Researchers Find Cannabis Does Not Enhance Your Creativity
You’ve heard it from your stoner friends. You may even have said it yourself. But a new study says there’s no real evidence pot makes you more creative, and that in fact it probably makes you less so.
The buzzkill comes from Leiden University psychologists Lorenza Colzato and Mikael Kowal, who recently published their findings in the journal Psychopharmacology.
Their study gave test subjects either a low or dose of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, or a placebo, and had them carry out thinking tasks such as coming up with as many uses as possible for a pen or finding a link between words.
Not only did THC not help with the tasks, a high dose of THC actually impaired the subjects’ ability to come up with as many solutions to a problem as possible.
“The improved creativity that they believe they experience is an illusion,” Colzato said. “If you want to overcome writer’s block or any other creative gap, lighting up a joint isn’t the best solution. Smoking several joints one after the other can even be counterproductive to creative thinking.”
[Source: Leiden University]
Image from Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke