From pot-parenting to teenaged toking; marijuana is creative, cooler than alcohol and above all, harmless!
“MARIJUANA MAKES ME A BETTER AND MORE CREATIVE PARENT,” January Thomas tells Huffington Post.
She reads child books to her two-year old with titles like: “Mommy’s Funny Medicine” and “It’s Just a Plant.”
Cheryl Shuman told the Daily Mail, “I like to think we (Pot Parents) are bringing some glamor and exclusivity to marijuana use.”
Diane Fornbacker of the pot-legalizing group NORML spoke up in favor of Reefer Madness in a 2012 interview. “Marijuana parents aren’t perfect, but they’re far less imperfect than parents who use alcohol irresponsibly.”
MARIJUANA BEATS ALCOHOL ABUSE!
Take that, Wine Moms!
“Before I got sober,” says Wine Mom Irina Gonzalez, “I loved all those “mommy needs wine” memes that friends and acquaintances posted online. Although I wasn’t a mom yet, I’d smile and say a big “cheers!” while holding up my own ever-present wine glass. After all, those memes gave all of us stressed-out, overworked women permission to pop the cork, right?”
ALCOHOL USE DISORDER IN WOMEN
Since the early 2000s, research has shown that alcohol use disorder is on the rise in women. A 2018 study by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the National Institutes of Health, found an increase in alcohol-related ER visits with women accounting for more of the increase in visits than men.
While Wine Moms may be plain old drunks, we’ll set our sights a little higher! Marijuana has a daring allure, a hipster panache to it. Plain old alcohol just can’t compete with that!
MY MARIJUANA PIPE DREAM
I am not a pot-parent, not even a pot-grandma. but I thought THC gummies would help me sleep, as I was recovering from West Nile Virus. They did! However, their side effects were downright frightening, and my pipe dream developed a nightmare edge.
Why?
Just a sliver of THC gummy brought surges of anxiety and the backward masking of my thoughts. Ever had your thoughts run backwards? I don’t recommend it. Add slow recall in the days to come.
Is it just me? I asked myself, desperately trying to find an excuse to continue. Insomnia is no fun. After all, other people don’t seem to have issues with marijuana. It’s harmless and relaxing and I could sleep — after a while.
REEFER MADNESS?
Oh, but people do have issues, something the dope shop where I bought gummies (legally) never mentioned. As we soar airborne on weed, there is still a place where the reefer meets the road, as we shall see.
Marijuana use can cause:
1. Impaired memory and cognitive deficits. Some research has found the more pot you smoke, the worse your memory will function. It is especially damaging for concentration and learning, the working memory.
Memory impairment from marijuana use occurs because THC alters how the hippocampus, a brain area responsible for memory formation, processes information. Animal studies in cognitive decline have been the main research for cognitive decline; but I can raise my hand, here. THC did affect my memory negatively. In real time, not toke-time, the hippocampus tends to shrink in older people. As people age, they lose neurons in the hippocampus, which decreases ability to learn new information. I can relate! Do you really want to accelerate that?
2. A 2016 study published by JAMA Internal Medicine found that middle-aged people who smoked marijuana daily for five years or longer performed worse on word memory tests than those who didn’t smoke pot. The more weed they smoked, the poorer their word recall was.
I noted memory trouble almost right away using THC, and I used only a tiny amount for sleep. Fortunately, some research reports that memory deficits may improve with time.
3. If a person smokes marijuana, it can cause the same lung ailments that smoking cigarettes does. Why wouldn’t it?
4. Smoking marijuana can cause harmful cardiovascular effects, such as high blood pressure, according to Mayo Clinic. After all, it is smoking.
5. Can marijuana make you depressed? Mayo clinic doesn’t think pot causes depression, but it may trigger schizophrenia or psychosis in people at risk for these conditions. Oops!
6. And the grand finale — serious hits on the bong over time lead to — wait for it! Continual projectile vomiting that requires an immediate trip to the ER.
Marijuana has changed a great deal since the days when a joint made people giggly and hungry. Marijuana now has all the power of serious prescription medication, and medicine is not recreation. That is why we have Medical Marijuana for pain management and other serious physical ailments.
WHAT ABOUT THE ‘GLAMOR AND EXCLUSIVITY’ OF MARIJUANA TOKING?
Teen toking is where a doobie fast becomes a downer.
Some studies have linked marijuana use to declines in IQ, especially when use starts in adolescence and leads to persistent cannabis use disorder into adulthood.
Two shorter-duration prospective longitudinal twin studies found that youth who used marijuana showed significant declines in verbal ability (equivalent to 4 IQ points) and general knowledge between the preteen years (ages 9 to 12, before use) and late adolescence/early adulthood (ages 17 to 20); however those who went on to use marijuana at older ages already had lower scores on these measures at the start of the study, before they started using the drug.
The CDC reports that, in 2019, 37% of US high school students reported lifetime use of marijuana and 22% reported use in the past 30 days. Past-year vaping of marijuana also remained steady in 2020 following large increases in 2018 and 2019.
WHY WOULD THE CDC CARE?
Marijuana use is a serious health risk for young people.
Some doobie downers for high-schoolers include:
1. Difficulty thinking and problem-solving
2. Problems with memory and learning
3. Reduced coordination
4. Difficulty maintaining attention
5. Problems with school and social life
Unfortunately, there is increased risk of potential mental health issues popping up with frequent teen marijuana use.
All recreational drugs come with warning labels, for serious reasons. Alcohol is legal everywhere, and marijuana is fast catching up. As these drugs are used for fun, many people tend not to consider their effects.
Stay informed.