• Cannabis Discussion Welcome Guest
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules

Why pot demotivates some but not others

Flickering

Flickering

Bluelighter
Joined
Apr 11, 2011
Messages
1,118
Here's some fridge logic.

One of the effects of cannabis is to suppress anxiety and stress.

People get varying degrees of their motivation out of anxiety and stress. Maybe a CEO-type thrives on it.

I do not. I actually find my reaction to stress is to shut down productivity. I need to be interested in things to engage with them. Which is an element of a creative mindset.

So, perhaps people with creative mindsets will find pot actually helps their motivation. After all, weed puts you in a creative headspace, and create-ive is really just a more abstract version of product-ive. If you're not worried, it means you're free to express yourself. Someone with a more creative / freedom mindset thrives on it, someone with a productive / stress mindset does not. You might even vary between the two from day to day.

Maybe marijuana... is what I've needed all my life to get me going?! 8o
 
weed is a drug that acts so differently on each person. some people will definitely say it does not suppress anxiety, as it is a very common side effect of weed i'd say.

if i'm high i'm very unproductive, because everything is so confusing i just sit down and do nothing but laugh. i find that if i smoke too much weed over the days, it makes me feel very apathetic and lazy too, tbh

but some people react differently, weed is the weirdest
 
For me it depends on my mindset before I smoke. If I'm in a lazy mood, weed makes me even lazier. But if I'm in "Go Mode" then weed just makes me go more creatively.
 
neurotic said:
weed is a drug that acts so differently on each person. some people will definitely say it does not suppress anxiety, as it is a very common side effect of weed i'd say.

if i'm high i'm very unproductive, because everything is so confusing i just sit down and do nothing but laugh. i find that if i smoke too much weed over the days, it makes me feel very apathetic and lazy too, tbh

but some people react differently, weed is the weirdest
Click to expand...

Different individuals respond differently during different smoking sessions, too. I've had weed act for me as an extreme anxiolytic and euphoric drug, but I've also had it make me think that my next door neighbors were planning to rob/kill me (I mean, they were drug dealers but there was really no reason to think that), or that I was going to be raided by the police at any moment...I hate panic attacks when I'm super blazed, it's a one way ticket to crazytown for sure.

Weed is usually a demotivater for me, though. When I'm high I like to look at magazines and giggle at the pictures which I think are funny for some reason, or something similarly stupid and pointless. I've also been around people who've gotten stoned and then loudly proclaim that they want to go hiking, though, so it's dependent on the individual I'd say, although that I'd say that in general it's probably fair to say that weed demotivates more than it motivates, with maybe the exception of artistic creativity.
 
I think weed can give a more stimulating and motivating effect in novice smokers/experienced smokers after a long break. Chronic use will lead to a decrease in this effect and produce the opposite (laziness) effect instead.

Nora Volkow's team have found that long term weed use can diminish the brain's response to dopamine. Dopamine is not so much involved in the actual reward feeling of things, but much more in the motivation to acquire a reward. Hence, low dopamine response = low motivation.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/heavy-marijuana-use-may-affect-dopamine-response
 
St3ve said:
I think weed can give a more stimulating and motivating effect in novice smokers/experienced smokers after a long break. Chronic use will lead to a decrease in this effect and produce the opposite (laziness) effect instead.

Nora Volkow's team have found that long term weed use can diminish the brain's response to dopamine. Dopamine is not so much involved in the actual reward feeling of things, but much more in the motivation to acquire a reward. Hence, low dopamine response = low motivation.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/heavy-marijuana-use-may-affect-dopamine-response
Click to expand...



Mannnnnn, I was just reading about that this morning before I checked this forum out. Crazy shit, but I hate to say that I feel this is something that somebody should have probably realized before now....
 
Weed makes me too neurotic to make me lazy, but I get lost in thinking about what I'm doing with my life from an ideological stance, and don't take action on it because I keep trying to figure it out more and more in my head. So I'd say it effects my motivation when used in excess, but it doesn't make me lazy.

Having said that, I'm gonna go smoke a big ass bowl.
 
Flickering said:
Here's some fridge logic.

One of the effects of cannabis is to suppress anxiety and stress.

People get varying degrees of their motivation out of anxiety and stress. Maybe a CEO-type thrives on it.

I do not. I actually find my reaction to stress is to shut down productivity. I need to be interested in things to engage with them. Which is an element of a creative mindset.

So, perhaps people with creative mindsets will find pot actually helps their motivation. After all, weed puts you in a creative headspace, and create-ive is really just a more abstract version of product-ive. If you're not worried, it means you're free to express yourself. Someone with a more creative / freedom mindset thrives on it, someone with a productive / stress mindset does not. You might even vary between the two from day to day.

Maybe marijuana... is what I've needed all my life to get me going?! 8o
Click to expand...

Stoned ramblings?

So you are creative, free-spirited, and motivated in life because you smoke lots of weed? Yeah, right...

It won't "make" you anything other than occasionally baked, or an addict if you smoke it every day. You are just you. See it as what it is for most people: getting high, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's moderated.

In my experience, less is more. If you can moderate your use to once a week or less (most people can't), it can generate spiritual experiences and deep transcendental states of meditation. This can be beneficial.

Any more than that and it's typically nothing more than a deceiving and deluding bad habit. It can obviously burn people out as well and it's risky business smoking too much weed. Trying to make a recreational and psychedelic drug a regular part of your life isn't so much of a good idea.
 
rave_itsrealfun!!! said:
Stoned ramblings?

So you are creative, free-spirited, and motivated in life because you smoke lots of weed? Yeah, right...

It won't "make" you anything other than occasionally baked, or an addict if you smoke it every day. You are just you. See it as what it is for most people: getting high, and there's nothing wrong with that if it's moderated.

In my experience, less is more. If you can moderate your use to once a week or less (most people can't), it can generate spiritual experiences and deep transcendental states of meditation. This can be beneficial.

Any more than that and it's typically nothing more than a deceiving and deluding bad habit. It can obviously burn people out as well and it's risky business smoking too much weed. Trying to make a recreational and psychedelic drug a regular part of your life isn't so much of a good idea.
Click to expand...

Key words in all of that was "In my experience" and not the case for everyone. Ive been an almost completely daily smoker going on 15 years and im the most productive right now then ive ever been in my life. I happen to think its more enjoyable when you have a certain level of tolerance then when you do it just every once in a while. Thats just me though and if someone doesnt want to do it that much, that is fine also. But to paint an obvious burnout, obvious being a word that is pretty strong to use, for someone who has used this long term is just not accurate and kinda offensive.

Sort of contradicting too because at one point you say the creative, free spirit and motivated life just comes from you, the person. Then farther down the post you say how its deceiving and can make you a burnout. Well, isnt that the person making themselves the burnout and not the drug like you said before? You is you i thought you said?

Also you say "yeah right" to someone who mentioned things like the creative, free spirit, and motivation attributes of herb but then you say "it can generate spiritual experiences and deep transcendental states of meditation. This can be beneficial." Seems to me that those can be thought of as similar things, so why would you say yeah right to that first?
 
Last edited:
rave_itsrealfun!!! said:
In my experience, less is more. If you can moderate your use to once a week or less (most people can't
Click to expand...

Lord knows I can't LOL

One of the big problems with weed that's somewhat unique in comparison to other drugs (for me) is that I can do it all the time, feel good, and then come off it and not feel bad. I can do tons of other drugs and feel great, but there's always that payback of my rational brain telling my messed-up brain, "whoa, you really fucked up this time pal, see how sick you made us? Drugs man, bad news!" Which will usually lead to me either stopping usage of said drug, or just continuing to do the drug until I get an even sterner lecture the longer I prolong it.

Even with my other relatively benign DOC which I do frequently (benzodiazepines), I space out my usage just because I'm scared of becoming "dependent" on them or whatever.

But with weed I can pretty much hit the reward button all day and be fine. Nowadays I can only get high at night, though, because my current work schedule is pretty time consuming. When I was unemployed or in school there were definitely periods where I'd fall into the "get high all day and forget to do anything" pattern of usage that some marijuana consumers fall into.
 
its entirely mental, when i started smoking weed regularly, i told myself im gunna do stuff, i kept it up, i didnt allow myself to get lazy. is there really anymore to it then that?
i smoke about a oz a week, different kinds every week, my tolerance is stupid, but i smoke smart, i didnt start smoking weed until i was 22, at this point i had lived on my own for 3 years, i had to learn how to not be lazy, how to be an "adult" before i started smoking weed.
Knowing what needs to be done and doing it, to what you want to do or done, prerogative maybe.
 
Here's a blast from the past.

":Time slowdown" http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/3075.html

Talks about why musicians like weed as it gives one a sense of time slowing down a bit. Artist can get more notes in than they can if sober. Interesting read.

I'm not a creative person by any means. Weed sedates the living shit out of me regardless of the strain. I've actually started to cut back on my use and when I use. Tired of falling asleep during a movie, etc.
 
I got burnt out on it I'm good without it. Weed just makes me lazy\tired. Time for a break. Sad thing is I used weed and ignored the underlying causes of my drug abuse. I just switched to weed. Well now it looks like I'm switching to other drugs like klonopin and phenibut and others to cover up my problems. I should have just quit back then. I should quit now. Neither is gonna happen it seems like.
 
weekend addiction said:
I got burnt out on it I'm good without it. Weed just makes me lazy\tired. Time for a break. Sad thing is I used weed and ignored the underlying causes of my drug abuse. I just switched to weed. Well now it looks like I'm switching to other drugs like klonopin and phenibut and others to cover up my problems. I should have just quit back then. I should quit now. Neither is gonna happen it seems like.
Click to expand...

Same here brother. I got cannabis hyperemesis syndrome from smoking 3-5 grams of hash oil per day. My anxiety was through the roof, I developed lung problems, and I lost everything near and dear to me. You know that joke people say that no one has sucked dick for weed? Well my ex girlfriend did suck dick for weed. My average spending was over $1000 per week on it, which is more than what most heroin junkies use. I rolled blunts/did dabs at least once an hour, the second I started to come down, I had to do another dab, which towards the end was every 30-45 minutes.

I'm now a daily user of Kratom, and Etizolam. If I stop either, the withdrawals will suck, but I have enough on hand to last me several years of use, and it helps me work. I got a manager position at a large grocery store chain, and am now making $50k per year on salary.

People say pot doesn't demotivate them, but it definitely does. I know I would FEEL motivated, but I wouldn't actually get anything done. Opiates and Benzos have saved my life, and now I never have to worry about money or my next fix ever again.
 
I'm definitely much more of the creative thinking type, & anxiety/stress don't motivate me but instead make it harder to function, yet weed makes me extremely lazy/unmotivated, but even moreso VERY spaced out.

Cannabis just pushes me all the way into my head. I'm the type who's pretty deep in my head anyways, I've always got a lot of thoughts going through my head. Get me stoned and I barely wanna interact with the outside world (why I prefer it alone, though smoking with a few friends can still be quite nice).

Cannabis can help me with musical creativity sometimes, but it's often too spacy for that, amphetamines & psychedelics (not necessarily during the trip but sometimes even then) are infinitely better for creative purposes.
 
I get pissed when people say weed makes you lazy. It makes YOU lazy, not me. My last year at university I smoked before every single class, before studying, and before exams and had an A average. I smoke before work all the time. The only way I wouldn't is if i was operating heavy equipment or if i was flying an airliner. It doesn't matter though what kind of job it is otherwise weed doesn't effect my performance.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top