Are stoners really dumb? Or do they just think they are?
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 18, 2025 11:53
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Oh, I LIKE this! I've never known whether what I perceive as my lessening cognitive function is due to age, my bipolar meds (I did discover that one of my meds affected my balance, so lowered the dose), dope or something else. I think I'll believe this study!Quote:
http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/18/are-stoners-really-dumb-or-do-th
If you're acting stupid because you're a stoner, you might just be playing to type. That is, it may be your expectations about marijuana's long-term cognitive effects — rather than any real effect of the drug itself — that is to blame, particularly if you're male, according to new research. The study, which was published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, explored the effect of "stereotype threat" — the idea that performance is affected by conventional images of minorities — on marijuana smokers.
Earlier studies of stereotype threat have found that when African Americans are asked to identify themselves by race before being tested, they tend to score worse than blacks who weren't reminded of their race — in line with racist stereotypes about blacks doing poorly in school.
Explains study co-author Mitch Earleywine, professor of psychology at the University of Albany–SUNY: "The bottom line is if you get folks into the lab and prime them about the minority group they're in, they tend to behave consistent with the stereotype. With Asian women, if you bring them in and say, 'Oh, you're a chick, you can't do math,' they tend to do lousy. But if you say, 'Oh, you're an Asian,' they do well."
Earleywine wondered if the same could be true of marijuana smokers. While there are obviously acute effects of the drug on memory when someone is high, the research on marijuana's long-term impact on cognition, when not under the influence, is complicated. A meta-analysis that summed up the research found no clinically significant effects, but some individual studies have shown small but measurable cognitive differences between long-term, short-term and non-users. Is it possible that the studies that found a negative effect had cued marijuana users to the fact that they weren't supposed to do well?
Earleywine and his colleagues studied 57 users, 30 male and 27 female. Half were given material to read suggesting that marijuana damages the brain; the other half read a research summary suggesting that the drug had no long-term negative cognitive effects. Then, all participants were asked to take cognitive tests after abstaining from marijuana for at least one day.
There was a marked difference in results — interestingly, between men and women. Men who got the negative information about marijuana performed worse than men who didn't, but the women who were faced with stereotype threat actually scored better on tests of verbal skills and memory than women who weren't given negative information.
"I think that the stoner identity reads differently to women," says Earleywine. "They were like, 'I'll show you!' It was funny to see that go in the opposite direction. They did better than those who read that [marijuana has] no impact, on three of four measures."
"It certainly seems plausible that if someone came up and told you that marijuana caused cognitive impairment and gave you some test that you might respond by showing some cognitive impairment," says Dr. Harrison Pope, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has conducted studies of marijuana and cognition himself. "But what is odd is that women would have paradoxically shown better performance whereas men showed worse. I'd like to see it replicated."
If the finding holds up, says Pope, "It would throw in yet another factor one has to consider when studying the effects of marijuana."
ey-just-think-they-are/#ixzz15l6ts9st
Of course, that still means I have to decide between "age, bipolar meds, or something else"...
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Ag
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Interesting.
I've tested stoners a lot on problem solving etc. They're not stupid, they are mentally disabled. They're incapable of certain kinds of thought and problem solving. It's due basically entirely to receptor loss. Reversing that is one of my pet projects. But it's definitely not made up, it's very real. Given complex logic puzzles in test after test, I found that the average person could do the puzzles in a wide range from 15 seconds to 15 minutes, which was based on their core problem solving skills and their familiarity with similar problems. By contrast, long term marijuana users, even after only a few years of use, whether high or not, could not solve the problems. Typically it took them over an hour to reach the conclusion, and they could not do so without several hints, often fishing for help from every corner that they could. They weren't not of a mind that they couldn't solve the problems, they were certain they could, and while they eventually came up with solutions, they essentially never did it alone, they always got assistance from others, sometimes every advance they made in the problem came in the form of hints. Non-drug user, the sXe crowd, seemed to do just the reverse: They secluded themselves from any outside influence.
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Hello,
Do you have a copy of these problems? I'm curious as to how I might do at solving them.
--Anthony
Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.
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Anthony,
They were all logic problems. I'm sure you could solve them, I don't suspect you're a stoner. I suspect maybe Chris is a stoner 
Here a simple one, anyone doing it, set your stop watch before reading on:
Select to view spoiler:
A man stops at a hotel for a week.
He must pay one coin a night for a room.
He has a silver chain that has seven links.
The woman running the hotel will accept one link as payment.
He can never pay in advance, and he can never be behind.
He can make one cut once in one link.
Which link does he cut?
The logic of Mary sits next to sue but could not sit across from a boy, etc. is the type of analytical problem.
In RPGs I constructed elaborate problems. It was not *that* someone smoked weed, it was how much they smoked. Even highly function regular smokers did very poorly, but all of the subjects were college age, so that would effect the study. But there were many students and problems enough to make it the obvious determining factor. Even those who were excellent problem solvers to begin with who started smoking ended up doing poorly, even when not high. Admittedly, they did much worse when high.
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Quote:
I've never known whether what I perceive as my lessening cognitive function is due to age, my bipolar meds (I did discover that one of my meds affected my balance, so lowered the dose)dope or something else . I think I'll believe this study!
Well, that certainly does explain a lot.
Per the story, most ( though clearly not all ) stoners I've encountered in my life are actually quite intelligent.
That is, they POSSESS intelligence, though that's not to say they always make smart choices.
It appears, from my experiences, that given a choice between exclusively smoking or drinking, the more cerebral types tend to choose weed over booze.
Just my anecdotal observation.
" I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. "
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Nikki you are a train wreck. Weed, meds, and age. You should just kill yourself. I fall into the nikki you ARE dumb side. It is not your mind telling you that. puff puff pass.
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Quote:
Originally posted by kaneman:
Nikki you are a train wreck. Weed, meds, and age. You should just kill yourself.
Maybe you could demonstrate...
This Space For Rent!
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Trust me she doesn't need a demonstration. Do you really think an old, mentally disabled, drug addicted, Californian hippie hasn't tried to kill herself at least 36 times in her life? You gays are clueless.
Kwicko, I formally condemn your mother for not aborting you. Yeah, I'm sure her brother was happy to have a son, but you are inexcusable....
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One of the things that I believe IS right about dope is the lack of motivation. Either I started out that way or it's the dope, because I've never been terribly motivated. UNTIL I start something, then I go like a bat out of hell, but that might be the bipolarity ;o). It's possible lack of motivation has made people who smoke dope regularly lazy about their mental skills.
Thanx, Raptor I haven't been able to "officially" buy dope for over a year because of that stupid new tax. Working on getting some from my old dealer 'cuz I miss it. I know I'm not the regular dope smoker; it's my "evening cocktail" and I only have a couple of hits. Most people get really stoned when they smoke.
I started smoking over drinking in college. Booze doesn't like me, tho' I like it, and in social situations at that age, you want to partake of SOMETHING.
I'll have to check out your example.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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Hello,
Having never smoked weed (or used any illicit substances), I also could not solve the problem to my satisfaction. After approximately five minutes, I came up with two answers. Neither of them fully satisfied me. I spent the next twenty minutes searching for additional answers, to no avail.
Select to view spoiler:
The problem confused me a great deal, as I could not divine what it was trying to tell me.
However, based on what it was asking me, I felt strongly that the selection of link was unimportant.
Either A) the lady was prepared to accept one link as payment for the week, in which case you'd cut one off and give it to her at checkout.
Or B) she wanted links as a 1 for 1 replacement for coins, in which case you'd cut one off and give the rest to her at checkout after staying six nights during the week.
However, the phrasing of the problem makes me suspect that payment must be registered daily, and not at checkout. I could not figure out a way to get more than three independent links removed with one cut, so if this is the intent I could not divine how to solve the problem.
I am quite dismayed at my dismal performance.
--Anthony
Assured by friends that the signal-to-noise ratio has improved on this forum, I have disabled web filtering.
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