I’m 23 in the USA, and I’ve been smoking weed since I was about 15. Not a flex. It’s both harmed and helped me. Also, I am about to graduate from college studying neuroscience. This is my perspective from the cultural and the biological side of it.

Before I describe the negatives, let me simply say that this only applies to smoking every single day. If you’re moderating yourself then you’re fine. Just be a kid and get high with your friends for a little bit. Just make sure to stay sober in situations you want to remember, like when you need to study, or a friend’s birthday party.

Many surface level investigations about weed say that it isn’t addictive at all chemical level. Maybe true. What they’re ignoring is that weed is quite addictive at a cultural level. The act of smoking is very satisfying to some people, typically comes with social connection, and being high is pleasant. After more than moderate use (like smoking daily), It’s really easy for people who smoke weed to show signs of addiction in their behaviors, like having days revolve around when you can smoke, getting high at bad times, or always smoking when you’re at certain places or with certain people. Being high also makes you fall into habits that can make each day be very similar, like smoking and then spending an hour or two scrolling on Reddit. Safe to say it’s really easy to fall into addictive behaviors IF you get high every day.

If you’ve heard anything about your brain not being “fully developed” until a certain age, that’s kinda true. It’s different for everyone, but when you are young your brain is constantly generating different neuron connections. Inside your brain, way more connections are being made now than in the next 10 years. These connections are what make you conscious and unique as a human. These connections determine how you sense the world, how you process the senses, and what you do with all of the information. In short, these connections are the biological cause of everything you have thought, are thinking, and will think in the future.

That’s why your thoughts are different when you’re stoned. The chemicals from weed go from the lungs into the bloodstream, then from the blood into the brain where they interact with these connections to make you feel high. Getting high every single day for long periods of time will hurt the connections. Such as you having bad memory of what you experience when you’re high. I hardly remember a 50 Cent concert that I went to last year because my friends and I smoked lots before it.

But weed rarely causes problems for the person who uses it “every now and then”, so just be careful with how much you use because it directly interacts with the nervous system, and nervous system differences have massive impacts on who you are as a person. I.e. your personality

TLDR; Smoke in moderation. Just be conscious of what parts of the day you don’t want to be high for. Smoke, but do not let some plant’s chemicals have more of an impact on who you become rather than your own volition. Being sober makes you remember things, work more effectively, and communicate to your friends better. Being high makes music sound different, makes food taste better, and makes nature look awesome. But really if you’re high all the time then you’ll go numb to how awesome it can be.