Page 8 - My FlipBook

A Marijuana User Notices
Changes in Her Thinking

Elisabeth Davies, a life coach, counselor, and author in Peoria, Arizona,
started smoking marijuana socially when she was seventeen years old.
She continued to use the drug on and off during adulthood to ease anxi-
ety and escape from daily responsibilities. When Davies’s father died, she
began smoking every day to ease the pain of the loss. She says the drug
affected her mind: “[My family] could see changes in me . . . decreased
memory, like I’m not appearing as intelligent under the in uence. My
judgment is impaired. My clear thinking is impaired. My inhibitions are
impaired. I’m more self-centered. I’m not thinking about how my abuse
is affecting the people that love me.”

Quoted in Madeleine Winer, “Some Warn Marijuana Legalization Could Bring More Addiction,”
Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ), August 21, 2015. www.azcentral.com.

group, a group of normal, healthy people who can be compared
to the subjects being studied. All participants had refrained from
using marijuana for at least twenty-four hours before taking a
test designed to measure their cognitive abilities. The scientists
also tried to isolate the effects of marijuana by excluding from the
study anyone who had used any other drugs, such as cocaine
or opioids, during the past year or for more than three months
throughout their lifetime.
The researchers found that the heavy marijuana users per-
formed worse than the nonusers on a series of tests of cognitive
abilities. In one test, for example, the subjects and controls were
asked to remember a list of fi fteen words that were read to them.
Nonusers remembered an average of twelve words. Short-term
heavy users remembered an average of nine words. Long-term
users remembered an average of seven words.
Marijuana users also performed worse than nonusers on tests
that measure the executive function of the brain, including the
ability to make decisions. Long-term users showed a 70 percent

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