Gemma Speck

Let's take a break.

I feel like I just lectured everybody.

Let's, yeah, let's take a break and then let's talk about the effect that it has on our brain, what it does to our emotions and motivation and also our relationships in the long term.

Stay with us.

We are more than our bodies.

We contain essence.

We contain spirit.

Okay, let's talk about the long-term effects of smoking weed on the brain because I feel like this is something a lot of people want to know about.

When people ask about the long-term effects of smoking weed, one of the most important things to clarify is that the answer is not completely simple.

On one hand, research doesn't support the idea that everybody who smokes cannabis will end up with severe permanent brain damage.

But it also doesn't support the idea that using weed long term is completely harmless.

either.

What the evidence suggests is that the effects depend a lot on how often somebody uses it, how much they use, how old they were when they started, and whether they have developed more dependent patterns of use.

So using multiple times a week for extended periods of time.

Basically, the younger you start, the more frequently you use, the greater the amount, the longer the period of usage, the greater the correlation with problems involving attention, learning and working memory especially.

Cannabis affects brain systems immensely.

specifically that are heavily involved in learning and memory, specifically this region called the hippocampus, which you guys probably know from episodes in the past, helps us form and organize new memories.

THC in particular basically interacts with the endocannabinoid receptors in this region and disrupts the process of encoding information and

Meaning that smoking weed doesn't erase our memories or consuming weed doesn't erase our memories.

What it does is mean that the information never gets properly stored in the first place.