They keep bouncing around the "Possibility" of dependency on pot.... I've smoked the stuff from the age of 17 up until the age of 32.
No withdraws, doing just fine. I only stopped because of two reasons:
#1 - Having a child sucks your money away & I have to prioritize
#2 - Here in Australia, they're more fickle about weed than Americans and trying to find someone to buy the stuff from isn't very easy to do & you're made to feel like some crack head.
When they show news reports here about some meth lab exploding in someone's garage, they continually toss in extra clips from other raids of police hauling away marijuana plants as if a pot grow up will blow up and is a risk to you, your family and your neighborhood.
I'm doing just fine without it after 15 years of constant use of pot..... but I will say, once in a while, I'd sure like a joint now and then. Smoke a joint late at night, wifes asleep, sons asleep.... grab some cookies, something to drink, go play a video game.
Yup.... big danger to society I'd be.
And the report about how smoking pot affects certain areas of the brain?
Yeah, so does everything else on the planet. Caffeine, Sugar, Alcohol, Advil, a Stubbed Toe.... everything affects the brain in one way or another.
If marijuana didn't affect your brain when you smoked it, then that would mean it did nothing. If it did nothing, then why the sweet hell would anybody bother with it and why would governments try and make it illegal in the first place?
You smoke pot, your eyes go red, your throat goes a bit dry and you get thirsty..... then you get hungry.... you also find things funnier than normal.... and eventually you either want sex, watch a movie, listen to some music or to play a video game.
The only reason why paranoia is associated with weed is because it's made illegal and you get paranoid that some pain in the **** neighbor walked by, smelled something and called the cops because they're a party pooper.
The only thing I do now is smoke cigarettes.... make those illegal, make pot legal and the world would be a better place.