Dionysius—likely a pseudonym for a provocative guest—warns of marijuana’s escalating potency, citing genetic risks like schizophrenia (baseline 5% to 50%) and IQ drops from heavy use. He contrasts it with alcohol, calling pot "antisocial" and "anti-life," while noting its cultural detachment despite six Whitefish dispensaries nearby. A former Princeton classmate’s homelessness and paranoia are blamed on college-era cannabis, yet the guest admits alcohol’s harms are socially accepted, even if not ideal. The episode frames marijuana as a modern menace fostering retreat from reality, unlike alcohol’s flawed but redeemable social role. [Automatically generated summary]
Yeah, hey, I didn't know if you would have time to go over this or if it's super relevant at all, but I saw you retweeted something about there was a study about marijuana usage that came out about it being at record high levels.
And I'm seeing a lot of cover for that from certain people saying like, well, you know, like the normal stuff, like, well, alcohol kills this many people a year.
So what's really the problem with this?
Fair point.
I just kind of wanted your take on that to break it down a little bit because there's obviously like additional problems that come with marijuana that those people are just ignoring.
I'll talk about it a little bit.
I mean, I wouldn't even mind doing a deep dive into pot at some point.
I've seen that there was a New York Times article and I'm seeing that people are talking about it and summarizing it.
A couple of notes.
First off, just on a personal level, like I, I won't name names here, but it's not like anyone knows who this person is.
But there's this woman who I've known simply through my the kids, basically, my time at Whitefish.
Like I, I've gotten to know, and I, and I genuinely like her as well.
And it's, I hadn't seen her in a number of years.
Maybe I didn't really talk to her in two years or something like that.
And I just kind of saw her randomly and I just noticed two things.
First off, this Mar-a-Lago face, the Botox filler, it's not like she looked like Kimberly Guilfoyle or anything, but it is funny how universal that thing is, even with people in their like early 30s who you would presume wouldn't need that much.
I don't know.
I just noticed it and it's like, oh, you too, of course.
You now, you look a little bit different than when I saw you a couple of years ago.
But the other thing is the way she was talking, I was like, are you on drugs?
It was this like staring off to the upper left.
So I'm like, yeah.
And it's like, can you not do drugs, please?
It's 3 p.m.
I don't know.
Yeah, someone said total MELF.
Yeah.
Again, I'm not even trying to be mean to this woman because she is very nice and I genuinely like her, but it's something that's just so universal now that it sort of touches everyone.
Everyone's part of this.
Everyone's being pulled into this vortex.
The other thing, and I'm just speaking, again, very personally, but I think whitefish is representative of a massive trend.
I don't even know how many dispensaries there are within walking distance of one another, but I think it's like six.
So there's one place in downtown Whitefish that's like the fruity dispensary where they're selling like moisturizer and whatever, but then presumably you can also buy pot.
Drugs and Life Distortion00:11:57
And then there's like the power plant.
Get it?
Power plant.
It makes you powerful, guys.
Like you should smoke weed before you work out.
Yeah.
Or like playing beach volleyball with your shirt off.
Just smoke up before you do that.
Whoa.
Anyway, then there's like one that's just like the cheapo one that just says dispensary.
And there's others that I'm missing.
And it's, it is a funny thing because there's the boutique quality to it.
And then there's just the brass tax, you know, do you want to get high on the cheap quality to it?
I don't know the last time I have smoked marijuana.
I did it a few times in high school.
And then, you know, I don't know, you maybe in my 20s or 30s, you'd like go to a party or whatever.
But from what I understand, it is far more powerful than it was in the 90s through the power of eugenics.
And they have mastered the science.
And while humans keep getting dumber, our plants keep getting smarter.
And so this is a different type of drug.
And the ability to just put it into gummy or browny form.
And so everyone is mildly high can't be underestimated.
There are serious issues in terms of particularly with young, with boys and young men in terms of IQ.
There are really serious issues in terms of schizophrenia.
And I don't know if the New York Times article goes into this.
I presume it does.
Actually, I know it does because some people were mentioning this.
And I was actually talking with RFH about this a couple of weeks ago, and I don't remember the exact statistics, but just take my word for it on this.
There is a clear connection.
And if you have a tendency towards schizophrenia, smoking out on a regular basis, you smoke once or twice, probably and I can do anything.
Smoking out on a regular basis is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette in the sense of if schizophrenia, we don't even fully understand schizophrenia.
We know it as a phenomenon.
It affects men more than it does affect women and it affects young men.
So it seems to hit when you're 20, 25, thereabouts, and your life is destroyed.
I actually have not quite a friend, but a classmate of mine from St. Mark's who went to Princeton, actually.
He was a bit of a nerd, but he was obviously very talented.
And this man now has been homeless multiple times and is basically dysfunctional.
When he went to college, he started out just like everyone else.
Things were looking up.
And then he starts locking himself into his dorm room.
His like flat dorm mates can't get in.
He's afraid.
Everyone's trying to kill him.
They're aliens.
I mean, all the typical schizophrenic reactions basically are on display.
He cannot function at all.
And I mean, it is absolutely debilitating.
I mean, this is a terrible thing that we don't quite understand.
However, we can describe it as a phenomenon.
Let's say that it's genetic in some fashion.
Let's say you have a 5% chance of becoming of developing schizophrenia due to genetic biological factors.
Smoking out regularly multiplies that by 10.
So you might as well hold a revolver up to your head and put one bullet in and start clicking away and see what happens.
I mean, the idea, and that kind of stuff doesn't happen with alcohol.
So the idea that we would just like forget that this is like that this is a like statistically relevant phenomenon that we just sort of wash it over and say, hey, man, pot's cool, dude.
There's nothing bad with pot.
It just gets you relaxed.
Right.
And the fact that we would just treat pot as this benign and sort of just whimsical or meaningless when they have these clear correlations with something that dramatic is just the height of irresponsibility, the height of insanity.
Really strong correlations with repeated pot use at a young age and lowering your IQ.
So again, let's say there's a schizophrenic in your family tree, your grandmother, oh, she went crazy.
You might very well possess those genes.
And smoking out is a lot like playing Russian roulette.
If you're a young man, you might as well just hit your head, hit yourself over the head with a hammer.
I'm not talking about looks maxing here.
You might as well just dumb yourself down physically because that's what you're doing with pot.
But on a deeper level, I just sort of hate pot.
It's a dumb drug.
It's a left-wing drug, you could say.
It's a drug that like it, if it does something active, it creates paranoia.
Why would you possibly want to do that?
It inspires you to eat a bag of Cheetos.
Why would you possibly think that that is cool?
It dumbs you down.
It makes you forget the world.
It makes you check out of life.
Everything's fine, man.
It's cool.
I love you, bro.
That's what it does.
That's the drug, as opposed to a stimulant like cocaine.
Say what you will about the 1980s Wall Street, but there is something sort of, I don't know, cool about doing a line of Coke and going to the disco and staying up all night and being energetic.
That is getting off your couch and entering life.
I mean, I'm not endorsing cocaine, but I think you get my point.
The other thing, alcohol is obviously a depressant, although it's a funny type of depressant in the sense that alcohol can inspire fights.
It can inspire some very bad things as well.
There's no doubt that 90% of men who beat their wives do it on alcohol.
I mean, I'm obviously can inspire car wrecks and all that kind of stuff.
That being said, alcohol, the gift of Dionysus, it's culturally embedded in the world.
And you can at least sort of defend it.
Alcohol is not going to make you a schizophrenic if you have a cocktail at night or you're drinking some wine with dinner.
It's not going to bring on some terrible schizophrenia.
It's certainly not good for you, but you get my point here.
It's about celebrating and enjoying life.
Alcohol is social.
And we see these things about the lack of alcohol use among Gen Z and people are like, oh, look, Gen Z is so healthy.
Obviously, Gen Z is not healthy.
Gen Z are not having sex.
What?
Are they all religious moralists?
No, I don't think so.
I think something really bad is going on with Gen Z in the sense that they're watching porn.
They're men in their 20s suffering from erectile dysfunction.
I mean, there are some really clear indicators that they are not enjoying life or experiencing life in all its moments.
Alcohol is social and that is redeemable.
Now, I would say this.
I was actually talking with a woman.
I think this is about a year and a half ago or so.
I can't quite remember.
No, it was, I guess, almost a year ago.
And unless I've bought, when you get old, you lose track of time.
Something that happened four years ago happened like four months ago and vice versa.
Anyway, I think it was around a year ago.
And she was talking about her alcoholism that she went through in college, where she was a just dead ass drunk through college.
She would go to a party, get wasted by 8 p.m., black out by 10 p.m. and wake up somewhere the next morning.
I mean, terrible stuff.
So she went to rehab.
She got her life together, doesn't even touch alcohol, which is probably the right thing in her case.
She no doubt has some sort of genetic inclination to alcoholism and she's on the straight and narrow.
I don't.
I can drink and not get super drunk.
Remember my grandparents, every day at 3 p.m., they'd fix a bourbon or club soda or something.
Anyway, I'm used to it.
But the fact is, it's not healthy.
And so I gave up alcohol for Lent.
So I was sort of observing the Christian tradition.
I was experiencing Christ's suffering, in fact, by not drinking.
And I actually sort of kicked alcohol to the point that I don't really need it.
I have not given up alcohol.
At our last conference, I was drinking some red wine and I probably had a little bit of whiskey as well.
But you really, you experience the just, you don't need that in your system and you experience getting it out and the fact that you wake up and you're a little more energetic.
You don't just lose a day by getting drunk at night and then just, you know, being depressed or lying about the next day.
Being sober is just great.
It's a very good thing.
And the other thing is that you sort of enjoy alcohol more.
So I think it was last summer, I can't quite remember.
And I was actually in Dallas visiting my, I was with my mom and kids and we're visiting my sister and her family.
And everyone was ordering their drink around the table.
You know, you show up to a restaurant.
Oh, yeah, old-fashioned, all of this.
And I just didn't.
I said, I'll have a water.
And it was kind of powerful.
I don't know.
I didn't need it and I felt fine.
So I would recommend doing something like this, getting alcohol out of your system.
You don't need it every day.
Maybe it's Friday.
You want to wind down, have some red wine, have a cocktail.
That's all great, but you don't really need it.
It's not helping you.
And it actually is hurting you in ways that you don't quite perceive.
So anyway, there's my rant on alcohol, but I still do think alcohol is redeemable on some level.
In a way that pot isn't, precisely because alcohol is a social drug.
And pot, in my humble opinion, is an antisocial drug.
And it's actually an anti-life drug.
Pot is nihilistic.
Pot makes you retreat.
Pot brings you to another realm and not the real world.