• Dasus@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    But also, I don’t really care to argue about the veracity of the research presented by the NIH.

    Aaand that’s sort of my point.

    Yes, we should take the harms of any substances seriously, but to be frank, the risks in cannabis are comparable to caffeine, and on an objective level, even smaller. So my deeper point is that people should realise that attitudes can be deeply “programmed” by our environment (and I’m not talking about some malicious and purposeful propaganda, except at the very start of it, after which society just sort of did it’s thing), and we should realise to readjust our attitudes towards cannabis to be more like our attitudes towards coffee. For example, it’s not often you need to worry about someone’s caffeine consumption, but that too is a thing sometimes. The worst example I can think of is a middle-aged woman I worked with who made coffee 4x stronger than anyone else, no-one else would drink it (except for me as well, but with a lot of cream and sugar, and much much less than her). She was so caffeinated, it really did show up on her skin and definitely on her behaviour. She was very, very mildly psychotic, and I use that not in the colloquial, but clinical sense. In the sense that she was very mildly hypomanic and slightly confused at times, making a lot of mistakes in our work, to the point that she was prohibited from taking any of the orders that came from the government, because they didn’t want to pay for her constant fuck-ups. Other times it’s perhaps a young-ish person who is doing too many energy drinks, or it’s my 93-year old grandma who has anxiety and who’s hands shake, but who says she won’t stop drinking coffee. I’d say my worry for someone using too much cannabis has been much on the same level. It used to be bigger, when I was younger, and somehow believed the studies that only talk of these correlations, until I understood that none of them had any substance, always just “analysing” previous work and when you look into those, they’re more questionable than the newer ones.

    We’ve accepted a work culture in which you can make jokes about how you “can’t even function before my first cup of coffee”, and that’s completely fine. But if I say “oh damn, I just can’t get to sleep without a good bowl full of indica”, a lot of people would instantly consider me an addict of some sort, while the other perhaps a not-so-funny character in an office sitcom.

    Thank you for the apology, but there really was no need. Still, very mature of you, rare on online forums. tips fedora

    edit Oh here, have an image as well.

    • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      the risks in cannabis are comparable to caffeine, and on an objective level, even smaller

      OK maybe? I think it depends on the user. Excuse my falling back on anecdotes now, but I don’t think I’ve met anyone whose had a panic attack from drinking coffee (though I would not be surprised). However I know several people who have had panic attacks from ingesting THC.

      I agree that we are too blase as a culture about the relative risks of caffeine and alcohol dependence. I just get frustrated when people parrot the notion that cannabis has never hurt anyone. I even support the cause to at least decriminalize it and even legalize it for adults, though we need better education about the potential risks. I’ve only ever seen warning labels about the habit-forming nature.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yeah, anecdotes aren’t science.

        Especially when we’ve established how biased society’s view of cannabis is.

        Caffeine can actually kill you of an overdose. It’s not even that rare, medically. Not compared to zero cannabis overdose deaths.

        Caffeine can even cause auditory hallucinations on a fairly small dosage. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/caffeine-linked-to-hallucinations-51161154/

        https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2016/04/20/cannabis-vs-caffeine-which-is-safer-a-cup-of-coffee-or-a-puff-of-weed/

        CONCLUSION

        To conclude, caffeine is clearly more risky, more dangerous, more deadly, more harmful and more costly than cannabis in every category – overdose deaths, overuse deaths, withdrawal symptoms and acute toxicity.

        Yes the site is “cannabisculture”, but they give sources to actual science outlets and specific publications

        And this isn’t to say that caffeine is really that dangerous, as it isn’t. You can abuse it and get problems, but most don’t. It’s more addictive and more dangerous and more used, and less worried about. They hypocrisy around coffee is expecially high here in Finland.

        It’s honestly crazy, I’ve had to strip down and take a piss in front of a guy who’s lips were packed with snus and who was on his 12th cup of strong coffee for the day. As in he had to visually confirm I didn’t have any gadgets or anything on my dick.

        All this because I got a fine for smoking cannabis. And I had to do that every week, on random days, for six months. Beyond humiliating, especially done by people who were clearly sorely addicted themselves, which I wasn’t. (At the time I didn’t use caffeine or nicotine — even going so far as to not eat chocolate because of it’s caffeine content.)

        I don’t think I’ve met anyone whose had a panic attack from drinking coffee

        Yes you have. Go to literally any high school, and like a third of the kids are so high on energy drinks that they’d get a low score of mania on clinical tests. Just because you’ve not associated someone’s behaviour with caffeine doesn’t mean it didn’t cause it as much as cannabis the anxiety attacks of the people you talk of.

        And caffeine is actually regulated, formally. Cannabis isn’t. So you’d get way stronger strains than what you might if it were legal, ans definitely strains with more CBD, which counteracts the psychotic effects of THC.

        You literally couldn’t give the equivalent of that in caffeine, because it’d be like 8 large energy drinks and would literally kill a person, whereas with a cannabis overdose, you’ll get anxiety instead of a coronary and death. Also, the anxiety is very strongly connected to the legality of cannabis as well. In places whereby cannabis is legal, those sorts of anxiety attacks are far fewer.

        Video games are habit forming. Do you think they should have labels on them? Literally anything can be addictive. What causes the “cannabis isn’t addictive” myth is that cannabis doesn’t cause dependence. As in you could smoke insane amounts for several years daily, then quit cold turkey, ans only suffer a few days of insomnia if that.

        With alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, you’ll get actual physical withdrawal symptoms. With alcohol so bad that you can die.