StonerAmerica, Marijuana is a psychedelic drug that damages the brains and consciousness of habitual users




I will address the objections to my earlier article.

  1. “’Refer Madness’ has been discredited.” – To object to marijuana is not some alarmist scare tactic. Marijuana is a very strong drug, an hallucinogen. Yes most people smoking marijuana will not become schizophrenic. Although it does cause a significant number of vulnerable kids and young adults to cross the line to schizophrenia.
  2. “Loosen up and get stoned, you’ll like it.” – This is simply the mantra of stoner America. They can be funny, but it is part of the fallacy that grass is benign with no significant negative effects. Do we really aspire as a society to be stoned?
5 replies
  1. Ted Wright
    Ted Wright says:

    1. Your implication that cannabis is a cause of schizophrenia is disingenuous, at best. Cannabis does not cause schizophrenia; it may bring it out in people who have latent illness.

    2. Who said it’s benign? This is a misleading assumption that is aimed at getting the reader to believe the author’s philosophy, while ignoring the fact that cannabis can be a suitable drug for many different illnesses and symptoms that many seriously ill patients experience.

    3. You’re right; it is “epidemic” in our schools. It has been since sometime around 1976. I don’t know how many times I’ve been to legislative hearings and cringed while patients explain that they had no idea where to purchase cannabis for their nausea & vomiting or to help alleviate the side effects of multiple sclerosis, etc. They commonly state that they turned to their children or grand-children to help them get some because kids know where to get it. In fact, it’s easier for teenagers to get than alcohol or tobacco. What does that say? To me, it is a big red flag. Prohibition isn’t working! We’re not doing enough to take it off the streets and until we get a realistic approach about how to deal with the substance, it will remain available to the most vulnerable members of our population. Further, the same person that sells them cannabis often times has other drugs like cocaine, heroin, LSD or other drugs. That’s where your “gateway” is, it has nothing to do with cannabis itself. Alcohol is the substance that almost all heroin addicts tried first. Take cannabis out of the street dealer’s hands and things will likely turn around.

    4. “The marijuana lobby as very well funded as is the Big Pharma lobby.” ~ You need to do some research. A single dose of Herceptin & T-DM1 costs us $33,000 and that doesn’t even cover the hospital and nursing staff. My wife gets it every three weeks! Do some math.

    5. No one with any legitimacy is purporting that cannabis is a fixall. However, it can and does help many people with many ailments. My wife would have passed away some time ago had she not gotten relief from chemotherapy induced anorexia. She’s being treated for stage IV, metastatic breast cancer and the phase one clinical trial drugs she was on were killing her. None of the standard anti-emetic drugs worked for her, so out of desperation, she tried some cannabis. Within ten minutes she was eating the biggest meal she had eaten in over a year! It works and just because DEA and NIDA have been successful at fighting off real research on the subject, somehow the truth has gotten out. Listen to the “anecdotal” evidence; it’s so overwhelming that it refuses to be ignored…

    • Robert Berezin
      Robert Berezin says:

      If marijuana helped your wife, I am glad. I have no problem with that. However, anecdotal is insufficient. It needs to be carefully evaluated in relation to its effectiveness in the context of its negative effects and it needs to be compared with alternative anti-emetics. If it turns out to be a constructive medication than of course it should be sanctioned by the FDA for this specific purpose. And if so, this does not mean that it should be used in any other context and should be carefully controlled like any other drug. This does not mean that it should be legal.
      Actually Marijuana damages consciousness. As a therapist, it is my experience with many patients that it takes a year for a habitual user to recover and be available for the vulnerable relatedness that is necessary to deal with himself. I specifically said that marijuana does not cause schizophrenia. I don’t understand your defense of marijuana other than the fortunate help it gave your wife. We have a serious drug problem and marijuana is part of it. It is especially harmful to the developing consciousness and brains of teenagers.

  2. anonymous please, or Michelle will work
    anonymous please, or Michelle will work says:

    I started smoking pot just to try in the 9th grade, I was only 14. The first time effects I remember clearly. After smoking a joint, shared mind you (that also being said sharing where our mouths were concerned can not be good alone!) well the effect were severe dry mouth absolutely no salavia in my mouth making it most difficult to swallow, soon after laughter unstoppable and then I could not move for over an hour, a friend who didnt partake walked me home and soon after I feel asleep. I experienced happiness joy, fear and immobility. To me this began as a gateway drug/herb whichever. But yes it increased to smoking more and more for the effects of laughter soon after even perhaps prior I was depressed which has lead my life down the path of most other drugs for experimentation. Then of couse pharmaceuticals took its place. See in general I have not made an opinion for pot only that for me it lead me as a gateway. On the other hand I do know and truley believe perscriptions from pharmaceutical corporations is absolutely BAD and a means of genocide in our country.
    Life to me is sad that we all just turn our backs and walk away, this human conditioning is hard to bare. I absolutely love life but not this structure we are taught, go to school, college, religion, career amd marriage
    I believe we fail as a society we are not taught anything other than conditioning, our mothers teach kindness to love and share and create, we have not been taught how cope. How to eat we eat everything we are told and the majority of people just eat this up as truth. Do.people care and why do they stop when someone loves us and then leaves us friends, lovers, coworkers for me its unbearable. At any point I believe we all need to stop and reasses what our vaules and morals are.
    It is strange that a lot of us do before we think and even in that statement our words have a major role in our belief system if someone calls something a drug this holds in our consciousness or subconciousness as true and truley causes an effect on our personal judgments. I appreciated reading your article and hope that you further contiune your research. Now that pot is leagal/illegal what is your standpoint of the new product extracted from marijuana (sorry is use the word pot for the simplicity of spelling out the word marijuana) so now they have taken out the thc part if im understanding this.correctly and now.using.the ‘cbd’ oil the.other part of the chemical compound.
    Today well I have been on and off antidepressants and I am currently taking yoga and slowly.coming off my antidepressants and antianxiety medication I am upset that immediately doctors are so quick to get people off recreational drugs to pharmaceutical drugs, replace a drug with a drug when my intention was to not be on any type of drug. Thanks for your time.

    • Robert Berezin
      Robert Berezin says:

      Thank you for telling your story. What is most important is that you recover and be well. Your story is important because there are millions of kids out there with a similar story. There are also many kids and adults who don’t go through the gateway and continue to smoke marijuana. And their consciousness is altered without them even knowing it in very destructive ways. In therapy, every single user who has stopped has been grateful that they are back to themselves.

  3. harper
    harper says:

    “Their consciousness is altered without them even knowing it..” I might be under the wrong impression but is that not the objective of using psychoactive substances? I don’t think anyone has ever used a drug to maintain their current state of mind or accidentally experienced an altered state of consciousness through deliberate ingestion of these compounds. It is their crude version of psychiatry, which I can agree leads to some dangerous scenarios due to a lack of education and experience. However this is very valuable because it shows us that there is some type of problem recognition and a desire to change that can be worked with in more professional outlets of therapy.

    I apologize but i must blatently argue that cannabis is not a causal element of heightened drug use. Mental illness coupled with drug seeking behavior aimed at improving ones perception are the source of druge abuse. Initially something else must trigger the vicious cycle then tolerance to the effects of the drugs and availability of the drugs become “gateways” but using simply does not qualify as such. I feel we must stop blaming the cause of drug abuse on drugs and more focus must be brought to the addict themself. A coca plant will not kill, it only grows, but underlying mental illness and chemistry will lead to a pile of corpses. So why focus on the plant? Eliminate the use and there is no abuse! Lol

    Your entire disposition seems based on this mental distortion of generalizing all cannabis users as stubborn adolescents who have become completely dissociated and opposed to a “true” reality. Under mild to moderate doses of psychedelics, such as cannabis, people are normally observed to be much more susceptible to discussions of otherwise unacceptable topics. This is very useful for therapists to extract certain hidden away secrets and emotions that could be of essential importance in the treatment of people needing psychotherapy. The same effects of cannabis that cause anomalies in consciousness facilitate the ability to correct fallacies and misinterpretations in the addicts mind. It makes them more open to “bad” AND “good” ideas, it can make your job easier or harder.

    Yes its unhealthy, yes its unacceptable for children and most adults to use even occasionally, yes the criminal markets lead to pollution from cultivation and sometimes violence but never is our egocentrism towards these users’ different consciouses to be confused as a “true” collective conscious experience or should we “help” addicts or dealers by sending them to violent cesspools of mental disease and trauma known as prisons.

    You must look past your own inhibitlatory consciousness in order to learn the underlying cause, effects, and treatment of prolonged abuse of psychedelics. The same egocentrism you view as an effect of cannabis is the same poison effecting yourself in your ability to constructively manipulate the poor souls into an appropriate lifestyle with healthier coping mechanisms.

    Anyways, good luck on your studies and endevours and I hope you will consider different approaches to understanding addictive behaviors while still remaining strong against drug use.

    Nobody likes to be a buzz-kill bit somebody has to do it! Lol


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