#it's just about getting users psychologically addicted

[horrorsequel]

psychology is such a crazy field just because of how often psychologists have been wrong just with regards to me + ppl i know directly and it had catastrophic results. like medical doctors have also been wrong sometimes and messed up and bad things happened but i can also at least point out times when they were correct/helped. psychologists/tangential psychological professionals r like 1 for 999 in my personal experience

[nyhti]

Batman Rogues Tumblr AU:

Jervis:

-Joined Tumblr in 2009, has had the same blog all this time -Has a big follower count, but most of those blogs have long since been abandoned -Is very active -No sideblogs, everything from kink to cute animal pics is on the same blog -Has witnessed or been involved in every single major event in this site's history -Attended Dashcon (he was the one who pissed in the ball pit) -Involved in some sort of petty drama on a daily basis -Has a 20km long post of just going back and fort arguing with some random user. This argument started in 2016 and neither remembers what it even was about. He gets worried if the other person hasn't responded in a while. -Gets at least 3 callout posts a week. Always makes sure to reblog them and adds an essay underneath defending himself no matter if the callout post was about liking the wrong pony in MLP or murdering someone in cold blood. -Kinnie drama the likes of which you've never seen before -And in general just discord you never thought anyone could ever come up with -At this point you wonder if he's even having fun on this site, but he just keeps on reblogging bunny pics like it's nothing -Has a Wacom drawing tablet

Jonathan:

-Joined in 2011 after Jervis introduced him to the site -Has some really tacky theme he hasn't changed since 2013 -About a couple hundred followers, but they are very devoted. Lots of mutuals -579257405547 blurry photos of Nightmare -Post fics and essays on various topics he's been thinking about lately -Of course reblogs every single spoopy art piece he finds -Definitely does fic request -The most fucked up smut you've ever read -Like smut you don't even know is smut, because it's just that confusing -Most of his post don't get past 50 notes, but he has made a couple of post, mainly of the: ”Here's how you write x, y and z...” and ”As a Professor of Psychology, I can tell you...” variety, that have about 10 000 notes -Has a chill time on Tumblr -Only uses Tumblr on desktop. Has never even seen the app. -Completely unironically reblogs every cool skeleton on a motorcycle pic

Joker:

-Joined in 2013 -The only reason he joined is because he once came across a horny drawing of Batman and searching for the artist led him to Tumblr. -Starts writing a post, gets distracted mid way though and starts doing something else. Comes back to Tumblr 3 hours later, notices he was making a post, doesn't even bother rereading it despite not remembering what it was about and just hits posts. His blog is full of completely incomprehensible post that just stop mid way through -Makes a couple post that get so popular they are still making rounds today. They will always have additions like: ”I still can't believe this post was made by the fucking Joker” and ”Joker had a Tumblr?!” -Forgot his password a month after joining and never visited the site again. Barely remembers he ever had an account -Those true crime people still harvest his 20-post-pathetic-excuse-for-a-blog-blog for content to this day all the while completely ignoring all the rogues with still active (and better) blogs. They are saying things like: ”Ooohhhh, it's like a deep dive into his twisted mind :00” and are always trying to find some hidden symbolism and meaning behind all his ”just farted so loud it scared the neighbor's cat” kinda posts.

Eddie:

-Joined in 2011 -759752974576 sideblogs, 55425720752174838+1 sockpuppet accounts -When he's really low he'll post a poll like: ”Be honest, am I cute? Yes/No” and then has his 55425720752174838+1 sockpuppet accounts hit ”Yes” and somehow ”No” still wins. He deletes the whole post. -Posts the most obvious ”and everybody clapped” Tumblr fake stories you've seen. When he gets called out, he pretends you were supposed to figure out they were fake -Has an awful time on Tumblr, but can't delete, because he's addicted to getting notes -Always falls for every one of those post where OP pretends to be stupid on purpose (i.e. smooth sharks, putting fingers in guns etc.) -Posts riddles everyday that even his biggest haters cannot help but try and solve -Sends himself hatemail so he can post the witty comeback he just came up with. Forgot to hit anon once and people just won't let it go

Hugo:

-Banned for posting cock :/

[transmutationisms]

Hello so you said something about being pro-drug and I’m not 100% sure what you meant by it. I am absolutely for the decriminalization of all drugs ever. But like. Are you pro-using? Not that I’m anti users at all but i wouldn’t say I’m pro-using… just like based on my own experiences and my loved ones experiences and like what very hard drugs do to your body and mind and how they can like. Kill you. I 🩷 users and addicts and i don’t think criminalizing anything helps but… I’m prob misinterpreting your post so this may be a stupid question but I’ve seen all types of opinions on here so idk.

sarcastic answer, it's exactly this type of reaction that makes me think a truly pro-drugs stance is what communism needs today

less sarcastic answer, if drugs are the thing that makes someone's life tolerable and livable and even pleasurable then it would be uh, pretty fucking hypocritical of me to take issue with them using

even less sarcastic answer, you are overestimating the extent to which the danger of even "very hard drugs" (define that) comes from the drugs themselves rather than from the conditions of use: insecure supply driving desperation and making overdose more likely; black market making overdose more likely; intolerable conditions of living making using more necessary; &c. i can't speak to your life or loved ones but in my life i have observed and engaged in many different patterns of substance use, ranging from 'casually & occasionally using substances w high addiction potential' to 'intensely and compulsively using substances w much lower addiction potential' and everything in between. you are also jumping from "drugs" straight to "very hard drugs" (again, define that). drugs is an inclusive category: you need to be thinking here of substances ranging from heroin to caffeine to ibuprofen to xanax to ayahuasca to surgical anaesthetic cocktails.

really dead serious answer, yes, drugs can be dangerous. so can driving, working, and exercising. drugs can also be immensely beneficial, and that goes for drug use that's 'purely recreational' and pleasurable. as a matter of basic self-determination and autonomy, yes, i will defend people's right to get high for any reason they choose. as a matter of basic prison abolition politics i will defend that right twice over. i will also defend needle exchanges, social (not state) support systems, and the communist project of making the world a just and tolerable place to live in. but humans have enjoyed substance use for literally millennia, i personally enjoy substance use, and i don't think fearing it is politically useful or interpersonally helpful. at core, 'drug use' is simply the consumption of a substance that alters a person's psychological or physiological functioning in some way. it's not inherently 'good' or 'bad', morally or from a health perspective. what it is, though, is a common part of human existence, and not one i think can or should be eradicated.

[imbecominggayer]

How To Write Characters With Addiction

From @differentnighttale: "I am curious if you give advice about writing people with addictions for example substance. I have reasons my male MC does it. But how can I describe the addictions the MC has correctly."

In this post we are going to be talking about addiction! From alcoholism, substance abuse, nymphomania, to everything else that can be a possible addiction. This post will be all about making this realistic and complex :)

A) What Are The Benefits?, Make It Convincing

Grab a fucking piece of paper or whatever you have and just write a paragraph from your addict's perspective on the situation. Omit the bad stuff. Make it highly convincing. if you aren't thinking "hmm, understandable" after you've written and read it, you did it wrong.

What do they get out of it?

Why did they like it at first?

Are they calmer, more intensely concentrated, does it take the edge off?

Are they more confident?

Does it ease the sense of being fundamentally wrong or dull some other pain?

Is it fun to do something rebellious?

What made them like this thing so much they tried it again, and again, and again?

B) Think About The Consequences, And Ignore It

Oftentime, at least in my experience, people will continue with a bad habit if it means they don't have to be the one to think about the consequences.

The Consequences For Addiction Include:

Financial. Depending on what your character uses to get their fix and how much they use, they might be spending hundreds a week if they are a particularly aggressive user. People often steal money from their loved ones. Addiction also tends to get people fired. Write a scene where your drunk character gets fired for operating machinery. Have them be a burdenous sponge.

Social. It's common for addicts to lose their loved ones since it often gets to a point where it's impossible to care about these people despite how much you love them. Make love ones leave your character! And don't blame them

Physical. STDs, Overdose, Liver Failure, and a shit ton of other issues from the chronic to the fatal either cause, exacerbate, or are linked with addiction. Recovery can't automatically save your character so don't write that story.

Psychological. Being an addict isn't fun since you get to struggle with points 1, 2, and 3 all at the same time! Write about your character issues. Their lack of control. Their spiralling life.

Write all about your character's suffering. And then have them justify it. Make it convincing.

They need it. It's not their fault that this is the only that helps them! Everyone just doesn't get it. I'm trying to work on it, OK?! It'll all work out! They know that it's wrong but...

My most hated shit is when a character's arc is easy. They struggle with some things like a big dramatic argument with their wife, they cry a bit, and then they learn that "drugs are bad" so everything is fine :D

NO!!! Why don't you write about a friendship that doesn't get mended? A chronic illness they now have to pay huge medicine bills for? A fucked-up rap sheet that they can't escape?

And it's not because we want to punich addicts. It's because it doesn't matter if you care about addicts if you don't care about the messy shit!

It's easy to sympathize with an addict if you make them the most innocent victim who never hurts someone intentionally and who gets rid of the addiction in a second and never struggles with it ever again!

Do the hard shit. Make your readers sympathize with the unsympathetic asshole addict! Addicts aren't always good people! They can be dickbags. And they still deserve resources. Life isn't some kind of karma game where dickbags suffer and good people rise! Everyone deserves to not suffer!

Addiction is ultimately a disease. But it's a disease that can make someone you love into an absolutely unlikeable person. And this is coming from someone with an alcoholic dad <3 He does good things and bad things. I can sympathise with my dad and not let him walk all over me.

C) Withdrawal Is Leaving An Ex, Relapse Is Returning

Addiction is a motherfucker trying to leave. It's basically the equivalent of a clingy ex who keeps contacting you, asking for just one conversation, and the moment you so much as acknowledge them you are fucked.

And suffering the brunt of a clingy ex who won't take the hint tends to cause the same symptoms as withdrawal!

Obviously, withdrawal symptoms depend on what type of ex you have and what age you are and yada yada yada. Research for specificity :)

Withdrawal symptoms can include:

Headaches

Insomnia

Fatigue

Hallucinations

Seizures

Tremors

Cravings

etc.

BE AWARE: Relapses are when someone returns back to their drug if they were going cold turkey or going back to their original dose. Relapses can sometimes result in an overdose due to the fact that the brain has been weened off the substance and is now overwhelmed by the high dose.

Relapses often happen when a person makes the deliberate choice in order to stop these fucking nightmarish symptoms. To use the analogy of a clingy ex, you start talking to them in order to tell them to stop contacting.

Relapses can also happen through being in a setting where the behaviors associated with the addiction such as sex, gambling, drinking, substance use, and all manner of things are normalized.

This setting could be a party, a bar, or even a friend group.

Relapse is made more likely if someone is self-detoxing away from a support group or a doctor.

Writing about withdrawal and relapses are an important part in making a story feel more authentic. Just like with mental illness, people rarely learn the lesson and follow it perfectly. They make mistakes. Slip back into old habits. Do shitty things.

We aren't writing their suffering to punish them. We are doing it because you can't say you care if all you are willing to do is look at the easy parts.

D) Little Tidbits To Keep Track Off

This is the miscellanious things that didn't fit into their own boxes.

Friends!

Do they have friends who also have their addiction? How do they hang out? What are they like? How are their substance using friends different from their non-addict ones?

Slang!

Don't just look up slang for your substance of choice. You'll need to look at some first-hand accounts of addiction. Find an influence who has struggled with substance abuse in the past and see how they talk about it!

Variables!

Remember to keep their geographical location, socioeconomic status, time, and a host of other factors. If your character is a penniless alcoholic then it's unlikely they'll get their hands on some type of expensive gin. They'll probably use rubbing alcohol. Keep the price of your drug in mind.

A character's status will also impact their slang. No one unironically says doobie anymore.

A character's location will also impact how they get their shit and how other characters will react to that addiction.

A character's financial status also impacts how the consequences of their actions impact them. A low-income character wont be able to afford the same medication as a rich addict. They also won't have the same luxury for quality therapy, rehab, programs, time, anything really.

Look At The Addict And The Loved Ones

Try not the skew the reality of addiction to paint the addict as the victim and the loved ones as evil for not being forgiving and tolerant enough.

Keep sympathy for both the addict and the loved ones. Or drop sympathy for both of those characters.

E) RESOURCES

FDA and DEA online databases and drug resources

Social Networking Groups

Medical Journals

Local medical professionals, police, and medical examiners

The US national poison center

[the-creature230307]

do not interact with the user @/sillylittlekittyx3.

i hate to be apart of drama and things like that but as they get more prominent in the community i just want to warn users about them.

Please do not bully this person as they have mental health issues, just block!

i would appreciate if this post was spread around, but you don't have to.

info under the cut, tw: abuse, lying, manipulation.

Since their name is public and it is not their legal name then i will call them by this name.

Currently they are living in my home for reasons I do not wish to disclose.

I have known them for about 4 months and my current boyfriend of one and a half years, Quinn, and i used to be in a polyam relationship. When we were in this relationship, Quinn made me do things with him that i didn't want to do. my mother made a house rule that we can not go into each other's rooms without mom present for our safety. Quinn did not follow this rule. Not only did he not follow this rule but he would also go into my room, and would not leave unless i gave him what he wanted.

Most of the time what he wanted was physical affection. I will not explain fully but I have a history of sexual trauma and he has a history of sexual agression, even so to the point where he was detained for it.

He has been to a psych ward recently due to hurting himself for attention. I have a past of being in and out of mental hospitals due to depression, so when i say he was faking it all, he was faking.

he was choking himself for attention, and i know this because i tried to commit suicide by hanging before. when i tried to commit suicide for many days after i was coughing up blood, i had marks on my neck, and it was sometimes hard to breath and swallow.

He did not have any of these problems as it was not a real attempt, he was not trying to kill himself, he was faking for attention.

He's done other things for attention as well.

A very common pattern i see in his behavior is that any time i struggle with my *real, diagnosed* issues he will mirror me.

When i got overstimulated in a restaurant, he suddenly pretended to be upset and started hurting himself. When i talked to my mom about toe walking and how walking on my heels makes me feel like they're on fire, he quoted me exactly and started toe walking. another example is when i was talking about my migraines he told me that opiods would help with it. when i said no, that pain meds don't help almost always and that i also don't want hard drugs. he fired back at me and claimed that he always had really bad headaches and that he'd want to take opiods for it. he also claimed that his mother has migraines and that he got it from her.

i know for a fact that these things are untrue as he's had many psychological and physical evaluations, and as he is in my mother's custody i know what he has. when i first met him he would always have seizures. after my mom called him out on it and threatened him he stopped and no longer has seizures or "moments of psychosis".

He not only does this with mental illness but also identity.

when i was talking about being a otherkin, he suddenly identified as a therian and more theriotypes kept popping up every day. when i talked about questioning my gender suddenly he was nonbinary. when i talked about my sexual trauma suddenly he had sexual trauma. when i was having an allergic reaction suddenly he had allergic reactions, which, if you have real allergic reactions its pretty easy to tell when someone is faking them. there was no swelling, rash, throwing up, etc. not only this but also the story about his identity changes every time. he's also lied about being intersex and ethnically jewish. his family did a dna test on him, he is not from jewish descent.

on top of all of that, he will not admit things that he actually struggles with. he has drug, alchohol, and sex addictions. when confronted his history is always different. he says that he doesn't have those problems, and he gets agressive both physically and verbally.

another thing to mention is that i posted a video to this account a while ago when my blog was called "wolf-pup" of me wearing a tail, this video has since been deleted. if you check quinn's account you will see this tail, i will use this as proof of me personally knowing quinn.

TLDR; they are manipulative. abusive physically, sexually, and mentally. he in general just isn't a safe person to be around.

[psshaw]

The more time I spend on Spotify, the more it pushes me away from the outer edges of the platform and toward the mushy middle. This is where everyone is serviced the same songs simply because that is what’s popular. In 2018, while the app’s algorithmic autoplay feature was on, I was served the Pavement song “Harness Your Hopes", a wordy and melodic—and by all accounts obscure—B-side from the beloved indie band. The song has over 100 million streams, more than twice as much as their actual college rock hit from the ’90s, “Cut Your Hair", the one Pavement song your average Gen X’er might actually recognize. How did this happen? In 2020, Stereogum investigated the mystery but came up empty-handed from a technological perspective, though the answer seems obvious to me: Whereas many Pavement songs are oblique, rangy, and noisy, “Harness Your Hopes” is among the most pleasant and inoffensive songs in the band’s catalog. It is now, in the altered reality of Spotify, the quintessential Pavement song. When frontman Stephen Malkmus was asked about this anomaly, he sounded blithely defeated: “At this point we take what we can get, even in a debased form. Because what’s left?” The whole “Harness Your Hopes” situation is in part a result of what’s called “cumulative advantage.” It’s the idea that if something—a song, a person, an idea—happens to be slightly more popular than something else at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. (On the other hand, something that does not catch on will usually recede in popularity, regardless of quality.) This is the metric of how most social recommendation algorithms work—on Facebook, the more “likes” an article has, the better odds a user will read it. But when this is applied to what songs are sent to which people, Spotify can engineer its own market of popularity as well as what song defines a band. Popular songs on Spotify are popular within the app because they are what most people are listening to. So from both a behavioral psychology and business perspective, it makes sense for Spotify to assume that you want to listen to what other people are listening to. The chances of the average listener staying on the app longer are much higher if Spotify curates songs that have had a similar effect on people whose taste matches theirs.

[luulapants]

“I don’t use cannabis. How do I write characters that do?”

This long-criminalized psychoactive drug is having a renaissance in the US these days, now legal for recreational use in 21 states. That means there are even more ways that people use cannabis. It’s still illegal in most of the world, and I will be writing primarily about use in the US, where my experience is.

What should I call it?

Ganja. The Devil’s Lettuce. Dank. Mary Jane. There are endless epithets for this drug, and most of them will make you sound absolutely ridiculous unless used as a joke. The use of the Spanish name, marijuana, is traced to efforts to use American xenophobia to demonize it. Cannabis is the technical English term you would hear in, say, a police report. Your average Joe on the street, though, will say either “weed” or “pot.”

Who’s using cannabis?

More people than you might think! Stereotypes once painted this as the drug of racial minorities, hippies, burnouts, and teenagers. These days, anyone you could imagine with a glass of wine at the end of the day could be going home to a cannabis gummy. People use cannabis to deal with chronic health issues like pain, insomnia, or anxiety. Some partake as a rare indulgence, like a cigar on a special occasion. The vast majority of people who use cannabis do so in moderation.

Habitual users are easier to spot - people who make pot a huge part of their lifestyle. They might talk about it incessantly. They might be stoned at inappropriate times or wake ‘n’ bake (getting stoned first thing in the morning and, presumably, staying stoned all day). Cannabis is not physically addictive, but for people self-medicating other issues, it can be psychologically addictive the same way as shopping or gambling. People can become dependent on it to help them fall asleep or regulate their moods, in absence of other coping mechanisms. Just as with alcohol, someone who frequently uses cannabis alone is at higher risk of dependence than someone who uses occasionally or only in social situations.

Where do they get it?

Depending local laws, a person might have access to a medical or recreational cannabis dispensary. Recreational dispensaries can serve anyone who is above the legal age. Medical dispensaries require a prescription. These are really easy to get, and the dispensary may even have someone on site that can diagnose you (with pain or anxiety usually) and write a scrip. In addition to many forms of cannabis, they may sell glassware, vapes, or other paraphernalia.

A dispensary is like any retail location with a couple of differences: Most merchandise will be locked in cases or behind the counter, due to the regulated nature of the substances they’re selling. They may have extra security measures, like a security guard or bulletproof dividers at the counter. This is because dispensaries are cash only and usually have large amounts of cash on location, because conflicts with federal law mean banks can’t work with them.

Not having legal access to a dispensary isn’t the only reason someone might skip it, though. Dispensaries, due to overhead, liability, and very high taxes, are super expensive. If your character can’t get to a dispensary or has strapped finances, they will probably turn to a street dealer.

The local dealer or weed man is never a normal person. If you are depicting a weed man in your story, please keep this in mind. They are weird in different ways, but they’re all weird. You find them through personal connections, and a friend usually has to vouch for you before you can meet them. You might go to their place or they might come to yours. They may have a public meet-up location (park next to me in the McDonald’s parking lot after midnight). If you’re nice and the dealer likes you, they may smoke you out, meaning you smoke a bowl together from their personal stash, free of charge. One stereotype is a dealer who doesn’t have any real friends and makes it difficult to leave the drug deal because he wants to hang out. You then have to tactfully (without offending/losing your dealer) engineer an escape.

Otherwise, you might buy from friends, reimburse them for a buy they made, or throw down some cash when someone shares their weed with you.

Are there different types?

Yes! There are lots of different strains and crossbreeds of cannabis, most with lofty or whimsical names (purple unicorn kush, hazy sunrise sativa). If you go to a dispensary, a sales person will give you extensive “high profiles” of how different strains make you feel: “This one won’t make you as paranoid.” “This one is a very mellow high.”

Honestly, (and I might get assassinated for saying this) most of it is bullshit. Different strains have different chemical compositions and will act differently, but each person’s individual physiology is going to have a much larger impact, so Mr. X and Ms. Y will react more differently to strain A than the difference between how Mr. X reacts to strains A or B. And the dude at the dispensary is entirely unqualified to tell you how a strain will impact you, personally. Your expectation of its effects and how much you consume are also major factors.

One scientifically proven difference is the impact of different THC and CBD content. THC is the psychoactive component and CBD is responsible for more physical effects. The two major variants: Indicas are high in CBD, more sedative, and better at pain reduction and appetite increase. Sativas are high in THC, more stimulating, uplifting, and can help with creativity.

Whether your character knows anything about different strains will more about them than what strains they choose: whether they pay top dollar for designer weed strains or if they’re just buying whatever the local weed man has. The weed man may talk a big game about the strain they’re selling, and some of it might even be true. But usually, their stuff is not top shelf and, aside from low-budget weed aficionados, most of their customers don’t care.

Edibles

Edibles are foods with THC and/or CBD. Edibles might suggest a character who’s more health conscious, not wanting to inhale smoke, or who is more secretive about their cannabis use - edibles won’t leave a smell behind. People who only started using after it was legalized might be comfortable with eating a gummy even if they still have negative criminal connotations with smoking.

THC and CBD are fat-soluble, so edibles are usually made by infusing butter (for baked goods) or oil (for other products) with cannabis. If your character is into cooking, they might make their own weed butter, keep it in the fridge, and bake brownies or cookies with it. Usually, you can’t really taste the difference. If they’re looking for something portable or easy to hide, gummies or other candies are the way to go.

Dosage is important with edibles because it takes longer for your body to process them, so the onset of the high is significantly delayed. Whoever made the edible should tell you how many milligrams are in each item. How much you should eat depends on your body weight, tolerance, and how stoned you want to get. You can’t overdose, but you can have a really, really bad time if you get too high. The classic joke is that someone will be warned not to eat too much, have half an edible, say, “These edibles ain’t shit,” eat the rest, and then when it finally does kick in, they’re on-the-moon high.

Smoking

Let’s clear one thing up: smoking anything is bad for your lungs. That said, people do be smoking weed! Unlike edibles, smoking has near-immediate effects. The whole high doesn’t hit you at once, but someone with a low tolerance will feel something by the time they exhale that first puff. Unlike cigarettes, when a person smokes weed (takes a hit), they are supposed to inhale deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs for as long as they can before exhaling.

Before your character smokes out of anything, the first step is to grind up the weed. The part of the plant which is smoked are the buds: dense, greenish clumps which are ideally sticky to the touch. (Old, shitty weed will be dry and brownish.) These are placed in a grinder, a metal contraption which is twisted to move metal teeth inside and break the buds into small pieces. Ground-up weed will dry up faster, so it’s best not to grind until you’re ready to smoke.

Joints are made by taking a small piece of rolling paper, sprinkling a line of weed into them, then rolling it up. The edge is licked to seal it and both ends twisted closed. They’re smoked like a cigarette. If you add tobacco, it’s called a spliff. Most adults will add in a filter or roach on the mouth-end so the smoke is less harsh, and leaving it out speaks to being un-fussy. Like a burrito, you ideally want a nice, fat joint, but hubris can lead you to an overfilled, falling-apart mess. Joint rolling is a skill developed with practice, so your character’s ability to do so successfully or unsuccessfully will speak to their experience. Joints are cheap and portable, so good for tight budgets or someone on the move.

Blunts are similar to joints but made with tobacco paper - the brown paper that cigars are wrapped in. You can buy tobacco paper on its own, but more commonly, they’re made by buying cheap, sometimes flavored, cigars (like swisher sweets), cutting them open, dumping out the tobacco, and stuffing them full of weed. They’re bigger, so there’s a lot more weed in them, and they’re also wider than a joint, so each hit delivers more cannabis. Blunts are associated with urban Black culture.

Glassware includes pipes, bongs, chillums, bubblers, and other smoking vessels made of glass. These can be simple or beautifully decorative. A simple pipe might cost $10-15. A huge, artistic bong could cost upwards of a thousand. Glass is the most popular material for smoking vessels. All of these consist of a bowl where the weed is packed (”pack a bowl”) connected to an end where your mouth goes. The smoker places their mouth on the end, then holds a lighter flame over the weed in the bowl. They inhale, which draws the flame down into the bowl and causes the weed to smolder (not catch fire). The weed may continue to smolder enough for the next hit or the lighter may need to be used again. When the bowl is all burned, it’s cashed.

A pipe has a simple tube from the bowl and a small hole for the mouth, plus a carb hole on the side of the bowl, which must be covered while inhaling. The carb allows air into the bowl when not smoking, so the weed doesn’t burn too quickly between hits. The longer the stem, the less harsh the hit will be, because the smoke has time to cool off. Pipes are less harsh than joints and blunts but still pretty rough. A pipe can be made of many different materials. DIY pipes carved out of apples are a classic “no other options” stand-in. A chillum is a type of pipe that is straight, with the bowl facing outwards instead of upwards with no carb. A pipe with a very small bowl is called a one-hitter, since you can only fit one hit in it. A character might choose a pipe for portability, ease of hiding, or price.

A bubbler is a water pipe that uses water to cool and condense the smoke. The hole leading from the bowl descends into a small, enclosed compartment of water. The smoke goes into the water, then rises up a second tube to the small hole for the mouth. Like a dry pipe, it has a carb next to the bowl. They’re about two to three times the size of a dry pipe, not as portable, and more expensive. They are much less harsh than a pipe, though, and a good compromise between a pipe and a bong.

A bong is a long tube with a large water vessel at the bottom, usually like an Erlenmeyer flask with a really long neck The top has an opening which fits around the smoker’s mouth. The bowl is not connected but is shaped like a funnel with a stem that fits into a long tube that descends into the water vessel. Instead of a hit, smoking from a bong is called a rip. The smoke goes into the water, where it’s cooled and condensed, then continues to cool as it moves up the long neck to the smoker’s mouth. The bong will fill with smoke as long as there is suction between your mouth and the smoldering bowl. To end the suction, the stem is removed so clean air can replace the smoke as you inhale it. In order to not waste smoke, you should know how much you can inhale compared to the volume of the bong. Bongs can be filled with ice to cool the smoke further or have multiple chambers and twisty necks. They are much easier on the lungs than pipes or bubblers. They are also large, cumbersome, easy to break, hard to hide, and can be expensive. A character that owns a bong is a dedicated weed smoker with their own space where they don’t need to hide it, and the quality or lavishness of the bong will say a lot. Broke characters could improvise a bong by cutting a hole in a plastic bottle and inserting a tin foil funnel. That is janky as hell.

Finally, vaping cannabis took off in popularity at the same time as vaping tobacco. Cannabis oil cartridges are installed into a small vape pen, which can then be smoked somewhat discretely (less smelly than smoke, but it still smells!) with supposedly less damage to the lungs.

Effects

Different people react differently, much of which is based on their physiology and their mental state. Anxious people may become more anxious. Depressed people may become more lethargic. Affectionate people might get cuddly. Here’s some key elements:

Stoned/Faded: Reaction times slow. Memory becomes worse. Time perception is altered. You might repeat the same conversation over and over. The body feels heavy. Everything seems funny. You might become hyperfocused on something very specific or become intensely immersed in a story or TV show. Imagination and creative thinking improve. You may feel sleepy or serene.

Paranoia: Paradoxically, cannabis can create anxious paranoia, usually related to worrying that everyone can tell you’re high. The world looks very different to you, so it’s hard to imagine that you don’t look different to it. Slow reaction times mean that you might not notice someone moving until they already have, which can be startling and make you jump.

The Munchies: Cannabis is useful for people with appetite or nausea issues because it does cause cravings and the urge to eat. It doesn’t cause hunger, just intense craving. The intense focus of being stoned lets you focus on flavors more, which means food usually tastes better.

Baked: This term is synonymous with ‘stoned’ but it also implies some unpleasant side effects, like dry or bloodshot eyes, smoke-rough throats and voices, and an oppressive laziness that makes it hard to do things.

Second Stoning: Happens to some people, not all. Because THC bonds with fats, if you consume fats while you’re stoned, it will become bonded with those fats as they’re stored in your body. Your body fat works on a first-in-last-out system, so if you burn fat the day after toking up, the THC will be released into your system, causing you to get high again.

Is there anything I missed? Let me know!

[folkwayss]

Who are you!

I’m evan, or ev, or van! I’m a senior in college getting my BA in religious studies with a focus on the sociology of religion, arts, and chaplaincy!

religious studies major

he/they - trans butch androgynous lady guy <3

20 yrs on earth

areas of academic interest: sociology, religion, labor, psychology, addiction treatment, and mycology/microbiology.

currently applying to grad schools <3

hobbies: drawing, painting, hiking, bird watching, gaming, and photography.

What does your blog name mean?

I study sociology and love studying the concept of folkways:

“According to the American sociologist William Graham Sumner, who coined the term, folkways are social conventions that are not considered to be of moral significance by members of the group [e.g., customary behaviour for use of the telephone.]” (Britannica, 2024.)

What are your area of interest?

Degree interest is religious studies, art of the civil rights movement and Harlem renaissance, sociology of religion and media, and more! Generally I also take interest in ornithology, mycology, philosophy, labor studies, and more.

What do you think about AI for students, workers, writing, art, etc?

THIS USER HATES AI, GENERATIVE AI, CHAT GPT, AND ALL OTHERS!

Seriously though, I and millions of others don’t work our asses off to carefully craft writing, art, scientific works, analysis, music, etc. for you to generate a little stolen work using our limited power and water on this earth. AI writing your paper is plagiarism, AI art is plagiarism, and AI needs to be highly regulated. If you use AI to generate “works” get out of here.

Do you post about your religion often? Are you accepting of other religions?

I actually do not post about my own religion a lot, and while it is a big part of my life it is part of my life and I don’t expect you to make it part of yours! Whatever you believe in is just as important as my beliefs. I study religion from an open perspective, across cultures and histories, and with great appreciation for all. I am deeply passionate about religious studies and spend 90% of my education studying various religions but primarily Judaism and Indigenous Thought in North, South, and Central America.

[your-subby-creature]

Dear Creature, I'm trying denial for the first time in attempts to test my body but it is so much harder than I thought it was going to be and I've been only going for a few days 😭 I literally had so many ideas to dunk in your inbox to get you riled up, but every time I start writing them I can't focus and end up edging myself </3

Do you have any tips for making it through denial? [Serious and horny answers are both equally appreciated <3]

First of all, I *love* the format of this, I feel like an advice columnist for horny tumblr users! I'll give you some serious suggestions first, and then get to teasing you about it after >:^)

First of all, it seems like you're doing no-orgasm denial while I'm doing no-touch denial, so take everything I'm saying with a grain of salt, as I'm notoriously terrible at edging without cumming and find no-touch easier. That said, something that's been really helpful for me is having a redirect when I want to touch. When I feel my cock get hard or my cunt get wet, my hands instantly go to my nipples, and I play with them to relieve some of the neediness. This mostly works because I have denial conditioning hypnosis files that I listen to that have instilled this behavior as an alternative, and put up mental blocks around touching and cumming for me. I use Miss Lilith's (https://lilithunleashed.net/) files, specifically "Cumming is Temporary, Horny is Forever" and "Dials of Chastity" would be most useful for your situation. If you're open to hypnosis play like this, it's proven *really* helpful for me. The last thing I'll reccomend is to have a goal, or someone to be accountable to for your denial. Personally, I have a half-and-half mix, as I have goals within my anal and throat training that I work towards when I want to touch, and I'm also technically accountable to my followers and those who ask me about my denial. This latter one is only half accountability, as I was not ordered into this denial, and chose the time cap and circumstances for myself, and can make choices along the way as to how to proceed.

The same psychological principle underlies all of these suggestions: it's your mind sending the signals to your body to be horny, and your default somatic response is to edge and rub, but we have to disrupt that process somewhere along the line. Whether it's training, hypno, other goals, or accountability to someone who can boss you around a little, what you do with your mind matters more than what you do with your body.

Now that I've given you the serious tips, we do have to put a little bit of focus on how you were so horny and busy teasing yourself that you couldn't even get around to teasing me! It's endearing actually, you really couldn't stop edging long enough to send an ask? Really, if you're so obsessed with touching yourself, should you really be allowed to touch at all? Maybe try it, I bet after one day of no edging you'll be needy enough that even sending a simple ask feels as good as edging did before. You poor thing, so addicted to edging, maybe we should train you a little better, make you even more denied until getting to edge at all feels like a luxury. Just a thought, though! It might be something we have to work up to, I wonder if you're even edging right now! That'd be sweet, so worked up by getting simple advice that you can't keep from giving into the horny desperation, can't keep from rubbing. But I don't know, all I know is how to stay good and denied, so your edging isn't something I should be teasing you about. How rude of me!

In all seriousness though, thank you for sending this ask! It was so lovely and cute, and I hope I contributed some meaningful advice. Have fun being denied!

-your Creature

[psychic-refugee]

Here I think antis and trolls can be used interchangeably. They’re really the same beast but given a different name specifically for trolls who hate a specific ship.

I think Jenna said it best, arguing on social media is a war no one can win.

The antis don’t want to win an argument, they want to upset you. They can and will use whatever batshit insane thing that comes to mind in order to do so. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to work.

“First, based on the results of psychopathy and sadism, we understand the internet troll as someone who is callous, lacks a sense of personal responsibility and enjoys causing others harm.

The significance of psychopathy in the results also indicates trolls have an empathy deficit, particularly when it comes to their ability to experience and internalize other people’s emotions.”

“Unfortunately, the psychological profile of an internet troll means you will not get far appealing to their sense of humanity. And don’t just brush off the troll as someone who has low self-worth. Their character is far more complex, which makes managing the behaviour all the more challenging.” https://theconversation.com/new-research-shows-trolls-dont-just-enjoy-hurting-others-they-also-feel-good-about-themselves-145931) (emphasis added)

“Trait psychopathy and sadism were both significant positive predictors of trolling, corroborating results of previous research and providing further evidence for these traits to reliably predict trolling behaviors. The thrill-seeking nature of the individual high on trait psychopathy could enjoy the thrill of causing online social mayhem through trolling. Furthermore, the empathy deficits and deceitful interpersonal style characteristic of trait psychopathy aligns with the deception of trolling and the callous unprovoked attacks on other online users.” High Esteem and Hurting Others Online: Trait Sadism Moderates the Relationship Between Self-Esteem and Internet Trolling | Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/cyber.2019.0652 ) (emphasis added)

These people are addicted to the drama and causing psychological harm. It’s why I think the accusers made their claims in the first place. It’s why everyone who rally arounds them has no interest in seeing both sides, and have no interest in this going to court or going to the police.

What they want is to hurt people, specifically PHW and his fans. It’s why they’re reveling in his humiliation, it’s why they want him fired. They may say they want him jailed or to get justice, but they do not go through any reasonable avenue to see that happen.

Notice how they have such a low threshold for the accusers’ evidence, but hold ours to an impossible standard.

No reasonable person would take the garbage the accusers have proffered as gospel, but then come up with excuse after excuse for the accusers malicious and suspicious behavior.

They’ll call an alleged touch SA, but then try to split hairs when it comes to CSAM. They will see SS with no date, no metadata, no proof of a GC of “minors,” or evidence of any party that happened over a span of a couple years and call that undeniable proof. In addition, they think its reasonable to ask PHW to make a statement and prove his whereabouts spanning several years in order to prove he’s innocent.

None of it makes sense because they don’t care about making sense. They don’t need to make sense in order to meet their goals.

Their ultimate goal is to steal your peace.

So, let the dumbasses be dumbasses.

Go read @heyharoldsboo, @heavenlyvixen, and my fanfiction.

Don’t forget to leave a kudos and review!

Happy Fanfic Friday!  

[transmutationisms]

I feel like this is likely a bat to a hornet's nest topic but I deeply respect your takes and thoughts overall a lot so here goes: I really appreciate that the show frankly goes out of its way to not pathologize its characters and lets the audience sit with them in the context of their own lives. So I'm kind of baffled that so much focus is given to "diagnosing" them in fan discussions, the vast brunt of which Kendall gets. I don't understand how you can watch this show and understand him as someone who's been heavily abused and had his reactions to being abused weaponized against him and come away being like "wow it's so cringe he acts like that, he must have a brain disease and is just too stupid to understand that. every action he takes is because he is manic/depressed/letting the disease manifest. if only he took the good moral Legal drugs that I do instead of the ontologically bad ones that are Illegal and for dirty addicts. hopefully one day he will Get Help and Receive Treatment so he will be more palatable (no whatever he's done up to this point doesn't count because it didn't work which must inherently be due to his own moral failings)." How did a show like this attract so many Reganites??

bat at a hornets' nest yes. yeah i've said before that i dislike diagnosing fictional characters as a general rule. it's tautological ("they do [x] because they have [y], and they have [y] because they do [x]") and abrogates further analysis of their motives or the meanings of their actions. and it's doubly irksome to me with succession, because unlike a lot of tv, i genuinely don't think that it's written within the weltanschauung of dsm neurobio determinism. ie, it's not a show where the answer to "why did he do that?" is ever supposed to be "his brain is just like that"—these actions are supposed to mean something about what the character wants and needs, and the effect of the capitalist milieu on those things. it's psychological, not psychiatric (& of course, psychoanalytic approaches are common in formal literary studies, whereas blunt psychiatric diagnosis is decidedly less so).

with kendall's drug use there are some particularly irritating ways this all plays out. i've been fiddling with my own reading emphasising the context of logan's demands on kendall and the construction of bourgeois masculinity, and have tried to place kendall's drug use as a response to neoliberal control mechanisms à la deleuze or foucault. i could certainly be challenged on elements of this reading, but what i see on this website is generally just an endless slog of very biomedicalised reads that seem to have no awareness of the particular historical and social baggage present in that model. i do agree there's an element of reactionary DARE-esque moralising going on here (stg if i have to read one more post written by someone who, like, has never so much as met a coke user and thinks all drugs instantaneously give you irreversible morally weighted heart damage, lmao), but it's honestly not just that.

i think most of the time when people do this they're not trying to be reactionary or regressive, and often they not only don't believe themselves to be moralising affective distress, but actually think the dsm diagnosis is the way to avoid that type of moralisation. this is essentially the "it's a discrete disease entity, so they have no control over it and can't help it, so it's not their fault" argument. in practice this fails on many levels. for one thing, it often implicitly assumes that 'ending the stigma' requires any kind of mental disability or affective distress to be treated analogously to physical disability or illness, as though those latter are not also consistently stigmatised and moralised—because ableism is actually more complex than that and has to do with the fact that capitalism values people on the basis of the 'use' it can make of them and their bodies, etc etc. it is also, again, a wildly decontextualised understanding of affective distress, the reasons why people use drugs—including in a manner that feels compulsive and out of control—and so forth.

i'll add also that wrt succession, i actually do see a LOT of pathologisation thrown at roman as well, and more than an incidental amount directed at connor, tom, shiv, and logan. which is to say, i don't think this is solely about people's discomfort with addicts. there's a broad tendency among fans, echoing the even broader social tendency, to see medical diagnosis as personally liberatory, and medicine and psychiatry as passing 'objective' judgments that are necessary in order for a person to 'get better.' this is essentially positivism and is very much a status that the medical profession has fought to obtain (in france you can trace certain 18th-century discourses on national decline, aristocratic luxury, and the corrupting influence of the city -> the birth of clinical medicine after the first revolution -> social hygiene and the pathologisation of the parisian urban poor -> the third republic's 'physician-legislators' and the general class status and professionalisation of medicine; i know less about the gory details of the american and british cases simply by dint of what i do professionally).

we tend to forget these histories when talking about science; it presents itself as a set of timeless, incontrovertible truths that are simply waiting to be uncovered, and we have entire industries of science communication and journalism that propagate this view. which is to say, circling back to succession, i don't believe that most people diagnosing and pathologising these characters are trying to be reactionary or are aware that there are reactionary and moralising elements inherently built into these discourses. i think they're largely people who have not been given the tools to see alternatives, like the perspectives dominant in the history and sociology of science, which are very much kept paywalled and inaccessible on purpose because this is profitable for the academe.

this type of popular literary analysis is simply not going to go anywhere as long as this is still the status and the moral resonance of medicine (and psychiatry by extension because it gained its professional independence without sacrificing the appeal to medico-scientific epistemological authority). i don't think succession viewers are any more or less prone to this type of thinking than the general population they exist amongst. i firmly disagree with this attitude, obviously, and like i said, i don't actually think succession is written 'psychiatrically,' which cannot be said for all tv lol. but i more or less expect to encounter this type of deference to medico-psychiatric judgments in 95% of social interactions and contexts, again because of a combination of institutional control of information, other forms of inaccessibility, and physicians' and psychiatrists' advocacy for their own class and professional interests, both historically and ongoing today.

[unohanabbygirl]

‼️‼️‼️‼️Please be warned this topic can be triggering!!! Please read something else if this topic is triggering or upsetting towards anyone‼️‼️‼️.

⛔️⚠️‼️Warning……….Triggering topic……

FMN Discussion…….Sensitive topic………

You gave us a hint that Luke may be using again in the near future and as to what type of narcotics they might be?

While you mentioned that acid won’t be his top choice, I think perhaps milk of the poppy (heroin), thus far it seems like the one drug that he might feel keeps the voices and memories in his head away. The temptation to hit Baela stash of medication is another possibility so opioid addiction another likely one. Your portrayal of Luke’s high is very descriptive and pretty spot on when it comes to individuals who have dealt with addiction or when they feel the need to use again. Most authors I’ve read don’t do a well enough job in taking the reader into the protagonist mind. Glad that you are sensitive about the subject because like many addicts drugs becomes a physical need that the body demands and there is a lot of shame, denial, that comes with it. So Luke’s psychology of how he views himself is tragic but very spot on to how many addicts view themselves which leads to an endless cycle of using again. How Luke’s family deals with the fallout will be the real tick though. Sometimes all the love in the world isn’t enough to save the person from the hole but how he comes out of it is something that I like forward to seeing you develop. This is a great story and one I’m truly invested in on an emotional level because of the difficult topics. It could have easily turned into a modern parody but you’ve taken each character and made them look inside themselves and develop.

Some films that portray addiction realistically, Again very sensitive subject don’t recommend if it can be triggering for some people.

Basketball diaries (Leonardo decaprio)

Requiem for a Dream

Traffic (Michael Douglas)

Candy (2006)

Rush (1991)

Gia (1998)

Permanent midnight (1998)

Rachel Getting Married

Trainspotting

Thirteen

28 Days

Euphoria (TV series)

Apologies again if this subject is heavy or hard for anyone.

I will never tire of hearing that i’ve been able to give justice when it comes to such serious topics and that this story hasn’t branched off into something that doesn’t handle these issues as well as it should,

I’ve read so many different perspectives through forums from current users and those who’ve been sober for x amount of time, watched interviews, and dived through articles to make sure everything is actually realistic. The way someone feels when they’re high both physically and mentally, how their addiction went unnoticed by loved ones for so long, and even how certain people in their lives reacted when the truth came out are the most important details to get right. Addiction is real, sex crimes are real, and the feelings of worthlessness so many people have to battle on a day to day are important to delve into.

Luke’s drug of choice is poppy for multitude of reasons, one being that it’s the most addictive among them all while the second is because Owen introduced him to it in the first place. It serves as the link between these two that Luke will always have to fight against in a world where sobriety is the goal. It reminds him of his most precious and most devastating moments which are addicting themselves. He doesn’t just miss Owen, he misses how Owen would hurt him only to turn soft minutes later before drugging him up as an apology. To Luke this is no different from a parent yelling at their child and giving him a big hug afterwards, it’s love and sometimes love hurts. He misses that love, the love that he now knows was never truly there but is desperate to have back because it made him feel special, feel seen for the first time. It’s a feeling he’ll fiend for when he remembers everything and feels nothing but betrayal.

Another little tidbit i’ve heard quite often from people who’ve struggled with substance abuse is that while they hate themselves, their vice loves them. Liquor and alcohol can’t tell you you’re a disappointment or a waste of space. It’s always going to accept you with open arms even when the people around you can’t. An amazing way to sum up Luke’s addiction as a whole.

I recommend everyone who feels they’re strong enough to watch Requiem for a dream, Gia, and thirteen. Those films show the real gritty details of what addiction and unhealthy relationships does to a person.

[jourdynarmstrong]

BIG Data & Algorithms

I have heard a lot of the warnings and problems that were talked about in the lecture and in The Social Dilemma documentary, but it was still crazy to learn more about it and see more about how it works. What really caught my eye was in the documentary when they showed the three men using controls on a big desk to send notifications, posts, and ads to the boy to get or keep his attention. I know that it was just an exaggerated way to show how the algorithm works using data collected about each individual. The best way to describe how I felt after learning these things was unnerved. It makes me uncomfortable to know just how much my action on technology is being tracked and used to keep me hooked. I feel like it is an invasion of privacy at this point. I mean, sometimes it is nice to have ads or posts tailored just to me so that I am interested in what I am seeing, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it after seeing just how much data they collect about me. I think it has potential to become a dangerous tool, as it has the ability to predict so much about a person without even knowing them personally. 

I think that this has become an ethical dilemma. In order to deal with them, I think the companies that collect and use this data should consider backing off and giving privacy back to their users. I personally think that it is wrong for them to collect and use data about individuals just for personal business gain. They should think more about the people that they are affecting and less about themselves when choosing to use this data. And it isn’t just data, they use tactics to keep people hooked to their phones such as using red for notifications instead green because it is more an alerting color that grabs our attention and makes us want to look at it. I understand from a business perspective wanting to get and maintain the attention of your customers, but I personally think that social media has been taken too far and people are too obsessed with it. I am afraid of what it will become if people continue to get more and more addicted to it. They should back off some and let people use it naturally instead of forcing them to use it through psychological means. 

[microdosingwithjoe]

I'm Joe. I'm here to help you get the most from cannabis.

I’m an enthusiastic cannabis supporter, writing in the *hope* that a few people will read this, but it’s mostly for my own therapy; writing relaxes me and makes me use my brain. If you’ve accidentally stumbled on this blog, I’m not a flake, and this is good advice for cannabis users.

Cannabis gets you high, fixes any number of aches and pains, and a lot more, through your endocannabinoid system (ECS). It's also the most improperly used and abused drug in America.

Most people think cannabis is like ibuprofen, or liquor; if two pills or two drinks work, three will help their pain go away faster, or get them higher.

Well, it does at first.

Your ECS is different over the long haul because just the right amount will get you the best buzz or the best treatment for your ailment. Sure, the first couple of times you overdose, you might get a mind-bending high, but excessive use just spirals into abuse in a matter of days because your ECS rejects chronic overdoses and becomes dysfunctional.

This is the most important fact to realize: your ECS is made to respond to your body’s own chemicals. Even though THC and cannabis’ other active ingredients use your ECS therapeutically, THC is many, many times more powerful than the natural components it replaces.

Your goal is to push your ECS to its peak performance level for your purposes (getting high, killing pain) the way you want it (alert, sedated, energetic, relaxed, etc.) without triggering an overdose reaction.

When your ECS gets overdosed, it rejects more and more THC, so you must use it more and more, and the high gets shorter and shorter.

This cycle quickly spirals out of control, especially in people with addictive tendencies. You can't become physically dependent with cannabis, but you can get psychologically addicted, much like coffee, where you crave it habitually, like mornings just aren't the same without it. Symptoms of withdrawal include mild anxiety and bitchiness.

More importantly, all that is unnecessary, and you get your best high by not crossing that overdose threshold.

Nobody has all the answers yet, but I can help with the most critical issues that get you the best effects. Everything after that is just trying to find ways to improve our collective experiences as new knowledge trickles out from new scientific cannabis studies.

This very simple method I will introduce you to is very effective at getting the best high from recreational cannabis and the best results for medical uses, like treating inflammation-driven joint pain or reducing anxiety in the long term.

I’m going to teach you #HowToGetHigh.

I have studied cannabis for almost 9 years now. I studied it because I had huge success with the first strain I had that worked for my chronic pain, but I was unable to replicate that success. Finding out why some cannabis strains help my pain better than anything else I've ever tried while others do not, or even worsen my pain, was and still is not common knowledge.

My debilitating chronic pain was inspiration for finding out how and why cannabis works or doesn’t work.

The knowledge I gained didn't go unnoticed. I teamed up with another patient, a cannabis specialist attorney, the former director of our state’s medical cannabis program, a neuropathic surgeon, and the executive director of a top ten cancer treatment center to form the Medical Cannabis Alliance. I wrote the first Medical Cannabis Patient Guide reviewed and approved by a major cancer treatment center, a Medical Cannabis Patient Guide, and a Medical Cannabis Provider Employee Handbook. I was also Deputy Director of our state’s NORML organization and lobbied for medical cannabis issues.

Nowadays, after legalization, I’m just a patient and a stoner, but I wanted to share my knowledge with you and learn about your experiences.

With over 450 different active ingredients, cannabis, unlike liquor or ibuprofen, is too complex to know everything about it. There are decades of research ahead before we can reliably predict its effects as a recreational drug or as a medicine. The fantastic thing is this infinite variation could someday lead you to the perfect buzz for the moment in time or the best treatment for your ailment(s) ever.

Cannabis is nontoxic, and mostly harmless, so experimenting won't harm you. Cannabis is the gentlest drug and the gentlest medicine on earth; even a 10,000X overdose goes away after a good night’s sleep. That alone should tell you that this drug does not play by the same rules as any other drug.

If you're intrigued by that, follow along with me.

I recommend reading the piece about your Endocannabinoid System first, The Entourage Effect second, and then the microdosing in under 48 hours to get microdosing asap. You won't be sorry.

I always use the name “cannabis” and not “marijuana” because the origin of that term is racist. I appreciate you using “cannabis” here, but not going to lecture you if you don’t.

5/28/23 A sidenote. I still have about 3/4 of a gram of this 3.5-gram nugget 4 months later. Microdosing works!

[lunarsilkscreen]

Retail, Points Programs, and Addiction

For the longest time, humans didn't have a Tobacco addiction. Or drug addictions that weren't immediately solved by the community coming together to stage an intervention.

What Changed?

While Indistrialization is the core reason, there's another reason; and we currently use similar systems today that caused the problem for us in days past.

Points Programs.

Now, Points Programs guarantee free stuff for customers that buy a lot of stuff, but they weren't originally intended for the end user.

Retail and Small Businesses formed with the help of Big Business and Nation Wide retailers with the ability to "Buy In Bulk" so that the retailers could sell to individuals and make some sort of profit, While *also* being rewarded in limited edition merch that could be used in lieue of retailer necessities. Like Storage Shelves, Refrigerators, Appliances, etc...

Effectively propping up mom&pop convenience stores.

Everybody is familiar with the limited edition coke machines, or the Marlboro Tote bags from back in the day, or even the Magic:TCG Reserve list, or limited edition Jordan's or Life Size cardboard cutouts of Ryan Reynolds.

So what happened? Why did this become a problem?

Well, thanks to the post office and the late effects of nationalization of the United States; people learned to get their hands on the bulk sales items.

And because of the incentive to buy more of the limited edition items from the catalog meant for retail stores; people ended up using more.

So what used to be a cigarette a day habit (at the most) became a pack a day habit. What used to be a Budweiser a day habit, became a case a day habit.

And you can see this repeated with nearly anything that had a bulk points program attached to it.

Today, the "points" programs have been given to the end users and *massively* downgraded on points necessary to get a thing; but the system still stands.

Where there's a points program *intended* to be valuable to frequent fliers or early supporters... There's addiction; scalping; and even greed about these points program items.

<aside>I still can't believe I missed out on that Limited Edition Luigi's Mansion figure... I had enough points, I just didn't know it existed until it was too late and there was no stock left!

No I don't have a Gaming Abuse problem Mom.</aside>

This has of course gotten back to getting out of hand with microtransactions in certain games. Of which I may or may not have spent too much of my entertainment budget on the equivalent of Ape.Gif's... but that's neither here nor there.

Certain Games do it well, others not so much. Of th features I enjoy, are basically; in some games: once your caught up with the latest sets, you're basically done unless you're *REALLY* interested in older sets, which barely matters thanks to power creep.

And yes if you're wondering; I am talking about the well known psychological effect known as "FOMO". But; if you're talking about stocks... FOMO is a powerful driver in that circumstance as well. (NFTs+FOMO+Stock, think about it...)

The problem that we're face with today is a loss of personal equity due from psychological stress created by these programs. Purposefully leveraged against the idea of scarcity and investment we're all taught during school.

At Age 18, they say; a $1800 investment should be enough to retire on if you don't touch it until you're old.

But; if everybody is investing into every thing; a method we call "Diversification", which can include popular collectables, limited edition "drops", even stocks and bonds...

Shouldn't at least some of them be paying out in the long run? That's how Diversification works.

Unless of course; those assets are stolen, taken offline by content platforms, or otherwise legal removed from the hands of their owners.

Then that *also* results in a loss of equity. Which we can then blame on *addiction*. Creating a double bond against the consumer. They should've known better than to buy the things they're being psychological and economically leveraged into buying, and they should've also known every investment they ever made into anything (including the good investments) would be bad.

Or that they confused "Investment" with their "Addiction".

Curious how it's the consumer who is always blamed for playing the game...

[nulifelinecarerehab]

Finding the right Drug Addiction Treatment near you in Dehradun

You’re struggling with a substance use disorder. Maybe you’ve tried quitting before and relapsed shortly after leaving rehab, or perhaps you’ve tried on your own and are wondering, do I need treatment? You’re not alone. Millions struggle with substance use disorder or addiction in India.

Substance use doesn’t just affect the individual user. Instead, the fallout from drug addiction impacts family, friends, loved ones, co-workers, and peers. Therefore, when looking for drug addiction treatment at NuLifeLineCare Rehab, you aren’t just helping yourself. You help those around you. Contact us at 8958305058 if you’re ready to participate in drug addiction treatment near me.

DO I NEED ADDICTION TREATMENT?

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You continue to use drugs or alcohol despite the consequences

You are unable to control how much you drink or do drugs

You’ve tried quitting on your own and failed

You prioritize using over anything else

You find yourself lying about your substance use

Your drug or alcohol use is hurting your relationships

You probably need treatment if you’re struggling with substance use disorder, especially if it negatively impacts your life or health. Drug and alcohol use can cause physical and psychological harm to your body and negatively impact your relationships, work life, and social activities. Substance use can also lead to legal problems or financial distress due to spending money on drugs or alcohol. Addiction treatment programs provide the necessary support to help you cease using drugs or alcohol and set you up for long-term recovery. Some modalities that help with the recovery process include:

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Addiction treatment can be tailored to your needs like any outpatient therapy program.

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM DRUG ADDICTION TREATMENT

Addiction treatment starts with an intake interview and assessment. An addiction care specialist gets to know you and your needs. Assessment is also when you and the expert customize a treatment program. Typically, you start with detoxification, which allows your body to break the physical dependence on a drug.

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Anxiety

Depression

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Grief or loss

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Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Attention-deficit/hyperactive disorder (ADHD)

Depending on your specific circumstances, family therapy may also be needed. Examples include co-dependent relationships that require assistance. Psychotherapy can take the form of one-on-one talk sessions and gender-specific group therapy. At the heart of the treatment is a firm belief that customization makes the modalities work for every client.

Finally, drug addiction treatment provides you with aftercare and transitional living opportunities. You gradually integrate back into your family or society. Therapists help you along the way to ensure a smooth transition. Doing so enables you to overcome a broad range of chemical dependence in the long term.

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Whether you’ve tried recovery before and relapsed, or you’re dealing with poly-addictions, there’s help. At NuLifeLineCare Rehab for addiction treatment in Dehradun, we understand that addiction is a chronic condition and requires comprehensive care to treat it effectively.

We develop individualized treatment plans that are tailored to your needs. It’s unimportant if you’ve been using drugs for a year or a decade. At NuLifeLineCare Rehab, we offer numerous treatment programs, such as:

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Thus, you’ll likely find the help you need with us. There are addiction specialists who can assist. Call NuLifeLineCare Rehab for addiction treatment in Dehradun today by dialing 8958305058.

Or visit: https://nulifelinecare.org/