This Legalise Cannabis campaign

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Happy to send myself up about it mate, can see the humour in it, but I don't use homeopathy, and don't see it as something that would or could ever replace western medicine.

 

I know someone who uses homeopathy. For all my thoughts that it's a dangerous game to be legitimising a trade that's so diametrically opposed to the science of proper trials and peer reviews, when you see someone benefit, even if you know it's a placebo effect, it'd take a cold bastard to try to convince them that it was all in their head. Like people who use common weed for a variety of ailments, they've usually reached the end of what doctors claim they can help with, so if the only alternative is to explore other avenues, then fair enough.

[General Dryness]

Can't hack it at all. 3 tokes and i'm on me arse. 

 

And yet you can drink enough to stun a rhino.

 

Mad how things affect people differently. When I was well into the weed I could smoke it all day long and neck a bottle of rum in the evening and still be reasonably coherent. But if I had about four pints of decent strength lager I was fucked. 

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Even though that may be so, the mind is an odd thing, some hippys give it the help the mind and you heal the body shit, but who knows they could be onto something... same thing applies to canna called the entourage effect, it's to do with the smells the terpenes give etc... so the same weed with the same thc level can have a different effect on you if the terpenes are different...

 

I've always assumed a lot of the claimed beneficial effects of alternative medicines were due to the relaxed state they put people in more than anything. Stress and tension can cause or exacerbate a variety of illnesses. Things like acupuncture require you to lie still and relax, much like meditation, and even homeopathy requires a lengthy consultation, which is little more than therapy and someone listening. For some people, that can be all that's needed.

 

In a way I kind of envy that. 

[Captain Turdseye]

You two need to get vaping... (I think the joint thing is more habit than anything else)

I was vaping for a year up until September and I fell off the wagon. Started again today on 10mg. I've no immediate plans to give up nicotine altogether though, I enjoy it too much. Blueberry e-liquid after your morning coffee is immense.

[Adebisi]

I smoked it near enough everyday for 4 years. Got to the point where I'd smoked myself bored though so now I save it as a treat or for the day after a night on heavier drugs. Love a nice smoke with some good company though, whether it be the house, garden, beach or whatever. If I'm smoking alone I like to go out the back, lie on the grass and gaze up at the stars on a nice night. Everything feels right at that moment. True bliss.

I don't think I've had any real negative effects from smoking dope. Sure it got me in a little dept and I used it to 'escape' relationship problems and stuff like that but I've never felt anxious or paranoid, at least not enough to think 'This stuff is bad for me' but make no mistake two of my best mates can't touch the stuff anymore. I'm talking crippling anxiety and paranoia which is a real shame because there's no one else I'd rather smoke with.

I do worry about youngsters today smoking the stuff though. There's some super strong stuff out there and most dealers wont think twice about selling to some kid and when brains are still developing that's when there's some real dangers involved. A lot of the people I know who smoked it when we were in school just come across a bit simple and monged out these days. My mum put it in my head from a young age that all drugs were bad so I never touched the stuff properly until my late teens and as I say I've never had any real issues with the stuff. Drink on the other hand I was getting on some serious downers with this past year. Waking up feeling completely helpless even though life was fine. Never had that on the devil's cabbage.

[moof]

I've always seen it as an enhancement drug. It makes music sound better, food and drink taste better, sex feel better. I like to get high before I work out, lift weights and stuff it's fucking awesome. I think stereotype that it's only for feckless losers is completely wrong, I know many, many top level professionals and athletes that smoke the stuff

[Boss]

I know someone who uses homeopathy. For all my thoughts that it's a dangerous game to be legitimising a trade that's so diametrically opposed to the science of proper trials and peer reviews, when you see someone benefit, even if you know it's a placebo effect, it'd take a cold bastard to try to convince them that it was all in their head. Like people who use common weed for a variety of ailments, they've usually reached the end of what doctors claim they can help with, so if the only alternative is to explore other avenues, then fair enough.

 

This is another area were society has fucked up. It's perceived to be dangerous to give people natural herbs that grow abundantly on the planet to help them with various ailments, but it's perfectly normal to give people synthetic, man made chemicals drug companies produce for bottom line profit with the trials and peer reviews funded by those very same people that seek to gain profit in the drugs approval. It's a blatant conflict of interest. They fabricate data, they abandon clinical trials if the data isn't showing their drug in a positive light and it's all about how much money your capable of leveraging into getting the drug to market, otherwise drugs like thalidomide would never of made it past the trials and likewise many drugs available today.

 

Then you have the existing drugs being farmed out for other conditions and diseases beyond their original remit like chemotherapy drugs being given to people with acne and of course the drug manufacture wants this to happen because the more conditions it's implicated for, the more money for them, regardless of any detrimental effect on the patients health. It's a profiteering industry, it's got nothing to do with health and it's got nothing to do with finding a cure.

 

The western allopathic system hasn't cured anything in the last 100 years barre polio and measles, and they just used Louis Pasteurs method of the 1800's for that anyway, giving you a very small amount of polio or the measles virus and your immune system fights it off, creating an immunity to the disease itself. Barre using his method over 150 years ago they haven't cured anything, heart disease...they still don't know how to remove cholesterol from the arteries, cancer...more people die from cancer now than ever before. 

 

Yet billions of pounds are pumped into the industry every year and what have we got to show for it beyond tablets for symptom management? The 11th century herbalists of the gothic era have a better understanding of the human body than the current medical establishment do in 2015, what does that say about the system in place today? They have no understanding of the human body and how it works beyond what they can patent. Greatest fallacy of the modern age.

[Anny Road]

Plutonium exists naturally on the planet I wouldn't smoke that.

[Boss]

Plutonium exists naturally on the planet I wouldn't smoke that.

 

And Plutonium is a herb? completely ludicrous argument.

[Anny Road]

And Plutonium is a herb? completely ludicrous argument.

I was being facetious and fully support legalization but the argument that because it occurs in nature it is safe is a poor one. There are plenty of plants I would not touch never mind smoke.

[Anny Road]

Trouble with the legalize and tax it argument is precisely that it is a weed and will grow easily. Very difficult to tax.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Trouble with the legalize and tax it argument is precisely that it is a weed and will grow easily. Very difficult to tax.

I guess it depends on how readily available it became via legal vendors. The argument for legalising and taxation is that it'd be mainstream, and due to that all bar a minority would steer clear of buying from unlicensed vendors or bothering to grow their own. Legal and regulated product would be seen as safer too.

[Boss]

I was being facetious and fully support legalization but the argument that because it occurs in nature it is safe is a poor one. There are plenty of plants I would not touch never mind smoke.

 

Yeah your right just because it's natural doesn't mean it's healthy, but it does mean that it's made with our biochemistry in mind. Foods that are natural have more benefits in the body and that is continually proven time and time again, avocado's lower cholesterol, broccoli fights cancer, ginger helps blood pressure and so on and so on. I've yet to see a trans fats lower cancer risk, aspartame lowers heart attacks, E numbers increases longevity conclusion to any study, which shows our body is best suited to things from nature as opposed to man made things.

 

Obviously you can talk about poison ivy or dangerous plants, but we know what is safe and whats not safe, something like Milk thistle, dandelion root, red clover, nettles, yellow dock and other herbs have very beneficial effects in the body. I wasn't so much talking about weed in that post replying to Babb's i was just talking about herbalism in general, but it's logical to say natural cannabis leaf with no fillers in Hemp rolling paper will be safer for you than hash in a standard rollie, which will be better for you than having an IV drip of Agent Orange and so on.

 

Plutonium is a man made element anyway, you can't just stumble on a woodland clearing with plutonium growing next to it, it's made in nuclear reactors by scientists by very complex means, it's about as natural as Pammys tits.

[Anny Road]

You get what I meant though. Plutonium being a poor example.

 

Anywhere where it is quasi-legal can you get good hash? Love a good blob of sticky mellow hash. The super weeds knock me right out, having said that it has been many years since a did any.

[Babb'sBurstNad]

Are you implying Pammy's tits contain artificial additives?

 

Completely agree about herbalism though Boss. It's funny, but that kind of thing is far more accepted when it's used for animals, most horse owners put more thought into what goes into their animal's feed than their own, and will readily accept using things like nettles as a diuretic.

[cloggypop]

Lovely hash over here.

[Mil-ing Around]

Sadly, I'm very well informed about this stuff and have witnessed it ruin many people over the years and can visibly see the long last effects it has had on many close friends personalities. 

 

Someone on here mentioned it's a gateway drug and pointed to the fact that people start on weed and then move on to other things. That's a very simplistic view and takes out huge factors. Firstly, Cocaine, crack, heroin, E's, crystal meth are all known as hard drugs and the consensus is that they will fuck you up in the long run. Weed doesn't have that taboo attached to it....most people see it as nothing more harmful than fags or alcohol. So obviously it is pretty much ALWAYS going to be the first drug that kids try...

 

You won't go to a school or a college and find loads of people sniffing, shooting up and dropping a pill before class. Almost everyone starts on a few drags of weed. The gateway, is the mind of the individual and nobody can predict which way a person will go after they have a smoke on a spliff.

 

My second point is about the strength of weed these days...its fucking ridiculous!! Go back to the 80's and 90's and most people didn't grow in England. The skunk was coming from Holland/Amsterdam where it is regulated and the THC levels controlled (19% THC is the maximum i think). The stuff they grow over here now, cheese & haze etc, is full of chemicals and are hybrids of strains. A few years ago i went to Amsterdam and smoked my lungs out but the stuff i left back in England for my return was WAY stronger than anything i got over there!!

 

I even have friends who can't tolerate the strength over here and don't smoke it, saying it fucks them up and they get headaches/paranoia etc but when they go to Amsterdam they are fine and can happily smoke and enjoy the effect.

 

Weed in England needs regulating and controlling pretty fast! They need to step in before the high strength stuff over here fuck's with more kids minds. 

 

Finally i would just like to say that i know Doctors, Solicitors, Bankers and many other high profile people who all smoke weed. It's a fucking myth that its all hippys and chavs. This shit needs some regulation though, the difference in skunk today and from 15 years ago is crazy.

[Anny Road]

Lovely hash over here.

That Holland Cloggy? Had some Afghani over there years ago was the best ever. Like putting on a warm snuggly blanket. Not trippy just super mellow yet you still had your wits about you.

[cloggypop]

That Holland Cloggy? Had some Afghani over there years ago was the best ever. Like putting on a warm snuggly blanket. Not trippy just super mellow yet you still had your wits about you.

Yeah. If you like the Afghan you would love the squidgy black Nepalese and Indian Temple Ball. Lovely stuff. Some quality Moroccan everywhere as well and skuff for those that like that sort of thing. The likes of the Bluebird in Amsterdam has a ridiculous amount to choose from.

[Guest Super Sub]

Yeah. If you like the Afghan you would love the squidgy black Nepalese and Indian Temple Ball. Lovely stuff. Some quality Moroccan everywhere as well and skuff for those that like that sort of thing. The likes of the Bluebird in Amsterdam has a ridiculous amount to choose from.

Squidgy is like smoking road Tarmac. I agree though it is a mellow smoke doesn't blow your brains out just fucks with your throat.

[cloggypop]

Cheese and Haze have been readily available over here for years. Pretty sure it's where they originated. Cheese anyway. There are some stupid strength skunks around.

 

[Mil-ing Around]

Haze was around in the 60's in Cali, esp in the Santa Cruz area, that's where it was developed and it was about in the 80's and 90's haze in itself is not new, nor are the plants full of chemicals other than the chems used to grow them unless they are into organics, Certain cuts of "cheese" are known to cause paranoia hence one cut got labelled "physcosis" theres reasons for this within the plants natural chemicals... The only difference in skunk form today and now is because of where man has bred it to.. ie all for thc...

 

Fair enough mate, I wasn't really trying to say that Cheese and Haze were created in England but more the fact that its pretty much all they grow here now. Nobody really bothers importing it from Amsterdam anymore, it's not cost effective and seen as more risky but the weed from over there is regulated.

 

Even with all the chemicals they use to help grow in Holland, the THC level is still regulated. So the stuff here is way more harmful and sadly, it sells better. It's what most people want and worryingly it's actually what most kids are having their first toke on. They are at a much higher risk of psychosis and other mental conditions than if they had started out smoking regulated and controlled weed.

 

That's why i think they really need to step in and do it fast. 

[JermainePennant]

I smoke weed regularly and it should be legal, smoking cigarettes or drinking is worse for you.I know a lot of people that smoke everyday doing all sorts of jobs and it has no effect on what their doing, also knowing a few people that sell it I have seen that all kinds of people from all different walks of life smoke it, I've seen a lot of people I would never have thought would smoke it.

 

If it was legal people wouldn't be getting dodgy batches and the strength of it could be controlled aswell, people in England are smoking stronger weed then people in Amsterdam because it's getting sprayed with all sorts.

[Dr Nowt]

I know someone who uses homeopathy. For all my thoughts that it's a dangerous game to be legitimising a trade so diametrically opposed to the science of proper trials and peer reviews, when you see someone benefit, even if you know it's a placebo effect, it'd take a cold bastard to try to convince them that it was all in their head. Like people who use common weed for a variety of ailments, they've usually reached the end of what doctors claim they can help with, so if the only alternative is to explore other avenues, then fair enough.

Yeah, I can understand that view mate. My own thoughts - not really related to what anyone has said in this thread specifically, more things I generally hear and observe on a constant basis all over the shop - are that it's far too easy and throwaway to mock natural health care, and as a whopping great generalisation of my own, it's quite often done by those who can afford to not have to give these things a go with an open, if guarded mind, and haven't spent a long, long time becoming intimately familiar with certain limitations of the western health approach, at the same time as acknowledging an unpayable debt to it in so many ways.

 

You also don't necessarily see a homeopath for homeopathy/the famous drops of magic fairy water which have been hit with a stick; there are many things one may advise you on that are perfectly sensible; dietary advice - I have my own dietitian at the hospital, and they mean very well and are expertly trained by the book - i.e. to compartmentalise every element of medical treatment, and if one thing you do throws another part of your body out of kilter, medicate that to within an inch of it's life and then deal with any negative consequences as yet another separate entity, and on and on forever - therefore much of the expert advice I have had over and over since childhood is literally that due to malabsorption of fat and related weight deficiency, you absolutely on pain of death must stuff the likes of KFC, chips, fizzy drinks and chocolate into your pie hole every night, as you won't be alive long enough for the long-term consequences to catch up with you, but of course in the meanwhile that type of diet makes you feel like a sack of shit, which affects compliance with your necessary regime, and mental clarity/fortitude, and quality of life, plus it can cause other serious health implications, such as Diabetes, which then add to your treatment burden, etc - natural supplements, advice on all sorts of life changes you can make which can gain you a few vital percentages of improvement here and there, which may all add up together to years of both quality and quantity, and certainly don't come as standard within the western, less natural approach; not in any NHS hospital I've attended, and I've been in and out of them every few weeks on average since I spent the first 9 months of my life in one.

 

The idea some have of everyone involved in 'alternative health' being a snake oil salesman also doesn't chime with the fact that two different unrelated people, having seen my clinical response improve beyond any reasonable expectations after seeing them for a while, treat me for free the vast majority of the time, or just ask me to stick a few pence in an honesty box if I have it. Many people who work in 'alternative health' just want to help people be well, they're in the health business not the sickness business, and aren't mercenary about it in the least. Same as vets, for example; you get some great, caring ones, and you get some mercenary cunts, in it for max profit (insert joke about Al). Pay your money and take your choice; be selective, same as you would with anything else.

 

It's an interesting and valuable thing to be open-minded about - 'alternative health' as a whole, I mean, not homeopathy per se; which I don't know enough about, or have enough first-hand experience in to offer a blanket opinion on, personally - and I'd recommend looking into and actually experiencing it for additional support for the body and mind to anyone faced with stark health news.

 

As for the placebo thing; in long-term chronic, and I would guess, in some but certainly not all circumstances acute illness, even the vast majority of western doctors will admit, and have directly done so to me time and again, that the strength of your character, the power of your belief that you will get better/stay well, the state of your mind and your attitude are often of paramount importance to survival rates, so it's all quite the grey area, really. If your bias is being well, rather than being right or not being sniggered at, who cares? I had to swallow my own prejudices about much of this stuff and admit I was wrong when it worked wonders, to the amazement of my Doctors who were, if not walking around banging a gong and shouting "Bring out your dead", looking very, very concerned and offering a seriously bleak prognosis, but then I'm up and about and not being chewed on by worms, so I'm happy to be a fool for a lifetime if that's how using it is seen.

 

* Shrugs *

 

It's about percentages; you 100% need western medicine at certain stages, there really is no substitute when you genuinely do - it's all a careful balancing act and you can teeter too far on either side - but need to be so careful how much you hand over complete control of your health and any conditions you may have to the purveyors of it, in my experience, particularly in terms of how often you are medicated. There are plenty of negative things I've observed and learned about the set-up down the decades, some which will likely take a few years give or take off the backend of my life.

 

And I don't have something which can just be cured by lying down and listening to a bit of whalesong for a while, or someone giving you tea and sympathy, or any of that stuff. I've got the most commonly fatal genotype of the one incurable genetic illness which kills more people in the UK than any other, and have known it to just wipe both kids and adults away with absolute ease; ones who are doing absolutely everything by the book and are desperate to beat it.

 

There's loads I could add, but I'm mindful it's not theLBWCway, and I've already said far more than I would normally ever let slip out. Far too easy to mock from theoretical knowledge and call people who look into it gullible or daft though, even while I enjoy someone like Rico doing so as I hugely approve of the levels he has attained in the fields of pisstaking and cuntishness.

 

It's just really not as black and white as the uber-science mob would have you think, so the certainty people say stuff with always makes me chuckle to myself, as you never stop learning new things even while living it every single day, but I'm forever meeting a ton of experts in the theory side who have boiled it all down to a few caustic one-liners.

 

It's a hugely personal thing contingent on myriad factors, some within your control and some out of it. It's just all about stacking your hand as best you can when you're playing the house, and that means a singular focus and listening very carefully to your own body and your own instincts, rather than being too cynical or sucked into received wisdom.

[Dr Nowt]

Short, non-tldr version:

 

Boss knows.