A Motivated Post

The stereotype of heavy pot smokers lacking motivation is fairly universal (think just about any movie with a stoner character). And yet, how true is it?
Fred Gardner at Counterpunch reports that a graduate study has been completed on that very subject, and while the article points out some of the limitations of the study, still it’s very interesting to discover that the conclusion was:

“Participants who used cannabis seven days a week demonstrated no difference from non-cannabis users on indices of motivation. These findings refute hypothesized associations between heavy cannabis use and low motivation”

Interesting.
Sure, we can all probably come up with the unmotivated stoner example, but if we thought about it, we could just as easily come up with the unmotivated non-smoker. And the reverse is also true — One of my top former students, who graduated with honors with a double major and several leadership positions in university organizations, later confided to me that he had smoked pot pretty much every day during his four years in college. Not something I’d recommend, and for some people it would be disastrous, but it does help show that marijuana by itself is not anti-motivational.