Have the effects of cannabis changed for you as you got older?

[Sign]

When I was young my mind was uncluttered and I could take the highest THC I could get my hands on. After starting to grow again I find that my brain is a sonofabitch and if the THC is too high or I smoke too much it won't stfu and wants to show me the worst things I've hidden away from myself.

Is this common? I have not discussed this offline with anyone and an curious.

It's a two sided sword, on one hand it allows me to confront things I can affect change with and guide me down the better path. But for things I cannot change it's just so pointless. I've taken to titrating doses to keep affects sub-mental, so I don't get mental lol. But I miss the days of getting absolutely baked. I'm a heavy user of indica and haven't had a sativa since starting up again. Current grow includes super lemon haze to try out the other side. My last memory of sativa was Mexican brick from the 80's and I wanted to experience the bubbly laughing euphoria again.

I'm convinced it was the 'me' that changed and not the weed though so perhaps this is a pipe dream.

What do you other old timers that perhaps didn't quit for the majority of your life think?

 

[Malato]

Ive been smoking since i was quite literally a little kid 9. At first when i would smoke it almost had a xanax like effect on me, would relieve all my stress and anxiety. By the time I reached my pre teens and early teens smoking would cause me to get extremely paranoid, frankly im surprised i kept smoking. By the time i was around 16 it was more a mixture of both, with friends i get funny relaxed and introspective, and around strangers or high pressure situations i have a mild panic attack in situations i wouldnt sober. Would say thats where im at now.

 

[Teddybrae]

My view as a Senior Citizen is that Cannabis has not changed except perhaps to become stronger. Altho I can remember in 1974 ...

I would say there is no change of effect as one ages. One's ability to 'meet the stone' may change tho'. I know lots of people who just do not have the energy to stone any more.

You might consider taking a break for a while ... to refresh.

What's happening in your private life? Any unusual or untypical stressors? Has anyone close to you died recently?

I have seen many cases where people have avoided issues and these come back to 'haunt' them as they age. I believe we are as sick as our secrets and from what I 've seen I don't want to be dying with any secrets at all!

So maybe the dope is leading you to private matters you need to take a good look at ...

 

[Chunkypigs]

Nah! Started toking in 1973 and the only thing that changed is I roll bigger joints now and I'm an international championship stoner...

 

[St. Phatty]

I don't feel anything yet.

 

[Mengsk]

This question, well we all change as we get older I am not sure about the effects.

For me, my position or views on cannabis could not be stronger. I lived under the heavy oppression of laws and family who screamed shouted hated and discouraged cannabis use. So you feel a little bit like a child who has been abused their whole life. In the sense that cannabis is actually medicine and doing good for me. But the fact in the modern world is I am being told 1/8 costs $75 and beer companies are taking over. Every one of us who have lived under banks and police and have been robbed our entire lives. I am the same person who was harassed by police and pockets emptied and cited fined billed ticketed for one thing or another, so that I was always a working poor my entire adult life.

The lawyer in me wants those 20+ years of back fines and taxes, in my savings with interest, along with some time to ponder on where my life would be now had I had that money to keep for myself and spend and invest. I 100% do not honour or believe the rights of big money interests here is what I am saying. Null and void no contract, legal dispute, and arrest and jail for cannabis cultivation is not the same thing as suing for predatory lending mortgages or worse. The legal dispute is the legal dispute but my qualm begins with the bill collectors.

A key ingredient here is I tried medicine. I myself gave a career in medicine a shot, and then I discovered it is a total fraud overall. I also personally found cannabis to be "a cure." There you have it free of charge. The problem is that the doctors, the medical field, the hospital, together they have a lot of money you know. Employ a lot of people. And I am saying I found a way that works, I'll write a book on it. Save lots of money because most of it is a waste. If you say up front at the outset that you'll gladly perform a surgery for anyone regardless of ability to pay, I can beat around the bush but it is mostly clear to me that someone or people did not want me around. Being enemy #1 of the medical establishment comes with a little hex if you will, I do not think they specifically want this kind of publicity.

Now I am a poor working class citizen, with more debt and more disbelief, and a matching disconnected unrealistic demand placed on me by the tax man and working world, or our system, whatever you want to call it. What I am discovering just now, is to begin to take the law into my own hands, because I have been robbed my entire life of my livelihood. I am not implying targeting me as an individual, only the intended effect. Even if I'm just the one speaking up about it, someone has to be patient zero or the prime victim. In other words if there is a slave class and super wealthy master elite rulers like with a billion in the bank account, then there has to be someone at the other end working like a slave. For nothing or less than nothing, will not ever receive anything in their entire life or for their children. That is your "can't have one without the other."

All instructions or advice I was given about a career, all I am seeing in my everyday world is how ideas have been stolen and people manipulated. Every law or paper or authority that I look at seems to say that I owe them a bunch of currency for one reason or another. I supposedly owe people more money for stuff that hasn't even happened yet than there is money, I'll ever have likely. And that became a normal American dream for many people a while ago it's an illusion it doesn't feel tangible to me. That is the way I feel. All the money in the world has trickled up into fees and interest and debt. If I want to shrink my debt, it looks like the options for shrinking debt are shrinking. The police and IRS can't rob me my entire life and then I'm told that the legal cannabis industry is evicting me from the only house I've ever lived in. That just isn't going to fly in court or on the street, IMO. It sucks that's the way I feel about cannabis use now.

My rant on the internet isn't going to make my debt disappear, but I feel as though I have been living under oppression. This money is false, only designed to incriminate me and strip me of my rights and abilities and potential. Not exactly something I have concrete evidence for but I'm sure others feel similar. This is a little weird just an anecdote but out of the string of employers/supervisors/bosses I've worked or apprenticed under who had a lot of money, in hindsight I don't think any of those employers had any intention of significantly promoting me.

You see that 10:1 income ratio or whatever the case may be just kind of sit there, while your superiors are 10-20 years older than you. And the best explanation I can come up with is rather than me bring tricked or scammed by every single one of my bosses they likely just ignored me for as long as possible. As in nobody clued me in or gave me a hand up, just quiet. A person in their 40s knows a lot more practical stuff about life than a 20 year old and when you look back you see these people for who they really are/were. They were not helping you all along, they were either against you completely or just sit you in a corner and don't tell anyone. Many professionals are the complete opposite of genuinely helpful human beings.

Simply put retail or budtending or delivery driver jobs do not pay enough salary to afford this cannabis and rent at the same time. Why should this sound like a joke to anyone I'm not sure but there is no way I can be a full time Amazon or Uber driver and afford to purchase thc cartridges from the dispensaries on my wages. Hence "access" or can people get it when they want it. If commute and rent and cell phone are all sky high in the grand scheme of things economically speaking then there isn't much left for cannabis. Growing more is one thing but this inflation of the dollar is a real phenomenon.

If I can't afford to grow at home and I can't afford to buy, what's left? So I can grow for myself for my own cannabis and for therapy, and I can also get a delivery driver job to pay rent. Maybe that's what's expected. More than one job for each person. Our economy used to have 1 worker per family, then 2 parents both working (so no raising children?), and now I don't really see one job as supporting one person but maybe that's just me.

Every bill each one of us has can quite likely rise in price, more than cannabis. We are talking about the human benefits of cannabis use, but it seems big economic forces are drowning cannabis. Here it's like pointing at an invisible party, because if one company is gouging for boof extract that means there is a shill capitalist money hoarder who doesn't belong. And every person in that entire chain associated with any boof extract is guilty of making it tough for the little guy whether they intended it that way or not.

I am overreaching possibly but this means rent is too much. We all have necessities, basic essentials. Food, water. Transportation, ok recreation and medicine both fit in here. But cannabis is not optional it is medicine for many users. $75 1/8 is not a monthly allotment for cannabis. No user (what 1%?) can reasonably spend $750 a month or whatever on cannabis for one person. I don't feel I have the answers so much as stating the obvious.

In all fairness if you work a normal 9-5 job and smoke 1/8 a week dispensaries are quite affordable. It works out similar to a cell phone bill or something. Don't want to compare with the cost of cigarettes or alcohol because that is an odd juxtaposition. You'd be comparing the price of something that kills you to something that saves you. So it is really the actual price = (price of cannabis - price of alcohol - price of cigarettes - price of health care). The over the counter price for 1/8 is less than what we used to pay years ago. The 1/2 oz per week or heavily medicated user is probably more of an outlier. Thinking ahead can you/we subsidize everyone idk nevermind about that.

So the entire time I believed anyone else for saying bad things, I was a victim pretty much. This sounds strange in our politically correct or anti-PC culture but it was society's fault for my whole life track that happened after I stopped using cannabis. You start to have thoughts about how much different your life may have been had you not listened to authorities or kept with cannabis use the entire time. This is the issue with legislators and regulators, I feel society has kept me down financially and psychologically or emotionally.

You cannot put a price on human life, or recouping prison time. My prison time isn't at Folsom my time is spent every day of my life. Prisoner or ward of the state or government worker or indebted servant, the line becomes blurry. People are assigned a value (money) and I do not see it correlating to worth in any sense I can comprehend.

 

['Boogieman']

I'm 30, first smoke was Mexican brick in the early 2000's, some highs I could not stop laughing, some put me in my chair and I could not move. All within a month, I been chasing the dragon ever since, I liked the highs that got me highly paranoid, it never went away, the paranoia added to the intensity of the high.

 

[Mengsk]

If anyone is wondering about cannabis, ^ do you think I would write that drunk LOL. Good or bad for the psychiatric assoc'n ^ there's my testimony.

 

[Mengsk]

Used to buy $30 bags which I guess were Mexican from Dolores Park on my scooter. May have been grown elsewhere but dealer buyer vocabulary wasn't so extensive back then. That was before we started cutting school.

There is an effect of paranoia but discussing it is a little weird because mild paranoia side effect is different when "the police really are coming to get you."

Now that cannabis is legal and can be consumed openly without worry the effect of paranoia all but disappears. In my experience you might become self-conscious or think people are talking about you, something relatively mild along those lines. Especially with certain strains. And then a few hours later no dude they weren't talking about you, you were just high.

Before I would actually feel guilty about my use which carried its own psychological toll you could say. A tobacco addiction in the form of blunt wraps meant a co-addiction with cannabis. I would carry out a routine cycle of wanting or needing a daily fix, tobacco and weed together indistinguishable. Looking for it, buying it, smoking, and then immediately feeling like I don't want the thing. Like I made a mistake and that I am trying to quit smoking cannabis. Repeated this cycle many times, more or less feeling bad about what I was doing.

Now I've cut out tobacco and the emotional experience is totally different. Especially with edibles and cartridges, being a cannabis user is about as healthy as you can possibly be in my view. This argument may be difficult for some to understand but loaded up on thc edibles and vape cartridges I think people can be absolutely much healthier and better off than tobacco or alcohol or even sober. Advocating a universal medicine that any/everyone should use is also a little weird. I don't want to seem like a drug pusher although the truth is I think this stuff can help a lot of people. To that there is no limit really.

 

[St. Phatty]

Used to buy $30 bags which I guess were Mexican from Dolores Park on my scooter.

Dolores Park SF ?

Hope it was good.

 

[Mengsk]

Yeah SF. Could be described as seedy compressed green/brown/yellow a little wet at times but it did the trick That is something I do remember that I don't think we will be smoking again.

Everyone can become nostalgic about what they remember. It wasn't too long ago but I must say I'm happy we mostly have ounces to smoke now instead of daily missions in search of a joint. For all there is to complain about, what a difference having $50-100 ounces of local green compared to compressed brick buds.

I'm not exactly homeless knock on wood but with weed I feel ok well this is something they can't take away from me. Not entirely sure about the economy otherwise but an absence of seedy brick weed in the stash box is good news as far as I can tell.

 

[RB56]

OP - Some strains can be terrifying. I've found that to be especially true of narrow leaf plants. If you've moved form wide to narrow leaf and are finding it terrifying, it could just be that. Try something different.



I have a plant I have been growing and consuming for many years. It's my favorite of all time and the favorite of everyone I know. A seed from the same pack produced a plant that would almost have me hiding under tables.

 

[Mengsk]

A buddy and I would go watch the laserium at Golden Gate Park. Free laser light show set to Pink Floyd on the dome ceiling used for astronomy projections.

We went to see Half Baked in the theatre. Rolled the whole bag I guess about 1/4 oz jay between us

 

[Sign]

Thanks for all the replies! Yeah I don't have paranoia or anxiety or anything like that, I live in a legal state (my long break from growing was due to deciding the mandatory minimums just weren't worth it)

For me it's really just memories that have been put to rest that I revisit randomly if I consume too much. Some things after a night of analysis allow me to change for the better. Others were just dead and gone and revisiting them just brings needles sadness. Thank you for sharing that Teddybrae it seems that is where I'm at.

Seeing these replies has been cathartic, and seeing that it is just all a part of the journey for many makes me want to see again what additional perspective I might find the next time I smoke, because I plan on getting truly and righteously blazed before bed!