Study: Smoking pot makes you less motivated

Though the researchers hypothesized that habitual pot users would experience increased dopamine production, since that has been linked with psychosis, they found that regular (at least weekly) cannabis users actually had a reduced capacity to synthesize dopamine. A causal relationship couldn’t be proven, but those who started smoking earlier or smoked more had the lowest dopamine levels. The frequency of psychosis-like symptoms didn’t have an effect on dopamine.

“Our findings of reduced dopamine synthesis capacity in dependent subjects may reflect a ‘blunted’ dopamine system,” the authors write.

This lack of dopamine could possibly be the underlying reason as to why marijuana doesn’t exactly turn people into go-getters, the authors suggest: Without the drive of dopamine, apathy reigns.