Marijuana Blog

Although Wiz and Snoop are about to consummate the relationship between marijuana and music, the substance and our sounds have been closely tied for centuries.

 

Musicians have often cited marijuana as key to their creative process. The first musician to make his marijuana use public was the grinning, gravel-voiced Louie Armstrong. He wrote in his autobiography that ganja or "gage," as he referred to it, was "a thousand times better than whiskey ... it's an assistant — a friend." More than half a century later, Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson, the man responsible for writing Rolling Stone's second most important album ever written, echoed Armstrong's notion of marijuana being an "assistant:" "Marijuana helped me write Pet Sounds."

 

The list of musicians who have praised the green goes on and on from there. Everyone from Bob Dylan, The Beatles, OutKast, Alanis Morissette, Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley celebrate the drug as a key creative tool.

 

But it turns out there's hard science to back up the claim. Marijuana actually does have a strange relationship to musical creativity.

 

Putting the dope in dopamine. THC in marijuana smoke causes the body to release elevated levels of dopamine. This is the hormone behind the signature placid calm and euphoria of a marijuana high. Most significantly for artists, dopamine can lower one's inhibitions and quiet the "inner editor," allowing thoughts to flow more freely. Numerous writers and artists have asserted that scrutinizing every idea as lands on the page is a great way to short circuit one's creative output. So, for anxious musicians like Brian Williams, the ability to switch off self-consciousness while preserving self-awareness is huge.

 

Opening up. Few studies exist connecting marijuana and music explicitly, so many of these connections are still left to speculation. In his frequently quoted treatise on marijuana and musical faculties, "Marijuana and Music: A Speculative Exploration," earth scientist Peter Webster claimed the most remarkable effect of marijuana is a greatly enhanced appreciation of musical stimuli.

 

"The effect seems to be almost universal," he wrote, "and does not fade with experience." He noticed that during "cannabis sessions," people who loved pop music became fascinated by more complex, artful sounds, while people who had previously rejected pop music as "crude and trivial" came to appreciate it more through "cannabis consciousness." This means, then, that artists can have more powerful gut reactions to their own output, enabling them to make stronger creative decisions.

 

As for listening to pop music, feel free to use this to perform your own scientific study with the following control:

 

Divergent thought. The biggest claim about marijuana and creativity is also the most hotly debated. Researchers at the University College London found in 2010 that marijuana heightens the brain's automatic semantic priming abilities — or the ability to draw connections between seemingly unrelated concepts. That ability is known as divergent thought, and it's the holy grail of creativity, our best guess at what actually makes a person creative. A study performed by researchers at Temple University found a direct correlation between self-reported frequency of marijuana use and scores on creativity and "adventuresomeness" tests. The higher the frequency of use, the higher the subjects' scores.

 

But there also are a number of earlier studies that assert the exact opposite. Without getting into all the nitty gritty of experimental design, a lot of the arguments over the validity of divergent thinking tests like these come down to what researchers consider to be "coherent" and "divergent" responses.

 

Read more: http://www.policymic.com

Both systems will work well in a marijuana garden. With the reservoir system, you’ll use horticultural clay pellets or pea-sized volcanic lava in plastic pots. The containers are put in a tray that contains a water-nutrient solution that is about one quarter of the height of the container. A container that is 10 inches high will have about one inch of soaking rock. A large portion of the medium stays above the waterline. Capillary action keeps the rock moist by drawing up water. All the clay pebbles in the container remain moist as long as water says in the reservoir.

 

As soon as the water-nutrient solution is added to the tray, plain unenriched water needs to be added to keep the water level and strength of the nutrient solution at equilibrium. As water evaporates, the concentration of nutrients rises. Adding water will lower it.

 

Most of the literature suggests that roots should not be sitting in water. There are two reasons why this is occasionally true. First, the sitting water might not have dissolved oxygen. The roots utilize oxygen and will incur diseases without it. Second, some mediums are incredibly dense and take up so much water that there isn’t any air left. The roots then suffer from a lack of oxygen. In a reservoir system, large air spaces are left in between pieces of clay pebbles or lava so that there is enough air and the roots can access the oxygen more easily. Download my free marijuana grow bible for more tips and tricks about growing marijuana.

 

Roots that grow into the water look different than those that grow above it. They won’t have the fine network of root hairs and are denser even in water that has been depleted of oxygen. Other roots appear to supply oxygen to the roots in the water.

 

Marijuana gardeners concerned about a lack of oxygen for the water roots can infuse the water with the gas with a small air-stone attached to an air pump. The column of rising bubbles moves the water around. A larger amount of the surface area contacts the air and absorbs oxygen while releasing CO2.

 

The never ending drip system also utilizes clay pellets or pea-sized lava in containers that are sitting in a tray that drains into a reservoir below. A pump supplies a constant gentle stream of water through the tubing to each container so that a wispy stream of water is always trickling over the stones. This system is rather easy, but it still promotes vigorous growth. Keeping the drain hole blocked with the tubing that raises the drain to the desired height makes for an easy combo constant drip/reservoir system. With this, the marijuana plants are receiving a constant stream of water and the water roots are given space in the reservoir.

 

Read more: http://www.theweedblog.com

FAIRFIELD — Weeks after a state senator introduced a bill that would make the sale and possession of marijuana legal in New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie emphasized today that he is opposed to any effort to legalize pot in the state.

 

"I'm not going to do that on my watch," the Republican governor told a crowd of about 500 people — including dozens of students — at Winston Churchill Elementary School. "I'm just not. I don't think it’s the right thing to do for our state."

 

Last month, state Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) introduced legislation that would regulate the growth, possession, and sale of recreational marijuana with an aim toward stemming the illegal drug market and provide new tax revenue.

 

"It's time to update our archaic drug laws and get real about the detrimental effects they are having on the lives of residents here in New Jersey," Scutari said at the time.

 

A Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press poll released today shows that nearly 60 percent of New Jersey adults say alcohol and tobacco pose a greater hazard than marijuana. Still, the poll also reveals that residents are split on whether to legalize pot, with about 48 percent in favor of making it lawful to buy a small amount and 47 percent opposed to it.

 

Christie — a possible candidate for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination — has long said he is against legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana because it will send "the wrong message" to children. 

 

Read more: http://www.nj.com