Silk Road forums
Discussion => Drug safety => Topic started by: IgnorantFuck on February 17, 2012, 03:21 pm
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What's SR's opinion on the effects of drugs on young people? I heard from pretty much every health class in school that all drugs have long-term effects on a developing mind (up til the age of like, 24 I think it was?) and where a lot of the rest of those classes were propaganda, I've never heard this topic brought up here or on any of the other forums I frequent.
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I have heard that marijuana negatively affects the development of young people's brains, but I don't think that there is any evidence to support the claim. I'm sure drugs like Meth and Cocaine would have some detrimental affects on the brain, but only when you take them and don't get enough sleep, I don't think it would do much/any harm to the brain if you are smart about using them. The same can probably be said for most/all drugs, don't use them recklessly and you ought to be fine.
I don't know though, I smoked my first doobie when I was 13 years old.. Until then I had straight As, I was the best flute player in band class and I had a solid and expanding grip on the English language.. These days I try to keep up, but me still don't does it right.... :(
( just kidding.. ;) )
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My take on this is that it probably does (although I've no proof) change development, but children's minds are influenced by so much regardless of chemicals/drugs that it'd be pretty difficult to tell. How a mind develops is so much about the environment and culture/society it develops in and I think it'd be quite difficult to ascertain what was caused by drugs and what was caused by external factors.
Children's minds really scare me, that's why I'll never have them. I'm too scared of fucking them up!
I guess to relate this more specifically to drugs it would probably depend on the type of drug - if I think about some of the bad trips I've had, and then imagine having them as a child I think I'd have been completely petrified, unable to reason that it was temporary, and do something stupid! But I started weed fairly early and like to think that my mind developed well :)
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I've been smoking weed since age 14 and have experimented with other substances back in college. I've definitely scaled back my use sticking mostly to weed and shrooms but I like to think that I've turned out alright.
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I have been using psychedelics fairly heavily since I was 14 and don't have any real regrets about it :P
I do regret using some drugs at a young age though. And although I was a fairly responsible drug user at a young age (by comparison), I was also pretty reckless in some ways. If I could go back I would have used less of certain drugs, and used other drugs more responsibly, but in the long run I don't think much if any damage was done. I also think it is harder to use drugs responsibly at a younger age because of prohibition.
My main regret is that I didn't have access to some of the drugs I wish I did, and my peer group was largely fairly stupid about drug use and it rubbed off on me to an extent. It is hard to say how much of it is related to the age I started using at, and how much is direct and indirect effects of prohibition...but overall meh I would still use drugs when I started.
I think if kids had access to pure drugs, honest information and drug culture wasn't artificially merged with fucktard culture, that it would be much better.
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Yeah these responses are more or less what I'd expected. I'll still be a bit cautious/sparing with drugs til I'm a bit older I suppose, but nice to know the general consensus is that it doesn't make that big of a difference.
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It doesn't make a difference unless you let it make a difference. Some people in my highschool let drugs fuck them up pretty bad. Other people were even more responsible than I was and didn't let it effect them at all. I think the biggest downside for drug use at a young age is tendency for young drug users to also (in general) be not the best people to hang out with. The most responsible people, who use drugs imo, tend to start when they are freshmen in college or seniors in highschool. I really think people who start younger are statistically more likely to become involved with other criminal activity, but I really can't say it is just my own little perception of a tiny subset of a tiny part of the world ;). And of course correlation and causation....I actually blame prohibition for a lot of these problems.
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I considered this a bit more yesterday and thought there's probably a higher chance of being ripped off by a dealer if you're quite young (and new to drugs), so I'd try and use someone you trust. And if that's not possible try and find a dealer that's not tweeked out on some dodgy corner in some dodgy part of town (I would guess SR would be your best bet as you can get reviews of the products, but depending on how young you are I guess money could be a problem).
Exercise caution...go into it with a good mindset...and like the poster above says, try and avoid anyone who looks like they're going to quickly spiral down...and enjoy!!! :)
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Dunno if this clarifies anything but: I'm 35 and I started smoking pot at 15, so in 20 years I have;
Graduated university with Honors, travelled extensively thru my own country and S.E. Asia, smoking weed all the while. I am an acomplished musician in both woodwind and brass instruments, and in the last 5 years I've taught myself to play banjo. I've owned my own successful business for about 4 years, and the longest time i can remember not having pot to smoke was 2 days where it was dry around here and i had to smoke the powder from my chopper! Pot probably has affexted my motivation in the short term, but I follow through with my plans and desires and IMO drugs have only held my bank ballance back! But not everyone is the same!
I've got a music festival to attend soon and while there I plan to consume - LSD, MDMA, a little DXM, probably some nice clean speed to get me home and I'll chase every hit with copius amounts of Yes I Cannabis!
I've been into drugs for a long time, seen a lot of people get messed up, seen some get real fucked up and i have even had the misfortune of seeing a couple of people die! It won't stop me taking drugs tho, I keep (try to keep!) myself mostly informed about what i'm taking and I don't have much sympathy for people who don't respect psychoactives!
HOT TIP: Use 'em as much as you like but don't actually BE an ignorant fuck, use erowid.org, stay informed and like you said, use em sparingly, baby steps first and before you know it you'll be an A grade Keith Richards!
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I know this is not the question but somehow related: I think if you are doing it the right way and responsibly you can use drugs until you die. Albert Hoffmann did LSD at the age of 91.
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Recently they've started scanning the brains of hockey and football players.
Guess who has more brain damage than drug users??? Contact sports players, that's who.
;)
I'm not saying you can get by with the IQ of a beaten hockey player, as you don't get a scholarship for doing drugs, but I am saying moderate drug use is probably not going to hurt you too badly.
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Recently they've started scanning the brains of hockey and football players.
Guess who has more brain damage than drug users??? Contact sports players, that's who.
;)
I'm not saying you can get by with the IQ of a beaten hockey player, as you don't get a scholarship for doing drugs, but I am saying moderate drug use is probably not going to hurt you too badly.
::)
IRONY OVERDOSE!!!!!
They actually scanned the brains of football players?
I could have given you these results over the phone, from around the other side of the globe, sight unseen and high on pcp! What a waste of a CT or MRI! Surely its a given they're spastic, by the fact they're professionals... at sport?!!!
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How are we supposed to filter out what actually is true about the possible dangers of drugs from a sea of lies, speculation, and propaganda? The government proving itself unable to give us the full truth leaves us in a bit of a predicament. Can cannabis cause lasting harm in the developing brain? I wish I knew. I think it definitely does cause some temporary cognitive impairment though.
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How are we supposed to filter out what actually is true about the possible dangers of drugs from a sea of lies, speculation, and propaganda? The government proving itself unable to give us the full truth leaves us in a bit of a predicament. Can cannabis cause lasting harm in the developing brain? I wish I knew. I think it definitely does cause some temporary cognitive impairment though.
I think it's all too individual to draw definite conclusions from.
I guess the predicament is that you can never know for sure because everything about a person can influence their susceptibility to developing any of the numerous scary side effects we're so frequently told about. Even when reading professional studies it's important to fully look through all the facts - for example, the original reports linking cannabis to psychosis (which many health professionals rejoice in rehashing to me over and over again) failed to take into account any other substances people were using, their environments, childhood trauma, genetic predispositions, etc etc.
With re: to cannabis, I believe it to be one of the 'safer' drugs, and as I mentioned in another post somewhere it's never caused me any difficulty or cognitive impairment that I've noticed. I'm a fully functioning, 'normal' adult. I became concerned a few years back when being treated for depression because people were constantly telling me I would spend the rest of my life in some cannabis induced psychosis so I decided to do my research and called out a lot of my doctors. After I finally got them to cut the 'professional' shit they unanimously agreed that it was perfectly safe for me to use it in the way I had been (my GP was actually disgusted that they could justify telling me cannabis was going to send me psychotic while putting me on 13 pills a day for depression). Moral of this longer than intended story - do some research and listen to your own body and mind - you know yourself better than any report coming out of the government and health agencies.
I think exercising caution and knowing your own predispositions is the most important thing...so for example, if there's a history of schizophrenia in your family, it's probably not advisable to have excessive and continuous use of drugs such as LSD etc (particularly if you're young).
My general rule is never to make rash decisions in the heat of a moment - i.e. don't decide to try your first IV hit of H immediately after you've just been fired, your girlfriend/boyfriend's dumped you, and your dog died. Research, plan, and exercise caution :)
P.S. Sorry for going on, my mind's racing...hmmm.... :)
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How are we supposed to filter out what actually is true about the possible dangers of drugs from a sea of lies, speculation, and propaganda? The government proving itself unable to give us the full truth leaves us in a bit of a predicament. Can cannabis cause lasting harm in the developing brain? I wish I knew. I think it definitely does cause some temporary cognitive impairment though.
it was mentioned before actually, use erowid and read medical journals. Science doesn't lie, interpreters of science do
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It's true that science doesn't lie, but it seems like there's always some degree of speculation/uncertainty in scientific research that could be misrepresented or skewed (accidentally or not) by the time it reaches me. I guess the problem is separating the good science from the bad science but doing that isn't always easy either.
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it seems like there's always some degree of speculation/uncertainty in scientific research that could be misrepresented or skewed (accidentally or not) by the time it reaches me.
Well that's like the students who experimented on rabbits, monkeys and what have you on the effects of cannabis on the brain. I read yesterday that the monkeys were forced to inhale huge amounts of cannabis smoke, which actually DID cause brain damage due to oxygen deprivation, not the cannabis itself. However their results were used by the government to suggest that cannabis causes brain damage, but it's really not conclusive. I KNOW cannabis can cause temporary short-term memory loss from experience, but I don't think it's capable of causing long-term damage unless you smoke weed like all day every day for years and years or something. Maybe not even then.
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It's true that science doesn't lie, but it seems like there's always some degree of speculation/uncertainty in scientific research that could be misrepresented or skewed (accidentally or not) by the time it reaches me. I guess the problem is separating the good science from the bad science but doing that isn't always easy either.
Then cut the chain of information short! Stop playing telephone and go to the source. The following site is an official government database of many, many published papers. The government, to my knowledge, does NOT filter the articles so it should be legit. Most of it is not about recreational drugs, but with a simple search you can find what you're looking for.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/
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I think the original question was about drug use in under 24s, I have recently seen a study that suggests the male brain doesn't mature until about 24 (females are well ahead (I think 18 or 20), but being male I cant remember), the study seemed to exist that any trauma on the brain will cause some damage, although currently not quantified. I imagine that most drugs would cause a mild trauma, so youngens better laying off and leaving drugs to use oldies.
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To me this is a tricky one.
I started smoking weed at 14 didn't get high the first two times when i did it was AMAZING, i was blown away that something could actually make me feel like that. The main thing that matters most, in my opinion, is that YOU make the choice personally to try drugs out of legitimate curiosity, not from peer pressure and especially not to fix a problem (parents divorce, death in family, etc). And most dont, but RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH!! I was learning all about drugs starting around age 15 and have (learned a lot, much more than an average drug user my age) come to the conclusion that responsibility is the most important thing when using drugs. 99% of drugs are not bad/evil at all, that 1% of drugs that are true evil(shit like krokodil and many "drugs" in africa) is only used by very "ignorant" people. And do you really want to keep them around, especially to produce offspring?
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To me this is a tricky one.
I started smoking weed at 14 didn't get high the first two times when i did it was AMAZING, i was blown away that something could actually make me feel like that. The main thing that matters most, in my opinion, is that YOU make the choice personally to try drugs out of legitimate curiosity, not from peer pressure and especially not to fix a problem (parents divorce, death in family, etc). And most dont, but RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH!! I was learning all about drugs starting around age 15 and have (learned a lot, much more than an average drug user my age) come to the conclusion that responsibility is the most important thing when using drugs. 99% of drugs are not bad/evil at all, that 1% of drugs that are true evil(shit like krokodil and many "drugs" in africa) is only used by very "ignorant" people. And do you really want to keep them around, especially to produce offspring?
I've definitely been researching what drugs do. I wouldn't even try weed until I was sure it had few effects. I grew up in a household where one parent did all the drugs basically and the other said weed was the devil, so I had (and have) little choice but to research it all for myself.
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erowid is my bible... and if weed IS the devil... call me Mephistophiles!!!
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Drugs arent evil, people are evil.
Misusing drugs makes evil people, out of control evil people. :-[
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I was once informed (by a doctor at a sex health clinic who was trying to convince me to cut back on my alcohol intake and promiscuity) that the brain is not fully developed until age 24.
However, I have often wondered if some people are intelligent and capable enough that they can "afford" to lose a few brain cells, so I haven't allowed this information to deter me much. :)
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Problem with starting drugs young, is that when you finally clean up your act, you don't have any experience of living strait to fall back on. If this is you i recommend taking a "geographical" This involves taking 2 pairs of clothes, a sleeping bag, 5 litres of water, a few cans of food and walking to the next town. get a job there and stay for 6 weeks then move to the next town. If you stay any longer you fall back into the same crowd you left cos drugs are everywhere.
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I started smoking cigarettes when I was 10, but not frequently like maybe 2 a week at most, so I think I just wanted to be cool, and anything that I wasn't suppose to do was cool.
I have Aperger's, so I get fixated on things heavily, and drugs is one of those things, and I fixated on it the wrong way in my later teens.
Cigs: 10 y/o
Alcohol: Techinacally like 2-3 my step dad thought it would be funny to give me beer when I was thirst
Weed: 12 y/o
Cocaine: 15 or 16 y/o
Heroin: 18 y/o
Meth: 17 y/o
I did exceptionally well in school, and never had to study. I am a very smart guy, and have always excelled in intellectual activities. I became addicted to heroin, and that was my downfall, and was a junkie for 3 years, but what I like about having gone through that is now I know what it is like, and although I still do drugs occasionally I don't do them everyday or every week, and usually not even once a month except maybe a good beer or two.
I am still very young 22 y/o and now that I have learned how dangerous they are first hand, and what a true addiction is I never want that again. It is better I went through that at a young age then 30 when I have a family to support.
I am pretty positive drugs did change my brain chemistry, because before I was an addict certain drugs felt way different and after being an addict they don't feel like it used to and in fact nothing like how the drug is suppose to feel, and it isn't due to quality difference or cut.
I am fine with my brain being different the key is is realizing it, and finding a way to cope with have Asperger's (brain is different from the beginning) and a past addiction.
I was a high honor roll student, both with grades and being high all the time.