Did That Really Happen? - Does Cannabis Create False Memories?

Ganja Theories – How Much of what you think you know…you actually know?

marijuana and false memories

https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20200211/marijuana-use-may-increase-risk-of-false-memories

The other day I was smoking a joint in the kitchen talking to my wife while I was cooking up some food. We were just having a casual conversation – throwing about interesting facts very matter-of-factly. As I was explaining to her about some random tidbit of information it dawned on me suddenly that I had no idea that what I was saying was true or not.

What had happen was that I saw a headline in the morning that said something that caught my attention. I did NOT click on the headline; I didn’t read it either save the meta description at the bottom of the post.

Based solely on that information – throughout the day I continued to formulate an idea or notion about that particular subject – that by the evening when I was talking to my wife it had slipped beyond the edges of conscious thought and was sinking deeper into the sub-conscious. At the point of telling her about the information – as fact – it dawned on me that I had absolutely no idea about any of it. I was stating truth based on a fantasy I generated throughout my day.

Fortunately – I’ve been doing a lot of mindfulness meditations and become more aware of my own physiological, psychological and emotional responses to events in my life. I was able to catch the lie as it was being spun of which I immediately stopped myself and clarified to my wife that I actually had no idea whether any of what I told her was true.

In her world – everything I was saying was 100%-Verified, meaning, she accepted everything I said to be true.

Another toke from a joint and then…

As I clench my fist and hold my cough…my mind jumps to the next thought; “how much of my reality is based off these non-truths?”

The human mind is a crazy thing. If you’re not actively working on being aware of your own behavior, thoughts and responses – you do so many things on auto-pilot it makes the Adam Sandler Movie “Click” seem more like deep insights to the core of our human nature than a meh-comedy you watch when you have nothing better to do.

So much of what you do is on auto-pilot. You go through the motions completely unaware of everything you are doing. Take a look at driving for instance – you’re simply going about your way thinking you’re going from “point A to point B” when in reality you are;

Aware of other moving vehicles in front, behind, and next to you.

Utilizing your hands, feet, eyes, and ears without missing a beat.

Thinking about some other random thought that slipped into your head in between 2nd and 3rd Street.

Holding a conversation with someone

Yelling at the asshole who just cut you off

And probably a million other things

Most of which you are completely unaware that you are doing. We are freakishly “near-sighted” when it comes to navigating life. We live in a bubble – and that’s that. The rest – our physical body and subconscious mind takes care of all that.

This is all good and dandy because without this mechanism we won’t be able to survive. We wouldn’t be able to get anything done at all. However, our bodies are still too stupid to deal with the technological advances. We don’t have the ability to differentiate between “fake news” and “real news” and even more disturbing is our ability to “fill in the details” without giving it a second thought.

These “false memories” fall into the background of our “reality matrixes” and helps sustain what we call “Consensus Reality” or “Paramount Reality”. This is the world where we live – this contains everything that is good and bad around us.

The question being – how much of that “consensus reality” is actually made up by self-generated fantasies? How much of what you think you know are merely subconscious suppositions based on faulty information streamed into your consciousness along with Terabits of diverse content mediums.

With an information overload – our bodies do what it does best – it automates. Goodbye beloved critical brain and hello fantasy factory.

However, because we are in a constant state of “information gathering” – we don’t allow ourselves the luxury of sifting through the information we gathered about our days. And so – we simply “store” the fictitious facts within our subconscious and it becomes the backdrop of our reality.

Okay – so what?

If what you know defines what you do or don’t do – then a lack of factual certainty may take some options away from you. For instance, not traveling to a dream destination because of some “warning” you “read” on an article on your feed – except, you didn’t read the article nor did you even care to open the link. You scrolled onwards and found something that interested you.

Your brain on the other hand said – sure, we’ll throw this in the “definitely true” pile – just remember, “Costa Rica’s Currently being plagued by killer-zombie bees from the sixth circle of hell [and they’ve got knives!!!]”.