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Link Between Marijuana and Psychosis Goes Both Ways
An anonymous reader writes with news of a study out of the Netherlands (abstract) about the link between psychosis and marijuana use. The researchers wanted to examine what caused the relationship — was marijuana use leading to psychosis, or did those suffering from psychosis have a higher tendency to seek out marijuana? As it turns out, they found evidence for both. From the article:
"... using pot at 16 years old was linked to psychotic symptoms three years later, and psychotic symptoms at age 16 were linked to pot use at age 19.
This was true even when the researchers accounted for mental illness in the kids' families, alcohol use and tobacco use. Griffith-Lendering said she could not say how much more likely young pot users were to exhibit psychotic symptoms later on. Also, the new study cannot prove one causes the other. Genetics may also explain the link between pot use and psychosis, said Griffith-Lendering."
So, we learned nothing of value except that studies like this have inconclusive results. Oh, and teenagers can experience psychosis before, during and after using drugs.
2) Drugs cause the problems - but no one ever noticed before.
3) Some idiot won't even consider option #1 and go right option #2 - without any evidence at all, let alone proof.
Note, I have kidney disease - and as such do not take pot, drink alcohol or do any other drug without my doctor's express advice. My body can't handle it - but I'm not stupid enough to think other people have the same problem I do.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
So the only clear conclusion is that we need further study. Which will be made more difficult by the criminalization of the substance in so many jurisdictions where that research could be performed.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
..... where weed IS decriminalized.
I personally find studies out of Amsterdam to be the most unbiased in the world. Remember that it's tolerated there, not promoted, like cigarettes in America, for instance, by the tobacco lobby.
If the drug does cause psychosis, then society as a whole can react to it accordingly. Conversely, if people with psychosis are attracted to the drug, then there must be an underlying reason for that.
I look forward to seeing what else comes of this.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I don't know what kind of expansion you are talking about. After years of watching pot smokers I can't actually say their minds have expanded at all. Some of them seem to have lost a bit of functionality, actually.
Ironically your sarcasm just makes his point stronger.
His argument not only applies to but is based on the comparison to alcohol and tobacco, which have many well-proven side effects and long term medical issues. As he pointed out, Marijuana on the other hand does not have such clearly proven effects, and certainly none as serious as liver disease or lung cancer.
There are many existing studies that have already proven several things about marijuana use:
1. Smoking (anything) raises your risk of oral and lung cancers, including marijuana.
2. Marijuana lowers IQ in developing brains, e.g. children and adolescents. If you've seen the kind of permanent damage neurons experience after smoking marijuana, this is hardly surprising.
3. Marijuana causes psychosis in healthy people and worsens it in those with existing conditions.
4. Marijuana is addictive. It's a hotly debated point but the fact is that many people really struggle to stop using it and relapse.
Denying or arguing any of these points would seem fruitless in light of medical evidence, yet people insist on claiming marijuana has no side effects and is completely harmless. That's a great pipe dream, but we'd have to assume it is literally the perfect drug and works in a way that no other drug has ever done. Sadly, that's just not the case. Like any other drug it has its pros and cons.
Marijuana advocates reject all criticism, and assume all scientific studies are somehow flawed or are the result of anti-marijuana conspiracies. To them marijuana _has_ to be the perfect drug, even if reality contradicts that viewpoint. Sounds crazy, but it's roughly what you'd expect from people who are no longer living in our reality.
yet none of them has found any serious and life threatening illnesses caused by weed smoking/eating compared to alcohol, alcohol mixed with Tylenol, pharma drugs, side effects of chemical leeching out of every day plastics or even walking down the road and breaking a leg. YET they try and try and try and....
How about some food allergies http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db10.htm Peanuts can be deadly too..
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
the data was inconclusive; which means exactly that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Coming from somebody who suffers from schizophrenia, I'll tell you the drugs never helped kill the voices or the thoughts of paranoia. They worked as a tranquilizer, I was taking Clozapine in the end (all the milder drugs did nothing for me and in many cases made it worse). The only thing that helped was learning to cope with the voices and paranoid thoughts, and put them where they appropriately belong (in the garbage). Lots and lots of therapy.
The unfortunate reality is I lost about 6 years of my life learning to deal with it, 3 of those years spent in a hospital. I've been off drugs for several years now, I still struggle from time to time, but I'm able to actually live my life without losing control of my emotions, and I'm able to hold a steady job. The unfortunate reality is you'll be dealing with this for many years if she has any serious psychiatric problems. Patience and being her rock is all you can do, and encourage her to seek help.
LSD with her therapist present or MDMA with her therapist and the kid present. Marijuana is not the only currently illegal drug with serious medical uses.
http://www.maps.org/
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
well, there's plenty of cases where people blame weed for stupid shit they've done - so you'd have no trouble finding institutionalized people who would claim their cannabis use caused them to become institutionalized and well, you'll find plenty of people who were institutionalized to jail for it of course too - though strictly speaking in those cases it's the law and other people who have caused them to be institutionalized and isolated(again compounding possible mental locks and general unhappiness with life).
just as there's plenty of cases where people blame alcohol for the stupid shit they've done. AA is full of them.
still, if an alcie goes to doctor because of anger issues/unstability(that they blame on drinking) around here it's quite usual they're given diazepam. which would be all good if they weren't unstable alcoholics and the pams just enhance that. giving them a bag of weed would be much better, at least if someone is going too deep with weed they're not 99.99% of time going to hurt anyone, themselves or others, except through inactivity. someone with anger issues gets alcohol+diazepam psychosis and someone is going to get hurt - via physical assault.
this study doesn't really surprise me at all though, it's even on the "no shit sherlock" level, it's so blatantly obvious. still, it's nice that they bothered to make a real study about that unhappy people seek a fix.
I don't drink anymore due to health issues(pancreatitis is a bitch that wont let her eye off you) and would be very glad if they legalized weed around here. Sure, it might make you spend a lot of time thinking with yourself and laughing at stupid shit along the way but quite frankly what's so bad about that?
Psychosis as a term is so fucking all over the place that it's almost useless as a word too, since it can mean fucking anything - even me wanting to emphasize things with "fucking" is a form of psychosis if you ask the right idiot. basically most weedsters use psychosis as a word for being bored nowadays(they're out of weed it's "psychosis", they got some good weed but nothing fun to do while smoking it and it's psychosis again! they smoke enough that they're practically sleeping and that too then is psychosis.) - it's so fucked up thanks to the prohibitionists. hell, even being drunk is "psychosis" nowadays, fucking pansies.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Myth.
http://www.briancbennett.com/charts/fed-data/stronger-weed.htm
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm about half-baked already but I am going to find some citations to dispute you. I think... ohhh man, cupcakes! They are like a whole little world with frosting on top of it...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
As far as i know the active ingredient is the same as it has always been. You have modern strains of weed that might produce more of it, but so what. We have always had the ability to concentrate high levels of THC into things like hashish and pot oil. The dose you ingest has always depended on what you smoke and how much. Three fat stogies of 1978 Columbian gold or one medium sized J of 2012 Northern Lights and you are in exactly the same place.
Its like arguing that wine is twice as bad for you as beer because it contains twice the percent of alcohol.
and this sort of shit cracks me up.
I looked up the meaning of psychosis: Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: False beliefs about what is taking place or who one is (delusions); Seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations).
That describes religious people, not stoners.
I've known people that smoke weed for over 40 years, and none of them see shit that isn't there. None of them believe in false stuff, except the religious ones. Most the others have businesses, jobs, responsibilities they take care of.
I've known druggies that lost reality after ODing on coke or heroin, but I have NEVER seen anyone do that on weed.
What I gained from the article was kids that have psychosis are more likely to use drugs, which doesn't surprise me. I was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia when I was in my mid 30's. Growing up I had no idea why people heard me say different things then I was saying, why people always took what i said or did at it's worse instead of how it was intended and why I had a hard time functioning socially with people. During my 20's I did a shit ton of drugs. I gave up, I didn't understand why I had problems with people. Drugs (heroin) made me feel better, or made me not care for a bit, made life a bit more bearable (so i thought). After I found out about my dyslexia and ADHD and got help for that, I understood finally what the problem had been. I had no problem quitting my heroin addiction after that. In fact, in almost 10 years since I found out, I've been clean. (I don't count weed as a drug like heroin, coke, benzo's, etc).
Funny how people have been smoking weed since it's been around and in over 100 years of recorded medical history we still get stories like this, that really have nothing to do with anything.
Be seeing you...
The myth would be the claim that it is very different.
If you look at the charts two things stand out - that the most potent commonly consumed cannabis, sensimilla, has not changed in potency since 1990, that is more than twenty years. So this product is exactly the same as it has been for a couple of decades or more.
The second is that the generic "marijuana" has over the same time inched up by 80% over the same time, less than a single doubling, and is still half that of sensimilla of 20+ years ago.
Let me put this question to you: is a Sam Adams Boston Lager very different in its health and drug abuse risks than a Sam Adams Double Bock? The latter has 80% more alcohol than the former. You will not find anyone in the alcohol abuse treatment community claiming that alcoholic proof has the slightest bit of difference in the risk and harm of alcohol consumption.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I'm a pretty heavy pot smoker myself and know potheads of all types. Smart, stupid, lazy, motivated etc. Just like the rest of the population. But, anecdotally I have always thought smoking pot (or doing any drug) at a young age was bad. I noticed that most people I know who used to smoke when they were young can't now because it makes them way too paranoid or zone out and shut down. People I know who started smoking when they were older don't see to have this issue. Myself included.
Ever wondered how much less shitty the world might be if people like yourself just minded their own business?
Potheads want to smoke? What does it cost you, exactly? Put a price on what it actually costs you, for potheads to light up. No, you can't count the exorbitant costs of maintaining the DEA, the narc squad at your local police department, or the drug interdiction teams at the state level. You can't count all the costs involved in smuggling drugs. Those costs are created by nosy bastards who can't stand the idea that potheads might want to get high.
Pot can be grown in backyards for little to nothing. The pothead grows his own, dries it, rolls it, and smokes it at almost no cost to society, but people like yourself want to get involved. Why? Let the dopehead do his thing. That mellowed out bastard poses NO THREAT to you and yours.
So, just maybe you're partly right. Maybe if he spent all that energy and resources on bettering himself, or helping the community, the world just might be a little better.
Then again - I've met a lot of dopeheads who were veterans. They've already given to the communities across America. Leave them the hell alone!
Whatever their reasons for smoking pot, that's THEIR problem, not yours.
Shut up, sit down, and learn some tolerance. Maybe the potheads will allow you to sit with them, eat some munchies, and sing 'Kumbayah'. Think about it. Free munchies and some comaraderie. You don't even have to light up, they aren't as prejudiced as you are.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
There are many existing studies that have already proven several things about marijuana use:
1. Smoking (anything) raises your risk of oral and lung cancers, including marijuana.
In fact studies show the opposite for marijuana.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=large-study-finds-no-link
Cannabis smoking appears to protect against lung cancer. This study is now seven years old, and an even larger one fifteen years ago found the same thing:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1018427320658
Can't be cannabis interfering with your ability to process information. I guess we will just have to chalk it up to prejudice and willful ignorance.
3. Marijuana causes psychosis in healthy people...
Link please?
4. Marijuana is addictive. It's a hotly debated point but the fact is that many people really struggle to stop using it and relapse.
Meaning... you know there is no real support for this, but you want to throw it out there as a claim anyway. You do know that by this same standard tanning is addictive too, right?
Marijuana advocates reject all criticism, and assume all scientific studies are somehow flawed or are the result of anti-marijuana conspiracies. To them marijuana _has_ to be the perfect drug, even if reality contradicts that viewpoint. Sounds crazy, but it's roughly what you'd expect from people who are no longer living in our reality.
Looking glass time. You are describing your own rejection of scientific evidence.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
You are vastly underestimating the prevalence of marijuana use. Check this survey out. 36 percent of high school seniors report having smoked marijuana in the past year, 23 percent in the past month, and 6.5 percent are daily users. These *are* the kids that are taking AP Calc and gunning for the Ivy League.
You are correct that disadvantaged or troubled kids are statistically more likely to be using drugs, but everything you say after "socieconomic red flag" in your original post is so wildy off base it almost seems like you're trolling. Very successful people are regular marijuana users, most of those people started in their teens, and they are not in any way statistical outliers. The idea that a teenager smoking marijuana implies that they had poor parents or are on the verge of failing out of school is absurd.
Pot has absolutely nothing to do with psychosis. The voices say so, too.
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!