Does smokeing too much weed really damage your memory?

Question

did i ask this before?

Answer 1

Yes... yes... yes... like alcohol, it destroys brain cells... and how do I know... because my son aged 43 is a drug addict who started out on weed and is dying slowly on the streets and no one can help him, he's too dangerous... and he's been barred from town.

And would you like to know, how I die inside, daily, slowly, and beat myself up, with never a moments peace, because I couldn't stop his alcoholic dad from dying too and couldn't stop the influence that he exerted on him.

And being the 'goody two shoes' who saw ahead and tried to stop it and to save my son, and his dad... I get the blame even though he'd long left my safe upbringing in the security of home when he decided dad's life style was best!

So... go on... damage your brain, leave your family in grief and agony... wringing their hands forever, feeling helpless and lost... inside the memory of how beautiful a child to them you used to be, when you listened to their lovingly afforded words!

I've come back to add to my story... as a warning and a plea, to all of you who think smoking weed is kids stuff, and harmless, that you can control it:

My drug addicted son was my first born child, I conceived him at the age of seventeen and defied my parents on adoption issues (chucked adoption woman out the door) and kept I him. And survived them chucking me out on the street, after the adoption woman too!

He was the sunniest, funniest, happiest little boy, but even in the sixties, I knew he had a problem. Being an self educated reader, I discovered an answer, but everyone laughed at me... it was called dyslexia. Back then, the UK never heard of it. They laughed me out of his school, and he was to leave school illiterate. Because his teachers, as the experts, defied parents to intervene, or even dare to think they knew better for their children.

Marriage to an alcoholic, who also raped me while asleep, and physically abused me, was the only life he saw. But, everyone, professionals and otherwise, admired the way I raised my children, doctors down to taxi drivers, commented on their cleanliness and manners, and their happy faces. Taxi drivers wouldn’t take their fares giving it back to them for sweeties and praising me for their good behaviour. I raised them… I didn’t drag them up, we ate every meal at table and had three of them a day. I loved them see and gave them all of me! Although I overdid it once and collapsed when I used my own food allowance money, to pay for their school meals to stop them being taunted in the ‘free meals’ queue. I got too thin living on toast topped meals only. I used to lie at meal times and tell them, I’d already eaten, when they asked why I wasn’t sharing.

I ran away with them (no refuges in my day) on a small legacy my aunt left me. And I raised them single handed and kept them safe. I was one of the first ever school volunteers, inside the seventies, because my parents never came to my school, I vowed my kids would know I loved them, would not feel the loneliness I had. I helped children creative writing, and I read books and my own stories to them. The teachers loved them too and urged me to be a children’s writer, but, life never gave me time to do it for a living then. I attended every parent day and won, every mothers race. I couldn't give them money, fancy toys and designer clothes, but I could give them something else to make them envied by their friends... the badges to parade, and the way the other kids kept saying that their mum was fun!

I was a parent of five at the age of twenty-four, because of high fertility, and nothing worked to stop them, pill, coil, suppositories, condoms, spermicidal creams, or saying "No"… since you were your husband's property, he could take his rights, even in the swinging sixties!

My son was left by the wayside in his school… he never brought work home, he was left to peruse comics in the classroom, no one listened to my cries for help, no one helped, no one cared except to tell me firmly... it was not my business to decide his educational needs, OK? And I was one of those nasty females…a single parent, way before single parenting was fashionable, in fact, it was downright disgraceful and married females judged you badly, even if the divorce wasn’t of your making! If I’d waited a few more years, taken a few more beatings, I would have been a respectable widow when he died and been acceptable to society at large!

The experts only cared until he left their portals, and then he was no longer any responsibility of theirs and they didn’t give a damn what happened to him. And by this time I picked up the aggro', the loneliness, the pain and rejection inside him, the misfit feelings that he had. I took all the flack he couldn't give the system as he broke my windows in frustration and inability to express his feelings. As did his four younger sisters. When he took a kitchen knife to me, the same knife he had seen his late and drunken father take to me so many years before, I was numb with shock,. I realised that he’d carefully rummaged through the drawer to find the exact same one, from so many others.

When he finally found new 'friends' so called, and when they introduced him to weed, along with all the beers and such like, he discovered a way to fit, a way at last, to be the same as all the other lads with dads and mums. And because he found a solace in them, because he passed the pain inside whilst squiffy, he got more and more of it. And eventually… it got him!

Slowly over time, he was aggressive to everyone who tried to help him. He committed crimes as he got harder drug habits, to feed them. By which time, he was not my sunny, funny child, much adored firstborn, his features hardened, his eyes were filled with hate, or sorrow, or glazed over, and his childhood photos, only reduced me to tears every time I dusted them… and self loathing, because I felt I had failed him... because I, am his mother!

And society helped me think it too, it positively encouraged it. And in my town, I met people, dealing with my son, blaming me. People who had never met me, had never stepped inside my home, to see the cosiness of it, and all the other happy smiling faces of his sisters, who did, until leaving home, listen to their mum!

And in time, he was too far past the stage of help, when eventually he knifed a shopkeeper for drug money. The man died a year and a month later... too late for murder, and he got off with six years, but served three, in Strangeways prison. And only I still loved him, I couldn’t switch it off. They said I was fool enough to do so! And all my letters to the prison, tape recording, urging him to rethink his path… never reached him… were sent back to me.

And at the grand age of twenty-eight, inside that prison, they diagnosed dyslexia and I was ‘told’ it… as if it would surprise me! By then, I had no seen him face to face for many years, because I had another child to worry about.

As it happened, I had tried every avenue to help him, seeking peer group help when still at school, because at home he'd been alone inside a sea of petticoats. I felt this would have been the answer, to be with other lads in a social setting. I on a meagre income, I paid for uniforms and memberships and got him first, in the BB... but he burned the uniform behind a garage and some strangers found it with his name and brought it to me. I got him in the Army Cadets... and he absconded from the second meeting with a lad who had a criminal record, because he was a sucker for a lad who pretended friendship. And at the time, he’d renewed contact with his alcoholic dad and he was stirring his head up over me, because I had divorced him. It was my fault he told our son, that he had lost his dad, and felt alone. And he came home and broke my windows in his pain. He made the national news the day the other army cadet and he, stole (he was the passenger, but his fate was sealed) a double decker bus and drove it from the depot and crashed it into a brand new car.

I fetched in a social worker myself... just before it happened because, like all mums, I could ‘feel’ it coming and was terrified. They could not help him, they told me so, but the social worker fell in love with me... it was really weird how it happened, and at a time when I’d developed panic attacks over worry for my son… so, I opened up too much. I had vowed off marriage... but we married two years later and he promised we could bring my son back home when he'd paid his penalties. He broke his promise and banned him from our home.

Too late anyway... because the drugs were stronger now... and the knife attack soon followed! And I grieved so badly for the man, for his family... and for a crazy moment, I wanted to 'take my son out' myself... kill the child I bore, to stop the product of my womb, from damaging another life, another family, again. I blamed myself, because I bore him!

Had I not kept him, had I let the adoption woman take him, I would likely have had a better life, and a son seeking me all these years later, on Oprah! And I would not have the son I have today, from that second marriage. My youngest son, is twenty years his junior...

A happy ending... well, not quite, though for a while I thought so.

I was to discover that what I’d perceived as a hard time married to a drunk… was peanuts in the agony stakes… compared to inherent disorders… that it was merely training for a much more difficult and less understood disorder.

I married a man who was responsible for the lives of others, but, who had a hidden disorder, one which even he did not know about, one which takes years and years of living under the same roof with… to fully show fully and to understand, it’s called Asperger Syndrome.

When I understood it, I also knew my second son had inherited it... it's genetic. So followed, sixteen years of home education... and one to one he thrived, he was reading and writing way before others went to school. Like so many AS kids, he has a very high IQ. But Asperger is a complex and bizarre disorder, that doubles back on you every time you think you’ve mastered it.

I had discovered it in his dad because his behaviour caused us problems through the years together… and affected many people… and when a specialist confirmed it, guess what, it wasn't heard of by our lot over here. Not accepted by our experts. It took a year for me to train my GP in it... until he finally had answers for others in his care... others he had never understood before… and then, he called me the expert.

But it took years of fighting to be believed, and being labelled as an overbearing female, parent, wife, and all the same ridicule that I'd had with the dyslexia issue, in son number. I was always ahead of my time!

So, when my youngest child was born… no way… would I let those bloody experts, tell me what my second son needed! They'd messed my first son’s life up totally, by their lack of knowledge, lack of care, lack of working with his mum! I decided I would teach this bonus son to read and write myself … that he would be literate!

And he is... however, Asperger copies... they have to, to fit in... they emulate the people they admire! It's a survival method they must do, to fit the outside world. The mask they wear to hide their fear and confusion, hides a most bizarre condition. There is nothing romantic, or humorous about Asperger Syndrome!

His dad accepted his AS, but refused the assessment to be diagnosed completely in case it affected his work. He flipped on medication and tried to kill us all, then ran away and crashed our mortgage and our home around my youngest son and me. We never saw him again. After a 23 years marriage. After he had done much damage to our family... the other children from both our previous marriages as well. AS in an adult, who is entering your home, is insidiously devious, and like the cuckoo in the nest... it has a sub heading of being the ‘cuckoo syndrome’ too. He left a very emotionally damaged and wounded set of people in his wake. And the one natural son he sired… my son… behind because Asperger never sobers up… never comes down from a drugged up high… Asperger always is! And Asperger does not look back, nor forward, only in the present. It cannot see consequence. Unlike the addict and the drunk… it isn’t an acquired habit… one they can recover from… since they are born this way!

He left in 2000... just as my mum was dying… and we lost everything that year, and my youngest son, being Asperger too, couldn’t cope with dad suddenly gone… he tried to kill himself, because his dad abandoned him... he's never seen him since.

I hid his ties and belts, I gave him all of me... I watched and monitored and barely slept at all, and helped him get in to college and to work, and he has worked, every single day ever since.

But AS is easily persuaded, and like his dad did, which caused the need for pills, he's acquired a lot of serious debt since leaving home. When lenders tout and find AS, they find susceptibility supreme. I am currently standing betwixt him and his angry creditors, and crying Asperger at them! Threatening them that if they chase too hard and rive him to suicide (the suicide rate is high in Asperger people) I’ll go public and damn their methods and demand they take responsibility. It is slowing them down.

And life always has a few nasty tricks still to play…

In the same year that his dad left... 2000, we passed e beggar, sitting on the floor of our market square, and my young Asperger son, then seventeen and still at home, who emulated me in opening doors and giving to the needy... gave his change into the hat... he didn't know the beggar, but he whispered it was sad… he couldn’t know then, the beggar would use it for some drugs.

As the long haired beggar in the full length coat, looked up to thank him, I caught the brilliant bluest eyes that met my own for the first time after birth, in 1963, of my firstborn son... and my heart broke a thousand times again...and sudden overwhelming fear, for my Asperger, copy cat, baby son, stayed my urge to throw my arms about his filthy neck and hold him, try again to save him.

He didn't even know me, since twenty years separated my eldest and my youngest sons... they were brothers, one taking, one giving, and neither knew the other even existed. I just couldn't tell my son as he walked away, pleased to have done something good and decent... how could I share all those years of pain with someone who has not got the ability to empathise… but who could be further damaged by my revelations. I would have put his very life at risk.

I'm crying, writing it is hard… even now, so this is crappy English... I hope that it makes sense.

Last week in the paper, it came back to haunt me once again, there was a news item… Beggar Barred From Town Centre, and I read the joy the police expressed, when the court had put a banning order on my oldest son. The police spokesperson said how dangerous he is, how well known... how violently he lashes out at those who try to help him… and how he leaves syringes everywhere. I have not seen him to speak with, since the age of eighteen... when he tried to throw himself in his father’s grave… and threatened to kill me. Because he blamed me for his father’s death though we were divorced, many years before.

Since then, he’s got further lost in drugs and inside the system and the prisons.

And I had remarried and moved across the country with my Asperger ex's work, little knowing, just beginning to reap behaviour patterns of Asperger Syndrome. We never ceased to keep on moving home as he moved on inside the many varied social service departments. We were to have, 31 moves inside our 23 years together, before I finally understood Asperger and fought back, to try save my second son, and came home, to let him have a normal life. What I didn’t understand before, was how AS runs from itself all the time, because they can’t cope with standing still and facing themselves over time, nor allowing anyone to get inside their heads, by knowing them too well! My refusal to move on again, failed to ‘keep you busy’ and meant I was getting far too close inside the man… and AS can’t unravel themselves… no way is anyone else going to try it, it terrifies the sufferer of AS.

I just found out the new girlfriend of my 23 year old Asperger son, a girl he found on the internet, whom he raised thousand of £s debt to bring across here, from the US, then go to Ireland with... smokes Cannabis... and I'm terrified!!!!

He will copy her... if she stays around, and I have deja vu and am reeling once again with fear… this time, for him, while battling with his creditors as well.

Mine is an extreme story... and even weirder, if you knew it all. My lovely, really lovely looking, elder daughter, had an unhappy marriage and became an alcoholic, like her dad. She lives far away from me, all my daughters do, since they married men as we moved en route through my ex’s career… In 2001, she was critically ill, had all but destroyed her liver, and lives on serious medication now. She, like son number one, pined much for her late dad, wanted to be like him, insisted that she was... she so needed to follow him and bring him back to life, and if that meant taking herself to him, through a drinkers death, somehow, inside her head, it was ok, because she'd save him when she did!

So……… I beg you, all you young readers who read this… with all my heart and soul… Please, Please… Please… don't do binge drinking, or recreational weed... it only has one pathway... and only has one end.

And it destroys so many other lives, beside your own!

Answer 2

Two types of memory: Long term and short term

There is some research that supports cannibus impairs short term memory tasks (don't have sources but I know I read about it in some text) but these effects are reversable. (if the same people become sober again there are no "lasting" effects. You see the same thing with CNS depressants like alcohol, but THC in pot is not catagorized as a "depressant.")

Long term memory impairments? Don't think they have anything conclusive because to study this you'd need somebody who regularly uses pot and for a long time. It would be an unethical experiment in the lab.

Anyone responding to this question with animal studies in comparative psych should be ignored for two reasons: 1. Unethical research, and 2. marijuana may not affect the animal brain the same way it affects the human brain (or did you ask the animals?)

ALSO--think about this: any drug can become toxic after passing a threshold. You're asking a question about "too much" weed imparing memory when "too much" weed can kill you.

Answer 3

OH Bob BOb...yes weed is so bad for you.I used to smoke all day every day for many years(I dont remember how many years)After I went completely nuts and tryed everything to get better,I decieded to give up my weed and see how I did.I felt like **** for a few months but then the fog started to lift and I am fine now.Im not crazy anymore and I dont need meds after all.I grew up with weed in my house thinking it was "good medicien"...now all the pot heads in my family are total losers with nothing but a drug problem....while I am doing great.It might take you years to figure that out man...but when all you are is a pot head...maybe you will see the drug for what it really is.A drug.

Answer 4

Unfortunately yes it can as you can experience psychosis from smoking too much however if you choose to withdraw completely and assess the real reason you are smoking it and utilise other coping mechanisms such as antidepressants and counseeling you should find your brain will go back to normal when iit is out oof your system.

Answer 5

recent scientific research has deemed it so - also there seems to be a link to schizophrenia... also ex-drug users have mentioned that it has led to more serious/addictive drug use - even by just psychologically 'opening the door' to drug culture & it subtlety - www.whatnow.co.uk - look under 'info' then 'drugs' . There's load of sites on the net do a general search.

Answer 6

Smoked he **** for 22yrs, does make you lazy, dose make you lose your short term memory, leads to sampling other drugs. Put it this way its not as harmless as everyone makes out

Answer 7

I'd have to say from experience yes... but the thing I don't know is whether it's indefinate. I bet it's not everlasting considering the brain has the ability to repair itself in most situations.
If it is everlasting... **** happens.

Answer 8

the effects of weed are damaging to your lungs as well as your brain. They are also permanant.

Answer 9

See!

Answer 10

it can damage your memory and obviously inhibits your spelling skills as well.

Answer 11

No not if you pull yourself together and shake off the cotton wool ball in your third eye