The Dude shuffles through life as a cliche stoner. At some point he studied something a bit, but never finished it. The dude has better plans: bowling with his buddies, then lazing around in the bathtub at home and smoking a bunch of cigarettes. His motivation is only enough to order White Russian at the bowling center and roll joints. The Dude is of course the main character of the film “The Big Lebowski” (1998), which everyone, absolutely everyone, should see at least once a year. In any case, the dude played by Jeff Bridges embodies all the tired clichés about the chronic stoner: crazy, lazy, apathetic, can’t get anything done, talks nonsense. But for the purpose of partial legalization, I would like to ask: Are these clichés really true? It looks like they are grossly exaggerated.
200 million people worldwide consume cannabis from time to time, a significant proportion of them regularly or even daily. Psychologists led by Michael Inzlicht from the University of Toronto cite these figures and further specify that, for example, nine percent of adult Canadians are habitual stoners. Given these numbers, it is surprising that little is known about the daily effects of consumption on emotions, motivation, activity levels, and so on. Instead, the research has largely focused on the health risks, say psychologists, their study coming soon Social Psychological and Personality Science appears.
For their work, the psychologists disrupted the everyday lives of 260 habitual smokers: for over a week, they were asked via smartphone five times a day to answer a significant number of questions and fill out tests. Of course, the test subjects had to say whether they were currently stoned or sober. They also provided information about their emotional state, completed tests on their motivation level or had their level of self-control checked.
No sign of a grass cat
Being high gave stoners significantly more good feelings than bad, at least compared to sobriety. The extreme long-term users in the sample, who smoked weed almost non-stop, were not in such a rosy mood in comparison. However, the researchers found no evidence that cannabis leads to acute apathy and lack of motivation. Even stoned test subjects made a good effort to complete cognitively demanding tasks. However, extreme consumers were somewhat less conscientious. Surprisingly, the psychologists found no evidence that the participants experienced anything like a grass hangover. The next day or a few hours after the last high, her emotional balance was in balance.
Does this disprove the cliché of the sleazy stoner? Of course not, a single small study is never enough. Especially since, the psychologists point out, it could also be that their sample led to distorted results: truly apathetic stoners would never answer so many annoying questions five times a day. Or what does the Dude say about that?