Pubdate: Sat, 14 Jun 2014 Source: Guelph Mercury (CN ON) Copyright: 2014 Metroland Media Group Ltd. Contact: http://www.guelphmercury.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1418 Author: Rob O'Flanagan Page: A6 THAT'S JUST THE POT TALKING In a city such as Guelph it would be considered sacrilege and of the highest order of judgment to castigate the sacred herb, the magical marijuana. The blessed substance is in wide use in these parts, and is considered wholesome, harmless and beneficial. It is capable of curing-or at least soothing-everything from arthritis to depression, and helps the mind solve the greatest of the impenetrable mysteries. This may all be nonsense, a result of the drug's influence on the way the brain thinks about the drug. Drugs influence how one thinks. How many pot smokers have I heard pontificate at length-at great, stuck-in-a-mental-hamster-wheel length-about the mind-altering capabilities of chemtrails, or the god-honest truth about alien abductions, or the spiritual nature of sun circles in photographs, or any of a number of other far-out subjects? I always want to say, "Dude, you need to clear some of that excess cannabinoid out of the old cranial cavity and start thinking for yourself again." There's a wonderful world of chemistry in the body that seems to have a life all of its own, independent of choice or free will. There is choice in what we put into the body, but once it's in there, there is very little choice over how it reacts to the body's systems. You can choose to smoke weed, inject heroin, or drink single-malt scotch, but once it is in the blood stream the drug tends to take over the thought processes. A brain under the influence of drugs can make fairly stupid choices, and the drug can motivate the vocal chords to express fairly ridiculous ideas. We would most likely not make these choices nor have these ideas when stone-cold sober. Drugs have an enormous influence on our biology. They seduce the brain and manipulate how we think and what we think about, how we act and feel. The body that just wolfed down a Snickers bar is quite a different body from one that ate, say, a large hunk of raw cabbage. A brain under the influence of heroin reacts somewhat differently from one that just drank a cup of dark roast coffee with a double shot of espresso, my 'shot in the dark' addictive substance of choice. I have no experience using elicit drugs, but I do have a brain and I'm beginning to see how it gets tricked and tripped up by the intake of different food stuffs, beverages, or more intangibles such as sexual attraction or negative self-talk. The brain is always under the influence of something. Drugs, I can deduce through observation, hearsay evidence, and some drug-like experiential learning, affects the chemistry of the body, changes the way one thinks about many things, including the way the drug itself is thought of. That must be why so many pot smokers believe, mistakenly, that pot is harmless. Committed pot smokers don't care for evidence that the substance is actually quite damaging. They may be quick to reject the evidence of mainstream medicine but, nevertheless, reputable agencies such as the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto or the National Academy of Sciences are coming up with clear evidence that pot can accelerate heart disease, trigger psychosis, depression and mood disorders-especially in teenagers-and lead to cognitive impairments in habituated users. Cannabis smoke also contains carcinogenic toxins. And pot is actually addictive. So, it just might be that pot smokers think pot is harmless because that is what cannabis tells the mind. The mind has natural occurring cannabinoids-those 85 chemical compounds that perform vital functions in the body, including pain suppression. The body is already wired to feel good about cannabis, and so when it is introduced into the body, the mind feels good about it and says, 'Something this good can't be bad.' Oh, the seductive stories drugs tell. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom