Harvard psychiatrist on David Brooks' pot column: "His ignorance about this subject is vast."

That’s a laugh. Like someone else noted here, I would likely disagree with his entire world view, but at least he wasn’t a dumbass.
Brooks is trying to put a foot (after removing from mouth) on each side of the fence here with his mention of younger David toking but older David scolding.

I dunno if you can call a paper that helped mislead the public into the invasion of Iraq by printing government lies at face value part of the “liberal media,” so maybe it’s a double-bluff!

“See, we have an idiot conservative, we CAN’T be willing servants of conservative agenda items!”

1 Like

I think Mr Grinspoon was just trying to be polite and/or charitable. Either that, or he’s had the good fortune to not be exposed to Brooks’ horseshit before.

Yeah it’s a fucking joke but I think that is what the NYT likes to believe. He’s a total milktoast in my opinion.

You know, despite giving you the munchies, it doesn’t feel like pot usually makes people fat. I certainly don’t know anyone who has.

I’ve never managed to gain any weight from smoking, even though I get bigger munchies than anyone I know. I normally don’t have a very big appetite, but when I smoke weed… it’s ridiculous. I get obsessed with unhealthy food - it tastes so good - and I can eat a box of cookies, a bag of honey-coated nuts, half a bundt cake and bunch of ice cream all in one sitting, and that’s on top of regular meals.

Yet I’ve stayed skinny. I think the biggest reason is that when you smoke regularly, the munchies get smaller and smaller until you barely get them at all. These days I smoke only every now and then, only a few weeks at a time. I’ll eat like crazy during that period, but when I stop, my appetite disappears almost completely and I’ll eat so little that I quickly lose whatever few kilos I’ve managed to gain.

And regarding driving high… well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it. But it’s nothing like driving drunk. Drunk people get reckless and over-confident, but when you’re high, you become cautious and nervous. I would never in a million years trust myself to drive while high, but I used to regularly drive around with a friend who almost always drove drunk, and never made a single mistake. But even if it doesn’t affect some people as much, I think it’s better to just say that driving high should be illegal. Better to not take any chances.

I wouldn’t say that. More dangerous, yes, and it affects your motor skills more when you drink enough, but “much stronger”… I don’t know. Everyone has their own idea of what strong even means in relation to drugs, of course.

Even though I feel clear as a day when I’m on opiates (I actually feel like the person I’m supposed to be), I still think they’re stronger drugs than things like weed or alcohol, which make me feel more “messed up”. I guess one way to explain it is that alcohol feels much “dirtier” than many other drugs - I can get some fun feelings out of it, but they always come with a bunch of unnecessary effects and the fun parts seem to drown in the sea of fuzziness. Weed is more effective at what it does and what I want out of it, and opiates target the right recepors very strongly like nothing else does, without anything unnecessary.

(This went completely off topic - I mostly wanted to see if I can explain to myself what I’m going for.)

1 Like

True, it’s of course very subjective. Dosage also makes a (pretty important) difference.

But as a demonstration head out into the streets of Amsterdam on a Saturday night and tell me who you think is more intoxicated :slight_smile:

I read that column the day it came out and found myself thinking two things: 1) The essay was insulting and baseless to a high degree, and 2) I hope to hell BB gets a hold of this and shreds it as it should be utterly shredded. It was a laughable read that only served to underline Brooks’ lack of knowledge on the subject and it’s nice to see many others calling it out.

yeah i agree, that’s why the quotes. i’m sure they would like to think of themselves on the left - clearly though they are the #1 mouthpiece for american policies, if not the government itself.

Matt Taibbi does a good job as well in his RS blog.

1 Like

Dose matters as well, that’s true. For me, it takes a while to get really drunk (I don’t really enjoy being very drunk, anyway), while I only need a few hits to be really high. Other people are affected differently.

But I agree with you that drunk people are a lot more obnoxious and usually more messed up. Most times, you can’t even tell when someone is high.

This pretty much sums it all up:

<img src=

7 Likes

I never thought that I nor the universe would reach a state where it’s possible to say, “Gosh I miss William F. Buckley, Jr.”

5 Likes

Yeah, seriously, I feel the same way. I wish I would have appreciated him more when he was alive because I thought he was a total prick at the time. Now he seems positively sane and nowadays sanity seems like such a high bar for the Republicans.

Not a bit, personally. He was the grandfather of modern wingnut punditry, putting a pseudo-intellectual gloss on unapologetic racism.

1 Like

He apparently knows how to work the system. Most people provide frequent outbursts of idiotic opinion for free, and he gets paid for his…

2 Likes

Do you think our two statements are mutually exclusive?

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.