Not sure if this belongs in D&D but it seems like most of the pot related threads are in Hangout. http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/legal-pot/mar1juana-re-shapes-brains-users-study-claims-n81126 mar1juana Re-Shapes Brains of Users, Study Claims By Bill Briggs This is your brain on drugs –- only now, with real pictures. Two neural regions key to emotions and motivation become misshapen or abnormally large after repeated pot smoking, scientists reported Tuesday. They call their study the first “to show casual use of mar1juana is related to major brain changes.” No need for that iconic, anti-drug image from the '80s -– a piping-hot pan and a frying egg –- to make the latest visual point. To bolster this claim, researchers used an MRI machine and the brains of 40 live people. They assert that the more joints a person smokes, the more those two neural hubs get “damaged.” “Anytime you find there’s a relationship to the amount of mar1juana consumed, and you see differences of core brain regions involved in processing of rewards, the making of decisions, the ability to assess emotions, that is a serious issue,” said Dr. Hans Breiter, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a study co-author.
I was skeptical upon reading this at first, but it may hold some weight. The nucleus accumbens is an area of the brain that has been shown to correlate the most with the rewarding affects of drugs. Alterations in transcriptional activity with markers like FOS, prove beyond reasonable doubt that cocaine and other strong dopaminergic agents alter the mind and turn addiction into a long lasting physical imprint. Strange to see it mentioned in conjunction with mar1juana. Then again, they didn't go into the specifics and took individuals that smoked 11 joints a week which is on the extreme side of things.
mar1juana effs with your brain? I'm shocked! Do you mean to tell me a drug that increases your appetite, creates intense and surreal experiences (for some), and dramatically changes one's mood is *gasp* messing with you brain? Shocked! I am shocked!
I agree. 11 joints, in my less than scientific calculation, would be equivalent to about 30 bowls. That means you smoke around 4 bowls a day by yourself. There are plenty of people that do smoke this much but I'm not sure I'd call that casual weed smoking.
I don't know how much you have to smoke to be called a "stoner" --always felt that term was too subjective, but just replace the initial thought with "getting intoxicated 11 times a week" Alcohol is a far more powerful drug, but the majority of adults consume it in moderation. Try thinking of someone that gets drunk 11 times a week. It is well documented that such a person will also experience brain damage.
Yeah 11 joints isn't a casual smoker. It's a daily smoker. For a daily smoker 11 joints sounds reasonable.. But he's definitely a pothead. 11 blunts on the other hand, all by yourself is pretty extreme lol.
"Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
Yup, you are intoxicating yourself everyday of the week, of course your brain is going to alter itself in an attempt to bring itself to baseline. The significance of the Nucleus accumebens is that very strong, short acting dopaminergic agents like cocaine will alter transcriptional activity and make addiction a physical process you can gauge, after just a couple of uses (not even large doses). Using an intoxicant, even one that is as mild as mar1juana, so often, should be expected to alter the mind. Someone that uses mary jane so heavily is treading in the footsteps of an alcoholic imo.
Prescription medicines also alter the brain! Yet there are no real 'negative' changes to the brain from mar1juana Go mar1juana!!
So you say there is no negative changes but Dr. Hans Breiter, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine says we need more study and that it raises a cautionary flag. I don't know who to believe.
Yeah I'll be the only narc here that says **** mar1juana! It smells bad and you should feel bad for smoking it.
Oh shut up. Who are you to judge anyone? If you don't like it, that's fine. What other people do in their spare time is their business.
correlation does not imply causation This work was supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (Grants 14118, 026002, 026104, and 027804 to H.C.B. and Grant 034093 to J.M.G.), the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center Abnormal doesn't mean better or worse, it just means different. If you have a different world view and different perception who would think it shows up in brain activity. Weed has made me a lot more empathetic and conscious of my actions and how they effect others, as well as allowing me to get out of my set perspective on the world and look at things differently. I'd say weed has made me a better person for sure. Though that doesn't mean it was just the weed, it is just a tool that I used to work on improving myself. Ssnjay Gupta said that before he started his mar1juana series he found many reports like this one. He soon found real life examples that conflicted with the government findings. His conclusion was that the US government does not and will not support pro mar1juana research. If weed makes users abnormal, then everybody should get on it, because the average man is a sh/thead of massive proportions and they need to loosen up.
