Now more than ever people are exposed to huge amounts of information in media. The twitter post TV world dense with an impressive gamut of constantly changing information. Information overload is now a possible psychological conditions from over-exposure to information. Forgetting is a mental memory clean up function that helps mentally healthy people discard "useless" information effectively. It turns out that marijuana is often used by people to help them unlearn "bad ideas", specifically helping people that are hindered by memories of negative life events or those who internalized toxic negative ideas from the world. The positive power of learning to "let go" and to "forgive and forget" in many ways underscore why forgetting is such an essential mental function.
Imagine for a second if you were to remember the face of every person you passed in traffic or on your train, bike, or bus commute. Our brains are efficient as massive parallel information processing tasks essential for visual and sensory processing of information from the world. Forgetting is a powerful mental function that enables mental data compression, for efficient use of biological memory resources. If you take for example the summary or abstract of a paper or book, producing it involved a lot of mental compression tasks that are heavily dependent on "rejecting/ forgetting" non-essential information. Forgetting a toxic negative memory can liberate a person from sickness and suffering that would have otherwise come if they held on to the negative useless memory.
Marijuana appears to modulate a system of the brain that involves CAMP, enabling enhanced "forgetting" mental functions. Many soldiers that exit a combat tour are scarred with very graphic traumatizing image and sound memories of their friends being killed in gruesome ways via explosions, shrapnel, fire and other brutal painful ways. These negative memories persist in the minds of those people, haunting them with toxic emotions that hinder them from living a healthy life. Many people with post-traumatic stress disorder seem to be unable to forget the toxic memories effectively. Drugs like MDMA and marijuana have been very effective at helping these people to experience productive and healthy forgetting. Psychological research conducted to understand why people use marijuana has revealed that many people who use it are essentially self medicating for physical and mental pain. To this end the active chemicals in marijuana (CBD, THC and CBN) appear to be very effective at reducing neuropathic pain and enabling the healthy "forgetting" of toxic negative memories.
I was doing some literature review on the biochemical, psychological and ecological properties of marijuana lately as a result of a local law that passed legalizing marijuana as an 21+ age restricted substance. Many of the studies that I read indicate that marijuana is very effective at treating pain, anxiety, stress, frustration, fear, apprehension, depression and other negative psychological problems. Marijuana has been found in the sciences to effectively help patients suffering from MS, Cancer, HIV/AIDS, and Fibromyalgia. Neuropathic pain seems to be particularly effectively helped by marijuana and cannabis extracts.
Dr. Lester Grinspoon has written extensively on the psychological properties of marijuana: have a look at some of his writing: http://marijuana-uses.com/introduction-to-the-marijuana-uses-blog-2/
There is also a good full length documentary about Marijuana on youtube:
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High
http://youtu.be/6jO_ncXj7RE
While law makers have been generally phobic about marijuana legalization, many have endorsed and supported laws that enable state level medical marijuana to exist. The fear, uncertainty and doubt that many people hold about marijuana has its origin in misinformation published by Richard Tricky Dick Nixon and Ronald Regan: these two presidents are responsible for most of the lies and confusion that hinders people from understanding the truth about Marijuana.
No one here is saying that getting high all the time is healthy! What I am saying is that using marijuana with rational restraint and prudent wisdom is perfectly safe and may actually be very mentally and socially healthy for the aforementioned ability of marijuana to facilitate the "forgetting" of useless memories and ideas, especially negative ones that might otherwise hinder a person from living life with a more positive perspective.
No one here is saying that a person has to smoke marijuana either; the inhalation of smoke is an intrinsically unhealthy practice. It is possible to cook marijuana into edible oils and foods that contain edible oils. These medicinally active marijuana enhanced foods are a much safe route of administration. Eating marijuana also reduced the so called side effect "high", and give much better overall pain suppression for a longer duration. Edible marijuana products produce a slow soft on and slow soft off effect as the active components slowly enter and exit the body. This is sharply contrasted with the mind blowing effects of smoking strong marijuana that peak within minutes, only to precipitously fall off by the end of the 2nd hour. Usually drugs of any kind are far safer to consume orally, as the digestive system has protections and buffers that are absent from our lungs. Orally consumed medicines enter and exit the body more gently than smoked substances.
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