YouTube video (Amber Hollingsworth) explaining how heavy marijuana use affects teenagers’ psychological development. The speaker emphasizes that frequent use can produce dependence/addiction, impede development of coping skills and identity formation, increase anxiety long-term, and trap users in stagnation even if not as acutely destructive as other drugs. The talk distinguishes occasional/recreational use from problematic, daily use and ends with guidance to parents to watch related videos about discussing marijuana with teens.
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In this video, I'm going to talk about how marijuana affects the teenage brain. Now in some other videos I did way back, I really nerded out on these subjects and I talked about all the different drugs and what happens on like the cellular level in the brain. If you want the nerd out version, make sure you check those out. But in this video, I'm going to talk about it in a bigger picture kind of way. I'm going to talk about how marijuana affects teenagers psychologically. Because there's all these arguments out there about marijuana should be legal, not illegal. Hey, if you haven't checked out my video on how to talk to your teenager about marijuana, you need to check that out because I talk about the whole how to address the whole legal versus illegal issue, but there's just a lot of information. There's a lot of it's natural, there's a lot of it doesn't hurt people. But let's just take a second back away from all that media and talk for a moment about the reality of what happens psychologically when a kid starts smoking weed. Okay, so what happens to their brain? Well, it depends on the kid and it depends on how much they're smoking. Sure. Lots of people smoke marijuana, teenage or otherwise, and they don't really have bad effects from it. That's totally fine. But a lot of the kids that I see in my office smoke weed like all the time, like three or four times a day. So that's different than somebody that uses occasionally or socially or is a teenage experimenting. This is like I'm dependent on marijuana. And guess what? You, yes, you can definitely get addicted and dependent to marijuana. Dig deeper. If you haven't found that research, if you found something that says otherwise, because that's what you wanted to see. Okay, so yes, you can get dependent on it. How does it affect the teenage brain when you get dependent on marijuana? Well, for the most part, addiction really isn't about the drug. Addiction is about what's going on on the inside of that person. Are they vulnerable to it? And teenagers by nature are just vulnerable to addiction for a lot of brain reasons. Other videos on that, if you want to see that. But psychologically, being a teenager is like ridiculously crazy, stressful, hormonal. I mean, you get broken hearts. You have to deal with high school is totally difficult. So you're on such a roller coaster at this point in your life that you're dealing with a lot of stuff. You're learning how to cope with the world. In fact, the that's Your whole developmental task as an adolescent, you're supposed to be sort of breaking away from the safety of mom and dad and figuring out how to navigate the world and figuring out who you are and where your place is and who your people are and what your purpose in life is. And if you're smoking a lot of weed, like the ones that I see in my office, you're not doing any of those things. You're not figuring out who you are, other than maybe you've decided that you're a pothead and you're going to hang out with the stoners. Well, guess what? That's not who you really are. You got better things to do than that. You. You aren't figuring out how to cope with stress. Because so many of the teenagers that we see that have a problem with weed, it's because they feel anxious and they feel like the marijuana is helping the anxiety. So they feel anxious and they smoke and they feel anxious and they smoke and they feel anxious and they smoke. And guess what? After smoking a whole bunch, then you feel more anxious because smoking weed in the long term increases your anxiety. So the thing that you think is helping you feel better is. Is actually making you worse. And another point is you need to be learning how to deal with the stresses in your life. And sometimes you're supposed to feel anxious. Your brain has a warning system in there on purpose. Maybe you're supposed to be worried about your test and the grade that you're going to make. Maybe you need to be worried about whether or not your parents are going to murder you, strangle you, crowned you for something crazy you did. The key isn't I'm supposed to medicate any uncomfortable feeling. And teenagers really just aren't mature enough to really understand that there is a reason why we need to feel uncomfortable. Hey, if there's an easy way out, they're gonna take it. And if they're using marijuana to not deal with life, then they're not developing those skills. If you've got a kid with a marijuana problem, then you know what I'm talking about. Like, everything sets them over the edge. They can't tolerate anything. They fall apart over everything because they're not the developing normal coping skills. I say, like, coping skills are like muscles, like any other muscle you have in your body. And if you don't use them, they atrophy. If you don't use your coping skills, like, you lose them and you become vulnerable to any kind of stress and overwhelmed so easily psychologically. For teenagers to be relying on marijuana. To deal with life is a terrible idea. They're not developmentally progressing, they're not learning how to cope with life. They're hiding away and they're using this substance to deal with their life stressors, which in the end, ultimately isn't going to work. In the end, it's going to cause you a lot more stressors because you're probably in trouble at school or at home or you got like a possession jar. So now you got even more stressors. So you need to smoke even more weed. Deal with those stressors that you're getting because you're smoking weed. You can see it is like a never ending trap. Last thing I'm going to say about marijuana and the teenage brain is, you know, teenagers and college kids and adults, they like to argue with me about whether marijuana is a problem or not. And I say, I don't know, probably not a problem for most people. Alcohol is not a problem for most people. Pain pills aren't a problem for most people. But for some people, it's a big problem. It's so much harder to see, though, with marijuana. I, I like to say that, like, getting people to stop smoking weed is like the hardest thing that I do. I'm telling you. Harder than getting people off heroin, harder than getting people to stop drinking. You know why? Because they can't see that it's a problem. Because it changes your life so slowly that you can't even notice it. The best metaphor I have for it is like when you're a kid and you're out and you're playing in the ocean and you're having fun and you look up, you're like, mom, look at me on my boogie board or whatever. And you look over there and they're not there. And you're like, what the crap? They love me. And then eventually you figure out they didn't leave you. You moved the ocean, water moved you down, but you didn't feel that happening. That's what smoking marijuana is like. Eventually you start looking around, trying to find your friends and your family, and you're like, what the heck? They love me. No, they moved on with their life. And you're still in the basement smoking weed. That's what happened. I like to say marijuana might not take you to your bottom, might not like destroy your life like cocaine or heroin or some of those other things, but it will get you stuck. You'll stay stuck. You don't develop as a person when you're smoking all the time. You don't move on with your life, okay? You might have all these big ideas and plans in your head about you're going to do this and you're going to solve the world's problems. But guess what? That's the effect of the marijuana. Are you actually getting those things done? Probably not if you're smoking all the time because it's hard to get a whole lot done. We got to stop smoking. You start working on something, got to stop smoke. That makes life a little bit difficult. I'm not talking about people that use marijuana every now and then or recreationally or experimentally or whatever. I'm talking about when you're using weed to deal with life, that's some major negative impact on not just the teenage brain, but any brain. So everything I'm saying here that applies to teenagers really does apply to adults too. Like we all know that person who's like 40 years old living with their parents and they act like they're 15. You know why that is? Because they've been smoking weed since they were 15 and they have not emotionally developed past that. So. So yeah, there are 15. Yeah, they're like 15. Emotionally. 40 year old, physically. You can see it all the time. Even teenagers watching this video. I know you know someone like that, probably someone that you smoke with and they're like 40. It might be cool for you as a 15 year old, but it's really not cool for them as a 40 or 50 year old. And you know that. Uncool. You don't want to end up like that. If you're a parent watching this video and you've got concerns about a teenager that's smoking weed, make sure you check out my videos on how to talk to your kid about smoking weed and how to win the weed debate. Those are two huge ones. Don't even go into the conversation with them until you've seen it because you're going to screw it up. You're going to do what all parents do and you're going to like say all the wrong things. Don't say those things. Don't have the conversation. Watch that video first. For tons more information on all things addiction and recovery and lots of free expert advice. Make sure and subscribe and hit the bell so you don't miss a thing.
