That said, as someone who is bipolar, has bipolar friends and has used cannabis for a significant portion of my half-century on Earth, cannabis usage is proportional to mood instability in myself and my friends. I have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile when taking breaks.
This can be true at the same time that cannabis use disorder increases the likelihood of mental illness is true. These are not mutually exclusive.
"Apt or likely to change."
is it grammatically correct to say "there is nothing more non-labile than a temporary code"
I experiment with the gummy's afterwards and found that the depression post usage effect was still present. Something about using them as pain relief changed how my mind responded to THC.
Both can be true, weed can help with mood swings by numbing you out or shifting your mental state somewhere else. Weed can also be harmful because it numbs you, but harmful in a latent and subtle sort of way.
For sure, but that's an association. Which one actually caused the other? eg. perhaps you got into a state of mind that was less emotionally labile and so decided to take a break.
Sometimes I don't use cannabis for a while and feel fine. Then, while still feeling fine I unexpectedly end up in a situation where I can smoke a joint. Maybe it shows up at a birthday party. The days after there is a noticable change in my emotion regulation (less stable, easily feeling down).
I am also terrified the medications we force on some mental health patients, especially injected long-term ones, are purely for the benefit of the care taker and not the individual.
I think cannabis had fell into a niche of "self-medication", for people who the system doesn't seem to work for. Cannabis nor alcohol are the ideal medications, they are simply the only ones most easily available.
What are some of the impacts?
I remember the show "Homeland" the main character had a sister who was a doc who would prescribe her meds for bipolar, that way she could continue working for the government/Pentagon as a spy.
Mental Illness is a very broad term.
Marijuana is absolutely a drug with downsides. There are also upsides - for example I enjoy my life more. I also enjoy alcohol, sometimes to excess. I acknowledge I have taken likely years of my life away through my actions. I have also dabbled in cocaine and ecstasy. I don’t think those drugs should be totally illegal either.
My point is we all make our own decisions and are forced to accept risk. Sometimes you just have to live. Otherwise why bother living?
It's important to understand the risks so that one can make informed choices. That is probably where there needs to be more research.
I only have issues with those who smoke so much it reeks even when they are not smoking or I am 10ft away from them and still smell it.
I supported, and still support, legalization. But the smell is a serious issue. Even just driving down the road I catch a whiff from other cars or buildings nearly every day.
One of the more academic investigations of addiction, the book High Price by Carl Hart, suggests that the real experience of addiction is substantially different from the way most people think of it and most addicts eventually quit on their own for a range of reasons. This suggests that the very concept of "cannabis use disorder" may not really make sense.
I've known people who used cannabis the way alcoholics use alcohol - if it wasn't a use disorder, I don't know what is. The concept is valid and can apply to sorts of things from gambling, pron, online gaming even. If the use becomes problematic then its a problem, 'use disorder' is the just the name for this.
Then the next week, the clinician leader of the support group laid down a few ground rules for the new members, one of them being "if you show up while you're high, then you'll be gone just as quickly".
So I think it's safe to say that there is a range of opinions and attitudes among clinical professionals.
She enjoys her drugs, of all kinds. She worked hard to connect with a psychiatrist who could both prescribe the sorts of drugs she's into, and also not shame her for the recreational drugs she does on the side. She pays out-of-pocket for the privilege.
It became apparent to me that she's not really into treatment of her condition or healing, or repairing her relationships with friends and family. She just seemed to be on a hedonistic journey of seeking pleasure.
So you can decriminalize and reschedule all the drugs you want, but people will self-medicate, and find dangerous uses. People who use illegal or OTC or alternative treatments will not always report those to their physician or pharmacy. Even if they do, all interactions are not known, but many dangerous ones can result from trying to put someone on psychotropics while they're under the influence of something else.
One can also pick how to battle. A hostile zero tolerance edict wasn't necessary to anything.
But not without NNTs. For depression, OR = 1.8, NNT = 12 (assuming 10% lifetime incidence, this is very hard to estimate due to the difficulty in diagnosis). For bipolar disorder, OR = 3, NNT = 25. This is before accounting for any reverse causation: roughly 80% of incidence of BPD is associated with genetic variation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_needed_to_treat
So e.g. assuming a fully causal association with bipolar disorder (unlikely due to the strong genetic influence on bipolar disorder) you need 25 people to stop smoking weed to prevent one case of bipolar disorder. You can also calculate it in terms of how many people do you need to imprison to prevent one case of bipolar disorder.
This is particularly revealing when you look at studies giving an odds ratio of 2-3 for cannabis use associated with schizophrenia. The base rate for schizophrenia is <0.02% [1], so the NNT is >2500. You probably need to imprison hundreds of people to prevent one case of schizophrenia, again assuming the association is causal.
The claim that these studies should impact marijuana legality is just plain bad math.
1: https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...
Heirloom strains had CBD alongside THC.
CBD on its own has been as effective in research as antipsychotics in treating schizophrenia, and very much mitigates the OP effects in research.
But the vast majority of product today has selectively bred out the CBD.
It's time we stop talking about cannabis use and start regarding it as THC use, as the full spectrum of the original plant is no longer what people are really using.
It'd be like selectively breeding high arsenic almonds and then people getting sick eating them and declaring the problem as one impacting almond consumption instead of more specifically arsenic consumption.
THC unmitigated by CBD is a psychiatric sleeping giant that's currently not being addressed because the pendulum swing is still glowing strong with legalization momentum and any criticism is generally dismissed as simply being anti-cannabis use generally.
The challenge with running studies ethically is that you can't split your test groups into two groups and somehow induce cannabis use disorder and see if major depression, bipolar, etc results from it. Rather, you can see if the people who naturally develop the disorder also have those problems.
The flaw in this reasoning is that people who develop depression and similar issues are likely to self-medicate with cannabis. In related news, umbrellas do not cause rain.
> “Around 20% of young people in Denmark use cannabis but in this study fewer than 1% of the sample had been assigned a diagnosis of cannabis use disorder and these may well have been people who had a pre-existing susceptibility to depression and other psychiatric disorders.
> “Other studies have shown that cannabis use itself is not associated with increased risk of depression, so perhaps we are seeing that people with a pre-existing susceptibility to depression are more likely to be diagnosed with cannabis use disorder. This clearly does not mean that we should infer that cannabis somehow causes depression.
> “I don’t think that this study provides us with much information to help decide the extent to which cannabis use is, or is not, harmful.”
[1] https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-study-...
They showed the link between smoking and cancer with a mountain of empirical evidence, including tests on mice. https://www.mskcc.org/news/how-do-cigarettes-cause-cancer
> Cannabis is federally illegal in the United States
Nobody cares anymore.
> I'd highly advise you to consider only the known benefits of using cannabis
Sugar has no health benefits and causes way more deaths. If you want to really change the world for the better, I suggest a war on ice cream.
> Treat any form of smoking, including smoking cannabis, with high suspicion, as it involves inhaling large concentrations of combustion products.
Finally, we agree: consume edibles.
Mental illness and substance use both affect/are effected by the Brain. It seems less likely that the same cause would affect both the Brain and the Lungs.
That's not even really true anymore. I live in Texas, which has virtually no legal weed (beyond medical marijuana for a very small number of specific conditions like epilepsy and ALS - it's not like other states where you can say "Hey doc, I've got a headache, can I get a marijuana prescription?"), and yet I can walk into a nice, clean, friendly store in a strip mall and pick up some D9 gummies and brownies, as well as some THCA bud that to me is indistinguishable from "normal" marijuana.
The fact is the 2018 farm bill that legalized hemp had enough loopholes that it essentially legalized marijuana as well. While a lot of this is in a gray area (particularly in the case of THCA bud which appears to me to be a pretty blatant misrepresentation of the law, but I ain't complaining), it's clear there is no appetite anywhere to crack down on these loopholes. For example, Florida considered a bill this year that would crack down on D9 products, but there was already enough entrenched business opposition that the bill was killed.
Weed is legal in the US. If you're worried about legal consequences, just pay a little more and go to a nice dispensary and you're fine.
Before you dismiss that is philosophical non-sense, causality is closely related to the "Arrow of Time" which is considered an unsolved problem in physics [0]. From what we've observed time appears to be the only asymmetric physical process, largely due to entropy (that is you can immediately tell if a video of a jar breaking is being played backwards because we don't expected a jar to "fall together"). There are Quantum processes, for example, that are time symmetric, that is playing a video of these processes would look the same reversed and forward.
That said, as someone who does a lot of statistics, in practice what we do is model the causal process with a directed acyclic graph and see how well our models behave under causal assumptions. These work okay for answering practical questions about does A cause B. By controlling for correlating variables we can see the impact on what we believe to be a causal variable when we condition on these other correlating factors.
Worth mention that nearly all of the work is done by linear models in practice.
Note, the study speaks of risk of depression - depresion happens after they have cannabis use disorder. Hence "Subsequent" in the study title.
!A & B
A & !B
A & B
!A & !B
A
B
!A
!BWe can compose DAGs that control for the factors we do know about, but it's impossible to exhaust or even know all possible latent processes that are impacting the outcome.
They didn't prove cause and effect, only association.
There is a large community of people who are trying to quit: /r/leaves
The article is nothing new to me. Read a few posts from the subreddit and you'd see a pattern.
Three weeks ago, I was pro-weed recreation legalization. Today, I'm strongly anti recreation use.
Edit: I'm not against decriminalization of weed. I'm highly against pro-recreational use. I'm against high THC %, easy access, advertisements, sponsorships, etc. I believe weed should be classified as a highly addictive drug - especially to youth. We should not have weed stores. It should be sold behind the counter. It should have a very high tax so that it's not cheap. It should have huge, bold warning labels on packaging. It should not be legalized at the federal level.
How many societies have legalized marijuana?
Unlike alcohol addiction, which can come on fast, weed grabs a hold of you over a longer period. It starts out as only beneficial with little to no downside. You won't notice you're addicted until much later.
Also, I find your decision to call the plant marijuana interesting. The names weed and pot have a negative connotation. But "marijuana" sounds a lot more acceptable. Nothing to do with you. Just something I noticed.
The other posters here have a point. If one is vocal against cannabis while mostly giving alcohol a pass - it makes it harder to respect warnings of harm.
After 5 generations of lying drug war PR and ridiculous propaganda, this deeply incredulous debate needs a lot to be worth considering.
I believe it's easier to get addicted to weed than alcohol. I think time will prove me right.
Think of it this way. Let's say there are 100 people in a society. Without weed, 5 are addicted to alcohol. With weed, 20 are addicted to weed and 3 are addicted to alcohol. Yes, there will be fewer alcohol addicts, but we added 20 weed addicts. Is this better for society? I don't believe so.
You're welcomed to disagree.
Haha like all reformed addicts of anything. I'm strongly anti cigarettes.
Extremely high THC products coupled with professional marketing agencies? Yikes. We're going to have a weed epidemic soon. Maybe it's a silent epidemic now.
Headline used here: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder
Specifically, what makes the latter - an Editorialized and Misleading version of the former?
Edit: downvote me daddy
I dont really blame drug users for what is usually escapism from our industrialized society rat race.
1. A director screaming at a subordinate. 2. Employees working so hard that they had to take time off due to health reasons, related to overwork. All were on visas and in this job market they don’t have a lot of options. 3. Employee A being so mean to an employee B that she started crying in a meeting. Employee A wasn’t even reprimanded. I obviously no longer work there.
But yes, it is my perception that is wrong.
It's probably not a great idea that the industry is moving towards high concentration THC and low to zero CBD product.
The "naturally occurring plant" is getting further and further from what's naturally occurring with the psychosis inducing compound coexisting with the psychosis mitigating compound.
It's quite disappointing to walk into a dispensary and see only a tiny shelf in one corner of the store with 1:1 or greater CBD products and 95% of the product on offer as a race to the bottom in CBD potency.
In the majority of people, this won't necessarily result in a psychotic issue, but it's going to happen commonly enough that we're going to have continuing and expanding social issues if 1:1 products don't become more commonplace.
I'd strongly encourage any future legalization legislation to consider marginally subsidizing product that has higher CBD ratios, as often I see that the consumer push towards THC only is related to cost saving against more expensive mixed products.
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Not saying you should never use weed, if I go to Amsterdam, I will for sure use it but I don't bring it back home with me. Smoking once every couple of months will not harm you at all, IMHO.
I propose: "Cannabis use disorder correlated to increased risk of both psychotic and non-psychotic unipolar depression and bipolar disorder."
Or even: "People with major depression, bipolar disorder and psychosis are more likely to be addicted to cannabis."
The appropriate title is "Cannabis Use Disorder and Subsequent Risk of Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Unipolar Depression and Bipolar Disorder".
I would never engage in any activity that increases the likelihood of a permanent life ruining mental illness!
I'd also ask you to try to avoid further stigmatizing an already misunderstood condition. It's ok to be unsettled by symptoms of schizophrenia and want to avoid developing them yourself! But let's be too dismissive of the lives of those who happen to be diagnosed with a condition.
I worked inpatient psychiatry for ~6 years.
All substances you consume have non-zero risk associated with them.
Including seemingly benign things like milk.
It's the job of every person to understand their body and to do a risk/reward analysis on anything you consume.
For many, the benefits of THC/CBD/cannaboids outweigh the risks.
> I would never engage in any activity that increases the likelihood of a permanent life ruining mental illness!
I'd be willing to bet a substantial amount that you already do.
Sugar, antibiotics, medications, heavy metals... take your pick.
You wouldn't even try Being Wrong on the Internet even once? I have. It's highly addictive.
Source: my own family.
I'm guessing they don't mean over 6 million Danes have cannabis use disorder, but are talking about the minority that do. In that case I'd wonder which came first, the mental disorder or the cannabis use disorder (I haven't read the full text)
That doesn't means and has never meant it is a harmless thing, like some groups portray it to be. "it's just a naturally ocurring plant!"
Education, more information and less zealotry help on both sides of the discusstion. It's not the devil's lettuce they had people think with 60s propaganda, but it's not a panacea either. Extremes are not good.
Some people experience various, mostly mild, forms of cognitive impairment such as sleepiness, thinking everything is funny, and memory issues. Other people seem to enter a state of heightened idea generation, like more of their brain is working on ideation than usual, and perhaps the sort of thing a priest class would find useful (thinking back to when this plant would have been domesticated). I’m sure there are many other types of reaction as well.
If someone experiences priest mode or is around those that do, they will be more positive towards it than others who only see impairment mode. It is much less homogenous in its effect on people than alcohol is.
Because it’s not about (only) the THC. The other cannabinoids, the terpenes, ... all seem to modulate the effect of the high.
The entire thread is HN playing denial of the harmful effects of a thing we've advocated for years, often with no dissent.
(1) Cannabis is a scavenger of metals and users had higher levels of lead and cadmium https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-high-blood-urinary-me...
(2) "there's a lot of overlap in terms of the toxins and carcinogens that are in [both] cannabis and tobacco smoke" https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-08-americans-marijuana-s...
Anecdotally, my cannabis use fell into the "use disorder" category and it wrecked me mentally. Thinking back on all of the people I knew growing up who said that cannabis wasn't addictive really shows how ignorant we all were.
That said, I still think it should be legalized. We clearly got the war on drugs really, really wrong.
Regardless of the problems, it is still a personal health issue. Criminalizing causes more harm than good.
It should be sold as a generic drug by pharmacies that make most of their business from other drugs not dispensary entrepreneurs creating massive retail brands like alcohol.
In Australia, tobacco is sold behind the counter. Tobacco has plain packaging and there is no advertising or promotion.
This is the way marijuana should be sold - cheap, clean, legal, available, but behind the counter and not advertised or promoted. It should not be like California or Thailand where you can go to cafes or marijuana shops.
Marijuana should not be treated as alcohol however - advertised, commercialised and glorified. Available, cheap, clean is enough.
Hah, in my country 10-15 years ago there was huge brainwash movement pushing pro-marihuana narration, mostly music/rap/etc communities
Smoking weed hurts your ability to think and learn. If you have responsibilities to children or shareholders etc you shouldn’t be doing it.
If you don’t and it doesn’t hurt others who are relying on you have at it, but still sparingly as not to be abusing your body and mind.
Alcohol has NO safe level of consumption.
Unlike cannabis.
If you say this while consuming other drugs that are harsher and less safe then you should do some self reflection on your prejudices.
Or do you adapt a more reasonable appropriate time and place for that type of drug?
I not sure if it hurts peoples ability to learn, even if some people have some memory impairment. But cannabis and other drugs change the way people think, and that can be good or bad depending on many factors. Have people created great creative works under the influence of cannabis? Yes. Would they have been better art if the artist had not consumed cannabis? Maybe not.
I know high functioning executives and parents who work and take care of family all day and eat an edible to go to sleep. And on Sunday night, they might smoke a joint and eat a meal with friends and discuss their next book or investment in between diaper changes.
I could care less if people get high, but as a general principle I will never consume a drug to help me sleep unless there’s a really good (doctor consulted) reason. I think we’re just setting ourselves up for an unhealthy dependence when we do that. (besides weed always had the opposite effect on me)
Alcohol addiction is very noticeable. People around you also notice. Alcohol will destroy both your mind and body. You're much more likely to be aware that you're addicted to alcohol than weed.
Weed addiction is slower. It starts out as only beneficial - until it isn't. Weed will only affect your mind. Unlike alcohol, it won't directly do physical harm to your body. The negative effects to your body from weed is indirect - such as getting lazy, munchies, etc.
>I not sure if it hurts peoples ability to learn, even if some people have some memory impairment.
This has to be a joke right?
Do you have family members who are below 18? If you truly believe what you said, you'd allow them to smoke weed and go to class.
Corporate America got a hold of the industry for pure profits.
You can purchase concentrates which are oils or resins at high THC percentages. These are manufactured from plant material to concentrate it not unlike making orange juice concentrate.
The theoretical physical limit of THC development in the plant is around 30%. You cannot find flower that will test much higher than that - if that.
Yes it’s more potent than it was due to - drumroll - modern agricultural practices.
This kind of misinformation parroting is really no bueno.