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"Marijuana-and-the-Personality..."Marijuana-and-the-Personality. I can attest to changes when I smoked pot, interesting the scientifics... Mans most precious possession: the mind, the personality, the spirit.
25 apparently healthy young males white blood cells were looked at who smoked marijuana at least twice a week for 4 years. It was found that one third of their cells contained only 5 to 30 of the normal human compliment of 46 chromosomes. These are the particles in every cells nucleus that pass on genetic instructions to the next generation. This is one example of marijuana damage to basic life processes.
Studies of Cannabis harmful effects on animal and human cells have appeared in scientific journals. These effects include: faulty division, slowed growth and abnormal-size nuclei in cells, disturbed production of protein, and also damage to sperm cells and ova, nerve and connective-tissue cells.
“The many findings of cell damage caused by cannabis explain all the other damaging effects of the drug – on the lungs, sex organs, brain, immune system”, states Dr Gabriel Nahas a pioneer marijuana researcher. He calls the cell damage done by regular pot smoking over the years a slow erosion of life.
Psychological signs of pot impairment are often not slow to appear and, generally, the younger the user the more rapid the onset of the damage.
Marijuana is now so endemic in society that there is no longer such an identifiable entity as a pot-prone personality. Only one characteristic remains as a “prone” factor: youth. The Pot Personality After young people become heavy pot smokers, however, widely diverse users tend to gel into a startling sameness, with a distinct pot-induced profile. Not all kids have the same symptoms in fact; some bright youngsters with out personalities seem to be able to maintain their school marks and activities for a few years. But gradually all users – youngsters and adults – compromise their potential, their activities and their lifestyle. And heavy young users eventually develop most, or all, of the ‘pot personality’ symptoms.
Psychiatrist Dr. Harold Voth defines the pot personality: “The most obvious impairments caused by chronic marijuana use are in the area of Organic Brain Syndrome (OBS). These include impaired short-term memory, emotional flatness, and the amotivational – or dropout- syndrome. This can progress from dropping out of sports, to dropping out of school, to dropping out of the family.”
Denial Other symptoms of pot induced OBS:
“It can take years of heavy drinking to reach the same point of psychological weakening that marijuana can induce in a matter of months, particularly in the case of a very young user.”
Unlike the heavy drinker who generally “becomes himself again” when sober, the underlying personality structure of the chronic pot smoker seems to change. If someone smokes twice a week or more, sobering up – in any total sense – never occurs. Even when not ‘high’ he or she remains in a state of subacute intoxication – in most cases, without even recognizing this ‘holdover’ effect.
Dramatic Changes While alcohol is water soluble and washes out of the body in a matter of hours, cannabinoids are fat soluble and accumulate in fatty sections of the cells and in fatty organs (the brain is one third fat). Only very slowly do the cannibinoids seep back into the bloodstream so they can be metabolised and eliminated. Thus they act like time-realease capsules, constantly emitting subtle intoxication.
When a study was taken on monkeys exposed to 2-3 “monkey-size” marijuana cigarettes (one-quarter the size of a human “joint”) five days a week for six months thousands of brain cells from 42 different areas of the brain were examined under the electron microscope. Though there were structural cell changes in all the brain sites, striking impairment was found in the sites specifically related to the typical pot symptoms of apathy and flatness. Dramatic cell impairment was also found in the sites correlated with irratibility and fear – prominent symptoms of pot-induced paranoia. Psychologist Stephen Williams found a number of “senility symptoms” in a study of 60 teenagers in a drug treatment programme who were daily pot smokers but used no other drugs. At the beginning of the study they were given a battery of psychological tests, which were then repeated after six pot-free weeks in hospital. Risk of Relapse Studies have shown that in the case of youngsters who abstain completely for an average of six months, there is return of concentration, attention and memory to expected levels. However this is not true of older users, in short-term memory loss, in some cases, they do not appear to come back all the way. Furthermore, because older users are often long-term users, they have made subtle changes in their lives that are hard to undo. For example they slide into less-demanding jobs. Also found was that like alcoholics, marijuanaholics are always at high risk of relapse. Even if off the drug for a year 1 or 2 joints can send them on a pot binge, and they relapse quickly into their former use patterns. And although it may take have taken two years to reach their prior seriously disabled state, it may take only two weeks of renewed pot smoking to revert to that same level.
The inescapable fact is that marijuana will have drastic long-term physical and psychological health effects on young users and, with pot smoking reaching alarming proportions, on the future of our society.
Taken from a booklet reprinted from the Readers Digest and written By Peggy Mann called MARIJUANA and the devastation of personality published in 1981.
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