future as any other cash crop or medicinal plant
The differences between Morphine, Diamorphine (heroin), Oxycodone, Hydromorphone, Oxymorphone, etc is all very very minuscule. Once they get into the bloodstream they cross the BBB and bind to mostly mu (but also delta and kappa) opioid receptors, and activate them. Do enough of this activity by any means and they will downregulate, temporarily disabling themselves, which both (A) makes the user's "baseline" increase, which is why they go into withdrawals if they stop using, and (B) requires more of the drug to achieve the same amount of activity, which is how tolerance increases. This is simply the body attempting to keep homeostasis. After a long enough period of abstinence, the receptors with upregulate and turn themselves back on, causing withdrawals to cease and tolerance to drop back to zero (Which is why so many users die after periods of non-use: They think they can instantly go back to their old dose)
There are several "weird" opioids out there like Buprenorphine which has an odd profile that gives it a ceiling, and I'm not including fentanyl and its derivatives because of the extremely reduced half-lives.
But the point I'm making is that all opioids are fundamentally the same thing, none are more "evil" than others. Its mostly the social stigma and black market's choice of product that makes diamorphine users fall so hard into the dark side of addiction. If it was prescribed in hospitals and no longer popular on the black market, (And indeed some countries have diamorphine as a standard pain reliever for acute severe trauma), it would have the same reputation as "medical" opioids rather than "street opioids"
That's why Purdue has to pay some $8,000,000,000. They knew oxycodone would have the exact same effects as anything else with that profile of receptor activation, but instead pretended it somehow has far less to none of the addiction potential of prior pain relievers in that class. If any pharm claims they've found an opioid pain reliever with no potential for abuse, ask them how it prevents receptor downregulation. Because even subutex (buprenorphine) has the potential for abuse if your tolerance is below its ceiling dose, its just much safer because that ceiling is usually well below the LD50 even in opiate naive people.
I don't think any of these opioids are "evil", but marketing tactics & regimes of perverse incentives for doctors & manufacturers and lawmakers ensure there is overprescription& overconsumption
TBH I have been a little skeptical ever since my friends in HS said "it makes them better at video games" and then all I wanted to do was scream, die, and eat 10 thanksgiving dinners
the hash oil used in dabbing can apparently reach 90%
exactly. it's never been used this frequently, at these strengths, so widely before. we the guinea pigs.
it's been shown to have an effect on teenage cognitive development, right?