Reefer madness
Smoking Pot Makes People More Prone to Psychosis:
Okay, here's my unscientific two cents on this rather unscientific non-double-blind study:
I used pot almost every day from the age of 18 until 25. In that time I knew lots of potheads and many of them were much heavier users than I ever was. Most of those who smoked it occasionally were fairly sane, held good jobs and coped with reality but all of the heavy users were messed up, couldn't hold jobs and were out of touch with reality in various degrees ranging from being eccentric woo-woo hippy-trippy-dippy folks to full-blown delusional "I hear voices" schizophrenics. The latter had all shown signs of mental illness before they smoked pot.
I also experienced insanity during the period of heavy usage in my hippy days but pot did not cause my insanity. It simply brought underlying mental instability to the fore. Simple youthful timidity and lack of self-confidence got blown out of proportion into paranoia. Plain old natural worry turned into paralyzing anxiety. Imagination became delusion. It was not only the bad effects that the drug had on me that made me stop. I also stopped because I could no longer stand the company of potheads. They seemed to be stuck in some nightmare, trapped and unable to take control of their lives.
Until a proper double-blind study is done, I will continue to believe the evidence of my own observations: that heavy pot users are already mentally ill. Even the study says that the incidence of severe mental illness such as schizophrenia has not increased since the Sixties when pot usage first became common in the West. If pot caused insanity then you would expect an increase in diagnoses of insanity but that has not happened.
But diagnosis of mental illness (unlike physical diseases) can be pretty subjective and the definitions have changed over the years. There may have been an increase in insanity. Living in San Francisco I sure met a lot of people who would be called nuts in any other time or place but they were accepted as normal. And yes, most of them were potheads.
I must also admit that I cannot be absolutely sure that some aspects of my mental illness during my pot using years were not caused by the drug. It opens up areas of the mind that are best left alone if you have a wild imagination or any sort of mental instability. It's not just something that makes you high. It is a psychedelic drug. The psychedelic effects become less noticeable after continued use and most potheads use it to relax but, underneath the surface, those effects are still going on.
My hunch is that pot probably can cause madness but it's more likely that potheads are already nuts. Drug addicts - like alcoholics - are already mentally ill and are using drugs to self-medicate. They would be messed up with or without drugs.
Smoking marijuana increases the risk of developing psychosis later in life by 40 percent, with heavy users having an even higher risk of mental problems, British researchers said.
The researchers analyzed 35 previous studies and concluded that using marijuana or cannabis raised the risk of hallucinating and being delusional later in life.
[...]
Nordentoft said the study is the best to date, although like any meta-analysis it is only as strong as the weakest trial under review. Because a large-scale trial of an illegal drug isn't feasible, the results can't be confirmed by the highest scientific standard, a double-blind study.
[...]
Zammit's team found, independently of the transient intoxication effects of the drug and independently of what they call "confounding factors," such as existing mental health problems or other drug use. "We can't be sure it is causal," he says of the association. "[But] studies find an association rather consistently....It's always possible people who use cannabis may be different [in some way] than those who don't."
Okay, here's my unscientific two cents on this rather unscientific non-double-blind study:
I used pot almost every day from the age of 18 until 25. In that time I knew lots of potheads and many of them were much heavier users than I ever was. Most of those who smoked it occasionally were fairly sane, held good jobs and coped with reality but all of the heavy users were messed up, couldn't hold jobs and were out of touch with reality in various degrees ranging from being eccentric woo-woo hippy-trippy-dippy folks to full-blown delusional "I hear voices" schizophrenics. The latter had all shown signs of mental illness before they smoked pot.
I also experienced insanity during the period of heavy usage in my hippy days but pot did not cause my insanity. It simply brought underlying mental instability to the fore. Simple youthful timidity and lack of self-confidence got blown out of proportion into paranoia. Plain old natural worry turned into paralyzing anxiety. Imagination became delusion. It was not only the bad effects that the drug had on me that made me stop. I also stopped because I could no longer stand the company of potheads. They seemed to be stuck in some nightmare, trapped and unable to take control of their lives.
Until a proper double-blind study is done, I will continue to believe the evidence of my own observations: that heavy pot users are already mentally ill. Even the study says that the incidence of severe mental illness such as schizophrenia has not increased since the Sixties when pot usage first became common in the West. If pot caused insanity then you would expect an increase in diagnoses of insanity but that has not happened.
But diagnosis of mental illness (unlike physical diseases) can be pretty subjective and the definitions have changed over the years. There may have been an increase in insanity. Living in San Francisco I sure met a lot of people who would be called nuts in any other time or place but they were accepted as normal. And yes, most of them were potheads.
I must also admit that I cannot be absolutely sure that some aspects of my mental illness during my pot using years were not caused by the drug. It opens up areas of the mind that are best left alone if you have a wild imagination or any sort of mental instability. It's not just something that makes you high. It is a psychedelic drug. The psychedelic effects become less noticeable after continued use and most potheads use it to relax but, underneath the surface, those effects are still going on.
My hunch is that pot probably can cause madness but it's more likely that potheads are already nuts. Drug addicts - like alcoholics - are already mentally ill and are using drugs to self-medicate. They would be messed up with or without drugs.
posted by Joubert at 12:05 AM
The Alliance
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