More Evidence of Marijuana-Psychosis Link

[Writer]

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Psychiatry/Addictions/18722

Marijuana use at a young age significantly increased the risk of psychosis in young adulthood, Australian investigators reported.

Young adults who reported a longer duration since first exposure to marijuana had a two- to fourfold greater prevalence of three different psychosis-related outcomes, John McGrath, MD, PhD, of the Queensland Center for Mental Health Research in Wacol, and colleagues concluded in an article published online in Archives of General Psychiatry.

A similar association was observed in a subset of sibling pairs.

"Apart from the implications for policy makers and health planners, we hope our findings will encourage further clinical and animal model-based research to unravel the mechanisms linking cannabis use and psychosis," the researchers concluded.

What kind of psychosis is THIS?

[Fumesucker]

1. Correlation does not imply causation..

It very easily could be that those more prone to psychosis are also more likely to indulge in drug taking, including alcohol, prescription drugs and yes illegal drugs.

[kestrel91316]

2. That has always been my theory - that the mental problems LEAD TO substance abuse.

Probably explains why some of the most normal, psychologically healthy people I have known can drink and indulge in marijuana moderately and not get into trouble over it. Me included.

Though some might dispute whether or not I'm "normal", lol.

[upi402]

8. Attempts to self-medicate are common

from stories I've listened to. And many return to normalcy, many of those without medication, after getting into recovery. Still, classic mental illness is different and psychosis is more likely that in the article.

Anecdote; a teenage friend years ago started smoking pot. Usage increased rapidly and then he tried acid. He had a psychotic snap and has not been the same since.

[liberal_at_heart]

12. I have know several bipolar people who have self medicated with marijuana, alcohol, or hard drugs

[depakid]

9. That's certainly been shown to be the case with tobacco addiction

The data is impressive and clinical pathways have been identified which help explain why.

[Fumesucker]

11. What is it, something in excess of 90% of psychotics smoke tobacco?

ISTR reading that a few times..

[depakid]

17. The range doesn't go quite that high, the upper end is in the 80's.

Schizophrenia has an extremely highest comorbidity- though with other conditions, the prevalence of tobacco addiction is also significantly higher than the general population.

[laughingliberal]

19. That is the same percentage of people with ADD that smoke tobacco-90%

We don't do nearly enough to find out what types of issues people who are using certain substances are dealing with. In my case, I was from a family with a long history of depressive illness and I was diagnosed very early with depression and ADD. Otherwise, my later drug and tobacco use might have been construed as the cause of my problems. Due to early detection of these problems, it is apparent the former (disorders) more likely led to the latter (use of substances).

[elocs]

21. Yes about 90% are smokers. They are actually self medicating.

Nicotine actually helps them in thinking and keeping their thought together. An irony is that their lung cancer rate is actually lower than the general population, although the other diseases caused by smoking does reduce their lifespan. Also, because many people diagnosed with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses have a reduced income the high cost of smoking is financially devastating to them.

[Bennyboy]

16. exactly.

As someone that has a few pecadillos myself, i can telly ou that weed is the only things that works for us. And we know it the second we take the first puff...Then as we get older some of the things start to manifest themselves more pronounced. I tired to stop puffing and taking "their drugs" but that so did not work.

[depakid]

4. Same problem with this research as in similar past research

It's attempting to prove or justify some pre-existing policy point -even though they admit themselves to having no clinical evidence of a causal factor.

[Fumesucker]

7. I honestly don't think I've ever seen someone come on to DU..

And post an OP to research showing that alcohol is bad for you..

But we get these half baked "studies" about cannabis on a regular basis.

[depakid]

13. There's actually neurological evidence that show the deleterious effects of teen drinking

Bottom line is that from the adolescent growth spurt on to the early 20's, connections are still changing or "maturing" at a fairly rapid rate- and ethanol adds a pretty heavy insult at a very vulnerable time.

The NY Times had a fair summary on that research a few years back:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/04/health/04teen.html

[Fumesucker]

27. I wasn't questioning the ill effects of alcohol, I was just commenting that we never hear about it..

And yet there's a steady stream of negative studies about pot that get touted here on DU..

From the article you linked to..

The costs of early heavy drinking, experts say, appear to extend far beyond the time that drinking takes away from doing homework, dating, acquiring social skills, and the related tasks of growing up.

Mounting research suggests that alcohol causes more damage to the developing brains of teenagers than was previously thought, injuring them significantly more than it does adult brains. The findings, though preliminary, have demolished the assumption that people can drink heavily for years before causing themselves significant neurological injury. And the research even suggests that early heavy drinking may undermine the precise neurological capacities needed to protect oneself from alcoholism.

The new findings may help explain why people who begin drinking at an early age face enormous risks of becoming alcoholics. According to the results of a national survey of 43,093 adults, published yesterday in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 47 percent of those who begin drinking alcohol before the age of 14 become alcohol dependent at some time in their lives, compared with 9 percent of those who wait at least until age 21. The correlation holds even when genetic risks for alcoholism are taken into account.

The most alarming evidence of physical damage comes from federally financed laboratory experiments on the brains of adolescent rats subjected to binge doses of alcohol. These studies found significant cellular damage to the forebrain and the hippocampus.

[poverlay]

31. Did you know the sun causes pregnancy? ...... Well, it tends to be up when people find out they

are expecting...

Morons

[Hekate]

5. Yes, as a form of self-medication. I have a few friends who are regular users, & they are not ...

... psychotic. One gets relief from migraines, another gets relief from arthritis.

However I can well imagine that a person with mental illness would certainly be looking for some way to calm down -- many of our local homeless are "dual diagnosis", that is, they are both mentally ill and addicted to either drugs or to alcohol.

Something about this "study" strikes me as flawed.

Hekate

[liberal_at_heart]

14. I know someone who uses marijuans for migraines

It gets rid of the pain instantaneously.

[depakid]

24. Here's a little confounder:

High comorbidity between bipolar II and migraines.

That one's interesting because several of the common medications prescribed (coincidentally?) have prophylactic effects that suppress the occurrence of the aura and/or the headaches.

[tabasco]

3. LOL. Government contracted crap.

Limitations of the study included: retrospective self-reporting of time since first cannabis use, lack of data on cumulative exposure to cannabis, no clinical validation of nonaffective psychosis diagnosis and lack of use of the instrument at the 14-year follow up, and loss of participants at the 21-year mark with significant differences in the group lost to follow up compared with those retained.

The study was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia.

The authors had no disclosures.

[ixion]

6. ...

:eyes:

Rubbish.

[RainDog]

10. all the more reason to legalize and require standards/info

keep it away from kids in the same way we acknowledge that alcohol is not a drink for kids.

the reality is that some people have a problem with alcohol, too. but that doesn't stop us from using some common sense to deal with them while acknowledging that the vast majority of people can have a glass of wine with dinner.

My ex is an alcoholic. As soon as he was dx'd, I simply quit drinking anything to make it easier for him so he wouldn't have to be around the stuff. I've had a bottle of vodka in my freezer for more than a year because I can take or leave alcohol.

my ex's experience doesn't mean that I should not have the right to have a drink legally.

neither does anything in this study indicate that marijuana is harmful to people who did not already have symptoms of schizophrenia.

and the irony is that doctors recognize therapeutic value in marijuana for some symptoms of mental illness.

sort of like anything else... some things are problems for one person that aren't problems for another.

[NinjaguyDan]

15. Yet another study that started with the conclusion

"we hope our findings will encourage further clinical and animal model-based research to unravel the mechanisms linking cannabis use and psychosis," the researchers concluded.


These people aren't researchers, they're propagandists.

[elocs]

18. It never goes well when a major DU god is questioned in any way. Never. n/t

[RainDog]

26. what is being questioned?

do you think people on DU think that kids should be smoking pot?

I don't.

I also don't think kids should drink.

[elocs]

29. I don't believe that DU wants to hear anything negative about pot whatsoever.

Anything that comes up will simply be denied out of hand.

[Fumesucker]

34. It's just that we've heard seventy plus years of hysterical paranoid propaganda..

Which has been shown to be exactly what it is time after time after time.

We know full well the government and a lot of private industry as well is desperately trying to find something, anything to justify continuing the prohibition of cannabis.

Eventually it becomes a cynical game to figure out how the latest "evidence" against pot has been cooked in a way to make it appear as bad possible.

[elocs]

38. So there could never be anything bad or negative about pot use?

Not even one teeny-tiny little thing? Is the defense of marijuana that absolute?

[liberal_at_heart]

41. It usually comes down to personal experience

I know lots of people who function very well in life, have high paying jobs, have spouses and children and who have used marijuana on a recreational basis for decades and have not had any negative medical side affects due to the marijuana. There are of course cases of people who exhibit out of control behavior that don't lead such productive lives but that has to do more with control than the substance they are using. The same goes for drinking. People drink recreationally and still have productive lives. If however people's drinking is out of control they will have problems in the rest of their lives as well. Of course drinking kills alot more people.

[Fumesucker]

42. I'm sure there is..

But that well has been poisoned for a very long time now.. And it is those who are and have been desperate to find something, anything bad about pot for reasons of politics and profit who are responsible for the cynicism..

The old story of the boy who cried wolf is perfect for this situation, the government has cried wolf for over seventy years now, what rational person would believe an entity that has told so many lies for so very long without some remarkably strong evidence?

Yet all the evidence that the powers that be keep throwing up about the evils of cannabis is ambiguous, slanted and twisted or out and out bullshit.

[Webster Green]

35. That's because it's all bullshit.

Of course it is denied here. We know better than to believe the propaganda. At least most of us do.

The only thing negative about pot is the law against it. It's a miracle plant. One of the most useful plants known to man.

[depakid]

28. What I'd like to see is hard clinical evidence to refute the epidemiological inference

Namely: since there was a rapid increase of teen pot smoking in certain cultures and areas in the decade spanning the 60's - 70%, one would have expected that if a modest causal factor existed, a corresponding spike in psychotic illnesses would have followed, and the effect could have been plotted and identified.

[RainDog]

30. oh god I love it when people talk rational to me!

it's just sweet.

[Gold Metal Flake]

20. Rerun

Blue Sunshine

[Blue_In_AK]

22. After smoking pot for 43 years,

if this is crazy, I don't want to be sane. :hippie:

[EFerrari]

23. If you think it makes you unwell, don't do it. n/t

[Minimus]

25. TeeHee.... I just smoked a bowl and log on to DU and see this.

:smoke:

[jmowreader]

32. It would be real easy to design a study to prove/disprove this link

We need, say, 100 pairs of adult siblings who live outside California for reasons which will soon become obvious. We ideally want same-sex pairings--two brothers or two sisters. None of these people will have any history pf cannabis use or of psychosis. Ideally we want people within two years of each other. Segregate by age and sex, then put each sibling into one of two groups. One group agrees not to take any marijuana for five years. The other group agrees to take a conservative amount of marijuana--say, no more than 42 to 44 grams per month, which would be one gram per day plus two grams on Friday and three on Saturday--for five years. (They could take less, of course--smoke two joints on Saturday night and put it down the rest of the week, which a lot of smokers do. What we don't want to do is have one group completely abstaining and the other smoking like the reincarnation of Bob Marley.) We don't tell them they have a special government research warrant that lets them smoke dope without fear of prosecution.

Within a year we'll know whether this shit causes psychosis, whether you have to start out psychotic to wind up that way, or that pot DOESN'T cause psychosis but worrying about getting busted with it does.

[TeeYiYi]

33. This is going to sound ridiculous... but...

... all drugs affect different people differently. That's why some drugs work one way with some people and another way with others.

ADD is a perfect example. Ritalin makes most people speedy. It has a calming effect on ADD people.

Since we're all kind of in charge of our own bodies, it's up to us to know which drug does what.

Personally, pot makes me paranoid in social settings. By myself, it's calming and enjoyable. I actually used pot to quit smoking cigarettes many years ago.

I'm one of those people who gets sleepy on cocaine. Go figure...

Anyway... my point? Who knows? I'm drinking vodka. :P

Specific to the OP, my point is that marijuana really does make most people paranoid. That's been my experience anyway. I can see where pot smoking might lead to psychosis in some people... YMMV.

Hi Agent Mike. :hi:

TYY

[xchrom]

36. With SO many people smokin ganja --

You're gonna find people with disabilities using weed.

[elocs]

37. There are things in life which are good for many people, but harmful to others.

That premise can never be accepted by DU when it comes to marijuana. Even if it helps many people deal with diseases or pain, that pot may have a negative impact upon the health and lives of some people must be denied here at all costs. Somehow there is the mindset here that unless any and every negative result of using pot must be denied out of hand, otherwise it negates any of the good of marijuana use.

What do we believe of others who think that way?

[RainDog]

43. well, I stated that very premise which you claim is "unstatable"

before you posted on the thread the first time.

others on this thread have also noted people have diff. responses to things.

so, for you to present such a black and white view of what people post here doesn't indicate that you are hearing what others are saying and instead saying what you have decided to think.

obviously there are people who are very defensive about this. As they note, there is valid reason to be so defensive.

[Hutzpa]

39. So one

can conclude that somebody like Bill Clinton is crazy, he smoked pot in
college as do other Leaders.

Sometimes you wonder if these investigators are not smoking pot themselves.

:shrug:

[Bert]

40. Nice conversation

I enjoy seeing an honest convsation about marijuana for once. Yes, it is probably not perfect, but nothing is. Food in excessive amounts will kill you. However these bullshit studies that definitely do look to reinforce a political talking point from the funding to the research to the interpretation to the publication strike me as flawed science at best.

When put in it's true context of the amount of harm it may cause physically or mentally vs. other drugs that help fund the drug war (alcohol and tobacco and drug manufacturers regularly contribute to "tough on drugs" candidates not to mention even the prison guard union in california is pro pot war at least) the war on marijuana seems to be nothing more than a cash cow for both those in government and the drug cartels as well.

[DefenseLawyer]

44. That reminds me of an informative film I saw called Reefer Madness.

If you want to see a realistic portrayal of just how marihuana makes people who use it insane you should watch this chilling documentary.