Perhaps people with those particular neurological differences are more likely to smoke pot daily? Back in the day, people I knew who werenāt stoners would smoke pot and declare āI donāt feel anythingā and getting nothing from the drug, would simply not smoke it.
They should MRI cats that like catnip and those that donāt, and Iām betting: neurological differences!
That was my initial thought when I read the headline. Great - theyāre different. How much are they different, do those differences really matter, and are the different (negative) or different (positive)? What. They are more relaxed and their brains show it? Is that bad? 
āthe study identified changes to the nucleus accumbens and the nucleus amygdala, regions of the brain that are key to regulating emotion and motivation,ā (taken from another article on the same study) ā¦ Iād be really curious about just how direct those correlationās are vs. what people consider normative behaviours are. But hey, Iād also like to know the motivation of why the individuals decided to smoke cannabis in the first place was and how that compares to behaviours.
/Iām a medicinal cannabis inhaler and Iām tired of bullshit sociological/medical studies when ignoring individual psychology
I was wondering about that. Itās seems like it would take some kind of disposition to want to use that drug daily or even with any regularity.
āHallucinogens are value changers, so is marijuana. Like it or not, it changes your values. It opens up your windows, doors of perceptions was what Aldous Huxley called them. You see things differently and I suddenly was able to see my place and realize I was in the wrong place.ā
George Carlin
I started smoking pot in high school because the clique that adopted me were āhippie.ā I continued smoking pot & using other drugs when I went to the state university. I drank beer & liquor too. I smoked weed off & on through out my working life -fifty years- & drank also. Because of the American lifestyle (beer & cheeseburgers, white burgundy & cheesecake) I had a triple bypass in 1999. Because of that, I have a tad bit of brain damage. Which is why I take vitamin E & smoke herb. I canāt drink anymore because I have type 2 diabetes & I am shooting insulin each day. I think I am fairly norbal for a 60-something.
The full text of the paper can be found here:
http://jn.sfn.org/press/April-16-2014-Issue/zns01614005529.pdf
The plots look like something a high school kid would do for their lab experiments where they know the answer theyāre supposed to have and then draw a line through their amazingly bad data to get the desired result. This is a crappy paper on so many levels.
Leary and RAWās Prometheus Rising come to mindā¦
Physical evidence of neurosomatic circuit opening/usage? Sure probably not, but hey, maybe!
āThis circuit is activated by ecstatic experiences via physiological effects of cannabis, Hatha Yoga, tantra and Zen meditation. Robert Anton Wilson writes, āTantra yoga is concerned with shifting consciousness entirely into this circuitā[8] and that āProlonged sexual play without orgasm always triggers some Circuit V consciousnessāā
Your typo made me giggle. A completely brilliant ironic statement. Mind you, I do have a spliff on the burn.
So stonersā brains differ from non-stoners. And artistsā brains differ from non-artists.
Hmmm.
The criticism provided of the study that normal were compared to normals reflects the authors poor understanding of research design. Since marijuana users may be at risk for greater mental illness, to avoid selection bias, the authors selected subjects without baseline differences to concentrate on the effects attributable to marijuana use. If you are going to write a criticism of a study, you should probably have some understanding of study design and controlling for confounding and bias.
What I get out have type of confession is a lack of individual will to make other choices when it comes to those particular lifestyle choices. You might consider yourself normal for your particular demographic but who said those cultural choices were normal to begin with?
I smoked a couple of times in late teen years, never dig much for me aside from encourage me to be more cuddly and alcohol only worked in large consumption models for a type of escape. So I didnāt really bother with either from an ROI perspective.
Then I developed a condition called tardive dystonia and I smoke an oz. every 8-10 days to manage the shaking the dystonia causes.
Using the same strict methodology from this study, I arrived at the conclusion that people with certain structural differences or abnormalities will benefit from marijuana use. This leads many un-diagnosed sufferers to self medicate or becoming what is sometimes called a āpot headā.
I stole it from a Mad Magazine article on taking LSD.
I identify myself as a hippie. My ālack of individual willā is a conscience choice.
Yay for peer pressure.
The propaganda machine against marijuana is ramping up after Colorado legalizes it. So predictable.
More drivel (aside from this bullshit study Maggie mentioned):
Murder, Illnesses Prompt Second Look at Recreational Marijuana Law in Colorado:
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/04/illnesses-and-murder-prompt-second-look-at-marijuanas-potency-and-edibles-in-colorado/
So when people take aspirin and coincidentally have psychotic breaks, are the cops going to focus on the hazards of aspirin and get that parroted by the idiots on news outlets as well?
Aspirin, by the way, causes hundreds of deaths each year.
Marijuana is supposed to be a distraction from the slow police response time.
I should mention I donāt necessarily blame the police for it. They are underfunded and understaffed. If marijuana had been legalized and taxed a long time ago, weād have much more money available for the police by now for a host of reasons.
So, if we really want someone to blame for the slow police response we can look dead in the eyes of those whoāve been in our way for marijuana legalization all these years.
But, yeahā¦ marijuanaā¦ evilā¦ badā¦ scaryā¦ while alcoholā¦ funā¦ machoā¦ mainstreamā¦
Yay for peer pressure.
Beer pressure.
There is so much wrong hereā¦ A tiny sample size, non-random group selection, short duration, no real control group (overall diet and intake of other substances were not controlled for). The self-selected group regularly smoking marijuana is bound to be substantially different from a self-selected group not smoking at all in many other respects, starting from previous history of substance use and ending with different current habits and routines.
And, of course, the authors already knew what conclusions theyād like to see. Makes one wonder how many similar studies were conducted and subsequently quietly buried because the results didnāt fit the desired narrative.
