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  1. #361
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    So many people fell for Sasha Baron Cohen's characters, and thought they were real.

    What's the name of this phenomenon? What is in the human makeup that leads to following con artists?

    I used to think it was naivete. But people who should know better still fall.

    Is there a survival aspect? Stay close to the leader and you'll get food/shelter? Stay close to the leader and you'll get power/salvation/a payoff?

    I have not studied cults and the mentality of followers.

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  3. #362
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    Cultists gonna cult cult cult cult cult
    Jesus' gonna jeez jeez jeez jeez jeez
    I'm just gonna shake shake shake shake shake
    Shake some salt! Shake some salt! Hoo hoo hoo.


    (there was at least one salt cult)

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  5. #363
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    I can speak of this 'Jesus' ... I could find myself actually checking out something like this, as a teenager, (high on booze and pot) I wished that I could have lived 2000 years ago and 'communed' with Jesus. Since, I got that the 'old thought' out of my brain, my brain changed. I wouldn't 'visit' such a thing without some real hard evidence of 'divinity/supernatural' acts. This dude ain't got it...

    Lost people looking for a 'comfort zone' and cultists are overjoyed to offer it for their own ends.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  7. #364
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by giovonni View Post
    For those who might still be waiting, here's a good example of
    what would (or has already) occurred upon this world...



    Cult leader claiming to be reincarnation of Jesus arrested in Russia

    By Vincent Barone


    September 22, 2020



    Sergei Torop meets with his followers in the remote village of Petropavlovka, Russia in 2009.

    "A cult leader who bills himself as the reincarnation of Jesus has reportedly been arrested in Russia.

    Sergei Torop, 59, will face charges for organizing an illegal religion and extorting money from his cult’s members, whom he allegedly emotionally abused, The Guardian reported Tuesday.

    Russia’s federal security forces conducted a special operation involving helicopters and armed officers to storm the cult in Siberia and arrest Torop, a former traffic cop known to his thousands of followers as Vissarion, and two of his aides.

    The country’s Investigative Committee accused Torop, who sports long hair and a beard, of “using followers’ money and psychological violence to inflict harm,” the Moscow Times reported.

    After losing his traffic officer gig in 1989, Torop said he experienced an “awakening” that inspired him to launch a movement called the Church of the Last Testament, which blends Christianity with environmentalism and other values, according to The Guardian.

    “I am not God. And it is a mistake to see Jesus as God. But I am the living word of God the father. Everything that God wants to say, he says through me,” he told the Guardian back in 2002."


    Sergei Torop appears at a hearing at Novosibirsk’s Tsentralny (Central) District Court in Russia.

    "The cult has about 20 settlements deep in the southern Siberian wilderness, where about 4,000 followers — or “Vissarionites” — live, according to the Moscow Times.

    Authorities also reportedly arrested Vadim Redkin, Torop’s alleged right-hand man, and another associate named Vladimir Vedernikov.

    It’s not immediately clear what prompted authorities to move in on Torop. The Russian Orthodox church has criticized the cult in the past, though the organization has remained largely unbothered, according to The Guardian."

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    Quote Originally posted by Wind View Post
    I always got a creepy vibe from this dude. Cultists gonna cult!

    Anyone claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus is nuts anyways.


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2Cv5hZfOmk
    Quote Originally posted by Octopus Garden View Post
    If you haven't seen this, it's great!


    For the above post comments reference sake ...
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  9. #365
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    #TrulyBreakingBad ...

    Drug suspect on the loose after
    daring escape courtroom
    escape caught on camera



    By Vincent Barone

    September 24, 2020


    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYva_M2io9M

    Suspect escapes Highland County courtroom on Sept. 22, 2020


    "An Ohio drug convict mounted a daring, caught-on-camera escape from custody during his sentencing earlier this week, a report said.

    Nickolaus Garrison, 34, has been on the run since Tuesday, when he shook loose from deputies and fled the Highland County Courthouse, where he was to be sentenced on a felony meth possession charge, WKRC reported.

    Footage from the courthouse shows Garrison break loose from two deputies as he was being led into a courtroom. He then runs out and down a flight of stairs with the deputies in tow.

    One deputy is seen leaping over the railing and onto the staircase in a frantic attempt to tackle Garrison. The deputy suffered broken ribs and a possible concussion during the fall, the station reported.

    County officials are asking for the public’s help in locating Garrison. He faces up to a year in jail and a maximum fine of $2,500."

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  11. #366
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    Rolling Eyes

    And speaking of meth ...

    Jailhouse Rock -
    Elvis Presley

    (From Jailhouse Rock Movie) 1957 HD


    3:19 minutes


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  13. #367
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    Returning Topic

    Meanwhile down at the pub ...

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  15. #368
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    Question

    The continual game of hide and seek ...

    Money laundering, oligarchs, terrorists:
    How corrupt are the banks? | To the Point


    Are banks helping criminals, oligarchs and terrorists to launder money? That’s what the so-called FinCen leaks allege. How do the charges stack up? Our guests: Daniel Drepper (BuzzFeed News), Vendeline von Bredow (Economist), Matthew Karnitschnig (Politico)
    Sep 24, 2020

    26:04 minutes


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  17. #369
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    Thinking

    Here's a song many have probably never heard before...
    Being what it was/still is ...


    It's All Too Much



    "Written by George Harrison for the Beatles Yellow Submarine album
    Original soundtrack barred by copyright. Shame. Re-uploaded with closest cover I could find."

    Lyrics below ...

    ♪ It's all too much, It's all too much
    When I look into your eyes, your love is there for me
    And the more I go inside, the more there is to see
    It's all too much for me to take
    The love that's shining all around you
    Everywhere, it's what you make
    For us to take, it's all too much
    Floating down the stream of time, of life to life with me
    Makes no difference where you are or where you'd like to be
    It's all too much for me to take
    The love that's shining all around here
    All the world's a birthday cake,
    So take a piece but not too much

    Set me on a silver sun, for I know that I'm free
    Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea
    It's all to much for me to see
    A love that's shining all around here
    The more I am, the less I know
    And what I do is all too much
    It's all too much for me to take
    The love that's shining all around you
    Everywhere, it's what you make
    For us to take, it's all too much ♪


    An animated retro-odyssey

    4:55 minutes

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  19. #370
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    Question

    Speaking of recalling ...

    Anne-Marie Duff on how
    ‘The Salisbury Poisonings’
    is relatable right now


    By Lauren Sarner

    September 30, 2020



    Anne-Marie Duff in "The Salisbury Poisonings."

    “The Salisbury Poisonings,” a ratings hit when it premiered in June on the BBC, arrives Thursday on new streaming service AMC+.

    The British miniseries dramatizes the 2018 incident in which a quiet English village became the site of an international crisis. It stars Rafe Spall and Ann-Marie Duff, best-known as Fiona Gallagher in the British version of “Shameless.”

    “If you aren’t British, [Salisbury] is sort of what you imagine a British town to be like,” Duff, 49, tells The Post.

    “It’s very pretty, it’s embedded in a rural area, it’s got a lot of history — and it’s near Stonehenge. It’s this picturesque version of England. So going there and walking around knowing that international espionage took place there was important.”

    In March of 2018, a lethal Soviet-era nerve agent called Novichok was used in an assassination attempt on a Russian double- agent and spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia (played by Wayne Swann and Jill Winternitz), who were living in Salisbury. As the series begins, both collapse and have seizures on a park bench. Passersby grow alarmed; the police and an ambulance are called to the scene."



    "The rest of the show follows ordinary people and public service officials as they react to the situation, including Tracy Daszkiewicz (Duff), the county’s Director of Public Health and Safety who rises to the occasion. Law enforcement and health officials alike scramble to understand and contain the threat, since just a half-teaspoon of Novichok could kill 20,000 people — and no one is sure who the Skripals came into contact with before collapsing.

    “[The show] had a profound effect when it was broadcast here during lockdown,” says Duff, referring to the fact that “The Salisbury Poisonings” is the year’s highest-rated drama in the UK to date, with 7.2 million viewers tuning into its June premiere.

    “There’s an immediacy of connection in the story because of what we’re going through globally,” she says. “We’re all in a frightened space at the moment because we don’t have the answers. [The show is] about real normal people living normal lives, having to deal with this craziness that’s unknowable. I think we can all identify with that right now.”



    Duff says her character is based on a real person, whom she met while filming the series.

    “I was very fortunate. [The real] Tracy had a huge role in the whole creative process,” she says. “She guided and steered the writers, so we could always phone or text her. I was able to hang out with her and just get a sense of who she is. She came from a background of social work, so she had a grassroots approach to local government and wanted to connect with people on a very personal level.

    “And who knew she’d be required to solve such an enormous international crisis?”

    This isn’t the first time that Duff has played a real person, having starred as Queen Elizabeth I (opposite Tom Hardy as Robert Dudley) in the 2005 BBC miniseries “The Virgin Queen.” But since this history is so recent, the stakes felt higher, she says.

    “There was one day when [the real Tracy] came on set and I was very nervous, because there I was wearing the same clothes she would wear, being in the kitchen pretending to be her,” she says. “That was crazy and the most frightening … the idea that somebody would be watching you being them. It’s surreal.

    “Even when I played John Lennon’s mom [in the 2009 film ‘Nowhere Boy’], her relatives were alive, but she had passed,” she says. “So [‘The Salisbury Poisonings’] was my first experience of looking into this weird mirror.”

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    The Salisbury Poisonings: Trailer - BBC


    1:12 minutes


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  21. #371
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    #SNLPremiere ...

    Ladies and gentlemen…
    Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.


    "Catch Jim Carrey and Maya Rudolph as 2020 Democratic nominees Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Saturday Night Live October 3, 2020, with host Chris Rock and musical guest Megan Thee Stallion."

    Oct 1, 2020

    18 seconds



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-aqTtywDDI



    ‘SNL’ gives first look of Jim
    Carrey as Joe Biden, Maya
    Rudolph as Kamala Harris


    Live from New York, it’s the Jim and Maya show.

    The official “Saturday Night Live” Twitter account shared a sneak peek of Jim Carrey as Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Maya Rudolph as running mate Kamala Harris ahead of Saturday’s premiere. The short teaser video gives a behind-the-scenes look at the makeup and wardrobe needed for 58-year-old Carrey to transform into Biden, 77.

    In September, the live sketch show announced the “Ace Ventura” star would be taking on the role, which was partly his own suggestion.

    “There was some interest on his part,” Lorne Michaels, who helms “SNL,” told Vulture. “And then we responded, obviously, positively. But it came down to discussions about what the take was. He and Colin Jost had a bunch of talks. He and I as well. He will give the part energy and strength . . . Hopefully it’s funny.”

    When Harris was announced as Biden’s choice for VP in August, Rudolph, who has portrayed the California senator before on the show, had a very candid reaction.

    “Oh shit. Ruh-roh,” the 48-year-old told Entertainment Weekly of Biden’s pick.

    The actress later said she received a “cryptic” text from the “SNL” boss about once again portraying Harris, who has spoken highly of Rudolph’s impressions in the past.

    “That girl being played by @MayaRudolph on @nbcsnl? That girl was me,” Harris, 55, wrote last September in a viral tweet.

    “SNL” will be hosted by Chris Rock Saturday when the show makes its return to Studio H8 for the 46th season. He will be joined by musical guest Megan Thee Stallion and a live studio audience, who will be required to be tested for COVID-19.

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  23. #372
    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    I'm not a big fan but that's a dynamite lineup ...
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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  25. #373
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    Smile

    #Hey ...

    The Middle | Jimmy Eat World | Pomplamoose



    4:27 minutes



    Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSfUuoY9FTo



    Jimmy Eat World

    "The Middle"


    Hey, don't write yourself off yet.
    It's only in your head you feel left out or looked down on.
    Just try your best, try everything you can.
    And don't you worry what they tell themselves when you're away.

    It just takes some time,
    Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
    Everything, everything will be just fine,
    Everything, everything will be alright, alright.

    Hey, you know they're all the same.
    You know you're doing better on your own (on your own), so don't buy in.
    Live right now, yeah, just be yourself.
    It doesn't matter if it's good enough (good enough) for someone else.

    It just takes some time,
    Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
    Everything, everything will be just fine,
    Everything, everything will be alright, alright.
    It just takes some time,
    Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
    Everything, everything will be just fine,
    Everything, everything will be alright, alright.

    Hey, don't write yourself off yet.
    It's only in your head you feel left out (feel left out) or looked down on.
    Just do your best (just do your best), do everything you can (do everything you can).
    And don't you worry what the bitter hearts (bitter hearts) are gonna say.

    It just takes some time,
    Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
    Everything, everything will be just fine,
    Everything, everything will be alright, alright.
    It just takes some time,
    Little girl, you're in the middle of the ride.
    Everything, everything will be just fine,
    Everything, everything will be alright.
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  27. #374
    Senior Monk Gio's Avatar
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    Question

    Mother’s Little Helper Is Back, and
    Daddy’s Partaking Too


    After the kids go to bed, the grown-ups are drinking and smoking pot to distract themselves from the hellscape that is pandemic parenting.




    By Jessica Grose

    Oct. 3, 2020


    "7:51 p.m.: It’s exactly 125 days tomorrow. I am pretg drink.

    7:52 p.m.: Drunk.

    7:52 p.m. I can tell. 😂

    I have a yearslong WhatsApp message group with a handful of fellow mothers of small children from across the United States and Canada. Since the pandemic began, what I refer to as “mom chats after dark” start at around 7:30 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. That’s when the children are asleep, and a wave of inebriation begins on the shores of the Atlantic and crashes across the continent. The above message was from July, when we hit 125 days of lockdown.

    12:10 a.m.: I’m really high and eating this cake right now and it’s sooooo [expletive deleted] good.

    That one is from a mother in California in early September, when she was trapped inside with her three children for days because the air was so thick with smoke that it was unsafe to breathe outside.

    Since the pandemic began, members of the group have experienced job losses, wildfires, weekslong power outages from tropical storms, political unrest, elderly parents with Covid-19, a news cycle on turbo and unending days filled with educating, feeding and caring for their children while also trying to fit in eight or more hours of work.

    And we’re the lucky ones who can meet our children’s basic needs. Somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of parents of children under 5 have worried about their children getting enough to eat since the pandemic started, and many who cannot work remotely are scrambling for coverage with the fitful reopening of day care centers and schools.

    The increase of substance use among parents is “just kind of understandable,” said Jonathan Metzl, the director of the department of medicine, health and society at Vanderbilt University. “This is an incredible, once-in-an-epoch stressful situation, and the kinds of outlets people usually have in their lives are just not available.” We can’t go to the office, we can’t go to the gym, we can’t really see friends or family, and we never get a break.”

    “My hobby is doom scrolling and learning the science of Covid and smoking weed and sitting on the toilet staring at the wall,” said Julie Kortekaas, 36, a mother of two children, ages 10 and 18, and a health-food restaurant owner in London, Ontario. “I just hide in my bathroom and vape,” she said, to deal with the stresses of a restaurant industry that’s unrelentingly bleak, customers who are anti-mask and a husband who works as a house painter and is concerned about virus risk in other people’s homes.

    Ms. Kortekaas has increased her marijuana intake since the pandemic started (it is legal in Canada). “I smoke some weed and am able to calm down and clean my kitchen and do my laundry and do some regular person things,” she said.

    Though there aren’t reliable statistics that break down parents’ use of alcohol, marijuana and anti-anxiety medications specifically, overall adult use of these substances has gone up since the pandemic began, said Dr. Nora D. Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

    A nationally representative study of more than 1,500 Americans over 30 published in JAMA Network Open, showed that alcohol use is up among all adults in that age range, but in particular, among non-Hispanic white people, women and those between 30 and 59.

    Many states where marijuana is legal have seen a big increase in sales since the virus began; for example, in Washington State, “cannabis revenue spiked at the height of the pandemic,” according to budget analysis from a local news radio station, KXLY. And some data from earlier in the pandemic showed that prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications were on the rise. Prescriptions for Klonopin and other similar drugs rose 10.2 percent in March 2020 from March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing statistics from IQVIA, a health research firm .

    Parents aren’t just using substances as a means of relief. For some, it’s also a ritual that helps them separate work from play when no one ever leaves the house. At 5 p.m. Bree Sanchez, 45, and her husband have a drink in their backyard.

    “We need to shape this day a little, a transition to our next thing, which is laundry, dinner, cleaning stuff up,” said Ms. Sanchez, an art director and mother of two children, ages 9 and 11, in the Bay Area. Their daily cocktail is “a way to pause and talk to each other, and the kids will leave us alone.”

    Though a desire to blunt the pain and uncertainty of 2020 with all manners of substances is understandable, Dr. Volkow worries that many parents won’t be able to tell when their drinking or drug use tips into dangerous territory. “It’s hard to be aware you’re falling into a pattern that’s problematic,” she said, adding that people with substance abuse disorders may rationalize any amount of intake, and may not be able to recognize that they’re increasing their use over time.
    From Miltown to ‘Wine Moms’

    Middle-class parents’ self-medication has long been recreationalized, even romanticized in America (so long as they were white); think of sitcom dads pouring a drink and sinking into the BarcaLounger after a long day with Bob in accounting, or neurasthenic moms popping pink capsules while the casserole browns.

    Starting in the postwar period, tranquilizers were marketed and prescribed to many women who were experiencing discontent related to their domestic roles. At the time, there was a great deal of cultural panic about them becoming too powerful outside the home, said Dr. Metzl, who is also the author of “Prozac on the Couch: Prescribing Gender in the Era of Wonder Drugs.”

    They had enjoyed a measure of autonomy and employment outside the home during World War II, and after it was over, men returned and expected their wives to happily retreat to the kitchen and the nursery so they could take their jobs back.

    The first drug to be marketed as “a drug for the tensions of the motherhood role,” was Miltown in the ’50s, Dr. Metzl said, followed less than a decade later by Valium.

    These powerful drugs were sold as a way to sedate women who didn’t fit the 1950s submissive ideal later satirized to chilling effect in “The Stepford Wives.” In 1966, the Rolling Stones released their infamous track “Mother’s Little Helper,” placing the blame on tranquilized mothers for needing a pill just to get through the day (coming from a band known for its louche drug use).

    A particularly offensive ad from the ’60s called “The Battered Parent Syndrome” implies that Miltown is the cure for any unhappiness a college-educated woman may feel about “the guilt burden of this child-centered age” or having to “compete with her husband’s job for his time and involvement.”

    A 1971 ad, for Valium, is about a woman called “low self-esteem” Jan, who never married because she is “psychoneurotic” — if only she could be sedated into perfect motherhood.

    By the ’70s, Valium had become the most prescribed brand-name drug in the United States. But the cultural view of women and drug and alcohol use was starting to shift in that decade, and it gave women much more agency. Feminists pushed back against the over-prescription of sedatives (“tired mothers might do better in working in the National Organization for Women than in taking antidepressants,” said a woman at a 1971 congressional investigation of Valium).

    At the same time, marijuana and alcohol use were associated with a newfound freedom and rebellious spirit, and feminist rhetoric was often co-opted to sell booze. (“I never even thought of burning my bra until I discovered Smirnoff,” read one 1970s advertisement.) But this sense of revolution was only for single and childless young women, and mothers, particularly nonwhite and unmarried mothers, were demonized for drug and alcohol use.

    There’s not a clean, linear narrative of alcohol and drug use among mothers from the ’70s to today, said Stephanie Coontz, the director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families and the author of “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.”

    Still, she mentioned that starting in the ’90s, what social scientists call “intensive parenting” — a style of parenting that takes a great deal of money, time and emotional involvement, mostly from mothers — became the norm for middle-class families. And stress and anxiety ensued.

    Despite working more hours, mothers in the 2010s spent more time on child care than they did in 1965. That’s around when “wine moms” entered the lexicon: women who were using alcohol to take the edge off a long day spent dealing with all the responsibilities of intensive parenting.

    Social media has amplified them. They’re winkingly letting us know that the expectations of modern motherhood are unreasonable by posting memes on letter boards like “Motherhood: Powered by Love Sustained by Wine” and drinking from enormous goblets on TikTok videos.

    All that was before the coronavirus, when the stressors and responsibilities of being a mother increased immeasurably. There’s more housework, more child care, remote learning to manage and a contentious political moment with reproductive rights, among many others, hanging in the balance.

    “It’s ironic we’re having this conversation now, in light of profound threats to everything women stood for in the ’60s and ’70s,” Dr. Metzl said.
    Gummies and Chill

    Wine in a sippy cup is simply not an option for many parents with a history of substance abuse. On Instagram, around 70,000 posts are tagged #winemom, but when you look through them, you realize that a small portion are posts about trying to stay sober in a wine mom world — a difficult task made even harder by a pandemic.

    Katy Maher, 47, has been sober for almost 19 years. The mother of 7-year-old twins in Chicago, she lost a job of nearly 20 years at a recruiting firm. “I was devastated,” Ms. Maher said. “I was bitter and sad, and there was no closure and no goodbye. It’s all due to Covid.”

    “I’m supplementing eating more instead of drinking,” she said. “I’m an addict, so it comes out in different ways.” She said she tries not to be judgmental of the “mommy juice crowd,” but she worries about the potential for substance abuse. “I absolutely think it’s harmful in many ways.”

    Dr. Volkow shares these concerns. She said that some signs of problematic substance use are when you need more and more to get the same effects, you cannot skip a day of use, or you’re forgoing other activities to use the substance when it’s not appropriate. She added that if you have a family history of addiction, you should be especially mindful of your intake.

    But for some parents, getting just a little stoned is the only way they can eke out a small measure of joy in an otherwise fairly hopeless time. Deborah Stein, 43, said her nightly pot gummy is the one thing allowing her to get a good night’s sleep on a regular basis.

    She’s the mother of a 21-month-old in Los Angeles and works in the theater industry, which has been “completely decimated” by the virus, and she and her husband are worried for their future livelihood, along with the health of their families, the air quality, the election and about a million other things.

    After dinner, the couple splits a “chill” gummy containing 50 milligrams of THC. “It’s a way of carving out this hour or 90 minutes we get to spend together, before we have to walk the dog,” Ms. Stein said. For at least that brief window, “we get to be peaceful.”

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