...we're gonna have to re-evaluate old concepts of free speech and democracy.
Everyone's on anti depressants/sleepers/speed, the chuds are blasting testosterone out their ears until they stroke, weed is everywhere and as potent as heroin.
Add the perfect dopamine delivery system, a political internet economy modeled on the addictive technology of vegas slot machines.
It's gonna have an effect on the national psyche.
Is it a partial explanation for Q?
Shout out to the divorced, biker, small business tyrant, dad...caught with test injectables and thc edibles, and guns, after the Capitol. Just the only man for the moment.
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edit: gotta step away for now. will come back to this. Feels like this post was misunderstood, or I just didn't make enough sense. Hope it won't make things awkward when i slide into selected PMs asking for a plug 😀
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Nooooooooooooooo
Some people doing weed being a reason to re evaluate democracy is such a weird take and I hate it.
If you have 75 million people believing in an actual delusion and willing to act on it you may have to re-evaluate old concepts of free speech and democracy.
It's about more than just a sixties understanding of weed. Respectfully, have you read all the posts?
Do you think people who take sleeping pills or weed believe in actual delusions? Lmao.
Why are you even bringing up the sixties, I wasn't born in the 60s, wtf.
Be careful because what you're saying is literally fash adjacent.
No. I'm saying, on the macro level, on the societal level , widespread use of modern hypnotics and ultra high potency cannabis, which didn't exist in the past, may have contributed to a change in the national psyche which may be a partial explanation for the rapid rise of Qanon. They are both highly psychoactive substances that are commonly used daily, often together, often with other psychoactive drugs.
I brought up the sixties because when society talks weed, it still, even today, talks about it like it's 1% THC bush weed from the sixties.
Thanks for the warning.
If it can't do any of these things on a personal level, how's it gonna translate into a societal level? Because frankly unless you're seriously abusing weed it's not gonna do any of the things you say, like, seriously, just try it once and you'll see. It's like being mildly drunk and chill and then it wears off. I also think you underestimate how much drugs people were doing in the 60s and 70s, drugs much more powerful than weed.
The idea that weed back in the 60s-80s had like 2% THC content and now it's OVER 30% is pretty dumb. First of all, over 30% THC concentration weed is very rare. Second, it's absurd to think that in the span of only a couple decades marijuana was magically altered so much through breeding alone that its potency increased by an order of magnitude. It's just not how it works. It's a plant that has been selectively bread for thousands of years, it's not gonna magically change so much within a couple of decades. It's way more likely that either Americans were getting shit weed before, or that scientific techniques used to measure THC content were inadequate back then. Breeding is probably also a factor, but it's probably much less important. Regardless, most people have either done weed or know other people who do, and I'm talking "modern" weed, and that's what they're basing their opinions on, as well as scientific studies on "modern" weed so I don't understand the point. It really doesn't do that much to you lol
Look somewhere else to find the origin of Qanon, this really isn't it. Chances are the people who believe in that sort of stuff are less likely to do drugs than the rest of the population, they tend to be creepy old fundies. The internet, yes. But sleeping pills and weed? Nah.
Christ, you're lazer focussed on weed to the exclusion of all the other factors. I get it, we all love it. It's not a sacred cow and has good and bad effects.
On the societal concept: Say one in a thousand people have an adverse behavioural reaction to a psychoactive medication. If that medication is prescribed on an indusrial scale, even overprescribed, you then have a lot of those people in society that may be more suggestible, more volatile, more irrational. Then consider poly drug scenarios, for psychoactive drugs taken daily, and the effect that might have on a wider, macro, societal level.
I'm suggesting that this may be one factor contributing to the rapid rise of Qanon.
I don't love weed, I don't even like weed, it just doesn't do what you think it does. If one in a thousand has an adverse effect, that's 0.1%. It's not gonna cause big societal change even if literally everyone takes them.
I really don't understand why you think it is so significant, and you can't just say that democracy should be rethought because you think maybe it might have significant influence on qanon (which I seriously doubt anyways).
Yet again, I wasn't just talking about weed. I was talking about many other factors, as per my other posts.
0.1% of 75 million Trump voters could be part of the explanation for the rapid rise of Qanon. That's a hell of a lot of people.
0.1% is... Really not a lot of people. And again, the q people are usually weird fundamentalist Christians, they're not exactly big on drugs.
It's possibly 75,000 people, quite significant imo.
Qanon people are absolutely not all fundemenalist christians, particulary the younger cohort.
Contradictory beliefs and behaviours are a massive part of fundamentalist christianity too lol.
Yes, they're not all like that. Also I suspect some of them used to spend a lot of money beanie babies too. But I don't think them spending money on beanie babies has much to do with them being part of qanon.
Alright, I'll leave you here too. If you've got a cogent point we can continue.
My point is pretty simple. You're making an assertion with sweeping consequences but you don't have anything to back it up, just that it kinda seems to you that drug use is up (and it isn't, compared to a few decades ago) and that it kinda seems to you like this might have something to do with qanon. Like, even weed is not that much more popular and it really, really doesn't do what you think it does, neither do sleeping pills or whatever.
i read through the thread and it more feels that you're personally skeptical/afraid of drug use and that's manifesting in the way you analyze social phenomena. i get it, i've seen people do a number of wild things under the influence, but i'd take care to read up on the psychopharmacology. reefer madness is long discredited, and outside very rare cases of cannabis triggering an underlying disorder (has more to do with how early you start smoking frequently, which prevents the neural development of barriers to psychosis ), the general effect of heavy cannabis use on the population is mild and probably sedative if anything at all
if you'd like to make an immediate dent in the damage that substances do, you could try volunteering to do some kind of harm reduction for a harder substance (heroin, alcohol, meth, etc.) that is hurting your community. you've also mentioned education in your post and there are ways to get involved there too
Definitely not shy of drug use in any way lol. Thought that was clear enough tbh. Did you read every post? Realise there's a lot. Cannabis was one of many factors I referenced.