Alcohol vs marijuana

[Deere Dude]

I really enjoyed the taste of beer but ended up getting drunk more times than not, but did it again the next night and then repeat. Never at work but was groggy all day until I got off work then I was feeling good enough to start over...from late teens until middle 20s. I never could see and still can't understand how anyone can down hard stuff. The bartenders like me though.

In my early 20s I would hang with my doper cousin now and then. I never bought any pot but he have me a hit or two and then one day he gave me one for later. I stashed it in my car.

I worked in a factory on second shift on a snowmobile line putting bogey wheels and tracks on the machines. In night at the 6 PM break I drove downtown and lit it up. It was a pretty good joint and I really got a buzz on. I came back to work and sat down in the cafeteria with some co-workers and one friend said, "What in the world is wrong with your eyes?" I said, "Nothing, it was late." I got out of there pretty fast because I just felt how bloodshot they were.

Five minutes later it was time to start the assembly line up so I got in my station. As soon as it started I knew i was in trouble. I could not focus on putting a nut and bolt together much less 20 of them plus put wheels in correctly. That was 40+ years ago and I still remember it well. The only way I could function and do the job was if I would take my mind off the job and focus on something across the factory floor and do the job from muscle reflex memory. I would try to focus directly on the job that simply would not work and that lasted for a couple hours. Maybe if I was doped up long enough and hard enough I could function normally, but I really doubt it. That was the last one I ever had and drinking was gone right after that. Of course I lost a lot of bartender friends and pot friends. It wasn't like they gave a crap about me anyway.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I stopped smoking pot back in the mid '80s. Honestly, I just didn't like having to smoke it. Never was a smoker. It also started to get expensive.

I drank a lot for many years. More than I should. More than anyone should. Stopped that for the most part when I turned 30 (there's a story in that, of course). These days, I rarely drink at all. I can probably count on one hand the number of alcoholic drinks I have in any calendar year ... and can count on no hands the number of them I actually finish. Just not interested in that anymore. I enjoy life entirely too much to feel the need for an altered mental state.

I don't know if that is biological or mental. The alcohol part is probably biological. When I was in my 20s I hung out with a hard drinking crew. Most of them kept drinking and are dead now. I went teetotal when one of them got drunk and coked up and murdered a girl. I knew he had a problem, but he was "one of the guys" and I never said anything. When I quit drinking, the rest of the crowd wasn't so happy to have me around. I eventually got back to moderate alcohol consumption. It's a family joke that every year my New Years resolution is to drink more, and every year I fail. My wife and I have a huge liquor cabinet. Some of those bottles are 30 years old. The way to develop a huge liquor cabinet is to buy it and not drink it.

As for weed, I started smoking it before there were hippies, when the beatniks called it "tea." I had a serious depression problem, and I guess I used it to self-medicate, though I didn't have the foggiest what I was doing. I quit that when I started a system software company in the early '80s. I needed my memory.

Then it was just me, a cup of coffee, and a cigarette. Man I loved nicotine. Quitting tobacco was the hardest thing I ever did three times. If it didn't, you know, kill you and stuff, I would still be smoking. Factory smoke has gotten expensive, so I would be growing my own. You can raise burley anywhere. The PITA is curing it. I know I have a nicotine problem, so I can't even think about that. My one remaining daily vice is a premium coffee from a local roaster that makes Starbucks taste like a mud puddle. When it's not sold out, I drink Buckmaster Rogue Valley Blend, part dark roast to give it body, part medium roast to stoke the caffeine.

Now that I'm retired, could sit on the porch or in a rowboat drowning worms and get so drunk I fall asleep. I suppose I could smoke pot if I wanted. It's legal in my state. Friends grow the stuff and would provide me with all the high quality bud I could smoke. I just don't care. Like you, I like my life.

 

[motownbrowne]

If you drink to "get a buzz", you are in a very very small minority, of those who enjoy a drink. If you use pot you have behavioral issues.

You could be dealing with people every day who are daily pot smokers and you might never know it. Honestly, doctors, lawyers, police, professionals of every sort and you might never know.

I think the guy who is an actuary makes a great point. Yeah, lots of total fuｩkups happen to smoke pot habitually, but there's multitudes more people who snooker it responsibly and have no problem at all. Thing is, unless you ask them and they answer honestly, you'd never know it.

 

[geoff l]

Used to have a drop of two back when I was a young man, I still now and then will have a bottle of beer or cider, but that's it as it upsets my system nowadays.
There is a culture amongst the youngsters here in the UK of smoking high grade grass, causing all manner of psychological issues in the long term, and increasing the crime rate in inner cities.
I'm glad to live in the wilds so as not to be exposed to the degradation that is ensuing in town, the grass smoking habit has gone from recreational to perpetual over here in some sections of society.

 

[houstonscott]

You could be dealing with people every day who are daily pot smokers and you might never know it. Honestly, doctors, lawyers, police, professionals of every sort and you might never know. I think the guy who is an actuary makes a great point. Yeah, lots of total fuｩkups happen to smoke pot habitually, but there's multitudes more people who snooker it responsibly and have no problem at all. Thing is, unless you ask them and they answer honestly, you'd never know it.

You might be speaking with a mass murderer too, you'd never know, but they definitely have a behavior issue.

 

[sseelhoff]

You might be speaking with a mass murderer too, you'd never know, but they definitely have a behavior issue.

Mala prohibita vs. mala per se.

 

[Sigarms]

I think the guy who is an actuary makes a great point. Yeah, lots of total fuｩkups happen to smoke pot habitually, but there's multitudes more people who snooker it responsibly and have no problem at all. Thing is, unless you ask them and they answer honestly, you'd never know it.

I think the issue is that some beer drinkers think for whatever reason, they are the only ones who can use a recreational drug responsibly

 

[sseelhoff]

I think the issue is that some beer drinkers think for whatever reason, they are the only ones who can use a recreational drug responsibly

Coupled with the fact that one industry pays a lot of money to lawmakers to keep the other potential competitor out of business.

 

[motownbrowne]

You might be speaking with a mass murderer too, you'd never know, but they definitely have a behavior issue.

My point is that your hasty generalization was, by nature of a generalization, incorrect. You said "if you use pot, you have behavioral issues". Sorry, but that's not true. Maybe you're an 80 year old lady going through chemo, or a 7 year old with uncontrollable seizures, or a beloved community figure who smokes pot on the weekends. Do some people who smoke it have behavioral issues? OF COURSE. Do plenty of people who don't have behavioral issues? YES!!

It's like saying, everyone who eats chocolate fudge is poor at math. Just doesn't work that way.

 

[tungularafishcamp]

I'll respectfully disagree. Beer is an aquired taste. Alcohol makes it taste horrible when you're not use to it. However, it's the same alcohol your brain gets use to it, now it tastes good. I'm guessing the reason you haven't found a good non alcoholic beer that tastes good is because it doesn't have any alcohol in it

Taste buds are a personal thing, I remember my first drink of beer, I was 6 we had just moved to Ohio from Japan, bbqing with neighbors, my dad gave me a sip of ice cold Wiedeman sp? And I thought wow, so much better than cool aid!!!! Since then my beer tastes have changed and I love dark heavy full flavored beers (I blame that on my first warm guniness in the BVI all the na beers I have seen/tried are Pilsners and they just don't do it for my tastes either with or without alcohol.

X2 on Dadnatrons comments, I too brewed a long time ago but once we got a local brewery and he started selling beer in pigs it was ez to give up brewing my inferior beer!