Lol while we're talking about drugs, what is your feeling on smoking? I personally have a few smoker friends and I get offered cigarettes anytime we smoke up, or just out and about, I always say no, except for an after-toke (cigarette after smoking up, for me it helps even out the high, and eliminate the burnout effect) Do you guys feel thats an "unwise" choice, I don't think I would get addicted, because I never have the urge, and it's always ever offered, I'm never asking for it. I do Track & Field to stay in shape (ran a 12.6 second 100m, jumped 5.45m long, and 10.20m triple as a midget in grade 9) so do you think smoking cigarettes would ever "catch up on me"?
~Bryan~
Well, as a general rule obviously the less toxic substances you injest, the better.
I quit smoking cigs quite some time ago thankfully. I always found (personally) that smoking after toking "ruined" the high anyway!
Although if you smoke a lot of pot (which I suspect is likely the case) then a cigarrette or a few puffs thereof probably isn't having a huge effect healthwise over and above inhaling hot burning plant unfiltered (mostly) as with pot, so being "wise" or not is probably a moot point!
Kind of like: "So far I've stapled my arm to my desk... Shall I continue and staple my fingers as well or call it a day with the arm?"
You probably wouldn't get addicted to smoking cigarrettes by having one now & then.
Haha thats why I only smoke the bong lately, cool smoke, filtered through the slide, filtered through the water, it really is a CLEAN hit. I used to smoke out of pipes or roll a joint, but I have become attatched to my bong, and now I know why long term stoners say "rip the bong, its better in the long run."
~Bryan~
DO NOT smoke tobacco or use any tobacco products. It is VERY addictive. Once addictive, it is extremely difficult to quit. It takes incredible will power to quit, which is what I'm fighting with right now. I don't smoke, but do use chew, smokeless tobacco, snuff, or whatever you call it in your corner of the world. I started when I was 14, or should say 14 is when I developed the addiction for nicotene. I am 35 now (a grandpa compared to BBT ) and it is in my head to quit constantly. But it is a very difficult thing to do for the majority of people. My hats off to anyone who states that they have quit using tobacco.
On the other side, smoking pot is completely non-addictive, no matter what the anti-drug crowd wants you to believe. You can be a daily user, heck, an hourly user for all that matters, and decide to quit now and never touch the stuff again if you want. You can also decide when out with your buddies who are ready to toke up that you can join them after quitting for so long and have no ill effects. Try smoking one cigarette and only one cigarette after quitting for 5 years. You will once again be a smoker.
LOL, midget, that's funny. Didn't confuse me, we have the same classification of adolecent sports as well.
The only thing I found with quitting pot (the few times that I did) is that you don't sleep properly for awhile... And your REM sleep goes nuts for some reason. Even when I did sleep there was so much REM that I woke up exhausted.
I've also smoked one cigarette (or really half of one as that was more than enough; please hold the room still!) subsequent to quitting a few times without the desire to smoke more, so I guess I'm wierd. But I would agree the cigs are just bad news altogether.
I also miss the taste of the green!
And damn, Mike, you're getting up there!
I was married at 20 and had a kid by 21, that way I can kick them out when I am 40
I smoked cigarettes for ten years. Best thing I ever did was stop. Suddenly I could once again taste food and smell nice things on the breeze. Plus I had more money, looked better and didn't smell like crap. It's been six years since my last ciggy now :up: That's not to say I haven't sucked a little tobacco - occasionally someone will roll up a doob with some tobacco in it to even out the buzz, but that's more a Melbourne thing. In Adelaide (where the gear is half the price it is in Melbz) we don't adulterate our drugs with poison
Also, I'm a better singer now than I ever was when smoking. Unfortunately I'm more sensitive to other peoples' cigarette smoke than I've been before, so playing in pubs has sometimes been difficult. Luckily though, all pubs in my home state are now smoke-free. Bitchin :up: I'm still getting used to the novelty of coming home drunk and messy but not smelling like an ashtray.
As for kiddies, I'm 30-ish and probably won't be breeding until Mrs Hank's finished her masters degree in a coupla years, so I'll be an old man by the time my future kids finally bugger off and leave me alone. Little punks. I just want some peace goddamit...
I also find myself taking a nice sniff everytime we are in the car and the kids yell "Ewwwwwww, I smell skunk!" LOL
unfortunately, I'll be just over 50 when I kick them out. But then again, I expect the oldest to move out and rarely call or talk to us and the little one to freeload off of us forever
Back on the topic of hippies (this thread drifted, like, Tokyo Drift-ed off topic) You ever notice how they think that playing music in a circle, and getting high off herb is their way to "stick it to the man" and "Help change the world" Do any of you see how that works? I'm still trying to figure it out myself...
~Bryan~
Obviously, smoking a bowl and playing shitty folk music in the mud makes all those politicans and businessmen freak out and go "Woah! Dude! I've wasted my life in the pursuit of material gains! I'm ditching this thousand-dollar suit, giving all my money and Porsches to that homeless guy who always asks me for a footrub and dedicating myself to alternative energy, organic muesli and meaningful dissent!"
Gil: if my own parents' experience is anything to go by, it's never too early to start bitching about your offspring
You dip skoal and live NORTH of Mason-Dixon? Wow, when I was in New England, most of those people didn't know what it was.
LOL I know you live in Penn.
About the weed thing.... Yeah it IS addictive. my best friend is a major pot-head. When he's out (for less than 24 hours) he goes nuts. I scored him a quarter bag once... a few hours later I scored him another one. And he's not some young punk type that thinks he can smoke people under the table.
Oh and $200 for an OZ???? It's like $60 here. It's not Hydro, but when you look at the quality vs price ratio, hydro sucks.
Any studies I've read show the opposite. Pot can be addictive psychologically for sure, I can attest to that - but there is no physical addiction to it, on a metabolic level. Crazy stuff like coke and heroin actually modify your body's metabolism in such a way that your body quite literally depends on the substance to function. This is physical addiction and often turns deadly, since when you deprive your carcass of a physically addicted substance, it's extrememely stressing to your entire body. Heroin addicts generally get physically ill when no smack is around, and since the addiction is basically a positive feedback (more drug means more addiction which means more drug etc) you end up either dying from the addiction itself or simply ODing trying to meet the "demand". You can't "OD" on pot (at least not physically) and it's never (in and of itself) killled anyone - save for of course lung cancer for chronics just like cigs.
When I have pot in the house I can't not smoke it - but that's because I have no damn willpower and it makes me RULE at god Of War I do miss it when there's none left but I don't jones and start freakin out like smack users do.
I agree that pot doesn't affect your body the same way that heroin or nicotine does. Those drugs create more of the kind of receptors in your brain that thrive on the specific stimuli the drugs provide. Take the drug away and those new, hungry receptors start telling you, with uncomfortable physical signals, that you better get some more of the good stuff in you or you'll be in a world of pain pretty soon. That's why kicking nicotine and heroin are so difficult, and why it's so easy to get back on them once you're clean - the receptors are still there and stay hungry for a very long time.
I do think dope can be psychologically addictive though, and can form into a strong habit that can be hard to shake. A few years ago I was a very heavy smoker and really dreaded emptying my stash because I knew the fog would lift and it would be back to reality. That's what made me feel like crap - returning to normality, having to deal with shit. However, once the THC had left my system after a couple of days I was fine and not feeling like a smoke at all. I agree it's very similar to an addiction to a stronger substance, but the similarities end once you delve deeper than the outward symptoms. However, I do know from personal experience that smoking too much weed too often can affect your moods in very unpleasant ways, especially if your wiring's a little wrecked to begin with (which may be the reason you start hitting it to begin with, who knows). These days I'm a very occasional toker and I don't buy it anymore unless I've got a enough time off to chuff the lot before going back to work.
Anyway, (to get back on topic again ) smoking loads of bud makes it very easy to be a hippy: after a while you don't care what you look like so a brown sack is perfectly reasonable attire to go visit grandma, you'll eat anything even if it smells like feet, you can't be arsed showering because "the whole process smacks of effort, man" and those droopy-eyed, scantily-dressed hippy chicks with home-rolled dreds are really impressed by your ability to use terms like "Kafka-esque" in normal conversation and roll five-paper blunts
I know the feeling. I used to smoke scads a day, and if I had some I figured "Hmm, what a shame to let that just sit there.... It's so... green and ... smells nice, and .. it's natural... I must do it justice, and light er up !!1111"
This is one of the reasons I knew I had to leave Calgary and quit. For me personally, it was a crutch. I had a LOT of things to think about, and although it let me do that, it wasn't the right way into (out of) things at all. I can very much attest to Dropin Biking's thoughts about pot letting one contemplate problems reasonable, that's the precise reason I used to use it. I could have a SHIT day at work, light up a few hits, and all of a sudden everything seemed to come into perspective - the issues I thought were big seemed simple to reason around, it's kind of a strange phenomenon TBH. Before I smoked it would be like "DAMN, that fellow at work makes me want to scream, how can he be such tard? WTF!?!?!111", and after a smoke it'd be like "Well, he's just a tard, what do you expect? It's no big deal, you still have a place to live, a great wife and kids, a decent job, life is not that bad. Just ignore that guy". The strange thing is, pot never gave me "bad" advice!
Not totally sure on that, I don't think any new receptors are "created" per se, but certainly the nerotransmittors (usually Dopamine for Coke, Norepinephrine to some extent, etc) are affected bigtime - which is the whole modus operandi of drugs to begin with. Booze actually blocks most (it's a CNS depressant) whereas coke causes a MASSIVE release of dopamine (pleasure transmitter) and so forth. It's been a while since I've read books on this though. Back when Shrooms were amazing to me, I made it a point to study drugs.
Indeed. Leaving it made me cranky, because I was back to reality and having to deal with shit, just like you say. No more assitance, no more crutch, just pick up your sac and do it on your own. Which really, is the manly thing to do anyway TBH. If I could honestly handle using it occasionally, I would if it wasn't illegal - but I know I would want more of it, so for me, it's not a good idea.
And then there's the "amotivational syndrome" associated with heavy use. ROFL. It is true, I used think "Hey, do the damn dishes dork", but then I would come back at myself with "Well, what's your problem man? Why waste the water? It's more efficient to leave it for bigger loads". SO then I'd just smoke some more and watch Who's Line is it Anyway, which was great high. But then I'd need another smoke to give me the energy to actually get my ass of the couch and FREAKIN DO SOMETHING.
That being said, I could kick anyone's ass at chess when high, because I had the patience to quite literally think of every possible move they could make and work around it. I don't normally have that kind of patience!
Never did them. Friends did, but I never did. Interesting because for a time I was into acid quite a bit.
WOW! You lived across the road from me all my non-married life, didn't you? LOL. Buddy across the street I got high with and we ALWAYS had to watch that when we got high, ROFL. Though, I hope you are talking about the original British version with Clive, and not with Drew. It was funny when it came to the US and went prime-time, but was hilarious when it was on Comedy Central only with Clive, Josie (guessing at her spelling) and, was it Mike who was the fat guy? Hilarious they all were.
I was talking about pot with a girl in college, who of course also smoked. I told her the easiest way to pass a test was to burn one and study. Then right before the test, burn one and there's no way you could do bad on it. I walked in the day of the test, she looked at my eyes and exclaimed, "You SOB!" LOL
Back on the addiction, I meant no physical addiction, of course. The psychological addiction is there, but it isn't as strong as you think. It is an addiction as long as you want it to be. The moment you decide it's time to quit, you quit. When I came to realize that the girl I was dating at the time was going to someday be my wife, I quit. I had slowed down previous to that because I was spending more time with her than with friends, but the moment I knew we were to be married to each other is the moment I stopped smoking pot. No ill affects, no burnout, no nothing. That is saying before we verbally decided on marriage, quite early in our relationship I knew we would be married.
Weed as a performance-enhancing drug (for something other than Playstation). Now I've seen everything
I think you're right about the receptor deal, it doesn't create new ones per se, more overstimulates the ones that are there and they get used to a certain level which, if taken away, makes them cranky as hell. Like me whenever I quit caffeine (or just miss a dose of mid-morning beans). But at least I'm not robbing my grandma to get my java fix. As for moods - apart from me generally being shitty when leaving the weed, I found it exacerbated my depressive tendencies during long-term use. Had some dark & dangerous times when I was younger and spending whole weeks baking my noodle.
Guys, if you dug Whose Line Is It (love it, both versions), you'll love Thank God You're Here. I believe there may be a US version already and there's probably footage on youtube. It's an Aussie show with a simple premise: take an actor, comedian, DJ - anyone famous or semi-famous - costume them up and throw them completely unprepared into a scene where everyone knows the script except them and they have to bodge their way through it. "In the deep end" kind of hilarity. Like those shows where they show car chases and you're just waiting for the badguy to fly through an intersection and split an SUV in half or take a short cut and land upside down in a swamp, but even funnier
Hippie lifestyle is ok as long as it doesn't harm anyone, or abuse the society (that happens here a lot, because our social security system is very comprehensive and basically available for all).
Side note: There's no hippies from Europe in LFSF?
does anyone else examine their batch, prior, under a microscope?...or am I just weird
...anyway how the hell do people smoke hay in work??? I dunno how they do it, bloody cabages lol.
I started my electrical trade apprenticeship at the ripe old age of 16, every morning on the bus into town three of my buddies would have the obligitary morning joint:worried:....discusting at that hour of the morning...they used to code name it PRSI(pre-rolled spliffs, immediatley)..cabages
to me breakfast is food? green first in the morning sees one closley resemble a zombie or a cabbage....especially going in to work on electrical installations in factorys...smoking in work is v.dangerous, one cabbage slip-up and your dead
Never been a big fan of breakfast buds myself, even when "between jobs" for lengthy periods. I prefer to wait until the end of the day, or at least lunchtime.