10th Grade Daughter is Vaping
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@Peatful It's bad. we don't have good data on the health effects of the chemicals. and it's illegal
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Oohh really? : /
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@CO3 it’s illegal: How so? Meaning under age?
Thx for your response
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THC suppresses steroidogenesis, including the creation of neurosteroids that protect the brain, and will legitimately give you brain damage if it’s used daily. Also not super awesome for the liver and can cause fatty liver disease in addition to making you gain weight (fat) more easily. Using THC as a teenager was probably the most overall negative thing I ever did for my health.
Nicotine is not really that big of a deal apart from being mildly addicting. The issue with vapes is the potential for heavy metals to leech out of the heating element and be vaporized along with the vape juice. (The juice itself may have some health concerns associated but hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to know)
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What could I have said to you as a non judgmental but firm mom-
To help you stop as a teen?Thx for your reply.
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@Peatful honestly, I can’t tell you what to say. My parents tried to stop me but I was hardheaded about it and just became deceitful. I thought it was perfectly safe and ignored their loving attempts to correct my behavior. (“its like… a natural plant mannnn”)
I had to learn the hard way when I became too sick, lazy, and retarded to function.
From a place of full sincerity, I think the teenage urge towards psychoactive drugs is just a desire for novelty. I don’t know how open-minded you are, but one option would be trying to redirect her desire for such novelty onto a different, less harmful substance such as psilocybin or other mild psychedelic. Which would be self-limiting as they only “work” for a few hours once every several weeks. She’ll still feel “cool” but it won’t interfere with her schooling or brain development.
Ray spoke positively about similar substances, and I actually made good use of them to help my autism and I would even say they helped me reverse some of the damage done by THC…
If that’s out of the question, (reasonable), there’s really nothing you can do short of impressing the hormonal impact. I’m sure a teenage girl might receive poorly the information that THC damages your metabolism and could make her gain weight. She might also not like the potential long term fertility effects if she has any inclination towards being a mother. (Weed babies come out a bit retarded)
On nicotine/vapes, just impress the reality that these things are totally new tech and have untested ingredients, and potential for heavy metal exposure (and all the associated diseases).
Also just coming from a regular nicotine user due to dependence, holy shit is it an expensive fucking habit.
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Unfortunately I do not have useful advice to input here.
Had a similar situation with my own sister when she went away for college (The thing I was advising her not to do was probably about 100 times worse than this). Anyway, that situation taught me a lot about people in general.
But anyway, it's useful to think about it like this:
I was not the only person advising my sister on things, she has friends, she has sorority sisters, she has a boyfriend, etc. she has XYZ people in her ear influencing her to do certain things and she's young so of course she's going to continue doing it until she learns her lesson. Unfortunately for my sister, those decisions have life-long consequences for her that will never go away and she cannot take back.And when working with teens/kids, you really just the same thing all the time: They are too young to make conscious decisions and to grasp long-term consequences of XYZ until they learn their lesson of course.
Anyway, I'm sure you know by now: the more you try to force it, the more they resist against you. Trying to brute-force anyone into stopping anything even if you are using logic, is a sure-fire way to have them want to resist against you even more.
If it was me, I suppose I would try to get her off THC and probably stick to Nicotine or Tobacco (Not ideal, but its better than THC).
If that doesn't work, then what can you do really? Even if you took it away from her you have to keep in mind she has friends, a whole school full of people she knows (probably the people who introduced it to her in the first place), that can help her just get another one.
Honestly, I wouldn't be too down on yourself if that was the worst thing she was doing, because I have seen so much worse working in schools and dealing with my own sister. I would just be mindful that continuing to do things like this leads her to a path where she continues to make bad decisions. So, I'm not sure - maybe try to convince her to switch off THC for something safer or make some kind of compromise. But anyway, like I said, I don't have any useful advice for this situation. Sometimes, kids just have to learn from experience.
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You don't read as autistic, stunted or retarded
Very well thought out and balanced response
Thx mate
Appreciate it -
@Peatful I appreciate that, but it took a lot of work (exogenous hormones, serotonin antagonists, and peating) to get my cognitive function back to a reasonable baseline… so please don’t take me as evidence that weed is harmless
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Thx for your quick response
I tagged you knowing you possibly taught in high schools
Seeing this first handWe live in a affluent and materialistic part of our city
We are the only family we know that kept our kids unvaxxedThe poor counties come to our high school to deal heroin to the rich kids
It’s gross hereIve read in the last day or two
Online advice dealing with this matterIt seems extreme and inflammatory
But
I may be naiveThx again for reaching out
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There are a myriad of studies establishing correlation between THC and psychosis/schizophrenia. The basic google search says "Cannabis is involved in approximately 50% of psychosis, schizophrenia, and schizophreniform psychosis cases" (5 sources in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3927252/)
The mechanism is a bit more difficult to prove. Ray Peat says about schizophrenics:
"Schizophrenics were significantly more hypofrontal than the controls" (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7892362/)
"Decreased frontal cortical glucose metabolism has been demonstrated in adult schizophrenics both at rest and while engaging in tasks that normally increase frontal metabolism," (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9437771/)There's a similar structure to cannabis users:
Cannabis Abusers (started from a young age) show hypofrontality and lower brain glucose metabolism (https://www.nature.com/articles/npp201667)
Acute marijuana users are on the same trajectory as chronic marijuana users from (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12784905/)
Haidut writes about how it increases serotonin signalling, with a link between serotonin and forms of psychosis
All over the place you'll find that neurosteroids rise in the brain in order to counteract the effects of drugs like cocaine and this is also the case with pregnenolone in response to THC
When you first smoke weed it is difficult to get high, but with each subsequent time you do it, it gets easier for you to get high. To me this means the THC interferes with the way pregnenolone is structured in the brain. THC also inhibits steroidogenesis by preventing the conversion of pregnenolone to progesterone. I think if this pregnenolone isn't converted into anything downstream, it's just excreted.
There's also a structurally similar lesser brain glucose metabolism (which is seen in aging: Lower brain glucose metabolism in normal ageing is predominantly frontal and temporal) akin to schizos.
Anecdotally every pothead I know has the demeanor of an easy going, chill guy but seemingly blows up at the slightest inconvenience, has difficulty sleeping, has tubby tits (it's also anti androgenic from what I remember) and has some form of anxiety.
Honestly just tell her to smoke cigs.
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That's right around the time I smoked my first doob, and bong, and blunt. Oops.
It definitely derailed my dopamine response and made it harder to order an expectation, an effort and a reward. But was that the cannabis anymore than than my "social" life lighting up. And without the latter would it have persisted without places, times and company. I don't know.
I'm not sure parental intervention could have put a stop to this. But I never revealed it, nor was I asked directly. And I had an elaborate system to conceal it. What would it have meant if it did. I'd probably have looked a lot smarter on paper, gone to a better university, and been able to jam over prog metal blindfolded. So all in it's probably liable to misdirect attention and the flow of energy, in and out. You can get her wise to that in your triage, but she probably is in her own way already.
The context of her use will matter a lot. The "happy kid" part speaks for itself. She's unlikely to be capable of faking that in your eyes. So it's probably a peer thing. With a hint of disquiet about the nature of this world and its expectations. Get your intel Peatful
Keep talking and don't worry without a starker indication you ought to. -
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Probably bad, but I won't lecture. I started smoking cannabis at 15. As for the science, there seems to be more and more damning evidence to suggest smoking cannabis in adolescents can increase schizo-like symptoms. What's more, well from a bioenergectic perspective it seems like cannabis is actually a stressor. Which is weird to think about, because popular culture paints it as a substance used to "chill people out." But there's evidence showing cannabis smoke increases estrogen and cortisol. There's also evidence to show it could cause cardiovascular issues in people who have long-term use for years and years. Which is certainly plausible considering how serotonergic cannabis is, and serotonin is a cardiac toxin. Other environmental aspects are important to keep in mind too however. Most cannabis smokers eat a processed food diet and live sedentary lifestyles.
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Hello everyone.
I just gently approached her with the vape pen or pipe in my possession.
And
She denies it is hers
Lol
It’s hers
Im willing to grant amnesty for the truth
If anyone wants to chime in
Im all ears -
@Mulloch94 thank you
Per usual I’m behind the wheel of a car
But I appreciate you reaching out and I just posted a quick question about amnesty any Feedback, of course is appreciated, but not expected -
Maybe there's a boy in the frame. There was a girl in mine.
Not a thought for a blame game. It's always us really. But there's always context.
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@Peatful just press that she is not in trouble and you are just concerned for her health.
Also “no free lunch,” cliche as it might be, is a pretty good way to illustrate the trade offs of the “chilled out” effect of weed. (It will make you more neurotic without it over time)
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I smoked weed every single day of college, still got a 3.9+ GPA, and was accepted into an extremely competitive grad program. I quit completely the year after I graduated as it made me anxious, lethargic, and unsociable.
As a parent, I think the true worry is whether it will interfere with her long-term goals. I have friends that still smoke everyday and they have stagnated in life, both spiritually and by worldly measures.
