Copied from p.229-230 of 'Drugs and Behavior' by William A. McKim. All portions copyright the author. It has sometimes been observed that when a young person starts smoking marijuana there are systematic changes in that person's lifestyle, ambitions, motivation, and possibly personality.
Verbal facility is often impaired both in speaking and writing.
What is not clear, however, is a causal relationship between the loss of middle class motivations and cannabis. This is not easy to answer. In fact, there may be no clearcut answer. To begin with, all we know about the amotivational syndrome is a result of a few case histories. It does not appear as though the amotivational syndrome is all that common among marijuana smokers.