Distributed to Psychedelics, Health

Does Smoking Cannabis Make You Dumber ?

Is it a real thing or just a bogus argument that aims to reduce cannabis consumption among the public?

Viktor Marchev
ILLUMINATION-Curated
4 min readAug 11, 2020

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a black and white cropped human eye in the foreground with leafs in the background with a purple colour
Source: Author

We’ve all read and heard about the different benefits and drawbacks that smoking cannabis can offer us. It has been used for decades by different people for different purposes. Some use it to just “chill out,” relax, and leave behind a stressful day, some to have fun with friends, other to become (presumably) more creative, and so on.

Today, people talk mostly about the benefits and positive effects of pot. Everyone will tell you how it helps her/him in one way or another. However, often, the desire to experience all these vivid feelings, makes one forget completely about some of the subtly hidden drawbacks.

A lot of regular cannabis users say that, in the long-term, they tend to become more absent-minded than usual. Also, they argue, sometimes they are more prone to forget stuff in their daily lives: not knowing where they last put their wallet in the house, forgetting what they went to the grocery store for, and so on. “Minor issues, but nothing too serious,” as they refer to it.

However, there are some people that experience these adverse effects in a more enhanced way, depending on the frequency of smoking. We probably have all heard the saying that the more you smoke, the more brain cells die in your brain. Is this true? There’s no scientific evidence to back this up.

Nevertheless, daily obsessive consumption (that is smoking more than 1 gram a day) could possibly lead to more absent-mindedness than usual and to more inattentiveness and forgetfulness.

Having all this in mind, does smoking make you dumber in general? Let’s look at the science behind cannabis, first.

Cannabis leafs vectors on a blue background.
Source: Author

What Smoking Does To Your Brain: The Science Behind It

Although I could start with some of the typical effects people usually experience from smoking cannabis…

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Viktor Marchev
ILLUMINATION-Curated

I read my own stories out loud. Interested in everything related to psychedelics, mental health, and spirituality. Writer for ILLUMINATION.