Alcohol?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Banana: “I know people have this “as long as you don’t drive, getting drunk doesn’t hurt anyone but yourself” attitude. But if “getting drunk” happens frequently, it tears apart families and ruins jobs and relationships”</p>

<p>I read a story written by a guy in his twenties who graduated from a top 50 college in the Northeast. He went to the NJ shore to party with friends, and got so trashed that he wisely decided not to drive. He put his keys on the counter and passed out on the couch. He was, at the time of the article, serving a very long sentance in prison for vehicular manslaughter. He has no memory of what happened after passing out - he must have blacked out. Apparently he got up, grabbed the keys of his car, and ended up driving north in the southbound lane of the New Jersey Turnpike. He killed a family that night.</p>

<p>It is impossible for us to know for sure before we have ever taken our first drink whether or not we are alcoholics. If we are able to drink, and drink way too much, we cannot know in advance if we might do something really stupid in a blackout situation. What this means to me is that while a nice glass of wine is great with dinner (I certainly enjoy it), alcohol needs to be taken very seriously by all of us. We all need to be very sober in our decision-making about any mood-altering substances.</p>

<p>BTW, Banana - God Bless you in your recovery! It is so amazing to hear from young people who are opn-minded and honest in recognizing that they have inherited the disease. I wish you the brightest future imaginable.</p>

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<p>1 of 42 - As I answered the last time you asked that question (find the link I gave you for educational tapes you can order from world-reknowned addiction expert Dr. Ohlms), order the material this time, hopefully watch and learn from it, and then get back to me and we’ll talk further.</p>

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<p>OK, 1of42, here is the link again. Dr, Ohlms can provide information about all of the studies on which he bases his conclusions, and you can decide what you like from there:</p>

<p>[FMS</a> Productions](<a href=“http://www.fmsproductions.com/Catalog/DavidOhlms/OhlmsBioList.php]FMS”>http://www.fmsproductions.com/Catalog/DavidOhlms/OhlmsBioList.php)</p>

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<p>spideygirl, last time you sent that, I told you my objections to it: that a single person’s opinions (even if that man is a doctor who purports to have specialized in addiction for a long time) are not particularly convincing; that Ohlms has not published any peer-reviewed articles i reputable journals, from what I can tell, and that none of the information is available publicly.</p>

<p>If you want to provide me with *reliable<a href=“peer-reviewed,%20statistically%20rigorous,%20published%20and%20cited%20material%20that%20I%20can%20somehow%20access%20without%20mail-ordering%20a%20bunch%20of%20dumb%20videos”>/I</a>, I will gladly look at all of the material carefully. But I’m not going to mail-order a bunch of videos of unknown quality from a doctor of unknown qualifications at expense to myself. Even if I did, the simple fact that the videos still fail to meet the test of rigorous academic material means you have still failed to properly back up your assertions.</p>

<p>Tell me: does anyone other than your Dr. Ohlms claim these things about marijuana? If so, I’d love to see some other evidence. If not, I find it disappointing that you have not yet learned that a single person’s opinion does not qualify as fact, and especially does not qualify when that opinion is not backed up by other scholarly research. However, it does not surprise me that you fail to realize this, since you have your pre-determined opinions about marijuana, and you have cherry picked the only person to make assertions that dovetail with yours as the “reliable source”, when in fact he is nothing of the sort in the context of this debate.</p>

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<p>Saw your second post. Thank you for the link. But if you really expect me to spend $40 per tape for material of entirely unknown quality (and I suspect the quality is low, given that one of his videos is about marijuana being a gateway drug, something already disproved in scholarly research), I don’t really know what to say.</p>

<p>Have you seen/do you own the videos yourself? If so, I would assume you have the sources that they cite on hand, and can provide them. Otherwise, are you simply using second-hand knowledge of Ohlms’s message and assuming that he has good reasons for it? If so, your factual basis for this argument is extremely tenuous.</p>

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<p>1of42, nice deflection. You have stated previously that you have a stack of research on your desk on this topic, so your are obviously very motivated to learn, right? The $4o is something you can cover if that is the case. If you are open-minded, there is nothing to be afraid of. Good luck.</p>

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<p>Well this is an epic debate, but let me just chip in my own personal experience. (add a lil humor to this thread too to lighten up the mood)</p>

<p>My family’s pretty radical and weird, so when I was a kid they used to have me and my neice (who strangely enough is 1 year older than me) engage in “drinking contest” to see how fast we could drink a glass of wine.</p>

<p>Did the trick haha. Disgusted by the waste of alcohol for life xD</p>

<p>I’ll have a glass or two at some high class social event, but as for those beerfests in college? nawww, not going there :P</p>

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<p>It’s not a deflection. I don’t have $40/tape to spend on material of unknown quality. I just don’t. Sorry, maybe you do, but being in college and not exactly rolling in money I can’t afford that. I’m not going to spend the $240 that it would take to watch all of his movies - because I can’t afford it.</p>

<p>This is not an issue of being open-minded. If I had a million dollars in the bank, I’d certainly drop $240 on proving Ohlms’s assertions wrong. But I don’t. If you’d like to pay for them, I’d certainly be willing to watch them and debate the points made.</p>

<p>But why would I go spend money I don’t have on videos like that when the library at my university is filled with scholarly research, books full of citations, and the like, all for free?</p>

<p>That stack of research is still sitting on my desk. But it’s sitting there because it was available to me. In the same vein, I’ve spent the last half hour reading through a transcript from a Congressional subcommittee surround marijuana. I’m highly motivated about this issue.</p>

<p>You cannot seriously expect me to throw down that much money to mail-order a bunch of videos simply to win an Internet debate, can you? Seriously? My inability to do so is not a deflection. It’s a fact.</p>

<p>On the subject of deflections, though, here’s one: you never answered my question. Have you seen the videos you keep pointing me to? Do you own them? Do you actually know whether or not they cite any scholarly sources?</p>

<p>Or are you operating on assumptions of their quality?</p>

<p>Really, spideygirl, this debate is ridiculous. I have provided and can provide multiple scholarly research papers refuting your claims; books, articles, testimony from experts, congressional transcripts, all kinds of high-quality research material to back up my case. The extent of your evidence is a bunch of mail order videos that it is becoming apparent you haven’t even watched. You see why it’s tough for me to take your argument seriously?</p>

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<p>Virtually anything we ingest may have some very slight negative potential health impacts–but the positive is greater than the negative. This is the case with light drinking. I always love the way people state something might ioncrease the chances of ------. Increase it from what to what>> I in 100,000,000 to 2 in 100,000,000. This is a doubling of risk but both numbers are so small I would not worry about it.</p>

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<p>1of42 - “Have you seen the videos you keep pointing me to? Do you own them? Do you actually know whether or not they cite any scholarly sources?..Or are you operating on assumptions of their quality?”</p>

<p>Yes, no,yes and yes they do, no (I know they are high quality, and the fact that they are used by the most prestigious addiction treatment centers around the world backs up my personal opinion).</p>

<p>There is a good chance that if you call Carrier or Summit Oaks (both close to Princeton), they will both have Dr. Ohlms’ material and allow you to watch it for free. Don’t get upset over this - I am offering you some GOOD stuff. Take it. Then get back to me and we’ll talk.</p>

<p>I was looking for a free summary of Ohms’ work online which might include the many studies on which he bases his conclusions, but found none. Apparently, he can charge a lot for his tapes because treatment centers all over the world (experts on these matters, 1of42) buy them.</p>

<p>Here is a quick link which might help you in the mean time:</p>

<p>[Neuroimaging</a> of marijuana smokers during inhibitor…[Brain Res Cogn Brain Res. 2005] - PubMed Result](<a href=“http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=15795138&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google]Neuroimaging”>http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=15795138&cmd=showdetailview&indexed=google)</p>

<p>It addresses impairment in decision making in regular pot smokers. It took a second to find. </p>

<p>The bottom line is, if we want to we can just discount what we don’t want to see.</p>

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<p>I’ll give those two places a call when I’m back at college. However, for the moment, you’ve still failed to provide scholarly sources for most of your claims (note that I’m not talking about the last - that was excellent, but it merely shows that marijuana effects the brain, which I don’t dispute). Sources for your claims about marijuana impairing actions for 48 hours, and that the fat solubility of THC results in long term impairment, specifically.</p>

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<p>One of the other interesting things that has developed out of this long and drawn out dicussion is the way people throw lots of facts around. Some made the excellent comment earlier that it’s hard for parents to BS their way through tough situations with scare tatics and bogus claims as today’s generation is smart enough (and has the resources) to find out what the facts are on their own. </p>

<p>We’ve seen a lot of bogus claims posts here (the less than a glass of wine a day will give you cancer was one of my favorites). As a general rule of thumb, if studies and claims aren’t published in respected peer reviewed journals then they’re generally not worth the paper they’re printed on. If people launch silly websites to post their ‘research’ and ‘thoughts’ on such subjects then its almost always because it wouldn’t pass a peer review (generally because the available evidence dosen’t support the conclusions). Just because someone has a PhD or MD dosen’t mean that everything they say is true or accurate. Peer reviewed mean that the study, its techniques, results and logic were all closely reviewed by a group of independent (usually anonymous) experts in the field who then sign off on it saying that the research is of good quality and there is no reason to suspect that there’s anything wrong or illogical about the results and dicussion that follows. </p>

<p>Anyone can run a website and post whatever they want without question… this is both one of the best and worst things about the internet. My point is that today’s generation has the resources available to look into all these thinsg themselves and (hopefully) has an education that taught them how to tell the difference between a website full of crap and a proper bit of scholarly research. With todays ‘youth’ and ‘young adults’ (especially those with a college education) bogus claims have zero impact (and will likely just get you written off as some wacko who dosen’t know what they’re talking about).</p>

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<p>1of42 -</p>

<p>LOL. Please refer to previous posts for clarity.</p>

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<p>To Rocketman08 and anyone else who is interested in this topic -</p>

<p>Dr. Ohlms is the most “peer reviewed” person in the treatment industry, and that is why I suggested him. Ohlms is the guy that doctors and counselors look to for advice across the globe. He bases his recommendations for treatment on well respected studies. I am not in that industry, nor am I a student of it (1of42 describes himself as such). I can only defer to the pros. </p>

<p>Targeting people like Ohlms (two others are Tammy Bell and Gorski) will provide a roadmap to scholarly articles and studies. Rather than rely on Google and end up reading from “Stoner Quarterly” or whatever pro-weed propaganda is out there, look to the leaders world-wide in addiction medicine, therapy, and counseling, and research the articles and studies they base their decisions on. You can find them in the backs of books, and at the end of videos, BTW. That is a very economical way (time-wise) to get good information on this topic.</p>

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<p>spideygirl: Let’s be honest here, seriously. The level of anti-weed propaganda out there today (and over the last century) is so much higher than the level of pro-weed propaganda that it’s ridiculous.</p>

<p>Now, a quick word about addiction experts: the 3 people you have mentioned, I have not been able to find in Wikipedia, and have had extreme difficulty finding reference to elsewhere (couldn’t find much about Ohlms until you linked to him, have found only a single link on Google to Tammy Bell, and still can’t find Gorski). So, if they’re as prominent as you say they are (and you’re not intimately familiar with them), why are they not more widely known about?</p>

<p>In today’s age of open access to information, if significant info about a person cannot be found online, it generally means that they are not important. I’m not going to question you or make such assertions about these 3, yet, since I have not finished researching them. But in my research related to marijuana, their names never came up. Looking at Ohlms, I can only assume that they are all addiction experts, which dovetails with your obsession about marijuana addiction. Working on that assumption, I do not see why their opinions about anything other than addiction are important, as their work has to do solely with addiction.</p>

<p>Either way, though, the end result of what I’m saying is this:</p>

<p>I have extensively sought out studies and other scholarly work related to marijuana. Watching Ohlms’s videos (if I can find them), and so forth will give me more information, I am sure. However, here is my issue: Ohlms must have, I assume, based his results on basic research created by others (or by him). This research, if it is peer-reviewed (and reliable) will be accessible on public databases, most of which I can access through the Princeton library. The fact that you have as of yet failed to provide me with any basic research to back up your assertions makes me highly suspect.</p>

<p>In effect, I’m issuing you a challenge. Stop omitting data. So far, you have ignored every statistical study I’ve posted showing evidence that supports conclusions about marijuana’s lack of impairment 48 hours after ingestion (studies conducted by the government, no less), health effects, etc. Instead, you continue to point me to a single set of videos from some addiction psychiatrist.</p>

<p>Is that really all you have? Really? Did you seriously expect to engage in this debate based on no more than a single set of videos from one addiction psychiatrist? That means one of 2 things: you don’t have any other sources (unfortunate for your argument), or you haven’t looked (also unfortunate for your argument). Which is it?</p>

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<p>[Approaches</a> to Drug Abuse Counseling](<a href=“http://www.nida.nih.gov/ADAC/ADAC4.html]Approaches”>http://www.nida.nih.gov/ADAC/ADAC4.html)
1 of 42
the above is a link to the National Institute on Drug Addiction. The Cenaps program was created by Terry Gorski</p>

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<p>Thanks very much, mom60.</p>

<p>Couldn’t figure out what his name was.</p>

<p>Good to read some stuff about Gorski; it confirms my assumption that spideygirl was referencing solely addiction specialists, whose expertise ends once we approach issues of health effects and impairment.</p>

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<p>1of42: “it confirms my assumption that spideygirl was referencing solely addiction specialists, whose expertise ends once we approach issues of health effects and impairment.”</p>

<p>Wow.</p>

<p>You think that top addiction experts don’t base their treatment decisions on the very best studies available? Addiction experts don’t know about “issues of health affects and impairments”?</p>

<p>ROFL!!!</p>

<p>Here is some help for the rest of your questions: Go back to my previous posts for instructions on how to find the papers and studies relied on for the work of the experts I mentioned. Do not rely on Wikipedia (for anything - trust me on this). Get the lists in the back of books. Go to Amazon for the names of books. Go to Priceton’s library or the local public library to take them out for free.</p>

<p>Am I really instructing a Princeton student on how to locate such things?</p>

<p>If this topic is your passion, go to it 1of42. </p>

<p>I am not obsessed with marijuana addiction, BTW, but it would be wrong of me to sit on my hands while potentially harmful misinformation is posted about drugs on this site. It is a fact that in the past few years the number of people entering treatment centers for addiction to pot has gone through the roof. This would have been unheard of in my generation. Much of the weed grown at home has been made stronger and stronger, and a lot of what comes in from other countries is cut with cocaine or heroin so it can compete. Marijuana is now considered a hard drug by addiction experts. </p>

<p>The “obsession” with marijuana that you mention is happening all across the globe as more and more kids are have their lives ruined by it. I am not saying that decent people don’t light up once in a while without much harm to themselves or others, but that the story of marijuana has changed and the truth needs to be told. I think that anyone who is so unnerved by what I shared needs to seriously wonder why that is the case.</p>

<p>“That means one of 2 things: you don’t have any other sources (unfortunate for your argument), or you haven’t looked (also unfortunate for your argument). Which is it?”</p>

<p>You haven’t set up a proper argument. It does not mean “one of two things”. Think critically - there are many more possibilities (just as there are other places to look than Google and Wikipedia).</p>

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<p>spideygirl: The reason I keep doubting you is because I extensively researched much of the basic research when I was going through all that I could find the first time around.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>That could definitely be true, but would make sense, as more and more people are now using it. It is a tautology to say that as more people use a substance, even when it is not very addictive, more people will get addicted. Is this really surprising?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>…wow. I don’t even know what to say to this, since it is so incredibly wrong.</p>

<p>First: yes, some strains of marijuana have been bred to have higher THC content. These are generally found in coffee shops in Amsterdam, or in government medical marijuana cannabis clubs, where breeders spend a great deal of time breeding more potent and pure strains of marijuana. However, this is not a different situation from the '60s and '70s, when potent thai sticks were widely available, and when the sinsemilla technique of marijuana cultivation was already advanced (it has been for centuries, especially in India).</p>

<p>Second: Cut with heroin or cocaine? Are you serious?</p>

<p>Do you understand what a ridiculous assertion that is? Cocaine and heroin are both white powders. You can’t “cut” a plant with a powder. Cutting refers to the process of scamming buyers buy impurifying the product, creating a lower-concentration drug. This is done with cocaine and other powdered drugs widely, since to the eye baking soda, for example, is indistinguishable from coke. But it doesn’t work with marijuana - seriously, you think no one’s going to notice white powder all of their weed? Give me a break.</p>

<p>More importantly, cutting is used to decrease the per-unit worth of a drug, and thus make the dealer higher profits. Cutting marijuana with heroin or coke, both of which are far more expensive, makes absolutely no sense. None.</p>

<p>This is not to say that marijuana is never combined with coke. It is, sometimes. It’s called splitting. But it’s done by smokers on their own before they smoke, not by dealers. And it’s rarely done with heroin, because heroin is a very tough drug to find, very expensive, very hard to smoke (the best delivery method is injection, followed by vaporization - chasing the dragon) and has a high that combines in a very crappy way with marijuana’s.</p>

<p>Do you see why I’m having trouble with your arguments yet? You’re making specious claims that show you know very little about the realities of marijuana as a drug, and worse, you have cited none of your claims, except to point to a set of videos whose content you know I cannot verify right now. It’s not a valid way to carry out an argument, and it’s very unfortunate that you don’t see this.</p>

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<p>My parents have always been lax with my brother and I. They let us do what we want because they know we’ll make responsible decisions. I remember being four years old drinking champagne with my mother for new years or with dinner. Now, I’m seventeen and she makes margaritas and lemon drops for the two of us every Friday. Last night was New Years Eve and I drank beer and champagne with my mom and her friends. I see no problem, because we never drive after drinking even one beer, and there’s no “mystery” surrounding alcohol so we’re less likely to get wasted at parties. Not allowing your son to drink a glass of wine is rather prudish as he has obviously consumed alcohol previously.</p>