Some info partly related to this thread started by the OP.
How Marijuana/Cannabis Affects Your Mind and Body
Marijuana, weed, pot, dope, grass. They’re different names for the same drug that comes from the cannabis plant. You can smoke it, vape it, drink it, or eat it. Most folks use marijuana for pleasure and recreation.
Marijuana has mind-altering compounds that affect both your brain and body. It can be addictive, and it may be harmful to some people’s health. Here’s what can happen when you use marijuana:
You Can Get “High”
It’s why most people try marijuana. The main psychoactive ingredient, THC, stimulates the part of your brain that responds to pleasure, like food and sex. That unleashes a chemical called dopamine, which gives you a euphoric, relaxed feeling.
If you vape or smoke weed, the THC could get into your bloodstream quickly enough for you to get your high in seconds or minutes. The THC level usually peaks in about 30 minutes, and its effects may wear off in 1-3 hours. If you drink or eat pot, it may take many hours for you to fully sober up. You may not always know how potent your recreational marijuana might be. That also goes for most medical marijuana.
It May Affect Your Mental Health
Not everyone’s experience with marijuana is pleasant. It often can leave you anxious, afraid, panicked, or paranoid. Using marijuana may raise your chances for clinical depression or worsen the symptoms of any mental disorders you already have. Scientists aren’t yet sure exactly why. In high doses, it can make you paranoid or lose touch with reality so you hear or see things that aren’t there.
Your Thinking May Get Distorted
Marijuana can cloud your senses and judgment. The effects can differ depending on things like how potent your pot was, how you took it, and how much marijuana you’ve used in the past.It might:
Heighten your senses (colors might seem brighter and sounds might seem louder)
Distort your sense of time
Hurt your motor skills and make driving more dangerous
Lower your inhibitions so you may have risky sex or take other chances
You May Get Hooked
About 1 in 10 people who use marijuana will become addicted. That means you can’t stop using it even if it harms your relationships, job, health, or finances. The risk is greater the younger you start marijuana and the more heavily you use it. For instance, the odds of addiction are 1 in 6 if you use pot in your teens. It might be as high as 1 in 2 among those who use it every day.
You could also grow physically dependent on marijuana. Your body could go into withdrawal, leaving you irritable, restless, unable to sleep, and uninterested in eating when you don’t use it. Learn more about how to spot the signs of marijuana addiction.
It May Impair Your Brain
Marijuana can make it harder for you to focus, learn, and remember things. This seems to be a short-term effect that lasts for 24 hours or longer after you stop smoking.
But using pot heavily, especially in your teen years, may leave more permanent effects. Imaging tests with some -- but not all -- adolescents found that marijuana may physically change their brains. Specifically, they had fewer connections in parts of the brain linked to alertness, learning, and memory, and tests show lower IQ scores in some people.
Your Lungs May Hurt
Marijuana smoke can inflame and irritate your lungs. If you use it regularly, you could have the same breathing problems as someone who smokes cigarettes. That could mean ongoing cough with colored mucus. Your lungs may more easily pick up infections. That’s partly because THC seems to weaken some users’ immune systems.
You May Feel Hungrier
Many people who use marijuana regularly notice that it boosts their appetite. They call this “the munchies.” Some research suggests that might help people with AIDS, cancer, or other illnesses regain weight. Scientists are studying this and whether it’s safe.
It May Harm Your Heart
Marijuana makes your heart work harder. Normally the heart beats about 50 to 70 times a minute. But that can jump to 70 to 120 beats or more per minute for 3 hours after the effects kick in. The added strain plus tar and other chemicals in pot may raise your chance of heart attack or stroke. The danger is even bigger if you’re older or if you already have heart problems.
It Intensifies Alcohol’s Dangers
More than 1 in 10 drinkers say they have used marijuana in the past year. Combining alcohol and marjuana at the same time roughly doubled the odds of drunk driving or legal, professional, or personal problems compared to drinking alone.
Your Newborn Might Be Underweight
Mothers who smoke pot while pregnant face a higher risk of giving birth to underweight or premature babies. But researchers don’t know enough to say if those infants are more likely to grow up to struggle in school, use drugs, or have other problems in life.
Many of the same carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, compounds present in tobacco smoke are also found in burning marijuana. In particular, unfiltered smoke from joints contains higher concentrations of a class of chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) than does smoke from tobacco cigarettes. Since marijuana users generally inhale more deeply than tobacco smokers, they may be exposing their lungs to even higher levels of these dangerous substances. Preliminary research also suggests that marijuana smokers' lung cells contain higher levels of an enzyme that converts PAHs into a cancer-causing form. Thus, it is not surprising that several studies implicate marijuana smoking as a risk factor for lung cancer as well as for mouth and throat cancer.
Several reports have suggested that marijuana smokers are at greater risk than nonsmokers of developing cancers in tissues that come into contact with smoke, such as the lungs, mouth, larynx, pharynx, and esophagus.
The short-term effects of cannabis use
Everyone's response to cannabis differs and can vary from one time to the next.
When cannabis is used, it can:
Impair your ability to drive safely or operate equipment
Cannabis can cause drowsiness, slow reaction times, lower your ability to pay attention and impair coordinationFootnote1 Using cannabis and then driving or operating equipment can result in an accident, serious injuries or death.
Make it harder to learn and remember things
Cannabis can impair your thinking, concentration, memory and decision-making, and can impact your ability to perform well on the job or at school.Footnote2
Affect your mental health
Though cannabis can cause euphoria (a high) it can also cause anxiety or panic.Footnote2
In rare cases, cannabis can trigger a psychotic episode (not knowing what is real, experiencing paranoia, having disorganized thoughts and, in some cases, hallucinating).Footnote2
The long-term risks of cannabis use
Using cannabis frequently (daily or almost daily) and over a long time (several months or years) can:
Hurt your lungs and make it harder to breathe, if smoked
Cannabis smoke contains many of the same harmful chemicals found in tobacco smoke.Footnote3
Affect your mental health
Frequent use of THC over a long time increases the risk of cannabis dependence, also called:
addiction
cannabis use disorder
problematic cannabis use
It is also associated with an increased risk of developing or worsening disorders related to anxiety and depression.
Using products with higher levels of THC (20% THC [200 mg/g] or more) such as resin, hash oil, wax and distillates further increases the risk of mental health problems over time.
Stopping or reducing your cannabis use can improve your mental health.
As a general rule, by all means, one should avoid any consumption of narcotics/intoxicants, because their poisonous effects as seen above, strike the mind and making it even more stronger than what it already is.
Which means, a still bigger hindrance to overcome, for those who seek the Lord Waheguru.
It is only by killing the mind with the sword of Nam, that one gets liberation/mukti, for it is because of the mind since aeons/yugas we have been separated from our Father Waheguru, and roaming aimlessly in the wheel of 84.
But, if we ourselves give the mind total control over us, how the hell can we reach our True Home?
Obviously never.
It is like adding more fuel to the fire, so naturally the fire will never extinguish.
And this fire will sure burn into ashes our opportunity as human beings for the purpose of reuniting our surtee with Waheguru, then who knows when the hell will we get a human birth among 8.400.000 species of lives.
Just imagine even an year spent in each of those lives, it is still 8.400.000 yearssssssss, then too no guarantee.
Aren´t we dumb and foolish, for wasting away such a golden opportunity, as a blessing upon us by Waheguru?
*Just an example, a daughter of a good friend of mine, started with weeds at the tender age of teens.... for 26 good years went on falling into the well of misery, staying on the streets, a life worse than that of a dog... had become almost a skeleton...one can well imagine all the pain and anguish caused upon her parents .... they not knowing what will happen next moments .....
Then by His grace, nobody knows how, but it has been 3 years now she is out of it, has some job here and there, but yet the deep effects on her mind and heart are yet impossible to erase like aggressivity, loose of temper, no self confidence, sudden change of moods... she may take a whole life to recover...
All drugs/alcohols should be burnt away forever, for it turns a human being into a demon, into a beast ......breaking family ties, jobs, wealth, health, sense of equanimity, responsibility.....
Yet people take this devlish issue as something light or unimportant.....
God save people.