Marijuana and Mental Illness

[Dancing David]

What happened to good old psychotherapy, or simply talking about one's problems and fears with a friend?

Considering that good old fashioned psychotherapy is about as effective a strapping on a page of Mao's little red book?

You do know that Freudian psychotherapy is total crap?

I feel the same about nutrition; why are people so lazy? Nutrition was taught in my and my children's high-school, and everyone who graduates high school should have a basic idea of how the human body works and what sort of foods it needs. If people chose to willfully break the laws of nutrition by eating junk then why should other people have to pay for them getting obese, getting diabetes etc? This is not a lack of compassion - it is simply being fed up of laziness.

Laws, what moralistic puritanical boat did you sail in on?

If people simply stopped buying junk, it would go away - just like the Mexican drug cartels would dry up and go home to their mommies if America stopped being so lazy and dependent on things that they think are somehow OK for them, due to advertising or peer pressure.

Hmmm such simple minded thoughts....

ETA: sorry to get into social issues again on a science thread.

Well considering that you have just taken a multivariate issue and reduced to something that is simple minded, it is probably not a good thing to do on SMT....

Your idea of why people get over weight is moralistic and simple minded, try looking at the world some day. It is not monovariate, now is it?

 

[Dancing David]

But we aren't talking about occasional indulgence - I was talking about brain-damaging chronic MJ use.

Undemonstrated brain damage, one possible article and you get all certain?

How about alcohol, do you even know what FAS is?

...


Having faith in magical invisible beings (the good ones) does produce real physiological effects, according to some believers. Those effects are called
"Health". On the other hand the very real physiological effects of the substances you mention start off positive but soon rebound into a state worse than before taken, leaning more towards disease and imbalance than health.

Well I suppose one un researched assertion deserves another, figures you are a religious apologist, the studies that show the benefits of membership in a church show the benefits of social support. There is no demonstrated benefit to prayer.

Yes. The shrink will help the person understand the root of their problems, see things with perspective and change their emotional reactions.

Knowing so much about psychiatry you just had to make stuff up, if you mean CBT, you can see someone other than a doctor.

If the cause of depression is a chemical imbalance, the cure is nutrition, - B vitamins are said to be good for the nervous system (plus good life style, more sleep and removal of stress, which all effect health) not a temporary fix of marijuana.

Your ignorance is showing. Dysregulation is a neural network is fixed with nutrition? Sure whatever.

Good idea. If a student misses a lecture because he was too tired to get up in the morning from the previous night's getting stoned, then let the college deduct that portion of his grant from his funds. etc. etc

Yup the moral hammer, untested, un researched appeal to emotion...

So you admit that pot smoking is a sin.

Yup you are a religious apologist.

I thought there were laws of nutrition, but maybe that's just the mean, judgmental, unkind part of me talking.

Maybe you should talk to the fairies in your head some more, there are no 'laws of nutrition', did you learn science in the 18th century? With a shovel and a piece of coal?

Isn't this what I said in the first place? (on the other thread I think)

SO?

 

[Halfcentaur]

I get tired of this idea that the cannabis today is so different just because of the heightened potency.

Yes, it get's you a lot more "stoned" when you smoke tiny amounts than you would expect from average domestic quality cannabis, which by the way is what you still find in most of the country between the east and west coast, but it doesn't give you hallucinations or transcend some barrier that once made it safer decades ago. The people who purchase the advanced strains pay quite a marked up price for it, and smoke much less as a result. The effects of one joint from "back in the day" are now achieved with a few hits. And you really can only get so stoned, even on the better stuff. It has more subtle flavors and distinct qualities to the high, but it's still the same high, a little amplified. I've personally had everything from ditch weed growing wild, to high quality mexican product, to the best you can find in Amsterdam and everything in between, and while the modified strains of today have a refined flavor and scent and incredibly potent effects in small amounts, it's not some out of control "moonshine" weed that will make you trip out and lose your mind while going blind. It's frustrating to see the increased potency cited all the time when law enforcement is explaining the dangers of today's product, as if it's something all that different than what people were smoking in the 60s.

 

[Cainkane1]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but your time would be better spent doing something else.

 

[Beth]

I was talking about indirect links from marijuana to the dealers' behavior, not the fact that they don't smoke the stuff themselves. It's a violent business. Even if they legalize it in the U.S. I doubt whether this will change much of the behavior of the "businessmen" involved in getting it to users.

Just like the repeal of prohibition didn't stop the violence associated with the "businessmen" involved in getting alcohol to drinkers? There's nothing to learn from that historical example.

And don't forget, the Netherlands have approximately the same level of violence associated with the drug trade as the U.S. - NOT! Nothing to learn from their experiences either.

 

[Beth]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but your time would be better spent doing something else.

One could make the same argument about playing video games or posting on the internet. They may be harmless pastimes, but the fact that people could better spend their time doing other things is an argument that applies to all recreational activities.

 

[Mirrorglass]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but your time would be better spent doing something else.

It is indeed somewhat ironic that you should make this point while killing time at a web forum. Aren't any cures for diseases you could be finding right now?

 

[GeeMack]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user some users to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but -- in Cainkane's purely subjective and unsubstantiated opinion -- your time would be better spent doing something else.

Fixed that for you.

 

[commandlinegamer]

Maybe the solution is to ban people from having opiate and cannibinoid receptors in their brain.

 

[NewtonTrino]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but your time would be better spent doing something else.

You mean like sitting here posting on this forum? Or having sex? Or cooking? or reading? Or working out? Or any of the myriads of things I do when high. Hell I was just looking at a financial projection spreadsheet for one my new companies and trying to work out some longer term cash flow projections while smokin' the reefer.

So please quit it with the stereotypes.

 

[Skwinty]

Maybe the solution is to ban people from having opiate and cannibinoid receptors in their brain.

Or, take the cane to Cainkane!

 

[Aquila]

Since you enjoy using personal experiences as your evidence I'll provide personal experience as a counter. I have smoked pot for several years with daily use. I go to college, work and pay for everything myself. I will graduate this spring. I have a 3.8 GPA, have been involved in several student organizations and have helped plan or participated in activities such as, bringing a speaker from Lebanon to talk about capitalism, adopt a highway, campus cleanup, building a rain barrel, holding a panel discussion on the RNC media censorship, clean sweep recycling, and others. Two summers ago I spent a few months in Japan teaching Japanese students English. I was invited to join an international business honor society, and have received scholarships due to my academic success. I can presently speak Japanese well enough for basic daily conversation and am taking extra courses outside of my major in Japanese simply because I want to be fluent in a second language.

Despite my daily use for several years I suffer from none of the bad effects you feel coincide with pot and in fact I excel. I've never been caught but if I had then I would have lost funding for school and would not have been able to do much of that nor much of the good I will do in the future. I also have other friends who also frequently smoke pot who have also excelled.

Finally in case you haven't noticed the war on drugs doesn't work. It wastes billions of taxpayer dollars, diverts police from where they are actually needed, funds organized crime rather than funding government, fills up jails, prevents people from contributing to society, and in general is just incredibly stupid. We have 100+ years of experience knowing it doesn't work but we keep pretending if we just try a little harder or spend more money on it it will magically work.

I hope my experience will help change your view on this issue.

I have heard of students like you The Animus mostly from my neighbors who are college lecturers. I can only presume that you have a strong constitution to withstand several years of daily marijuana use, especially with the THC levels (I am told) 10 to 20 times higher than they were 30 years ago. Please excuse me for asking if this is too personal, but are you of average weight? The reason that I ask is that I know several people who are, let's say, "large" and seem to be able to tolerate prescription medications with less side-effects than my average to under-weight friends.

This might be completely off base, but I am theorizing that because MJ is stored in fat cells, that people who have a larger body mass are less likely to experience the cumulative effects of MJ on the nerve receptors in the brain. My hypothesis is only backed up by my anecdotal evidence that all 3 of the people mentioned in my OP are average to slightly built, with not a lot of extra fat or muscle.

I also might be wrong here, and I'm sure you will all correct me if you think that I am blinded by my own biases, but I find it suspicious that the people who usually have a liberal attitude towards marijuana, seem to be, in my experience white, male and/or in their 20s. I have found that non-whites, women and/or parents have a more cautious attitude towards the drug. It's not that I support the war on drugs, but I would like to see some balance brought to the debate, alerting people to its possible negative consequences, which would include mental illness in a small percentage of the population.

And to correct anyone who assumes that I am a religious apologist - that's nuts! I hate religion. I quoted the word "sin" from someone else's post. I still contend that there are laws of nutrition, although they would not be written in stone and would have to be adapted for every individual (weight, pre-disposition to certain diseases etc, genetics), but after all we have taken billions of years to evolve these bodies, and we did it through eating natural food.

I think that you are all making this into a social issue, about freedom and "drug wars", but it's really about what is simply good for the human body. We didn't evolve smoking a joint of Mexican high THC every day, so why do you all think that we can get away with doing so without consequences to our bodies and minds?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

My problem with chronic overuse of MJ is that it causes the user to waste a lot of time. It may very well be that the drug is harmless but your time would be better spent doing something else.

And yet down time such as sleeping has proven benefits. Chronic users are not all wasting all their awake time. Many chronic users are productive for much of the day.

 

[GeeMack]

I have heard of students like you The Animus mostly from my neighbors who are college lecturers. I can only presume that you have a strong constitution to withstand several years of daily marijuana use, especially with the THC levels (I am told) 10 to 20 times higher than they were 30 years ago.

Why would you assume such a thing? It might be that damned near anyone could do it. Maybe your experience is with a tiny minority of wimps who can't. You do realize you're still making unsupported assumptions to support your argument from incredulity and ignorance?

Please excuse me for asking if this is too personal, but are you of average weight? The reason that I ask is that I know several people who are, let's say, "large" and seem to be able to tolerate prescription medications with less side-effects than my average to under-weight friends.

Do you have some particular disability that makes it difficult for you to do your own homework?

This might be completely off base, but I am theorizing that because MJ is stored in fat cells, that people who have a larger body mass are less likely to experience the cumulative effects of MJ on the nerve receptors in the brain. My hypothesis is only backed up by my anecdotal evidence that all 3 of the people mentioned in my OP are average to slightly built, with not a lot of extra fat or muscle.

Again, do you have some particular disability that makes it difficult for you to do your own homework? Oh, and you're misusing the term "hypothesis". It means an educated guess, and you've shown that you not only are wholly uneducated on the subject, but you also don't appear to really want to be educated either.

I also might be wrong here, and I'm sure you will all correct me if you think that I am blinded by my own biases, but I find it suspicious that the people who usually have a liberal attitude towards marijuana, seem to be, in my experience white, male and/or in their 20s.

You've already been corrected on being blinded by your own biases, by pretty much all the other participants in these discussions, and it doesn't seem to have done a lick of good. Consider yourself corrected again. Pardon me if I don't hold my breath to see if it does any good this time.

I have found that non-whites, women and/or parents have a more cautious attitude towards the drug. It's not that I support the war on drugs, but I would like to see some balance brought to the debate, alerting people to its possible negative consequences, which would include mental illness in a small percentage of the population.

You don't support the war on drugs, but you would support refusing a kid entrance to a college if he/she has smoked pot. Pardon me if I find your claim not only unsupported, but completely dishonest. Seems to be a habit with you.

And to correct anyone who assumes that I am a religious apologist - that's nuts! I hate religion. I quoted the word "sin" from someone else's post.

Well you are pretty judgmental, without cause, and pretty closed minded. Other than you haven't been directly preaching on behalf of gods, you are clearly an apologist. You have all the makings of a fundamentalist religious person, so don't be surprised when people take you to be one.

I still contend that there are laws of nutrition, although they would not be written in stone and would have to be adapted for every individual (weight, pre-disposition to certain diseases etc, genetics), but after all we have taken billions of years to evolve these bodies, and we did it through eating natural food.

Your definition of "laws" is so arbitrary as to make is totally meaningless. So your claim that there are laws of nutrition is gibberish. Oh, and we've been consuming recreational intoxicants for thousands of years, too.

I think that you are all making this into a social issue, about freedom and "drug wars", but it's really about what is simply good for the human body. We didn't evolve smoking a joint of Mexican high THC every day, so why do you all think that we can get away with doing so without consequences to our bodies and minds?

We are all understanding that it is about what is good for the human body, or not. What we are all not doing is steadfastly clinging to the irrational bias that you are. You seem to be placing marijuana in some isolated category of risk. The fact is people step off their front porches, trip over their own feet, fall, and die. It probably happens every day. And nobody is asking for special education of the public on the perils of walking down the front porch steps. Marijuana doesn't kill people. Thousands of other everyday activities do, more than just a little.

Put it in perspective, Aquila. Or at least have the honesty to admit that your opinion is uneducated, unsupported, and severely jaded by a couple isolated personal experiences. Your pretense that you know what you're talking about, when you've demonstrated beyond any doubt that you're making this stuff up from scratch, is dishonest.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Just like the repeal of prohibition didn't stop the violence associated with the "businessmen" involved in getting alcohol to drinkers? There's nothing to learn from that historical example.

And don't forget, the Netherlands have approximately the same level of violence associated with the drug trade as the U.S. - NOT! Nothing to learn from their experiences either.

I was always under the impression a lot of mob violence ended when prohibition ended. Clearly gang activity and crime continued, but not to the same degree.

And the issue with violence that was in the thread that spawned this one was about the current murder rate in Mexico, not the current level of drug violence in the US.

 

[Beth]

I was always under the impression a lot of mob violence ended when prohibition ended. Clearly gang activity and crime continued, but not to the same degree.

Yes, that's correct. I was being a bit sarcastic there.

And the issue with violence that was in the thread that spawned this one was about the current murder rate in Mexico, not the current level of drug violence in the US.

 

[Michael Mozina]

Schrodinger's Cat: Re my suggestions about penalizing students who smoke weed. One of my son's classmates at High School was caught sharing pot on campus and was denied entrance to an Ivy League college he had just got into. It was not my idea to impose penalties. His example deterred other students from doing the same.

I feel the same about nutrition; why are people so lazy? Nutrition was taught in my and my children's high-school, and everyone who graduates high school should have a basic idea of how the human body works and what sort of foods it needs. If people chose to willfully break the laws of nutrition by eating junk then why should other people have to pay for them getting obese, getting diabetes etc?

Hmm. The fact you compare the two makes for an interesting question. One could extend that analogy and ask why we don't penalize "fat" people too and prohibit them from entering certain colleges? Wouldn't that act as a deterrent to bad nutritional habits too?

One might also point out that the Ivy League school "accepted" the student in question before learning of his drug use so the claim of "laziness" is rather debatable, particularly in that particular case.

 

[GracefullyTalentless]

This is one of the few subjects that I don't care what evidence exists.

I was a long-term, heavy user of marijuana. There is no history of mental illness in my family. Nearly 4 years on from quitting and i'm still feeling the effects, but in the last two i've started to overcome them.

Cannabis does damage. First hand experience.


ETA: That being said, if we purport to living in free societies we should have the choice of whether or not we put such things into our bodies.

 

[Halfcentaur]

This is one of the few subjects that I don't care what evidence exists.

I was a long-term, heavy user of marijuana. There is no history of mental illness in my family. Nearly 4 years on from quitting and i'm still feeling the effects, but in the last two i've started to overcome them.

Cannabis does damage. First hand experience.


ETA: That being said, if we purport to living in free societies we should have the choice of whether or not we put such things into our bodies.

And these effects are?

 

[GracefullyTalentless]

And these effects are?

Social awkwardness, paranoia of varying degrees, damage to both short term and long term memory, extreme irritation caused by trivial issues.

None of which were a problem before starting using the drug.

Like I said, these effects are reducing in severity, but are nevertheless there.