Cannabis smoking 'permanently lowers IQ'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9426205/Cannabis-smoking-permanently-lowers-IQ.html

Thoughts? Think this is true?

yes, in teens when their brains are developing.

When some positive study is made, nobody gives a shit. But this one ... is in EVERY media here now. And then ask why majority of population here still thinks it's devil's drug like portrayed by Reefer Madness.

I don't know if I actually believe this study. These numbers are too insignificant IMO. Kinda reminds me this: http://xkcd.com/882/
Also I doubt they were studying vaporists. Smoking mj delivers a lot of nasty toxins which imo have much more if not all the harmfull effects. Lungs are not the only organ that gets damaged by smoke toxins, they get into bloodstream and hit everything, including brain.

IQ tests are very inacurate as IQ isn't simply a number, but a huge complex of mental functions. Also when someone only thinks faster, it's considerer higher IQ. I've took many IQ tests, in childhood and recently. They were showing very differing results as they're inacurate, from 125 to 156. I don't see MJ having ANY effect on my performance there, and I've started using in 16. Random events are having much more effect on IQ test performances than any MJ exposure imo. Of course doing a test stoned could yield lower points because of thinking speed I mentioned above.

Time Magazine's counter-article:

http://healthland.time.com/2012/08/28/does-weekly-marijuana-use-by-teens-really-cause-a-drop-in-iq/

The end is the best:

>Despite the fact that the average marijuana user starts at age 17 in the U.S and nearly 7% of high school seniors currently smoke pot every day, IQ scores have risen tremendously over time in all developed countries in recent years. Most of those same countries also experienced a massive increase in marijuana use between the 1950s and today.

Doubtful. I took the exam for Mensa, and passed!!

This was after more than 25 years of toking too.

There were only 38 people in this "study". Tell that to a legitimate scientist and his milk will come out of his nose.

From everything that I have read... Basically people who consume cannabis who start <15 years of age can have issues with their developing cognitive skills.

Nearly everything I have read points to no lasting long term negative cognitive effects even from excessive usage once the user has ceased.

I read a lot.

The sample size is most definetly insignificant. I can see milk coming out of my graduate psychometrics & statistics professors nose right now lol...

I definitively feel my memory slipping from medicating myself with pot. Moreover, it seems to be permanent.

The studies I have read suggest that you should cease use for a while man. You should feel your short term memory returning in no time.

Take 'er easy.

memory is actually getting better. still having trouble remembering words etc. but the time lag to remembering has definitely gotten shorter. before smoking on a regular basis some of these words were never recalled. would just forget about what the train of thought was. yep, ganja is helping.

There is a counter article in the Guardian written by Howard Marks AKA Mr Nice.
Personally thought it summed things up pretty well.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/01/cannabis-black-market-iq-howard-marks

There's no doubting THC can damage a young premature mind so why then do we not regulate cannabis and try to stop it getting in the hands of our youth? rather than let anyone of any age with money buy it..

The dealers don't mind who they sell to or the quality of what they sell, they just care about how much money they're making!

I can't see the benefit of lying to the youth about the dangers of certain drugs. Many people when young do exactly the opposite to what authority tells them to do, and if they were to do that and realize the government is misleading them about weed then who knows what they will begin to question, believe, or do.

Tested in second grade IQ 135
began smoking pot age 15 (after kicked out of high school, for ADHD - wish i could sue for lost wages)
smoked and drank, and other things, with two years and five years clean and sober until 2006
tested again two years ago IQ 130

Mom answered my ADHD childhood questionaire, and her answers matched my ex-wife's and mine, prooving I haven't changed

But, everyone is so brain washed by our corporate media - to listen to my grandfather it's the pot that broke me (nobody wants to talk about dopamine)
---------------------------------------
I remember the lady who tested me in second grade, how she was dressed, and the look on her face when she asked me to say out loud as many words as came to mind in sixty seconds - I started counting as fast as i could...she made me do it again (I still think that was pretty bright, lol).

I am still convinced my IQ is directly tied to the coping skills I developed from not having enough dopamine to concentrate for any length of time (on anything I'm not obsessed with). But, I could be wrong.

People just cannot accept that brain chemistry is the culprit, not the self-medication we do along the way) - I'm white, but the new racism on TV is against people with ADHD (imho)

Aw, I wanted to comment on that one (comments closed)

ooh, ooh, maybe they let people comment on the study, hehe

When I was in kindergarten, we had some state testing stuff to see how we were progressing... way back before I even knew what weed was, before I knew what opiates were, and why kids are given Adderall or Concerta or what the hell ever... anyways, going back, I was at a table with four other kids. Me being the genius that I am, I ended up finishing first... and then helping the other four finish their tests. I was so very confused as to why I wasn't allowed to help them. I mean, they're at my table and we helped each other out with class work, why not this? Come to find out some time later that my teacher had talked to my mom about putting me on some medication to help with what she claimed was some sort of attention deficit, not sure if just ADD or ADHD. I do feel like I have problems concentrating on shit that I just don't care about... like math, for example. Why do I need to learn how to do complex crap like sin/cos/tan, "OH GOD THIS GUY NEEDS HIS HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE MEDICATION FROM THE PHARMACY I HAVE TO GO FACTOR OUT SIX EQUATIONS TO DETERMINE WHETHER HE WILL BE SAFE OR NOT"

Compare it to... well, when there are any questions regarding common-ish medication (familiar names, stuff like benzos [Xanax/Ativan/etc], painkillers [Vicodin to fentanyl and back]) my parents ask me the questions first before calling the doctors or whatever. Obviously nothing that could seriously hurt someone, but stuff like "if you drink a beer, will it make the vicodin not work anymore?" and I'll go into an explanation as to why it actually makes some of the effects stronger (CNS depression etc).

It's just hard for me to give my full attention to something that doesn't really interest me... I'm scared to bring it up with my doctors because at 20 years old I'm getting handed 100-counts of 10mg hydrocodone pills. Now I go in for something I haven't ever mentioned before? What am I trying to do, score a load of pills? No, not quite, but I don't like how stimulants make me feel, despite the fact that I do feel like it's a problem sometimes.

I've found that taking vitamins helps with memory issues and "stoneover" effects. Vitamin B and Tryptophan/5-HTP especially. (Be careful with 5-HTP doses, it's essentially tryptophan that bypasses your body's method of regulating how much it metabolizes- you can end up with too much serotonin)

I take 5-HTP for depression and anxiety, both of which is affected by serotonin.

Ditto. It also helps me sleep (melatonin precursor)

have you seen a brain scan showing dopamine levels of an ADHD brain compared to non-ADHD?
And, have you seen a similar comparison of normal to meditating brain scans?
And, have you identified where and when you're experiencing dopamine the most?
For me it was while watching Naruto, Grey's Anatomy & Private Practice, and not while I beat off
when I transferred that skill I'd developed to beating off it increased it 100x (got my head in the right place before you know, instead of just for a sec at the end)
I'm convinced its a trick we learn to do in our heads, and I learned to block it off before I was two (probably because my Dad was out drinking and they'd fight when he came home, it wasn't a household where either of them really understood "remaining emotionally calm and emotionally available," i mostly remember waking up with night-mares, pissing myself trying to find my way out of my room at night, frantic, and the belt when I was punished (for wandering away from home, got brought back by police several times - my mom was a victim of her dad, and self-medicated with harlequin novels and soap operas)
People keep pushing us towards religion, but I'm losing my religion, and learning a new way of thinking, and it's replacing the old with stuff that's even better

like, didja' know...out-of-body near-death-experiences can accurately describe events from a view-point outside themselves, which sounds a LOT like Remote Viewing (which was/is real, and everyone has the ability)----in Avatar they had to plug in, but Earth has free Wi-Fi !!! That's way cooler than Avatar, IMO

we just have to learn to express dopamine whenever we want - some people we may not be able to do it around, but we can develop pathways that'll work for short periods of time, and you would be able to get over the hump on Math - I can't wait to start picking back up some of the stuff I've left behind, now that I understand this better...!

dude? you need a hobby or to get into some active sports. you have way too much time on your hands. sorry if that was blunt but i am fried at the momento lol

--edited--- I'm not a mod. Or the behavior police

Nah I'm thinking about going into pharmacology anyways so it works out. Maybe spend some time doing charity work outside. I'm on painkillers till I push daisies (or poppies), anyways... may as well learn everything I can about it.

Oh, and the sports? My joints are RUINED. Two years ago I couldn't get out of the house some days because of how bad the pain would get. The kind of pain that makes you feel like you're worthless, that you can't even brush your teeth because you can't hold your toothbrush... I wish I could play sports. I wish I could run and skate again and be able to go out dancing and not worry about how much I'll hurt tomorrow morning... between the drugs I'm taking and the medical, I feel a good bit better now, but not quite good enough to do anything too active... Doctor and a specialist both agreed on that separately.

sorry to hear this.

sorry to hear this. how old are you? there has to be something you can do to get some exercise. even if you start out really slow and progress. like walking.

I'll be turning 21 next month. I've had this pain since I was 6 years old according to my mom, and my specialist mentioned during my first visit that based on what we knew about it, we would be treating the symptoms because that's basically all that we can do. I have an appointment soon with him to see how my latest round of bloodwork turned out... the one before was 110% perfect, so I'm imagining the same will happen again this time. If it does come back clean I'll be referred to a special department of a university to undergo some testing and see if this is genetic or just a fluke for me.

Both my GP and specialist agreed that I shouldn't do much more than "light to very light exercise" and to do the majority of it in a pool if possible to reduce the strain that I would otherwise be putting on them. It's just stupid as fuck to know that I can't even buy beer when I go out to eat with the family, but I'm looking at life on opiates just to help me be able to live a somewhat normal life. Three or four years ago I would wake up crying from the pain, sometimes I wouldn't even go to school and just spend the day crying and eating Tylenol/ibuprofen like Skittles, trying to see if any of my friends could hunt the odd couple of pills to help ease the pain. Yeah, I resorted to that unfortunately, but it's not completely my fault, either. I would call and make appointments to see doctors, and I wouldn't get anything. 600mg ibuprofen, as if I wasn't already taking it and realizing it wasn't doing anything worth a damn except wasting my time. No opiates, I'm too young. No, you cannot get Vicodin, no you cannot get Tylenol 3, you're a junkie if you think you're getting tramadol from me. Yeah, 15 or 16 years old and I was getting told to kindly GTFO of their offices because they thought I was lying when I said that my joints hurt.

The pain is like a prison that I'll never get out of. It's like just being in a room and trying to continually bang the walls trying to get out, and weed/opiates sedates me enough to not want to hit the walls. It gives me the opportunity to "sit down in the room" so to speak and relax. Just for a little bit, though. Pretty soon it's back to the slow pounding, just a little at first. Maybe I'll notice that after a little while every couple steps, I feel a "cold" feeling below my knee. The pain is there, coming back slowly enough that your mind registers it but can still ignore it. And sure enough, just like the prisoner, the walls start banging. Slowly, but after a little while it sounds like hammers and not hands.

I do feel that I'm blessed in a sense. I live in California so I had the option to obtain a recommendation, which I got the second I set my 4 medications on the doctor's desk. He looked at them, looked back at me and exclaimed "wow, you're legit! you have all of this stuff, on the ball." Sure enough he checks the dates and they've been filled within the last month, or from a few years ago (the migraine medicine.) I do also have a relatively good GP (he was the first person to take my complaints of pain seriously, doing xrays immediately after I told him about it and giving me tramadol, as well as a referral to a specialist), my specialist who is doing his best to help me (who will also give me a referral as well as pain meds), and I have safe access to medical cannabis to help with my pain as well.

Can't have your cake and eat it too, ya know?