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Daily Marijuana Use And Highly Potent Weed Linked To Psychosis
Weed use is taking off as more states move to legalize it. And with all the buzz over medical marijuana, it's starting to gain an aura of healthfulness. But there are some serious health risks associated with frequent use. One of the more troubling ones is the risk of having a psychotic episode.
Several past studies have found that more frequent use of pot is associated with a higher risk of psychosis, that is, when someone loses touch with reality. Now a new study published Tuesday [open, DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30048-3] [DX] in the The Lancet Psychiatry shows that consuming pot on a daily basis and especially using high potency cannabis increases the odds of having a psychotic episode later.
[...] The study also shows that three European cities — London, Paris and Amsterdam — where high potency weed is most commonly available actually have higher rates of new cases of psychosis than the other cities in the study. [...] The researchers identified 901 people aged 18 to 64 who were diagnosed with their first episode of psychosis between May 2010 and April 2015, at a mental health facility anywhere in 11 cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, other cities across Europe, and one site in Brazil.
The researchers then asked these individuals and a control group of 1,200-plus other healthy people about their habits, including their use of weed. "We asked people if they used cannabis, when did they start using it and what kind of cannabis," explains study author Marta Di Forti, a psychiatrist and clinician scientist at King's College London. People reported the names of weed strains they used, like skunk in the U.K., or the Dutch Nederwiet, which allowed the researchers to identify the THC content in each product through data gathered by the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction and national data from the different countries.
The study found that those who used pot daily were three times more likely to have a psychotic episode compared to someone who never used the drug.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @05:02PM (13 children)
This is nothing more than the usual prohibitionist drivel. Cannabis had the opposite effect for me. Before I started using it, I was losing touch with reality. At one point I was cutting myself, and a year or so later I was in the emergency room with severe hyponatremia after nearly drinking myself to death.
Then I got high. Now I'm taking conscious steps to improve my life while smoking almost daily. For this sample size of 1, my life has immensely improved, including my mental health. I may still have moments when I am irrational, but now I feel that I can overcome it. Cannabis isn't a panacea, but fuck this reefer madness shit.
Why don't you do some double-blind longitudinal studies instead of this NHST crap? Why don't you work on improving access to mental health care instead of taking away a natural remedy for PTSD and crippling anxiety?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday March 20 2019, @05:04PM (5 children)
What strain of cannabis were you using? What was the THC and CBD %?
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(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @05:13PM
Chill, bro. I'll ask the pizza guy when he shows up. You ordered extra pineapple, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @05:35PM
I started improving with Azura Haze which my lab sheet shows is at 20.2% THC, 0.02% CBD, and 0.1% CBN. My supplier stopping carrying that one, so I switched to White Widow at 26.1% THC, 0.07% CBD, and 0.1% CBN. (Protip: if you have a plant you like, clone it.)
My first attempt was with a medical strain, but I forget which one. Was also one of those autoflowering ones (crossed with c. ruderalis), which tend to be weaksauce. iirc about 15% THC and 10% CBD or thereabouts. It didn't really help, but I'm not a cancer patient either. My hypothesis is that different strains will help with different conditions. My specific mental illness seems to be alleviated by THC, not CBD as one might think.
A lot of times when I smoke, it's like I'm able to hook a debugger up to my brain, get stack traces and set watches/breakpoints and all the usual stuff one does with a debugger. So THC is one tool in my toolbox (alongside talk therapy, which was never effective for me without THC), yet it's objectively a crucial tool in my case.
The biggest thing is that when I'm high, I begin to think in objective terms instead of subjective.
SSRIs have proven ineffective as well. Also I think just growing the plants is therapeutic itself (yet THC is the crucial factor for me, because growing that autoflowering strain was not effective itself). Still wouldn't say I have a green thumb (it's a weed after all), but it feels good to grow and nurture something with my own hands.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:46PM (2 children)
I use extremely high TCH cannabis oil to treat cancer, specifically colon cancer in my lungs. 3 years ago I was given 2-6 months to live max, with 2 being the more likely scenario. I quite chemo and went on Rick Simpson Oil (see phoenixtears.ca or Rick Simpson's FB page for more info). For 6 months I was off work, stoned out of my guard 20+ hours/day taking 1000 ml of RSO daily, and have been on a (smaller) maintenance dose ever since. I didn't expect it to work, but I did expect to die fairly quickly in far less pain than if I continued chemo. Instead, 6 months and 160 or so grams of RSO later I was in complete remission and returned to work, and have been productively working ever since.
I hate being high--I find it miserable, and while you're high you are arguably divorced from reality (just like someone blindingly drunk would be), but never was I anywhere near having a psychotic episode, nor have I ever been. It's a challenge to cope with, but compared to chemo, the after-effects of losing a chunk of your colon, rectum, liver, and lungs, it's a fucking cakewalk.
This is a ridiculous, manufactured result with a cherry-picked and highly-skewed sample base, designed to reach a particular solution. It is no coincidence that the FDA almost never allows marijuana studies designed to see if it has any benefits, but will throw their weight (and money) behind studies designed to reach these kinds of highly-questionable conclusion.
Cannabis saved my life, and continues to save my life. Should these evil pricks ever get their way and take it away from us, I will probably be dead within months.
Which I suspect suits their plans just fine. It's become quite clear than the American Plutocrats want everyone else to work for them for all of their lives, and the moment we are no longer productive in making them richer they'd like nothing more than for us to either (1) have become rich enough to be self-sustaining through retirement, including paying ever increasing medical costs, or (2) go away and die. (2) is probably preferable, as (1) implies we've managed to earn money they would like to have in their pockets instead.
Either way, their drive to cut and eventually eliminate Social Security and Medicare clearly points to an agenda along these lines. And their attitudes toward the poor and impoverished are even worse. Just wait until automation kicks in...it is not that far fetched that at that point they wouldn't mind depopulating the world of all the non-extremely-wealthy so they can have it all for themselves. Whether or not that's their actual intention or attitude (I believe it is, based on their policies, actions, and reading between the lines of their rhetoric), it is clearly in keeping with what they are doing to the rest of us. Marijuana prohibition is almost just a footnote, albeit a deadly one for those of us keeping our cancer at bay with RSO.
(Now queue the right-wing apologists accusing me of being "psychotic" for having suggested such a thing about their uber-rich heroes, whom they worship with far more fervor than they do their invisible friend in the sky in whose name they justify this crap. When the emprorer is naked, they sure don't like anyone pointing out the lack of clothing.)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:58PM
Uhhh, hold up a bit, please? Did you make a typo up there? Colon cancer in your lungs? I breezed past that, then a nice cruel joke started forming in my mind, so I had to look back. Fek - lemme try a search engine, see if I find something meaningful . . .
OK, minus the cruelty, it's still a pretty shitty situation. Sounds like you're talking about something like this: https://www.froedtert.com/colorectal-cancer/metastic-disease/lung-metastasis [froedtert.com]
Yeah, I realize it's just some doctor's advert, but it was the first hit I found that conveyed anything meaningful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @12:41AM
Thanks for an interesting rant. One of my best friends was given 6 weeks to live after diagnosis with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, in his early 70s. Medical marijuana kept him going for over a year, and relatively pain free until the very end. Bonus was that he was able to see his first grandchild born.
> it is not that far fetched that at that point they wouldn't mind depopulating the world of all the non-extremely-wealthy so they can have it all for themselves.
I'm not that kind of wealthy, but I do enjoy living near one of the rust belt cities that lost a lot of population back in the 1970s. Around here, a traffic jam might be a 10 minute inconvenience. A lot of local infrastructure is sized for higher population, it's not cramped, real estate is reasonably priced. It's all low stress, people (even other drivers) are mostly friendly and helpful.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday March 20 2019, @06:16PM
Cutting yourself sounds more like depression than psychosis (unless you were doing it for fun, or to try to find the CIA implants).
I found occasional cannabis use did wonders for my own drug-and-counselling-resistant depression. It wasn't that I had lost touch with reality, rather I lost touch with the joy of living, and cannabis helped me find it again.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 20 2019, @08:14PM
As with many drugs, effective for the maladies they cure, and dangerous for others.
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Wednesday March 20 2019, @09:20PM
"What? And remove some of our revenue sources?!? Are you insane???" - The Pharma Industrial Complex
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:10PM (2 children)
> I may still have moments when I am irrational, but now I feel that I can overcome it.
No, it just makes you believe you can overcome it. You clearly have a polysubstance abuse disorder. Get some real help.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @03:14AM (1 child)
Great Scott! A time traveling substance abuse disorder!
So, when I had these same symptoms growing up in a sweetly abusive family (sorta Calvinist but not) and even after escaping them, it was caused by my future use of cannabis. Do you propose BTTF/ST/Journeyman temporal mechanics or John Titor/Terminator temporal mechanics? It's important to know which so we can break the stable time loop and end the predestination paradox.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:16AM
Journeyman might require its own category. If you had a jumpsuit at the ready you seemed to be OK (RIP Pegasus Device). Plus they had that historical log 200 million years in the past. Probably doesn't make any damn sense if you delve into it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @11:36AM
Not only do I agree with you, but uh I thought it was known for years and year and years that strong THC, be it cultivated or chemical, could, in some people, cause or contribute to psychosis. in fact... one can nearly predict who, but at least at the time i thought this was common, only predict people who had various neurological issues that can be agitated to cause psychosis for a time.
often those same people are self medicating with marijuana, whether or not they undertand how much THC is in it.
i never read anything about CBDs causing psychosis. it could be that CBD sensitive people are less likely to suffer psychosis caused by marijuana as compared to THC sensitive people using marijuana of similar strength.
but reefer madness never really looked at why. just correlations--smoking roadside reefer means that your daughter ends up dating a homeless man of a different ethnic group who wants to sell her into slavery to pay for weights he will use to get stronger to better look menacing in his life of crime so he can afford to become a dealer. then your daughter ends up with mixed race babies that you are forced to take care of at your survivalist compound before the feds nab you because of your soverign belief system and lack of tax payments.