1125 Comments

Alex, don’t confuse correlation with cause-and-effect.

Expand full comment
May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022

I know two unrelated women, each with 20 year olds, who went from having "normal" boys to them being diagnosed as schizophrenic overnight. No family history. They both spent multiple stints in mental hospitals. Both exhibited violent behavior and did odd things like drilling a hole through a new laptop because it was spying on them. Both chronic pot smokers through high school and college. Both boys' doctors (incl. one neuro at UCLA) said without a doubt, it was tied to marijuana use. This is brain damage, folks.

Expand full comment
May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022

How about SSRI’s or other psychiatric drugs doctors so readily give out?

Expand full comment

While drinking gave me migraines in college, weed was everywhere. Not interested as it was illegal. Took the challenge and found I gained 20lbs, hallucinated and realized even the smallest amount would impair judgement with distance while driving. I quit. I won’t engage a conversation with high folks.

It’s a different playing field of reality.

Expand full comment

Rejecting God results in a proliferation of evil. A proliferation of evil results in violence. It's a natural progression. We need God back in our country.

Expand full comment

Makes sense. And no, not every pot head becomes a criminal. But it’s bad for you either way. And I voted for legalization - expecting it would save resources and let some stupid people grow pot in their back yard. Silly me. Instead it is now devolving into a state-sponsored corporate distribution network and taxation scheme. Ultimately, many more people will die as a result. And yes, I know alcohol is even worse blahblah - which is why I don’t drink and tell my kids to stay away from all of this bullshit. It fries brains. Period.

Expand full comment

Tell your children the truth about 2000 Mules….instead of ignoring it.

Expand full comment

You are going off the deep end bro. He's turning into a moron with this Marijuana causes psychosis shit.

Expand full comment

This is as bad and thin as saying video games caused it. Did this kid also listen to loud music and like anime? Must be all those things too

Expand full comment

yet a huge push by the left to legalize weed and more nationwide. it's almost as though everything the left and those in permanent government do is harmful to the fabric of a peaceful and functioning society.

Expand full comment

Great post as usual, Alex.

Expand full comment

Seems to me all my stoner friends in high school were always paranoid when high, anecdotal?

Expand full comment

I agree with Alex due to firsthand experience. Started smoking pot in junior high and through most of high school. Went from being a straight A student to barely graduating. It not only made me paranoid and later on depressed, it also affected my memory and abstract thinking. I am convinced that weed permanently diminished my short term memory because I struggled in college and struggle to this day (I’m in my fifties). I also had aspirations of being a drug dealer and bad ass criminal while partaking this “harmless” wonder drug. Thank god my dad set me straight all those years ago. It does affect your perception and judgement and young people should stay away from it. I regret ever smoking it.

Expand full comment

Margaret Trudeau, hippie-dippy stoner, Club 54 flasher, and mother of Canada's total idiot Prime Minister, is known to have said in her older and wiser years that basically every time she smoked up she had an attack of psychosis. Her drug use explains a lot of sad episodes in her life -- and we who live in Canada think it explains how and why she gave birth to such an empty-headed eldest child.

Expand full comment

Alex. You are very brave bringing up this subject. Where I live in Washington state, saying anything negative about marijuana gets you in lots of trouble. But the fact is there are some very troubling issues related to this drug that many here call medicine. When I walk down some streets in Seattle, I am in a cloud of pot smoke for blocks. So everyone i come across should be calm and relaxed, right? Well no, everyone is shuffling around with their pants around ankles or screaming at the sky. Did pot do this to them? We won't know until we look closely at the situation. And you have already started to- so thank you for that. Keep at it even though it is very unpopular at the moment.

Expand full comment

The use of cannabis or the veritable army of pharmaceutical drugs is a symptom of a larger issue: the complete disintegration of the societal structures that reward good behavior and discourage bad behavior. We live in upside down world, run by an idiocracy that pretends that the sky is green and that there is no black & white, no good or evil and anything goes. No one needs a purpose -- everyone just needs their range of the moment desires & whims instantly rewarded. The collapse of thinking and the use of reason has been ongoing for 7 decades. Our fake largesse, created not by hard work, but by grift & con, is coming to an end. All of the demons are going to come out of the closet and many of them will be addled by drugs. But that won't be the reason they seek to spread death & destruction -- it's what they have been spoon-fed by our sick society from birth.

Expand full comment

“Cannabis causes psychosis, and psychosis causes violence.” Cannabis CAN cause psychosis and psychosis CAN cause violence. There are a lot of people who like weed and don’t have a problem with it, but there are some like my brother where marijuana use in teen years definitely contributed to him developing schizophrenia at age 20. Don’t paint this with a large brush, it alienates so many people and the whole point is to make people aware it CAN be dangerous to a minority of users. You just don’t know who it will negatively affect just like you don’t know who will turn into an alcoholic. But the answer isn’t prohibition, it’s education. Your book is essential in doing that. And it’s illuminating (and kind of funny) to see the potheads get their hackles up when you suggest the harm.

Expand full comment

alex: i have found a lot of research that marijuana correlates to psychosis & communities that legalize it see large increases in violent crimes

weirdo stoners: I SMOKE WEED EVERYDAY AND I HAVE NEVER KILLED ANYBODY AND NOBODY ELSE HAS AND IT'S ALL LIES

Expand full comment

Sadly I have seen this in my own family. My brother in law has been smoking for decades. He is on antianxiety meds now and has my sister track his location because he has gotten so paranoid. His paranoia and anger has gotten worse the more heavily and longer he uses...now he has isolated his family from everyone. I know this doesn't happen to every user but just like alcohol it can make some go off the deep end.

Expand full comment

Because of the hybridization process, most of the weed now is so strong it will make your teeth chatter and induce incredible anxiety and paranoia. This isn't your father's 1975 Acapulco Gold anymore.

Expand full comment

BREAKING: Shunned (and pretty dang good) journalists conflates "fucked up person that uses pot" for "the pot made them do it"

Expand full comment

Maybe instead of getting rid of the 2nd amendment, we should focus on drugs?

Pretty sure that ATF 4473 asks if you’re a habitual drug user.

Expand full comment

I made this point years ago. Pot rage is real. If you know any chronic daily smoker who has smoked for ten or more years they are very angry. Not so much when they’re high. Or rather they are when they’re high but it is muted. It really comes out when they’re not high. It almost always is aimed at society. It’s aimed at some sort of amorphous thing that runs things. People laughed at me when I used to say ‘pot rage is real’. But I would question the person and ask if they knew anyone who smoked daily and had for a long time. And were they really angry about large social ideas. And were they actually quite angry people who appeared not. Almost everyone admitted they did know people exactly like that. I think it crosses into the brain and inflamed brain tissue. I’m not sure a gummy would have the same effect.

Expand full comment

The destruction of America by the Left is intentional.

Legalized pot is part of that destruction.

They know the truth, but the more stoned you are, the more your government can hurt you.

Expand full comment

It's going south in Canada too since Fidel Jr. legalized this poison. The left loves it... it creates unthinking, dependent zombies.

Expand full comment

Alex, why is it not possible that people with neurological issues use cannabis to self medicate rather than the idea that they are perfectly fine and then develop neurological problems from taking cannabis?

Expand full comment

None of the other things you are wrong about make you look as stupid and stubborn as this does. 😬

Expand full comment

I dated a man for nine years who admitted that if he hadn't been beholden to marijuana in his younger years he would have made something more of his life~~he said it made him apathetic and unmotivated. In high school (late 1970s) I remember trying to have conversations with my dear pot-smoking friends with their red eyes and the lack of being able to engage in even the smallest of small talk.

And now my best friend (a woman, 52 years old) is hooked on Adderall...she wanted to take it to lose weight...he doctor willingly gave it to her (she told him she had ADHD) and now she also drinks wine combined with a gummy every night. Recently she told me she has lost all sense of "care" for anything that happens to her and those she loves which is very much out of character for her.

Nation of zombies?? Add to that the effects from the jibby jab? Add to that the addiction of TikTok and porn and who knows what else?

This is how they want us. Stupid and numb and compliant. And psychotic if we have the right combination of life events. Yay, us!

Expand full comment

Whew! A LOT of protesting too much in the comments. Maybe try to comment when you aren't 😵‍💫

Expand full comment

I understand all the shooters ate food too. And had feet. I think we are on to something.

Expand full comment
May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022

Ehh I'd trust marijuana before I'd trust ssri's.... And I'm a psych nurse. Parents just wanna throw pills at kids and not discipline them. Kids growing up without God is bad news too, no empathy for others. Also the parkland shooters mother used illegal drugs when he was in utero

Expand full comment

and there's Geo Floyd meth'd up and fentanyl and no telling what else and the whole ordeal blamed on everyone but him or his drug use. When you convince people that they are victims,, this is how they act. No integrity, no purpose, no character, no regard for other humans. It is called NARCISSISM and it is why satan got kicked out of heaven. And the most beautiful example of narcissism is Beto O'Roarke disrupting the Govenor during a news briefing...100% arrogant SOB. And may he continue to self destruct.

Expand full comment

So Alex, I'm confused. Did the guns make them smoke weed?

When I grew up firearms were commonplace. Just as much as today. Perhaps not as refined, but they still had plenty of lethality. Yet somehow we managed not to shoot each other. It's not the guns. If Ramos didn't have guns he'd have waited for recess and run them over with his truck.

Go look at the frequency of mass murder events in Australia after their ban. They didn't go down, they just changed weapons (sometimes, sometimes they just used illegal firearms).

It's a pointless hypothetical. With 400 million firearms in the US, they aren't going away even if enough of us wanted them to. Also, you need to consider how many additional deaths there would be if people did not have firearms available for self-defense... The Obama administration CDC has studied the use of firearms in the US in the interest of public health. They report that firearms are used for self defense between 500,000 and 3 millions times each year. That is what 2A means, in part, when "translated" to real world situations. If you want to stop illegal gun violence, then start enforcing the law instead of defunding the police and releasing criminals from prison.

Two quotes from the report which you may find of particular interest:

“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,”

“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,”

*Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, 2013

Expand full comment

Alex Berenson's fear of plants is also psychosis. Other than that, keep up the good work.

Expand full comment

Not gonna lie, I can agree to disagree on cannabis but I really disagree with you on this one lol. Progressives do love to legalize drugs. And have a lot of crazy ideas I disagree with. I'm surely biased (I love cannabis) but there surely are a lot worse drugs that are legal on the market.

Expand full comment

When you're talking about cannabis but leaving out the effects of SSRI's prescribed by drug pushers with better lobbyists you sound like the type of propagandists you take issue with behind the plandemic. Lots of studies about the effect of those causing murderous psychosis. Nice, easy target to aim for cannibis. When the root of much more evil lies in the hands of the very same drug companies pushing dangerous, harmful experimental drugs into the world's population with evil lies and propaganda. Can you comprehend that Big Pharma is the biggest evil we face even beyond "vaccines"?

Turned many a mentally ill mind into homicidal youth. I was in Colorado's politically connected world when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a murderous rampage at Columbine. The investigation came up with all of the instances of SSRI over-prescribing to youth resulting in mass murder. Knew members of the investigating committee. Furious that the evidence of Big Pharma's fingerprints all over the tragedies was covered up...Big Pharma $$ and power more important that public safety. Just like they're doing today with dangerous, unsafe and ineffective experimental "vaccines." Same baddies. But you blame marijuana? Wow. Cognitive dissonance much?

https://web.archive.org/web/20070929124956/https://www.fda.gov/CDER/DRUG/antidepressants/PI_template.pdf#search=%22fda.gov%20suicide%20ssri%22/2006/paroxetineDHCPMay06.pdf

Expand full comment

Seems like it does. I have a relative who has been smoking for decades and while there is definitely neurosis involved, they’ve had two psychotic episodes that required hospitalization in roughly ten years

Expand full comment

Wow, how people lose their shit when discussion of the harmful effects of pot comes up. It is really sad, because I know first-hand how pot can cause severe psychosis. I would not wish that on anyone. It may be that 99% of people are just fine smoking weed all day long. But there's a percentage who simply cannot. I think of it like peanut butter. Perfectly harmless and healthy except when it's not.

Expand full comment

Horse shit, Alex. Those guys were self-medicating with anything they could find. It just so happens that pot is one of the easiest drugs to get ahold of. They were psychotic from the day they were born. t's just that everyone is afraid to say something, even professionals. If the evaluator who did a psych work up on the Buffalo shooter had been competent, s/he'd have seen the signs right then and there.

Expand full comment

What happens in a permissive society that rejects God, excuses soft crime and rude behavior while promoting alcohol and pot use, promotes gender confusion, led by leaders who hate this country and its founding, continually call us racists, divide us into categories, pitting one group against another? Surprise!!! Surprise!!! More serious crime! We have a serious culture problem; that's the root cause!

Expand full comment

Alex, nobody writing today has your cred on this issue. Readers should also turn to Peter Hitchens’s The War we never Fought. What is the root cause of pervasive psychosis among throwaway children steeped in media ?

Expand full comment

God Alex, you have so much good to offer. Why you choose this empty cause is just unfathomable.... I grew up with 50 years of cannabis. You are lost on this one..

Expand full comment

Question: I have no experience with it, no horse in the race, but from my vantage point cannabis seems a better alternative for a lot of things than big-pharma pharmaceuticals... is this not the case?

Please note I know nothing, and have never partaken. But from people I know and trust, whom use it for a specific reason, not a hobby or lifestyle choice, it seems a net benefit over the “acceptable” alternatives.

Expand full comment

I love you Alex I really do. I posted something on your earlier article referring to SSRIs causing this kind of carnage but later I wondered if it was reefer madness. Loco weed. Thank you for posting this.

Expand full comment

Yep. All drugs and alcohol are bad. Interesting how people so quickly get defensive over this truth. Cannabis is not harmless. I can tell you by watching people I love become incapable of adulting and also becoming paranoid. I wonder why so many people are willing to be unemployed by COVID mandates and come closer and closer to the WEF prescribed lifestyle of owning nothing, eating no meat, and being happy about it.. Oh yeah, all that dope smoking renders one unmotivated. Folks, you may think it's not as bad as alcohol, but it really is. All these chemicals feel good for a time. All of them have negative consequences, especially with regular use.

Expand full comment

Here's a thought: perhaps the end goal of the WEF/technocrats is to disarm us. If true, then increasing drug use via legalization (and increasing SSRI use via Pharma/prescription - similar to fentanyl) would just be the mechanism for provoking a whole lot of violence, and then they could proclaim that the "fix" is forced national disarmament.

People will still die from being deliberately run over by cars, but - cars don't scare the WEF/technocrats. Guns do.

Expand full comment
May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022

Watch out Mr. Berenson, the pot lobby is gonna come after you!

You know, the recreational users I get, I’m not gonna be a hypocrite, I had a past but it’s long gone.

When I was in college I never respected the daily smokers who just were in school for a free ride, usually mommy and daddy paid for it.

No, the chronic daily users, they are addicts, they may not have the consequences of heroin or cocaine, but they’re not that far behind.

Apathy, cognitive disruptions, sometimes subtle medical issues that are just smoldering, and then the psycho-social struggles with those who aren’t gleefully willingly embracing this daily cannabis bullshit, these people are trouble.

Colorado continues to hide its consequences, and wait for the usual suspects to come here and tell us “you are the scumbags, pot is great, and if you don’t like it, get the fuck out of America!”

These people are morons, real life Cheech and Chong…

Expand full comment

Just reading a lot of these comments reminds me of the pro-vaxxers who will argue against blatant proof of vaccine injury and give their children the jab anyway.

Expand full comment

I don't doubt you one bit on this, Alex, and I know much of that goes back several years. However, I would also add into the puzzle the tremendous stress, isolation, forced mask wearing and shutdowns we've experienced for over two years - not to mention the hatred and division amply fomented by the Democratic Party and the Media.

Expand full comment

A friend of mine, working professional, started using a lot of marijuana and ended up hallucinating that she was gonna marry a famous billionaire. Her brother was already diagnosed with schizophrenia. She ended up voluntarily in an institution for a month. Probably pushed her over the edge. Maybe some people can’t handle their pot. My ex sister in law had a similar experience. Left her kid and husband to live on the streets waiting for a dead celebrity to marry her.

Expand full comment