On 20 Apr 2014, at 12:33, Kim Jones wrote:
On 19 Apr 2014, at 2:15 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be> wrote:
On 18 Apr 2014, at 11:02, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
<snip>
and that it can exacerbate or precipitate psychosis in patients
who already have schizophrenia.
I agree. I might think that this is a good thing, as it will point
on the problem and help to manage a treatment. In some case
cannabis can be enough as a treatment; in other case cannabis would
be not indicated and should be avoided.
Personally, I don't think that cannabis, nor tobacco, should be
allowed, without medical prescription, to minors. But to make it
illegal to sell it to a minor, you have to legalize it.
For adult, I do think that recreational cannabis is *far* safer
than alcohol, on many level (from the liver to the social problem
or the car crash).
Bruno
Cannabis makes the user more sensitive to inputs of all kinds. It
kind of invokes an enormous range of qualia which can be disturbing
to some subjects. When stoned, you have intense reactions to
whatever you are presented with. The well-known feeling of paranoia
that often accompanies this is IMO the brain's natural panic
reaction to having so many parallel streams of qualia maxed-out at
the same time.
I wish this is true, but it is hard to dismantle it from the fact that
the "fruit is forbidden". I think the panic reaction occurs with
people who can't let it go and want to control everything.
This is normal under the circumstances and why I insist that
cannabis use must be ritualised. Consider what a ritual is: a series
of actions performed in a special space at a special time with like-
minded participants all of whom understand the process involved. You
undergo the experience in a protected space. To become stoned
amongst people who are not is a very dangerous thing to do because
the others will almost certainly make an uninformed judgement about
your behaviour.
I would separate the entheogenic use of cannabis from its recreative
use. A well known fact is that after years of consumption of cannabis,
it becomes essentially a relaxant time-slowing machine. The
entheogenic "teaching" get null. Its medicinal virtues continues,
though. It remains better compared to most legal tranquilizers or
antidepressant products.
The euphoric mind senses this, even though in an altered state of
consciousness, and paranoia is the result, because the mind feels
helpless when faced with the threat of outsiders who may be negative
toward the altered state you are in.
If only alcoholic could be like that!
Therefore, cannabis use is best confined to the "indoors" sensory
experiences that you can either do alone or with a few trusted
friends. Reading, writing, cooking, eating, listening to or creating/
performing music, painting, sculpting - anything creative that does
not involve much movement through space are all suitable activities.
The king-daddy experience of them all is, of course, sex.
OK.
Unsuitable experiences would be driving a car, ascending in a hot-
air balloon etc. this last was the fate of a group last year in New
Zealand (Liz may recall this) where the entire group got stoned
whilst aloft. When something went wrong with the mechanism of the
helium delivery to the burner, nobody was in a baseline state of
consciousness able to perform the necessary actions to save the
situation and the result was that all perished in a fireball.
If they all perished, how to you know that nobody was in a baseline
state of consciousness able to perform the needed actions?
I certainly not applaud the idea of doing that, but I am not sure
about your inference. There are many accidents with balloon, sometimes
even with sober people.
This is the antithesis of ritualised action performed in a protected
space.
Accidents are due to irresponsibility, not products.
Common sense indicates to not alter your mind when you know you will
have to use it, but irresponsible people will get the accident, in any
possible ways.
I love cannabis myself, but I am the first to proclaim that a stoned
driver is quite as dangerous as a drunk driver.
I never said that I love cannabis, to be precise. I might have said
that I love salvia. But salvia is quite different and is actually sort
of anti-drug, including cannabis.
And now, my dear Kim, I am not sure about any problem about driving
and cannabis. Again, when you look at the literature, you can see many
papers showing that cannabis is dangerous when driving, but when you
do the math, there are simply wrong. Their numbers proves nothing.
Yet two serious studies have been done, in France and in the
Netherlands, and have concluded, astonishingly enough, that cannabis
use diminishes the number of car accidents. Eventually an explanation
is that young smoker - young driver are to paranoid to take the car,
or are even unable to put the key in the locket, and old consumer-old
driver have no problem, drive more slowly and less aggressively, and
actually succeed better the driving test.
I am not saying that cannabis is an innocent product, just that we
must be rigorous, and aware, like Telmo mentioned, of our prejudices,
which can transform a coincidence into a causl link, wrongly.
If a plane crash, and the pilot was stone is not an argument for "the
plane crashed because the pilot was stone". No more than "the plane
crash and the pilot was bearded would imply the plane crashed because
the pilot was bearded.
It only looks like an evidence for a theory which is that cannabis is
dangerous, but that would be begging the question.
Once people from LEAP asked a group of cops to say if they were aware
of a specific accident due to alcohol consumption and they all said
that they were, and then he asked if they were aware of an accident
due to pot (and not due to the fact they were arresting people for
pot), and none were aware of any.
Now, I might be a sort of extremist, but even for alcohol, I think
that there would be less accident if driving with alcohol was not
prohibited. Why?
To be able to fight against the real culprit which is
irresponsibility. To drive with alcohol, you might still need to pass
a driving-with-alcohol-test, and people would be enforced by laws to
put a sign on the top of the car indicating the level of inebriety,
and they have to drive at some speed, determined by an alcohol test,
etc. That would awake and encourage responsibility. That would make
alcohol+speed *really* stupid, and much more rare.
The prohibition does not work: you will not refuse your grandmother
liquor, because you have a long road to take. So why not educate
people and trust their responsibility.
Alcohol does not kill on the road. I think. Only alcohol +
irresponsibility. And irresponsibility can kill all by itself, like
with speed, phones, iphones, cigarettes.
Well, No?
:)
Bruno
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