Joe Rogan - Effects of High Potency Marijuana, CBD | JRE Pot Debate

is going. I can't even read my Twitter feed. I fuck these people. I don't read it. If I don't put my glasses, I don't know what the fuck they're saying. Oh my God. So good. But I'm not saying people don't get depressing at anxious. I'm saying psychosis is a different thing. Yes. Okay. I think we are though discussing overall mental health. Yes. I mean, look, I'm saying this because I really think that this is something that I've made a big turn over the last few years with myself that I don't think marijuana is as safe as I used to think it is. I used to think it was benign. I really used to think there was no big deal, but I have a friend that I discussed the other day who was a really confident, fucking muscular, handsome man that never did anything. And he took a marijuana edible to go to sleep. And for two weeks, this guy was, this is a different guy, not the guy I was talking about, not Rafi. No, a different guy. He took it and he experienced suicidal thoughts and all these, he had like severe consequences. I think that the human beings, we vary so much biologically that to just make this overall blanket statement, what's good for you is good for me is irresponsible. And I've been irresponsible saying that before. Well, one reason it's interesting, one reason I think that alcohol is so widely accepted despite all the problems it causes, and again, alcohol can certainly cause problems, is that alcohol affects most people pretty much the same way. And you sort of know if what somebody looks like when they have one drink, when they have five drinks, if they have 10 drinks. I've got some friends that get those gerbilize. You ever see when people get shark eyes? They just garb and then they start talking crazy and like, whoa. But you sort of know that and you sort of know how long it's going to take to clear your body. Cannabis is so different. It's a really complicated drug and it does affect different people in different ways. Yes. And also the tolerance has changed. Yeah. Radically. Yeah. So, people say, well, two and a half milligrams of THC, you vape it. That's like one drink for somebody who doesn't use. But then if you're a tolerant user, you can use 200 milligrams in a day. That's 80 drinks. It's a weird drug. And then there's the issue of eating it. Yes. When you eat it, your body produces something called 11 hydroxymetabolite. It's far more psychoactive. Yeah, you are all long for the ride when that happens. Yes, you are. Yes. And it can take days for it to get out of your system. I know many people have eaten marijuana edibles and then they call me up the next day, like, dude, I'm still hot. Yeah. Yeah. It's real. So, I think the legalization community has sort of said for years, like, oh, there's basically no downsides to this. There's only upsides. The cops will bust smokers. There'll be tax revenue. All these people have a way to get high that's clearly safer than alcohol. And unfortunately, that's just not true. I think you're right. And I think the issue that people, from what I've read, are having with your book are people that are marijuana advocates that think that your position is unbalanced and that you've ignored the positive aspects of THC in terms of, like, when he was talking about cognitive benefits for people with psychotic episodes and that you're only focusing on the negative. I guess I will plead guilty to that. Yeah. Because I think that for 20 years, people have only heard the positives. Right. I think that's also, I'll plead guilty to that myself because I think that I've only been discussing the positives. And one of the things that I've tried very hard to do, and one of the things I've learned how to do from doing this podcast and experiencing criticism and communicating with a bunch of different people with a lot of different viewpoints, is examine my own positions and try to figure out, am I coming at this from a truly balanced position or am I trying to support a conclusion that I started out with and I'm trying to, you know, somehow or another back up my own work or back up my own statements and sort of prop them up instead of being really honest and objective. Right. It's very difficult to do. Listen, I wrote a book called Tell Your Children, the Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence. I don't think you can think that that book is going to be a compendium of the pros and cons of marijuana. If you want to tell your children the truth though, you really do want to tell them the pros and cons. Right. And you did indicate, Alex, you said, you know, we should tell people the truth in the book, right? So, you know, I think that when you're telling, and you're saying that you're telling the truth, and Alex, I'm agreeing with you that you're telling part of the truth. Right. But part of the truth is, you know, a little bit deceiving and deceptive in some ways, right? You want to tell the whole truth. When you tell the whole truth, then you give the whole story and then people can actually make, you know, a good informed decision based upon that. Like if people are going to just read one part of the story, then of course they're going to make a decision just based upon that one part. They're not going to make, you know, an informed decision based upon all of the parts. And because of that, people are going to make, you know, some very poor choices. I completely agree with that. But to me, the last 20 years have been an exercise in the other side, in the legalization side, doing a very, very good job talking up its arguments. And essentially there's almost nobody on the other side. There's this one guy, Kevin Sabet, who's gotten killed. What about Jeff Sessions? I mean, you had the fucking goddamn attorney general who's telling people that good people don't smoke marijuana. And that's literally a quote that he says. And yeah, thank God that little moron's not in an office anymore. But that's a terrible thing to say. Good people don't smoke marijuana. There's a lot of wonderful people who smoke marijuana. That's just not true. And by the way, I think this is a personal choice, okay? Especially for adults. Yes. Okay. And you can make bad personal choices. You go, look, I play cards. I love to play poker. I'm sad that on this trip to LA, I didn't get to go to a poker room, but you can go into a casino and you can see people who've lost. You can change your flight. Don't, don't, don't, don't encourage. A lot of places close by have been up to him. Don't encourage. My friend Ari, he used to make a living doing that, but he struggled with comedy. Don't encourage me. But you can go to a casino and see people who've lost their houses. Yes. I mean, the gambling should be illegal. I agree. It also means that there's less and more dangerous forms. That device in your hand where you can bet on what the next pitch is going to be, if it's going to be a ball or strike, that's more dangerous than my having to drive to the commerce and play there. And 100% or 98% THC that an 18 year old vapes is a lot more dangerous than a 5%, you know, CBD 15% THC product that Dr. Hart might suggest his patient uses once a night to go to sleep. Agreed. And that's the message that, you know, we should be putting out there, right? We shouldn't just be, you know, focusing on one side of the story. Like that part, you know, should also be included in the book. And like, you know, your book, you know, in some ways has made me rethink the way that I write, you know, because my first book was co-authored with Jeremy Costin called friendly fire. You know, my second book that I'm writing now is called cannabis for PTG. So it's how to transform post-traumatic stress into post-traumatic growth, right? Because I feel that, and you know, we all know examples of people that have encountered really difficult obstacles in their life. And some people have, you know, succumb to that stress and they've gone down, you know, the wrong path kind of thing. And then other people have used that stress to their advantage and they've actually become, you know, better because of it. And, you know, CBD and THC can both help facilitate that process. You know, when you're looking at someone like a veteran, for example, you know, the hallmark of someone with PTSD is someone who doesn't leave their home and they can't sleep at night. So like when I see a vet in my office, a lot of the times they'll be leaving their home like five to 10 days a month, right? So when you give them CBD, and this is really important for people understand CBD has been shown to decrease learned fear. That's incredible, right? So if you can get people outside of their home, because I'm not talking about, again, you know, someone who's, you know, too nervous to like go to, you know, the bar with like the friends or something like that. I'm talking to people who like, you know, it's difficult for them to go to the grocery store, just like pick up a few things. So, you know, those are the type of people that I see in my practice. CBD is really excellent for that. Then when you look at, you know, the nighttime component, you know, THC, again, is excellent for reducing nightmares. That's been shown in studies. And it was even shown with one pharmaceutical drug, Nablone. Again, I don't really use Nablone very much because it's only one cannabinoid. And I do believe in the entourage effect and using all of the cannabinoids. So I don't use that that much. But that shows that THC can reduce nightmares. And you know, if you have PTSD, I mean, if you talk to someone who has PTSD, and again, this comes from a clinician's point of view, they will tell you, I will try anything. And it's the same way when you get with like, you know, the parents of kids who have seizures all day, nobody wants to see that. And like, Alex, you know, if your kids, you know, ever started getting seizures, which, you know, I hope they don't because it's terrible, you know, what it can do to people. But when if that ever happened, you know, I would hope that you would consider, you know, CBD as a potential treatment option. He's not against that. I think we have to be really clear on this distinction. Like CBD, you're not against CBD at all. And I don't think anybody is I think no one really is arguing except maybe the federal government in certain levels is arguing against CBD. That's probably some pushback from the pharmaceutical industry. The reality is CBD is proven to be at least as far as I've read very safe and very effective for a bunch of different disorders, especially those that are about reducing and have something to do with inflammation or seizures. Yeah, one of my good friends, his son has developed seizures and CBD knocked it out, just killed it. Well, let me ask you, I was very recently, you know, you're somebody who's a, you know, who's a cannabis user. You obviously know a lot of users. Why do you think it is that people, you know, in legal states where they can really express a preference, they can go into a dispensary, know exactly what they're buying. Why is it that they want such high potency THC product? Because they get used to it. Your tolerance develops, it builds up, you know, every year we do this thing called sober October. Well, we don't do any, no drinking, no, no pot. And we do some sort of crazy challenge. Me and three of my buddies and when we do it, what it's very interesting how your tolerance is radically reduced. I guess I'll smoke pot at the end of that month and I'm like, holy shit. Like I don't even know what I'm talking about in the mid sentence and I'm just but blitzgrieged. Whereas, you know, now like I smoked a little weed last night, did some stand up, had a great old time. There was no, no issues with it at all, but I'm used to it. And if the weed that I smoked last night, I assume you don't smoke marijuana. I do not. Okay. If you and me were together last night and I gave you a hit of my joint, you'd be still there in the corner in the fetal position going, what in the fuck is going on? Because the marijuana is ridiculously powerful. But once you're accustomed to it, once your body acclimates, it's really not that big of a deal. The problem is you're dealing with a lot of habitual daily users. And for those people, like my friend Joey Diaz, there's a video of him given this other comedian. How many milligrams of those stars of death? Oh, Tilly. Like, when we give Owen, what did he give? Oh, I think just one. He ruined his life. But I've been about 200 to 250. Yeah. The guy opened the door and went out. Joey made a video, but the day changed Owen's life. Like literally fucked the guy's head up. Like he went outside and he vanished. He's gone. That's cannabis psychosis. Yeah. Well, I think, I think there's a real argument to be made, particularly with him. Well, it was going to make two points on that. So you definitely can develop a tolerance. Yeah. And I tell people all the time, try and take at least one three week break. But the evidence does show that if you stop for four weeks, generally all your receptors return and it'll be like you've never used cannabis before. So that's my experience. And that's even with people who are really, really heavy users. I can go back and get the study. But I mean, these people are using, I'm pretty sure it was like close to like seven joints a day. So really heavy users. Snoop Dogg's a good example of that. You know, my friend Tony Hinchcliffe is good buddies with Snoop Dogg. And he said Snoop Dogg just smokes all day. And he just like is always high. And you know, you're like, well, what do you do when you're not high? He's like, what? He's like, I'm never not high. So everything he does, he is high as fuck. Literally everything he does. Like for that guy, it's not that big of a deal. And for the way he lives his life, like he's just a relaxed, easy going guy. It's no problem. You could be high all day and live his life. And he's obviously wildly successful with this strategy. Yeah, wildly successful. And the second point I was gonna make on that too, though, was there does not appear to be any tolerance at the CB2 receptor. So THC attaches to the CB1 receptor. And that's where we know we can get tolerance. You know, some people, you know, they have some pain, they use some THC. And sometimes they need a little bit more same sometimes asleep, you know, they use THC, it'll work and then it'll stop working. With CBD too, we haven't seen that meaning like the people who, you know, get seizure control, generally, they don't need to increase the dose. Like the girl I was talking about earlier, you know, I first described her, I think when she was 20, when she was about 20, she's 25 now. She's never increased her dose. She's just used the same amount to CBD for the last five years. That's a medicine, right? Like it works for you. Yeah, I think we should really stop talking about CBD. I just wanted to make a note on the tolerance of the CB1. I just wanted to make a note that CB2 doesn't appear to be tolerance. Yeah, it's just there's just such a significant impact when it comes to especially edible THC. There's a significant impact on people's state of mind. And it's not always good. That's just a fact.