A current thread on pitting pot in the Pit has got me curious about my relationship with pot.
I use very rarely depending on opportunity as it might present itself in a social situation but I’m scared shitless of the stuff. I would never take more than one toke for fear of getting paranoid.
Although I have clearly proved to myself that I have an addictive personality, I can’t say that pot affects me that way.
It seems that if I’m acutely aware of deficiencies in speech, depth perception and general judgement, and the level of impairment from just two tokes scare the hell out of me.
I know far too many people who smoke a doobie after they get up, and continue through the day. They don’t seem impaired and claim that they aren’t.
Is it just me, or can you actually drive safely after smoking a whole doobie ?
A guy I’ve known since grade school (20+ years, btw) is a daily smoker. He says that pot helps him focus and get to work. Without it, like when he’s a bit short on cash and hasn’t replenished his supply, he lacks initiative and is listless etc. He smokes every day and goes to work, takes care of himself. He just lacks a certain drive, IMO, but is otherwise self-sufficient. Of course, he tells me he eschews such bourgeois ideas as ambition and the materialism that accompanies it.
I think pot affects different people differently. I know people who can smoke their heads off for years and remain coherent and jolly. I tend to get paranoid, though this came on gradually over several years before I quit.
I don’t think one’s judgement is very good on pot, and I wouldn’t really trust a stoned driver, but out of interest I myself did a reaction test, first sober, then drunk, then stoned. As expected, they were impaired when drunk, but my reactions were actually faster when stoned than when straight.
Some people can’t handle pot. However, I firmly believe that anyone can get very accustomed to it, to the point where people won’t even KNOW that they’re stoned, with some experience with it.
My girlfriend, for instance, gets a little paranoid when drunk, but while high is just happy as a clam.
Always depends on the person. If you don’t like how you feel while stoned, then don’t do it.
Most of my friend smoke pot while they drive. I wouldn’t do that myself, but none of them have ever been in serious accidents or gotten an unusual number of tickets.
In my not-inconsiderable experience with it, if you aren’t afraid your mom is going to walk in on you, you probably aren’t going to get paranoid. If it does make you paranoid, don’t smoke it! I can honestly say that I haven’t seen one case of it in the hundreds of people I’ve known since the 1970s who smoked - everything from the ‘wake and bake’ kind to the occasional user. If you can get so altered from having two tokes that it scares the shit out of you, it sounds like you are the kind of person who doesn’t need to smoke pot - in which case, good for you!
General disclaimer: Drugs are illegal. Don’t take them, unless you really want to give the DEA something to do.
HAH! I got paranoid as hell about 25% of the time I smoked pot. Didn’t matter the circumstances, I could be completely by myself. The other 75% of the time was fine, and I kept on toking up until I found a new interest. Morphine. But there had to be at least 100 episodes of pot paranoia overall. Haven’t toked in over 20 years now, and that’s just fine and dandy.
I smoke so rarely anymore, I get paranoid before I smoke it. But no, I’ve never gotten paranoid as a result of getting high. Relaxed, sensual, all that good stuff. Oh, and lack of concentration. Funny, my smoking regular stopped when I started programming.
Forget about paranoia - smoking pot would cause me to work myself up into a full-fledged panic attack - complete with racing heart and the resultant fear of a heart attack. It’s an odd thing, because in the past I’ve been able to easily handle much “harder” drugs with no trace of the same effect.
So yeah, I suppose it’s an instance of everybody’s mileage varying. And I would never be able to consider driving under that kind of influence.
You can count me as another square who really really tried to like pot but wasn’t good with it.
I always just think pot makes time go a bit slower so there’s more time to think in each second. So I would always have all this time to think bad thoughts. So, say during one 30 second commercial I could come to the conclusion that I hate all my friends, and then spend another 30 seconds totally paranoid that I was 100 times worse than them and they could see all MY character flaws too. Then another 30 seconds laughing about it and thinking how cool it is that I can be so tolerant as to spend a lot of time with people who really really suck. But then I would go, “holy crow too many deep thoughts,” and get very overwhelmed because even though none of those thoughts are very deep they felt really deep, and they felt like they took 2 hours to work through. And I would think that this was the window into my unconsious thought processes and that this was why I act the way I do and have the personality I have and that it’s, frankly, too much information because I am really a jerk.
I always wonder if that’s how pot is for other people but whenever I ask them they act mysterious and say it affects everyone differently. That also makes me paranoid because it’s like it has to be a huge secret what pot does to people. Why? Why so secretive? I hate that!
Anyway so yeah, that makes me very uncomfortable if it goes on for too long and after some certain point I always felt terrible and tormented.
I get paranoid sometimes (as Miller could probably attest to ) but it’s usually not too long in duration and isn’t really bad. More funny than anything.
I’ve knew/know quite a few pot-smokers and I’m the only one who’s ever experienced any form of paranoia, to any extent.
Oddly enough, I’ve used marijuana in the past to control my panic attacks. I’d get into these sort of downward mental spirals, which would end with me working myself into a full blown, heart-racing panic attack. But if I was high, I didn’t have the attention span to focus on all those negative thoughts long enough to freak.
Ditto for me - full-on anxiety attacks after a small joint or a few hits from a bong or bowl. Absolutely horrible - I really thought I was having a heart attack the last (and final) time.
Another ditto on the panic {read: sheer, curled up in a ball, whimpering, hallucinating terror. I got a neckache from the position I was quivering in and became convinced that my head was going to fall off unless I held it on.} attacks. NEVER EVER again. Conversely, I’m a happy and convivial drinker. Everyone’s body chemistry is different, I guess.
Same here. I had to have my friends “check my heart” to make sure I was okay, hahaha (damn was I retarded). Anyways, I think I just overdid it that night as other experiences after that point (but in the past, mods) yielded nothing close to that scary experience.
) but it’s usually not too long in duration and isn’t really bad. More funny than anything.