There are way more than 5 reasons people use marijuana recreationally.
It doesn’t matter if it’s because MMJ patients don’t get to keep their guns or because you don’t want a paper trail. Some people use weed without getting a medical card. We call these people recreational users and believe these are the top 5 reasons they smoke weed.
While medical patients smoke weed to cure cancer or leukemia, recreational stoners usually smoke for one of the 5 reasons on this list. Some may buck the trend and not conform, but I hope these modern day unicorns are compelled to let us know in the comments how they diverge.
Chilling out
Modern life is full of bullshit that you kind of have to deal with. Mouthing off at work will get most people fired which leads to a host of bad experiences. But that doesn’t make dealing with the crap coming your way any easier. Without a release valve, tension builds until you want to explode at something.
So people smoke to help them deal with the stress of things like exams, getting a divorce or a hard day of work. These people decide to smoke weed instead of lash out destructively in other ways. In a day when a diploma increasingly requires bullet dodging abilities, having a non-violent way to unwind that won’t destroy the body is pretty attractive.
Improving media
Everybody knows that smoking weed makes most movies better. Plays, operas and concerts also benefit from toking on some sticky icky. Getting high makes short term memory pretty much worthless. But this is a benefit because it allows you to experience a familiar event as though it were new.
Do you remember what it was like to hear your favorite song the first time? How about a joke so dumb you can’t stop laughing at how bad it is? Now imagine getting that experience over and over and you will begin to understand. Weed makes bad movies hilarious and great movies bend minds in the best of ways.
Dealing with annoying people/situations
We all know that one person who makes your blood boil just by being in the same room as you. We’ve all also wondered if we should smoke before dealing with a terrible situation you simply need to be present for. High stress situations like visiting in-laws or getting a roommate dealing with ‘personal space’ issues often demand a level of calm unavailable to an active mind.
Instead of spending the entire party thinking about how you want to even the score, getting high can give you the ability to simply think about something else. It’s hard to be mad at someone when your thoughts are consumed with the fact that cheese is just moldy milk. Especially when you start trying to figure out to turn expired milk into cheese.
To get off something else
People will try all sorts of things to get over an addiction. Most treatments perform little better than chance. But amazingly, recent scientific studies show that cannabis significantly promotes opioid addiction recovery.
The effects are strongest when the weed is dosed out by doctors instead of by drug dealers. But even the seeds and stems peddled by the U.S. government show signs of actually helping people. The anecdotal evidence for getting off common vices like cigarettes and alcohol is also pretty compelling.
Because it’s better than other drugs
There are a ton of drugs on the market. MDMA, crack, cocaine, heroin, oxycodone, caffeine, and a million others constantly compete with weed for users. But marijuana beats them out for several reasons. The biggest reasons are that weed is cheaper, less harmful, easier to get a hold of and can be dropped at any time.
The lack of hangover and ability to stop using at any time make weed especially nice. Unlike alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, prescriptions and club drugs, nobody has ever died from marijuana alone. So when times get tough, cutting out weed is as easy as not buying it.
