Cannabis and Conspiracy Theories

I’m a fairly creative person, but when I use cannabis I become much more creative than normal. That doesn’t mean the benefits of cannabis are all positive and people should be high all the time. There is a cost to higher creativity. It lowers your rationality and reasoning ability. (Plus, that increased creativity can manifest as anxiety and paranoia.) So you wouldn't want to be high in situations where reasoning and rationality are more important than creativity.

A result of increased creativity and decreased rationality are conspiracy theories. You may get high, watch an outlandish conspiracy video on YouTube and think it’s true because your mind is so creative under the influence of cannabis that you’re making connections between different facts and events, and it all seems to click into place and make perfect sense. Whereas if you watch those same conspiracy videos while sober, with a more rational mind, you will start to see the gaps in the connections that your creative mind made. (This has happened to me many times.)

Of course, not all conspiracy theorists are high on cannabis. Some are just naturally more creative and irrational thinkers, or they simply never learned to reason, think critically, and overcome cognitive biases. In any case, what all conspiracy theorists share is they are thinking too creatively, and not enough rationally.

Also, of course, not all conspiracy theories are outlandish and many turn out to be true. (Such as the deliberate propaganda campaign to paint cannabis as a dangerous drug.) I’m certainly not admonishing all conspiracy theories or theorists. It’s absolutely necessary to question the status quo and search for the truth. But the key word there is truth. The human brain is easily fooled by confirmation bias and other cognitive blindspots. Cannabis, as much as I enjoy it, can make it more difficult to recognize cognitive biases in yourself and others.

There’s a fine line with cannabis, where it helps you see through the bullshit constructs of society and recognize actual conspiracies, but the creative thinking cannabis employs can also be taken too far, so that you see conspiracies where none exist.

The creativity-enhancing effects of cannabis may work best for purely creative jobs such as the arts. Artists can get high and be as creative as possible. They have no need for rationality when creating their work. Art is and should be irrational.

A novelist, for instance, wouldn't want to be high all the time when they write, but using cannabis selectively can help them come up with inventive ideas. Or it can help them in the editing process by thinking of more creative ways to phrase things. It can help you see your writing from another perspective. Do one edit with your more creative mind and one pass with your more rational mind.

That’s the key to thinking while using cannabis, and thinking in general. You want to be both creative and rational. Maintain a balance and try to recognize the situations in which each is most needed.