First and foremost, I want to say that if you have friends who don't approve of you smoking, don't like you when you smoke, or criticize you in any way for smoking: Get rid of them now. It'll save you the time, the effort, and a bunch of bullshit. True friends accept you for who you are, no matter what you smoke! I wish I would have known that, and maybe saved myself some shitty situations.
Second, let's talk about marijuana and mental health. As most of you know, I have anxiety issues and love my Xanax, but before Xanax and all those other bullshit (and expensive) pharmaceuticals, all I did was smoke weed. When I tried a short stint with Celexa and Effexor all I did was black out when I drank, want to drink a bunch, make poor decisions and throw myself into a mental mania (faux, often dangerous extreme 'high').
When I smoke weed, I'm happy, giggly, and hungry. I can tackle one issue at a time, instead of getting overwhelmed about my massive to-do list, and can get through a 12 hour day like a fucking champ. And finally, after years of arguing with shrinks and therapists, science is starting to back me up.
While not anxiety related this is a great article: http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/marijuana-mental-health
I don't understand how so many people can be denied access to less harmful medicines from the Earth. This study (http://www.jci.org/articles/view/25509/version/1) is a great study and I've pulled out some of the highlights from the medically pedantic text to share:
The graph from above is from the study and kind of hard to understand, but if you'd like to take the time to read a bit of the study, it's interesting.
"We observed here that chronic administration of high, but not low, doses of HU210 exerts anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects... In summary, since adult hippocampal neurogenesis is suppressed following chronic administration of opiates (20), alcohol (21), nicotine (22), and cocaine (23), the present study suggests that cannabinoids are the only illicit drug that can promote adult hippocampal neurogenesis following chronic administration. Increased hippocampal neurogenesis appears to underlie the mechanism of anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects produced by a high dose of chronic HU210 treatment. The opposing effects of high doses of acute and chronic cannabinoids, together with the anxiolytic-like effects caused by a low dose of cannabinoids, may finally explain discrepancies in the clinical study literature regarding the effects of cannabinoid on anxiety and depression."
HU210 is a synthetic cannabinoid, FYI. I find it really funny that HIGH doses and not low produce these effects, adequately explaining why my tolerance is so high, and why some people may feel paranoid with small doses. Neurogenesis is also the way in which neurons are created in the brain, populating a growing brain. It basically makes your brain grow. Maybe thats why so many non-smokers are so ignorant...
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