Admitting that Cannabis Can Kill You. Quitting Marijuana in 2022.

[Music] i sat down with dr joseph habusch who conducted one of the leading studies on chs in a public hospital emergency department so chs cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome it was first described in 2004. so what ends up happening is folks who have been consuming cannabis for many years start developing these weird symptoms of nausea vomiting abdominal pain but really uniquely all of these patients had discovered that taking very hot showers helped their symptoms cannabis only does good it only does good because that's what everyone in the industry wants to think when you hear about weed you never think that it can kill you but is that the new narrative yes if it wasn't for marijuana we wouldn't have chs if it wasn't for chs then my son wouldn't be dead in 2016 she started to feel the symptoms of chs and in 2018 she had her first major episode for 14 days all day every day i threw up non-stop a small sip of water i was throwing it up i couldn't hold anything down i went to urgent care twice got ivs i was you know not throwing up when i had an iv in me but then as soon as urgent care would release me i go home and i'm throwing up i thought i was gonna die i was so frail i couldn't even look at myself in the mirror i was a skeleton and it was just like when is this gonna end the doctors recommended that brian abstain from consuming cannabis and he agreed to do so for 45 days after that he began to smoke again and did not experience major symptoms for six months but that would soon change october 23rd i had woken up and brian was sitting on the couch holding his stomach and i said bob are you okay he started vomiting so i called his doctor and i i said i feel like i'm watching my son slowly die my son had lost so much weight you could see every bone in his body and he uh started grabbing his back and he said my back hurts and instantly i thought his kidneys so i called brian was laying on his side facing the doorway and he said mom i can't breathe so i roll him over [Music] and my son's eyes are open and my son's not breathing so i started doing cpr i looked him in the eyes and i knew he was gone [Applause] [Music] i notice that it's become fashionable in terms of public science education for doctors to rely on argument by analogy what i mean is this i notice that increasingly doctors will say with a very flippant and relaxed attitude that xanax is a lot like alcohol all your nerves relax all the signals between nerves calm down your body feels calm your muscles relax does that sound familiar yeah it's the exact same mechanism that alcohol hits so yeah xanax is basically alcohol in a tablet i know that they're doing this because they're trying to make something completely unknown seem comprehensible to people in the audience by comparing it to something they're familiar with the problem is many people are very likely to respond to this line of argumentation by thinking oh well um alcohol is no problem at all i'm familiar with alcohol i'm not afraid of lapsing into alcoholism myself or you know yeah okay fine it's like oh it's like alcohol then it's no big deal then it's safe then it's normal then it's fine they're not thinking in terms of an allegory about the effects on the nervous system they're not thinking that from maybe from this doctor's perspective alcohol is the drug with the highest body count in the united states of america alcohol kills more people than heroin in most most western countries at least you know they may not be thinking that from the doctor's perspective alcohol might be one of the most addictive habit-forming drugs or they may be thinking that like alcohol when you go through withdrawal after you've developed tolerance or addiction you have delirium tremends you have uh go into physiological shock you're actually in danger of dying what the doctor means but the comparison to alcohol may be something very troubling and very worrying indeed but people in the audience are really going to find this kind of reassuring to have this drug brought down to this easy to relate to familiar level and of course this is done with allegories to marijuana even more with people presuming that marijuana represents something safe or at least that it's a drug where all of the negative consequences are are easily manageable now i rely on allegories of this kind in politics and history all the time if i'm talking to someone who really knows nothing about buddhism i can start to discuss and describe buddhism in terms of its similarities to catholicism but pretty soon in that conversation once i've explained a little bit about what buddhism is a religion is like and what it's about and so on at some point we have to move past the allegory we have to discard it entirely and say you know what before i told you that buddhism historically is similar to catholicism and this isn't this way but you know what the truth is it's something profoundly alien profoundly new very difficult for you to understand or relate to no offense um really it's something you shouldn't feel familiar with or that you should regard as safe uh this is something you should actually you're actually quite right to feel apprehensive about and alienated from because you you really don't know the first thing about buddhism then we can take the next step in the conversation i can i can maybe tell you the first and the second thing also there is a sense both in terms of the objective chemical science and in terms of the subjective experience of what these drugs are like there is a sense in which you would really be well advised to forget any comparison any allegory comparing xanax to alcohol and you should regard it with great trepidation as something quite terrifying exotic and strange now i emphasize here there's both an objective and a subjective side to the story i've heard many youtubers say that they find the effects of cocaine and the commonly prescribed methamphetamine adderall to be identical now we can get into the chemistry of what what objectively are the differences between adderall and cocaine but then it might also be worth explaining why it is for them subjectively it seemed identical the high produced by cocaine seemed exactly the same as the high produced by adderall uh i have heard people say here on youtube that they found prescription adderall to have exactly the same feeling exactly the same effect as buying methamphetamine on the street as an illegal party drug again interesting subjectively and i think we could find some people who are experienced drug users who would say no no no for them subjectively these were two very different things that these were three or four very different things or experiences for them in terms of how it felt in terms of how it exp how it affected them maybe also even specific things like how it disrupted their sleep how it disrupted their work life how it disrupted their sex life so with all these caveats having been stated i'd like to challenge you in the audience to ask yourselves why is it that marijuana is not referred to as a sedative why is it that we think of this drug as something profoundly different from an addiction to sleeping pills why is it that we think of marijuana as something profoundly different from an addiction to painkillers now the allegory is always going to be incomplete it's always going to be in part instructive and in part misleading but scientifically speaking objectively part of the effect of marijuana on your brain is sedative abstract cannabis or marijuana became legal for recreational use in colorado in 2012 and this legislation has created both challenges and opportunities in medicine more patients are using cannabis and more patients are now willing to admit cannabis use than in the past so this increases the likelihood that they will be forthcoming about drug use during medical questioning cannabis use may have implications during medical care including procedural sedation some of you might know if you have built up a tolerance to painkillers before you go in to have surgery you could have the horrifying experience of going through surgery without sedation without relief from pain because your body was already accustomed to such a high dose of that type of drug on a daily basis so it's important to be honest with your doctors and the doctors may not know how to sedate you or how to provide you with anesthesia if that is the case so the inquiry that this medical journal article is pursuing is the question of whether or not marijuana use produces a similar tolerance to sedatives to sedation can you guess can you guess what the answer is medical records from 250 patients were reviewed and researchers found that compared with people who did not regularly use cannabis people who regularly use cannabis required an amount of sedation for endoscopic procedures that was significantly higher it's very difficult to challenge the glamorization of drug use in our culture and in our times i know better than anyone i know just as well as you that by presenting drugs as something dangerous and exciting and edgy you could end up glamorizing them all the more even when you're really trying to warn people this can ruin your life marijuana is in some ways the most storied drug in our culture right now and if you doubt that keep in mind bob marley was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century i think snoop dogg not far behind how many songs were on the radio even when the drug was illegal you know during my youth constantly reiterating catchphrase smoke weed every day constantly glamorizing this as something rebellious as something liberating and in many many cases drug is believed to even have kind of profound philosophical significance in people's lives i've recently criticized one of the leaders of black lives matter for taking that position wouldn't it be in some ways useful if we could bring marijuana down to earth by classifying it as and insisting on it being not recreational [Laughter] not even a hallucinogen because for most people it isn't not psychedelic now there's a storied word what if we could start to educate the public about marijuana addiction as something that really is analogous to getting hooked on sedatives getting hooked on sleeping pills getting hooked on painkillers and as with all of these other forms of addiction the telltale sign is that you build up tolerance you need more and more of a dose in order to even get the same response the second biggest problem with weed for me was motivation i struggled with mental illness i don't know if we talked about it in this video if you're new but those of you who know me yeah you know that i struggle with mental illness and depression and motivation is like a huge thing for me overall i don't really want to live i don't really want to do things i still had motivation but the only motivation i had was just to get high like i wouldn't even mind if i get the munchies and like i was starving and i didn't eat for two days i was just like i can't be [ __ ] i just want to sit here on my hammock which is not mine even i just want to sit on the hammock in the sun and get more high i'm not a man of moderation only the best i can live i'll experience every moment i've done drugs man i used to sell drugs i know what's all about it's [ __ ] it's fake it's not real this shit's [ __ ] real man health is real it's never enough it was never ever ever ever enough like i never reached that balance i was never happy enough with how i felt i always wanted more and it just [ __ ] ruined me and a lot of people say weed is not a gateway drug and i can't say for everyone how it is but i know that for me whenever i feel like it's not enough i always think about going back to value those of you who have not been following me since like thailand wouldn't necessarily know but i've had quite a serious addiction to valium a lot of people get off street drugs and then go to [ __ ] prescription legal drugs and i don't think it's better because you're still a [ __ ] drug user you're still an addict you're not sober yet and i'm not gonna lie i hoard pills this is so [ __ ] up i still hoard pills and um i have quite a stash of valium being addicted to drugs and i laugh because it's such an easy thing to get out of to stop me just stop because the more drugs you do the more it becomes a habit and a difference between a habit an addiction a habit is you know it's bad for you and you can stop all right an addiction is you know it's bad you just can't stop you're just like it's roller coaster out of control you see how i got off [ __ ] speed meth marijuana lsd saw the recreational street drugs and even prescription drugs like you know some of the prescription you know painkillers and stims i mean ritual and exceptional methylphenidate these things i feel are as detrimental to your health to your sanity as the street drugs even more so because they're legal and i don't want to make this video about my valium addiction this is not about that i just wanted to mention that i nearly lost my life to my addiction and every time that i smoke weed and i get this tolerance then i i think what else can i do how can i mix this with other things how can i maximize this feeling how can i you know get the next hit get the next trip get the next i don't know and like even then it's not enough it's never enough [ __ ] drugs man like i've done eminence i can speak from experience and they [ __ ] up people's lives they [ __ ] up people's mood coffee's a drug it's as bad as speed it's as bad as meth 99 as bad as meth um because it's legal and we give it to kids and it keeps people up and okay people that break into homes for coffee i get that but it's it's [ __ ] as bad as men so if you do use any stimulants coffee tea whatever use them rarely sparingly not every week even ideally only even every month and just learn how to be to get [ __ ] done naturally all right learn how to do it naturally and that's how you get off drugs man is you just decide man you just [ __ ] decide you change your identity you identify yourself as someone who's clean lean with clean blood sharp minds [ __ ] the haters [ __ ] the dealers [ __ ] society who says have this have that it's your call man it's your body one shot drug free for life i have quit as i've said many times and i always came back to it because like the yucky black hole in my soul is like never satisfied it's a journey i guess this has been such a huge part of my life and i guess it still is in a way i do want to clarify though that i'm not against weed and honestly i'm not even necessarily against like harder drugs it's just that i feel like everyone should have the ability to choose what they want to do with their lives be it like doing drugs or even killing ourselves like i think i do support that i don't really want to live like doing drugs or even killing ourselves like i think i do support that however i do want to show you guys that other possibilities do exist i mean killing yourself is not the only option i'm negative and i'm dark and i want to do bad stuff i want i want to hang out my this neighborhood alone that's dangerous hanging out in this neighborhood alone right here right he wants to kill everything he wants to kill me too i hate myself i'm trying to kill myself i hate myself a lot i've been um i haven't drank uh took drugs in six days and for me that's a miracle i've been lying to everybody else to think i was sober but i'm not it's my sixth day i'm never gonna use again [Applause]