Marijuana and Mental Illness

[Aquila]

I've been lurking on this thread but I finally have to say something.

I'm sorry, Aquila, I don't mean this as an attack, but you do sound like the next thread you're going to start is "Magnets - how the *bleep* do they work?" There is no evidence to back up your claim. Sure, science theories start with guess or intuition, but you do realize how much "gut-feeling" hypothesis are kicked to the ground compared to the ones that are not? "Gut-feeling" is just that. A feeling. An emotion.

For example, I know a whole bunch of people who have a gut feeling that god exists, that Creationism is right, that homosexual people should not marry because it will cause more people to be gay and die out the human race, or that if you wear a Knocki Foot Pad it drain the toxins out of you.

Finally, I don't smoke pot at all, I have tried it, but only five times. I don't like the feeling of being high. However, I am in favor of MJ being legal. So not all people who are pro-legalization are "pot heads". We are people who ignored "gut-feelings" and propaganda and actually looked at the science that's out there. And I know you don't want to hear this, but, in the US at least, it IS a rights issue.

Hello FrankA: I do not feel attacked at all - thank you for your comments! I think that my statements about intuition were probably not stated very well. I never meant that intuition should be a substitute for empirical science, just that it is often a pre-cursor to science.

Empiricism is the most useful and fair form of research for the material sciences, physics, chemistry and biology, and of course gut feelings or belief systems have no place in these subjects, but when it comes to human psychology, it's nearly impossible to isolate all the different variables. When we put human beings in the context of a society, empirical science becomes very difficult. Just look at how this thread has been derailed so many times from the sceintific evidence - or lack of it - by people talking about legal issues, rights, and their own subjective experiences ( myself included). It is in the context of human psychology where I think that intuition might be more useful than empirical science. So my next thread will probably not be about magnets, but maybe about the limitations of empirical science when it comes to human social issues.

 

[BenBurch]

Maybe your next thread ought to be about how a pre-determined political position prevents people from seeing reality?

 

[Aquila]

...
As for the ciggaretts and alchohol while pregnant, these exist because of studies which show a direct, and frequent link between these behaviors and serious birth defects. They do not exist because someone, based on intuition, decided that this felt like it was bad for pregnant women to smoke and drink.

Again, I didn't say that intuition should replace scientific studies; it was the intuitive idea that the observed correlation between substance use and health effects that fueled these scientific studies, which later proved that there was a causal relationship between these correlations.

Sadly, babies were born with birth defects and people got lung cancer before scientists organized and funded themselves to improve conditions. Similarly, scientists are just beginning to test the intuitive notions that there might be link between chronic marijuana use and mental illness. Sadly, again, parents of high THC content - pot-smoking adolescents who are genetically prone to bipolar or schizophrenia have had to watch their children get diagnosed with with these conditions, and possibly had their education curtailed, and hope of living a productive life cut short, because scientists did not listen to the concerns and intuitive hunches earlier

 

[TubbaBlubba]

So you are saying parents who smoke weed get kids who are bipolar?

Well, that explains why my two siblings and I are bipolar. My mother smoked a bit of weed in the seventies. Geez, of course. Not genetic predisposition or anything silly like that.

 

[Dancing David]

Again, I didn't say that intuition should replace scientific studies; it was the intuitive idea that the observed correlation between substance use and health effects that fueled these scientific studies, which later proved that there was a causal relationship between these correlations.

Sadly, babies were born with birth defects and people got lung cancer before scientists organized and funded themselves to improve conditions. Similarly, scientists are just beginning to test the intuitive notions that there might be link between chronic marijuana use and mental illness. Sadly, again, parents of high THC content - pot-smoking adolescents who are genetically prone to bipolar or schizophrenia have had to watch their children get diagnosed with with these conditions, and possibly had their education curtailed, and hope of living a productive life cut short, because scientists did not listen to the concerns and intuitive hunches earlier

This is crap. if you are going to get schizophrenia or bipolar disorder then that is what happens, MJ use may aggravate existing symptoms but it does not cause mental illness. People like myself living with mental illness face three barriers, access to treatment, effective treatment and stupid old fashioned stigma.

You are stigmatizing people with mental illness, many people, including people with schizophrenia go on to lead productive full lives.
Here is an amazing man Fred Frese
You are sadly misinformed and I dislike people who stigmatize while pretending to be concerned.

Yes you should be concerned if your child is using, whatever the substance.

 

[Emet]

People like myself living with mental illness face three barriers, access to treatment, effective treatment and stupid old fashioned stigma.

I could not have stated this any better.

I would only add that other folks often don't understand, and may make no attempt to do so. The lack of empathy, compassion, and understanding adds insult to a very painful injury.

 

[myowninvention]

Again, I didn't say that intuition should replace scientific studies; it was the intuitive idea that the observed correlation between substance use and health effects that fueled these scientific studies, which later proved that there was a causal relationship between these correlations.

Sadly, babies were born with birth defects and people got lung cancer before scientists organized and funded themselves to improve conditions. Similarly, scientists are just beginning to test the intuitive notions that there might be link between chronic marijuana use and mental illness. Sadly, again, parents of high THC content - pot-smoking adolescents who are genetically prone to bipolar or schizophrenia have had to watch their children get diagnosed with with these conditions, and possibly had their education curtailed, and hope of living a productive life cut short, because scientists did not listen to the concerns and intuitive hunches earlier

really. You think someone, once diagnosed as bipolar or schizophrenic can never live a productive life? Also, just to clear up what may be misunderstanding on my part- do you claim that pot causes mental illness, or that it can trigger symptoms in someone with preexisting conditions? Because causing and triggering are extremly different.


Re the first paragraph: ok, I agree, that is where studies start. However, you seemed to be arguing that in spite if studies, which other posters have posted links to, you will continue to belive what your intuition tells you.


Btw, I am not a white male pot head in my twenties. (Ok, to be fair, I guess I am in my twenties). And it's true, nothing would have convinced me to smoke pot when I was pregnant, but my risk assesment for everything was different when pregnant vs not, as it should be. If you want to argue that women should not smoke pot while pregnant, I'm right there with you. However, there are a lot of things women should not do while pregnant: I also didn't take asprin, go for long runs, or drink coffee or tea. These are all relatively safe activities when not pregnant that are a completely different story when you are.

 

[Dancing David]

Welcome myowninvention.

 

[Aquila]

Welcome myowninvention.

Ditto!
The fact that what pregnant women put in their bodies affects a growing bunch of cells, the fetus, suggests to me that what non-pregnant women, and men put in their bodies also affects bunches of growing cells, other than a fetus.

I guess that much of my caution about drug use is based on a growing respect for the fragility of the human body which comes with age. When I was younger, I guess my kidneys or liver or whatever did the job were better at eliminating byproducts of drugs. This, and the fact mentioned earlier that I no longer feel the emotional need to experience a different state of consciousness. Reality is wonderful. If I want to be entertained I have YouTube or my own dreams.

 

[SnnTsd]

It is certainly true that cannabis smoke has a greater concentration of tar than tobacco smoke, and some of the more carcinogenic compounds are found in higher concentrations. But the fact of the matter is that MJ simply does not have the same cancer profile as tobacco. In another thread recently, Alfie presented evidence showing that MJ smokers are 5 times more likely to contract lung cancer, but compare that to 23 time for tobacco. I'm not sure why it is, maybe it's because THC isn't as addictive as nicotine so users don't smoke as compulsively. Or maybe, as I've heard but aren't sure just how much truth there is to it, the phosphate fertilisers we use have radioactive isotopes in them and they are carried up through he plant and deposited on the sticky residue of the leaves, which are then burnt and inhaled directly to the smokers lung. Whatever the case may be, the evidence suggests smoking MJ is lot safer than smoking tobacco. That being said, obviously burning any organic material and inhaling gasses and particulates it gives off is going to be bad for you, there ios always going to be a risk involved. But then again, you don't HAVE to smoke MJ either. You can eat in or invest in a vaporiser which only heats the plant material up to the point that the active constituent is released without combustion. There are plenty of ways to use MJ while drastically reducing the harm it may be doing to your body. And as far as health benefits go, yes MJ has quite a number of health applications, certainly moreso than tobacco, but even they have to be weighed against the risks, as with anything.

I looked up the evidence by Alfie that MJ users is 5 times and tobacco users 23 times more likely to get cancer. I think you were referencing to the link, posted by Alfie in the "A poster said incarcerating dope addicts didn't work. Ok so what does?" thread?

It starts with this statement.

"Smoking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk, say researchers, warning of an "epidemic" of lung cancers linked to cannabis."

It almost looks like you are taking two single papers that got some numbers that happens to make MJ look more safe than tobacco, and ignore the rest of the conclusions? Did the paper that claims "23 times likely more to get lung cancer", compare those results with risks associated with MJ smoking?

You don't have to smoke nicotine either(e-cigarettes for example).

Not saying that tobacco is "healthier" than MJ, but need more convincing evidence that MJ can be less harmful than tobacco.

 

[GeeMack]

These warning laws came into effect because the process of real science generated evidence to show that a genuine danger exists, not because someone with an "artistic, imaginary way of looking at life" had a wildass hunch.

I beg to differ, but from my understanding of the history of science, the empirical testing and research often come after someone had a wildass hunch. For example, Michael Faraday, before he started playing around with magnets and electric currents, had an idea that there was a field of energy round a wire, rather like his gold wedding ring - at least this is the way that the story was told in a Nova video I have called "Einstein's Big Idea". Einstein himself started his theory of relativity in his imagination, way before he worked out the mathematical formula.

No. The laws about any particular warning labels came about by working through the process of real science as a follow-up to empirical observations, not hunches.

And for centuries people with their "artistic, imaginary way of looking at life" thought rotting meat spontaneously generated maggots, thunder and lightning was caused by various gods working, playing, and getting angry in the clouds, the Earth was the center of the Universe, and a whole pile of other ideas that we've since come to find, by applying real science to our observations, were nonsensical.

In biology, the understanding of nutrition and vitamins was only tested after people noticed that people lacking certain foods got sick - beri-beri in people lacking B vitamins found in whole grains, scurvy from lack of vitamin C in fruits etc.

And they did bloodletting to drain bodies of the bad spirits that invaded them and made them sick, too. So much for biology based on hunches.

Regarding marijuana - why is it that so many supporters of the drug only talk about its effects while one is high/stoned? Just as I brought up the subject of Steve Jobs' pancreatic cancer possibly being caused by a withdrawal from marijuana (a natural tumor inhibitor), why is it that none of you pot-heads talk about MJ's complete effect on the whole person over time.

I already showed that very large numbers of supporters of marijuana legalization are police, judges, lawyers, and the other people who support organizations like Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, most of whom most likely don't even use it. I showed that somewhere between 5% and 12% of Californians use marijuana, but somewhere around 50% of them support legalizing it. Your inference that it's mostly high/stoned people talking about it is nonsense. If you were being scientific instead of following your hunch I'm sure you'd agree.

And who exactly are "you potheads"? Surely not me. I haven't used any for decades. Interesting that your intuition consistently fails you, yet you seem willing to accept your hunches over good empirical science.

This is what I meant by my beginning to question science; for marijuana research to be of value, I think that it needs to stay with subjects over several years, and measure withdrawal symptoms (if any) like changes in mood, aggressiveness. Research also, IMO, needs to include women, and subjects of both genders of all ages (most of the pro-pot publicity I see on the internet seems to come from 20 something white men). Would any pregnant women like to be part of the experiment? If researchers had asked me when I was pregnant, I would probably have said no - are you going to say that I would have been acting out of irrational fear and a wildass hunch?

Again with the generalizations that come from your intuition. Do you suppose those 20 something white men make up half the population of California, and likely similar portions of the population of most of the rest of the US? Some of those 20 something white men who have been contributing to the discussion in this thread are in their 30s, 40s, 50s and maybe beyond.

And someone else already addressed your attempted diversion about pregnant women.

Just to add another thought before I give it a rest - this is from a cultural angle. I suppose I would sound hypocritical if I were to tell my children or young people not to try marijuana when I had done it myself.

No, you'd be a bad parent if you didn't look out for your kids without regards to what you might do or what you did in your own younger years. You wouldn't be a hypocrite if you told your kids not to drink alcohol until they're old enough to take legal and social responsibility for their own decisions, even if you drink alcohol.

But, on the other hand (and this is apart from the fact that MJ is so much stronger today than in my hippie days) - you young folks live in a different world than we did back in the 1970s. It is puzzling to me why your generation would want or need that change in consciousness that seemed so necessary back in the 1960s and 70s. Marijuana then was a backdrop for civil rights, gender equality and the Vietnam War protests, with joints rolled on LP covers from home grown plants in flower pots on the roof, not supplied by drug cartels or business men with machine guns.

This particular young folk is in his mid 50s. A change of consciousness didn't seem necessary to me in the 70s, nor to any of my friends or social acquaintances that I recall. And aren't you glad we don't have those civil rights issues today? After all, nobody's discriminating against gay people, women are getting paid equal to men for the same work, and the Middle East wars are all about fair and righteous compared to Viet Nam.

And your intuition appears to be keeping you out of touch with reality. The Mexican drug cartels and businessmen with machine guns are a symptom of prohibition, not of using marijuana. Even with prohibition in force they probably only account for a small portion of the suppliers. End prohibition and they become a non-issue.

The psychedelic patterns some of us saw while tripped out on acid or mescalin can now be seen on a computer screen, generated by fractals. It's as though what was once in our heads has manifested in real life, through technology and artificial intelligence. Where my generation perhaps needed pot to kick us out of our parents' generation conformity and see through the falsity of religions into the purer "spiritual" teachings of the East, we can now explain so much with science and rationality - so what is the point of nebulous drug induced escapism. Isn't it going backwards?

People do an awful lot of things simply because they enjoy doing them. If there's anything hypocritical here it's you tagging those things which you have, based on a hunch, subjectively decided are bad things as "nebulous drug induced escapism". Relying on your intuition is going backwards.

It was probably during one of my marijuana highs 30 years ago that I originally had the idea of intuition being more useful than science.

Just because using marijuana seems to have caused a problem with your thinking doesn't mean it will cause that problem for any significant portion of other people. In fact that seems to be what this thread is all about, you know, marijuana and mental illness? Also in fact, after 300 posts in the thread you still haven't provided any evidence to support your hunch.

So beware all you pot smokers; see what it did to me! Better to stick with straight laced impressions from purely sense bound experience. I do worry about the kids though. I don't know if any of you have kids, but I wonder if you'd really be so blithely unconcerned if you knew that your teenager was smoking a joint of high THC marijuana every day.

Your strawman about our teenagers is noted. For the most part anyone who has been arguing against prohibition also recognizes that some reasonable regulations, like those which apply to alcohol, should also apply to legal marijuana. If your teenager is smoking a joint a day, you need to find a way to deal with it. Prohibition doesn't work. Oh, and neither does telling scary unevidenced tales about how smoking marijuana might make you go crazy.

Beware all you pot smokers. You might just end up thinking that intuition is a better method than science for understanding the Universe we live in. There are even a couple of anecdotes, an inconclusive study or two, and some arguments from incredulity and ignorance to support the claim. But as a skeptic with a pretty firm handle on reality, I'd wait until there is some actual evidence before I'd be terribly concerned.

 

[Dancing David]

Ditto!
The fact that what pregnant women put in their bodies affects a growing bunch of cells, the fetus, suggests to me that what non-pregnant women, and men put in their bodies also affects bunches of growing cells, other than a fetus.

I guess that much of my caution about drug use is based on a growing respect for the fragility of the human body which comes with age. When I was younger, I guess my kidneys or liver or whatever did the job were better at eliminating byproducts of drugs. This, and the fact mentioned earlier that I no longer feel the emotional need to experience a different state of consciousness. Reality is wonderful. If I want to be entertained I have YouTube or my own dreams.

And that has no bearing on your OP, now does it.

 

[Dancing David]

I looked up the evidence by Alfie that MJ users is 5 times and tobacco users 23 times more likely to get cancer. I think you were referencing to the link, posted by Alfie in the "A poster said incarcerating dope addicts didn't work. Ok so what does?" thread?

It starts with this statement.

"Smoking a joint is equivalent to 20 cigarettes in terms of lung cancer risk, say researchers, warning of an "epidemic" of lung cancers linked to cannabis."

It almost looks like you are taking two single papers that got some numbers that happens to make MJ look more safe than tobacco, and ignore the rest of the conclusions? Did the paper that claims "23 times likely more to get lung cancer", compare those results with risks associated with MJ smoking?

You don't have to smoke nicotine either(e-cigarettes for example).

Not saying that tobacco is "healthier" than MJ, but need more convincing evidence that MJ can be less harmful than tobacco.

http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/31/2/280.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17035389
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-3362.2009.00149.x/full
http://www.fhcrc.org/about/ne/news/2009/02/09/marijuana.html
http://ur.umich.edu/0607/Oct16_06/01.shtml
http://www.infectagentscancer.com/content/4/S2/P15
http://science.iowamedicalmarijuana.org/pdfs/misc/cannabis.pdf
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/64/11/4049.full

 

[TubbaBlubba]

Just because using marijuana seems to have caused a problem with your thinking doesn't mean it will cause that problem for any significant portion of other people. In fact that seems to be what this thread is all about, you know, marijuana and mental illness? Also in fact, after 300 posts in the thread you still haven't provided any evidence to support your hunch.

He's the evidence.

 

[JFrankA]

Hello FrankA: I do not feel attacked at all - thank you for your comments! I think that my statements about intuition were probably not stated very well. I never meant that intuition should be a substitute for empirical science, just that it is often a pre-cursor to science.

Empiricism is the most useful and fair form of research for the material sciences, physics, chemistry and biology, and of course gut feelings or belief systems have no place in these subjects, but when it comes to human psychology, it's nearly impossible to isolate all the different variables. When we put human beings in the context of a society, empirical science becomes very difficult. Just look at how this thread has been derailed so many times from the sceintific evidence - or lack of it - by people talking about legal issues, rights, and their own subjective experiences ( myself included). It is in the context of human psychology where I think that intuition might be more useful than empirical science. So my next thread will probably not be about magnets, but maybe about the limitations of empirical science when it comes to human social issues.

Thank you. I'm glad you didn't feel attacked.

However, I have to disagree with you completely with "hunches". We cannot rely on "hunches" when it comes to a society. It's been proven that they cause more harm than good. For example, it was a "hunch" that bloodletting was a great cure.

Society and laws cannot rely on hunches at all because those hunches get so ingrained into people that when the empirical evidence actually comes through, most people will disregard it. It's a very dangerous thing. I can understand extrapolating or expanding something proven, but to hunch it out of nowhere is counterproductive.

Getting back to the topic, there is no proof that MJ causes mental illness, other than short term memory loss. So why hunch that it causes, for example, bi-polar behavior long after a long period of time? If we are talking years here, there could be many other factors that have nothing to do with MJ to cause bi-polar behavior. Just coming up with it out of the blue is a hypothesis, but it is no cause for making it illegal nor is it a reason to believe the hypothesis is true.

Personally, your line of thinking is something I find frightening. I mean, it's okay to be cautious, but to base a fear on something that has no basis and is just a hunch can be perverted into an untruth that is propagated only because of fear. I'm not talking about just MJ now, although with all the "Reefer Madness" type movies and the "gateway drug" lie it's a prime example, but there are a lot of examples where a hunch eventually turns into "truthiness" whether its true or not.

 

[ThunderChunky]

I'm beginning to think that science, useful as it is, is beginning to fall behind intuition when it comes to providing useful information that people can use to stay healthy. Personally, I combine my basic knowledge of science (A-level Biology, Chemistry and Physics) with observation of the natural world, and also my "gut feeling" - I do not regard this as "woo". I think that the principle of balance, for example, is fundamental in all nature and see the human body as rather like a see-saw. I think that cells "remember" what is done to them and have "withdrawal symptoms" if we take away what they get used to. This artistic, imaginary way of looking at life may sound irrational, but I don't care - it's helped me. Maybe science will prove these intuitional thoughts to be true one day.

Science doesn't say smoking marijuana is healthy for most people, but it clearly says that it does not cause cancer. You're A-level science education is not enough to have anything close to an informed opinion.

 

[SnnTsd]

(A lot of links that I am not allowed to include in this post)

Thanks for the links, don't have time to read through all that, but, scrolled through a random picked link, the first one. There I found this:
"A major differential risk between cannabis and cigarette smoking was observed, with one joint of cannabis being similar to ∼20 cigarettes for risk of lung cancer. This is consistent with the observation that smoking “a few” cannabis joints a day causes similar histological changes in the tracheobronchial epithelium as smoking 20–30 tobacco cigarettes a day".

MJ smoking is bad, really bad for your lungs according to this paper, making the evidence of the opposite more questionable.

 

[SnnTsd]

And your intuition appears to be keeping you out of touch with reality. The Mexican drug cartels and businessmen with machine guns are a symptom of prohibition, not of using marijuana. Even with prohibition in force they probably only account for a small portion of the suppliers. End prohibition and they become a non-issue.

I beg to differ.

Perhaps violent criminal organizations will become less powerful if prohibition ended, but that does not necessary makes things better. Poor Mexicans will be replaced with Phillips Morris Inc if people keep on chanting "legalize it" senseless.

 

[GeeMack]

I beg to differ.

Perhaps violent criminal organizations will become less powerful if prohibition ended, but that does not necessary makes things better. Poor Mexicans will be replaced with Phillips Morris Inc if people keep on chanting "legalize it" senseless.

You mean poor Mexicans might get the opportunity to have a real job at a real company? Oh yeah, that would be terrible.

 

[BenBurch]

You mean poor Mexicans might get the opportunity to have a real job at a real company? Oh yeah, that would be terrible.

Which is all most of them really want. Jobs have not appeared with NAFTA, they have fled. Before NAFTA a small Mexican corn farmer could make his way in the world, but without trade restrictions, they cannot compete with ConAgra.