Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds
cnn.com
cnn.com
Worded that way, causation isn't the first thing this suggests to me. If percentage of cases associated with marijuana rise, it could also be that a larger percentage of the population is smoking and admitting to smoking marijuana regularly. If cases themselves rise, it could also be increases in the percentage of cases that actually get diagnosed, etc.
It could very well be that marijuana puts you at higher risk of schizophrenia - I certainly have an acquaintance in mind for whom recreational drug usage seems to have led them to a paranoid and narcissistic personality described here in other comments - but the connection in this article feels weak. Certainly weaker than the connection we see between marijuana law enforcement and the negative fallout of that.
The drug itself also changed over the years with current breeds having way more active ingredients than the ones used decades ago.
It's mostly true for the United States, although even back in the day there were strains (Maui was famous for this) which had nice crystals and were grown without males around to spoil the product.
In Europe, hashish was the normal form of cannabis, and it's hard to make hash more potent than it already is. It varies in quality and strength like any natural product, but over a range that is higher than a flower can achieve, pretty much by definition.
Hard-core concentrates and pure THC products are new, sure, but hashish gets you most of the way there.
"Resin potency increased from a mean [95% confidence interval (CI)] of 8.14% THC (6.89, 9.49) in 2006 to 17.22 (15.23, 19.25) in 2016. Resin price increased from 8.21 euros/g (7.54, 8.97) to 12.27 (10.62, 14.16). Resin increased in value, from 11.00 mg THC per euro (8.60, 13.62) to 16.39 (13.68, 19.05). Quadratic time trends for resin potency and value indicated minimal change from 2006 to 2011, followed by marked increases from 2011 to 2016. Herbal cannabis potency increased from 5.00% THC (3.91, 6.23) to 10.22 (9.01, 11.47). Herbal price increased from 7.36 euros/g (6.22, 8.53) to 12.22 (10.59, 14.03). The value of herbal cannabis did not change from 12.65 mg of THC per euro (10.18, 15.34) to 12.72 (10.73, 14.73). All price trends persisted after adjusting for inflation.
Conclusions European cannabis resin and herbal cannabis increased in potency and price from 2006 to 2016. Cannabis resin (but not herbal cannabis) increased in the quantity of Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol per euro spent. Marked increases in resin potency and value from 2011 to 2016 are consistent with the emergence of new resin production techniques in European and neighbouring drug markets."
Certainly, the potency is much higher than it was in the 1960's and 1970's.
When it was available back then it was always some low quality dirt weed that you could smoke for days and still function on.
With the legal recreational stuff, I was so blasted out of my mind that I couldn't hold a conversation. I had a mild panic attack because of slow playing music, and was high for the rest of the night. It was not fun, it was scary.
Maybe my tolerance has decreased, sure, but the strength differences in modern recreational weed are so severe that they probably should not be considered to be the same drug any longer.
If what was available to me as a teenager was like beer, the new stuff starts at vodka and goes way past Everclear.
I find it disappointing the same'ol propaganda reappear still today for MJ...now all left to do is to find out who sponsored the study this time and dictated the outcome...
Many of the vape pens are also extremely potent, and it’s even easier to overuse those.
I’m not saying the old propaganda has any value, but I do think it’s a lot easier than many think to level up to “heavy use” very quickly with modern offerings.
But even at insanely high concentrations, you’re still most likely to just have a bad time, not get seriously injured.
This should be addressed by education though, not regulation/propaganda.
It would be very surprising if there weren't (at least) a substantial minority of weed-smokers who have trouble knowing when to stop.
With food the issue is how our body is tricked to not feel full when in fact through more sugar and fat he got way too much calories. Then getting addiced to sugar and fat. While of course very problematic, that's a different matter, not directly comparable.
In general though, by nature's design, people start to consume everything unknown slow and increase the amount/dosage. That is how we function.
The fact some people do not know moderation, for various reasons, is not a sound argument for prohibition. Some will always abuse anything.
You can die of drinking too much water, and certainly people did in the past. Can you prevent that from happening, by controlling the access to water somehow? No.
In my opinion the more nonsensical idea is to try to forcefully protect people from doing harm to themselfes, when common sense and normal behavior will do on its own. There is free will and autonomy over the own body. That's the limit of regulation.
The better aproach is education in a honest, factual way.
The first study is commissioned by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and the second was funded by a Senior Academic Fellowship from the Society for the Study of Addiction.
The larger scientific discussion where study is confirmed is after peer review.
On HN, they are specifically disagreed with super often. Especially anything "softer" It is not like it was taboo.
And second, it is not scientific behavior to treat a single study as gospel. It is scientific when consensus emerges from many different studies and when those are reproduced and verified.
Pearl clutching over "peer-review" mostly suggests people don't know what peer review can or can not do.
No "science denial". Questioning of this specific study and disregarding your appeals for authority.
That's not always true -- especially among new, naive users.
I knew someone who for their first time smoked an entire joint because they thought that was a single dose.
Unsurprisingly, they had a bad time because they basically overdosed... and that was more than a decade ago, when cannabis was significantly less potent than it is now.
I'm sure there are plenty of new users today who repeat the same mistake with dire (psychological) consequences.
Of course there are also alcohol first-timers who get abolutely shit-faced, that's a really bad trip as well. Probably also some who die of alcohol poisoning.
I'm curious, why did you say "dire (psychological) consequences", what do you mean by that?
You explain it well enough yourself. The was a wide gap of difference hash in Europe in the 90’s vs your average weed in the US. All too often the stuff in the US would barely get you high whereas a few tokes of hash would be pretty intense.
Sure, you always had special strains, but they were the exception. Now the strains and derived products is competitive with hash and you have to be careful.
I used to think cannabis was relaxing.
Then I started wearing a watch which doubles as a heart-rate monitor.
I have what's called a paradoxical reaction to whatever they use to put you under anesthesia. I wake up in a rage, they have to take me out very slowly.
I have a friend like this with marijuana. She finds indicas make her euphoric and energized and creative, when she should be couch-locked with a body high. Until she swapped types she kept getting super anxious and it led her to bad trips. But the benefits outweighed the downsides for her (she was able to eat and sleep normally).
Also- coughing (which you almost certainly will), will raise your heart rate.
So how do we know what is a bad effect of the plant in general? This is worrying to me, and as a marijuana smoker I would really love more studies to be done on it.
Euphoria and relaxation aren't identical concepts...
Just saying 'marijuana did this to me' without context of the strain or if it was constant across strains isn't super helpful.
I generally suffer exclusively the singular negative effect of others finger wagging and disapproval of a rather pleasurable funcional vice or medication or whatever you wish to call it.
I’ve quit a few times for up to a year and always decided consciously to go back. One of the times I left tobacco behind. Countless studies will only ever have access to what users are willing to divulge, to the degree that it’s not an open regulated or at least informed market.
There is an interesting singular fact. Not one single overdose death has ever been conclusively linked to cannabis. The LD50 is something crazy like 15kg in the span of 15 minutes for a 75kg human.
A practical application of this is to suggest that those who want to use cannabis for a good night;s sleep, get started two or three hours before bedtime.
I got twenty excellent years out of regular cannabis use. Tradeoffs there were, but worth it.
I'm a lot more sensitive now and sometimes it gives me panic attacks. But even when it doesn't, cannabis consistently raises heart rate and lowers blood pressure, that's just how it works.
I still employ it, carefully, from time to time.
Have you tried using the minimal amount of very low-potency weed?
In my experience negative effects like paranoia and panic attacks come from overdose, either by using high-potency weed and/or smoking too much.
Panic attacks are well under a 1 in 20 response now or I just wouldn't bother, since it isn't any fun at all for about 20 (subjectively very long) minutes.
The effects also vary from person to person, and even in the same person at different stages of their life.
I think this is a good explanation. It's also important to acknowledge that norms around marijuana use and the perception of schizophrenia and its symptoms have changed drastically in the last 25 years. So have schizophrenia treatments.
Older neuroleptics have severe side effects that cause permanent Parkinson's-like movement disorders and are responsible for lowering patients' life expectancies. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1990's that the atypical antipsychotics were approved by the FDA, which had significantly less side effects than older drugs. And then it wasn't until the mid-to-late 2000's that those drugs had affordable generics. Several new antipsychotics were approved in the 2000's that have less side effects, as well.
So in the past, if you couldn't see a doctor, you couldn't get a schizophrenia diagnosis even if you had it.
[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2020/aca-10-how-has-it...
(Though perhaps dishonesty isn't the correct word to use here: I don't have a high prior on the journalist even understanding this complaint)
I'm also not sure if it's journalists wanting to push one narrative over the other, or just a lack of understanding.
Cigarette smoking also has a heavy association with schizophrenia, but the biases we have about it don't lend themselves to the kind of sloppy causality that you see with marijuana. I know you can legitimize biases by calling them priors, but then you need to show your work: those priors themselves should be based in harder data and explicitly referenced.
Otherwise, sloppy science (and reporting) become indistinguishable from considered priors.
>It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the world relates to one's own destiny", usually in a negative and hostile manner.
After all, MJ does alter the mind and broadens the worldview so to say, which could be called paranoid through a certain lens, and also dulls the senses and makes more tolerant for micro signs and non-verbal communication, which could be called, with some exaggeration, more narcisstic.
Something about THC is at the center of this. And also something about age.
I used to be able to smoke as much as I wanted and just enjoy it, then one day it started making me crazy.. and I kept smoking for a few years and truly lost my mind.
I've heard this story countless times... something (usually around age 20) just snaps, and suddenly THC == paranoia.
Also to note, psycho active drugs are as they are called: psycho active. With prolonged use, tolerance increase, with further use some imbalance occurs especially when not under the influence of that substance. Re establishing that balance takes time. We are very poorly educated when it comes to mental stability, and pharmaceutical treatment is the de facto answer by medical corps.
I do hope you get better, just don't forget substance use has an impact on the brain subtle chemistry, that's in a way what makes them attractive in the first place, and this impact doesn't disappear after a day like a hangover. Take some time off stimilant and psychedelics, you will slowly regain your normal self.
And in your first sentence, do you mean you get psychosis or hallucinations from smoking pot? Or literal schizophrenia? Interestingly, around 19-22 years old when I smoked a lot, I had some psychosis-like symptoms, mostly auditory hallucinations. They weren't very disruptive or paranoid-feeling though, it was always the sound of a group of people at a party or backyard barbecue or something standing around laughing & talking, and I could only actually make out like 1/5 words. It felt very real though, I looked out my window countless times to see if my neighbors were having a 2am party in their back yard.
It's common for people to smoke more and more cannabis as their tolerance grows, and higher doses of cannabis can easily lead to paranoia and other adverse mental effects.
If these people took a long break and then tried the smallest amount of the weakest pot they could get, they might find that they can enjoy it again without getting paranoid.
More likely, marijuana use accelerates the development of schizophrenia among people already at risk.
> it could also be increases in the percentage of cases that actually get diagnosed, etc.
This is generally a valid stock response to these sorts of studies. But it strikes me as a bit unlikely that there was previously a large amount of undiagnosed schizophrenia.
(Unless we have broadened the definition recently).
1. THC concentrations have increased which usually means there is less CBD. 2. Legalization probably increased casual use. 3. People who suffer from schizophrenia are simply more likely to be diagnosed for whatever reason.
The sum of these three things could easily account for a significant increase in diagnosis.
Sometimes increases in diagnosis correlate with better detection. Sometimes they correlate with incentives to diagnose people. I’m not even suggesting a nefarious connection. Sometimes incentives with the best intentions can have a big impact.
Why would that be unlikely?
As another commenter pointed out, US health insurance did not typically cover mental insurance until relatively recently, making diagnosis impossible for many.
She was likely predisposed to schizophrenia (because of her father - which we don't share) but I often wonder if it would have progressed the way it did absent the heavy smoking.
I say this also as a pot smoker myself (but only lightly in the past decade or so). I have nothing against it, and used to scoff at those who were against it.
Now... I'm absolutely convinced that marijuana use can have absolutely catastrophic mental health implications for some people. I'm also convinced it can help people with certain conditions.
At any rate, it's much less benign than I long thought.
Note that he told me so, even if his work during the last 15 years was mainly with the very poor people or refugees without health insurance, the ones suffering a lot from the drug dealers and all the associated black market, prostitution and abuse against minorities, women and kids.
We had lively discussion because I consider that legalizing drugs would reduce violence, gangs, etc. but it is hard to argue against somebody having clear first hand experience with both sides of the problem.
[0]: was in fact, he retired 2 weeks ago.
This is why I totally understand the point of view of the therapists having to deal with the long term effects on these unlucky people. Both sides have good arguments, one cannot ignore them, only trade-offs to accept one way or another.
A close relative had that since ~30 years of age until death at ~80 years of age. During his twenties he abstained. Then it was social drinking, then it became more frequent, then he started becoming dysfunctional, not being able to perform in his professional life, all the while his mental state degraded, around 50 years of age you could still argue with him, around 60-70 there wasn't anyone to argue with anymore, there was only a craving left.
I don't think it's just the alcohol. I presume that it concealed a psychological problem. But, I can't help thinking that if it were some other drug the person in question would have had a higher life quality. Alcohol is very punishing in all ways.
Even heroin can be used intravenously for decades as long as proper caution is observed, but that tends to become a low priority if availability and thus price fluctuates. If quality fluctuates, death by overdose is a matter of time. The opioid epidemic is no joke, but it took a turn for the worse once doctors stopped prescribing opioids and supplies dried out, making people pay inflated prices and/or switch to fentanyl.
At least alcohol is available, so people don’t drink mouthwash.
That's contrary to my understanding. I think you're overestimating the damage of one and underestimating the damage of the other. If you've underlying conditions susceptible to drinking or to smoking, indulgence in either can have dire consequences. For what it's worth, smoking for days straight is much much better in all ways than drinking for days straight.
Case point 1 but simple fact is, tons of people have some sort of predisposition to some form of mental illness. Wife is a doctor and she nicely sums it up - its not binary, tons of folks having miserable life are in scale 1-10 somewhere in lower part of one or the other mental illness (or more). Bipolar, OCD, ADHD, schizophrenia, etc., you name it. She deals with them daily.
For some, weed could trigger it. For some, some other drug or some big shock (close relative death, accident, violent crime etc). Since we don't ban the rest, banning the weed is just cargo culting due to US policies re hippies from Nixon era, enforced globally due to UN treaties. Which led to ridiculous situations where places like India or Nepal having marihuana as holy flower of god Shiva for literally thousands of years, using it to celebrate him, and suddenly had to ban it... at least on paper. Because bureaucracy.
Your father is not a good reference for this topic, its often a sad story when such people are asked to make policies that govern us all. They are always 'too deep' in the problem, see only the worst cases, so inevitably for them its the source of all evil and extremely dangerous. They don't know how happy, connected with nature and universe one can feel, how sex can be 10x better than best one he ever had, and orgasm can be literal nuke in your cranium, by far the strongest experience in ones life. Or tons of other, positive effects if not used in excess.
Ask doctors who work on alcohol rehab clinics whether it should be banned. Most will say definitely, and those who don't simply because they use it to self-medicate depression. And that is only because its socially acceptable drug, although way more destructive than weed could ever be.
Take someone that suffers from paranoid schizophrenia; telling them God speaks to people and that they should obey him can have dire consequences! I've see this problem first hand, so I'm not just speculating.
People throughout history have claimed to be profits; but unless they are a fraud, it's far more likely that the voices they hear auditory hallucinations associated with schizophrenia!
Anecdotally, I have seen several marijuana-using friends go down the tubes. One became extremely paranoid to the point he was unable to maintain relationships with the people around him (because he was worried everyone might be a spy), and several others became extremely unpleasant and irritable when they weren't high on the drug. This is perhaps the minority case and most people can partake relatively safely, but I definitely don't see it as a completely harmless substance.
I would bet you anything that this person was using a high-potency grade of cannabis and/or smoking a lot of it.
If they just used a little bit of a low-potency strain it's unlikely they would have suffered from paranoia.
"several others became extremely unpleasant and irritable when they weren't high on the drug"
So, wait, these people became nicer to be around while they were smoking and this is supposed to be a bad thing?
Edibles are usually highly opaque in terms of the strains used and tend to contain at least 5mg THC per dose, sometimes 10, and that's if you trust what's on the label. Due to how edibles are metabolized, the THC remains in your system for longer, too.
You no longer need to "smoke a lot" to consume a great deal of THC, a couple of edibles will do the job. A lot of edible fans don't smoke or vape at all.
We know when using a psychedelic dose, set, and setting become critical.
People taking a strong dose of a psychedelic and expecting it to be no more than a regular pot high might be in for a rude awakening, especially if they treat it casually instead of with great respect, take it in inappropriate circumstances (like at parties or clubs full of people they don't know or trust), etc.
It's no wonder that many people suffer from paranoia and other adverse effects from casual use of edibles. They should really be treating a strong dose of edible cannabis like they do a strong dose of LSD.
Also, there's a fundamental right to self medicate.
Absolutely. I am cutting down on weed after seeing it wreck a friend. They were really bright and down to Earth, but they use weed to deal with anxiety and now need to smoke before hanging out with friends. Now they are fully dependent on weed.
It has turned them into an unbearable person with no motivation. My friend is now totally unaware of how much of an asshole they are and no one wants to deal with them.
Weed can be an awesome relatively safe drug but please look for the warning signs of dependence and know that r/leaves exists.
OP was commenting on why there may not necessarily be a causation, and you commented on how the doctors tend to think there's a correlation. It just as well could be that schizophrenia tends to lead to increased marijuana consumption as people are self medicating. I'm no expert, so I don't have any strong beliefs around causation, but I do think both lines of thought (marijuana causing schizophrenia, or vice versa) seem pretty logical to me.
It's pretty widely believed that there is a correlation between the two, but the reason behind the link is where there's a lot of debate.
The discourse around how destructive it is encourages this thinking, similarly to how Americans struggle with alcoholism while Italians do not, despite the latter's culture of continuous exposure at young ages.
For example, there is a high correlation between having schizophrenia and consuming nicotine[2]:
> A strong association between schizophrenia and tobacco smoking has been shown in worldwide studies. Smoking is especially high in those diagnosed with schizophrenia, with estimates ranging from 80 to 90% being regular smokers, as compared to 20% of the general population. Those who smoke tend to smoke heavily, and additionally smoke cigarettes with high nicotine content.
I'd argue that nicotine use isn't a cause of schizophrenia, but an effect, as nicotine is reported to alleviate some people's schizophrenia symptoms.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia#Negative_symptom...
I don't remember the exact details anymore, but more or less they claim to address causation by 1) starting with a non-schizophrenic population, 2) segmenting by marijuana use, and 3) evaluating schizophrenic status N years later. The theory is that by limiting 1) to non-schizophrenics, they've factored out the possibility that schizophrenia drives drug use rather than the other way around.
Of course, most schizophrenics are not actually diagnosed until waaaay past the point where they are showing symptoms, and if you've ever known a schizophrenic who was diagnosed in college, for instance, you know that that diagnosis usually comes at the end of a long chain of subtle and not so subtle mental issues, shrink appointments, and life problems that start much earlier but don't present as full blown schizophrenia. So the whole supposed filter in 1) is complete trash, and they're probably including a lot of people who are already symptomatic, just not to a clinically diagnosable degree.
That sure seems causative.
> "There has been emerging evidence of an association between tobacco smoking and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD). Two meta-analyses have reported that people who smoke tobacco have an ~2-fold increased risk of incident schizophrenia or psychosis, even after adjusting for confounding factors."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6255982/#:~:tex....
To my knowledge schizophrenia is hearing voices and similar hallucinations, which are beyond trust issues.
But from experience with weed smokers, I certainly have the impression that there might be some truth to the story.
I could be completely wrong. I don't express this to assert it, but rather to ask if anyone else has noticed anything similar.
Basically with the thresholds all lowered one becomes satisfied with things that are objectively lesser quality, less demanding of effort and work. One would be equally satisfied eating junk food as they normally would having eaten some gourmet meal. There's no fire under your feet to hustle or put in the time to need to learn how to cook some truly delicious meal let's say or develop skills that bring longer term satisfaction that takes a while before payoff. Motivation never needs to take off because the cheapest junk already meets ones pleasure and satisfaction needs so why bother.
I didn't perceive things as more profound rather the little voice of anxiety inside by head went away and for the first time in my life I was free to figure out who I was.
That's hardly limited to that demo. Also generally chronic users aren't going to get that existential paranoia you get from casual use
(\s btw)
The question is, can we tolerate flawed people? Can we laugh about it? Can we let them rant and wear that suit from time to time?
I realize I’m probably being patronizing myself by pointing that out. As Bart Simpson once said, “The ironing is delicious.”
― Mark Twain
I suppose the intersection of ignorance, criminality and drug consumption may make you think that because they smoke, they exhibit the other traits, but it could be the contrary.
You need a bit of arrogance to think cannabis is on your side and you can dominate it, as I witnessed myself when I started stumbling as a teenager.
I have had similar experiences. Without your mind you are not you, a drug which changes the minds substrate (in some ways permanently) is going to be outside the control of the effected mind. Beware the Snoop Dogg pool party.
Regarding your friends, is it possible that the behavior you are seeing is when they are under the influence and not during sober?
Maybe when they use they are not having the same anxious feeling that the general public feels and they do not react to others who otherwise might be perceived as "more important" than them. This would appear to the person who typically views themselves as "more important" as arrogance or self importance...when in reality they are just mildly happy and don't care at that moment about the typical societal norms and ranking.
More than likely they are just going about their own business and not paying attention to how you are reacting to it. Every life has value...every person is equal.
Guessing what's going on in someone elses head can be pretty subjective. Sometimes it's the person looking who jumps to conclusions.
What was the point of that remark? Persons may be said to be of equal dignity, but no two people are ever equal, in value or otherwise. But what does that have to do with anything in this context? Are you reading things in? The OP was not making any point about rank, only haughty behavior which has no place no matter who you are.
I do feel everyone is equal in value. Possibly equally worthless depending on how you view humanity's place in the overall universal timescale.
Whenever you look at someone else and think they are being arrogant or self important...likely it is time to take a step back and think about why it is OK to think that they should not feel that way. Maybe they have good reason that day to feel self important :) Take it as a good opportunity to take a good look inside and realize...overall...it doesn't matter how other people view themselves.
That quote is often associated with Bill Gates in the context of running a charity. In that case it has merit. But on a personal level it makes no sense, at least literally.
The fact that the response to that is discussing money should be a red flag to you.
You can be good to your neighbors without giving anything but a smile and a kind word.
That would be as silly as that criticism of equality. I'm still unsure how we go from 'All people are equal' to 'Are they? I don't see you sacrificing <arbitrary amount of money> to help your fellow man.'
I’ve also successfully upgraded large chunks of my employers infra code; tests green, deploys green.
It’s no different than coffee to me at this point; I figured out working with those jitters and anxiety. I even saw shimmering with caffeine I’ve never seen on THC.
I’m pretty sure a whole lot of the behavior is just subculture stereotypes that become something like a truism; correct at any speed of light; which become hard to shake for most people (even smart ones).
Personal experience is the science of human existence. The anxiety of non-smokers isn’t an anxiety I have to take on myself.
If you find yourself still doing the same job in a decade, I think you'll know why. Tech jobs are very compatible with weed. The sort of tactical, short term thinking you need to apply current knowledge to problems works well. It's great for crafting clever, short-term solutions and hacking your way through things. If that's all you ever want to be, smoke weed everyday man, why not?
If you want to achieve more, that, for me and the people I've seen, is where the problems start. You might not even recognize that this is where you want to be in life until it's too late because you're so comfortable with your 'smoke weed everyday' job. It really sucks when mid-life comes and you realize your skills won't carry you another 20 years, or that there's a whole generation of kids coming to either push you up the corporate ladder or push you out on the streets.
I was literally high all day for 16 years. Grew it. Made hash. Supplied edibles to dispensaries. I get it. It feels great. Do yourself a favor and stop for 6 months. See how you feel about your life and the overall direction. You might find you don't want to go back. That's assuming you can quit. I tried over and over again and couldn't go more than 3 days without it. Anyway, good luck.
Sounds like you made being high your identity.
To me it’s like coffee (which I drink sparingly as caffeine messes me up worse; biochemistry shrug). I just consume it and go.
I’ve also never had an issue setting aside when I need to. If I want to interview, I can hop off cold turkey, give it 3-4 weeks to burn it out of my fat.
My career went nowhere before I started smoking, tbh. I was a Linux admin for nothing companies that don’t exist anymore; think mom and pop offices 20 years ago.
In the last decade I’ve worked for big tech, startups doing actually cool shit, and now for a really neat security company.
But that could just be the subjective experience side of reality leading to different outcomes for different people and have nothing to do with weed for either of us.
Nope. I always despised the 'smoke it 420' subculture. I just go full bore into my interests and weed was one of them. It was a coping mechanism for my bipolar disorder, attentional issues, and a bad marriage. It also felt really fucking great. The good feelings helped blind me to the things it was affecting negatively. I went for years missing out on simple things like having vivid dreams. Hell, after I quit, I started getting morning wood again. I'm all for legalization and letting people choose, but I feel like the 'marketing' on weed is a little too positive these days so I like to share my perspective.
Good for you for keeping it under control. For a lot of the people I knew, that wasn't generally the case.
Added to HN Bingo
Listen, I love weed. I'm going to buy some tomorrow for the weekend. But there's no denying it's habit-forming and a large number of people fall into a pattern where they devote their day to smoking weed from dawn till dusk. There are a large number of people here talking about how productive it can make them and I get that. I wrote my dissertation high. But there's a whole spectrum of behavior associated with habitual use and it can lead people to get in a rut where all they do is smoke. Visit /r/leaves sometime and read the stories there.
I mean, yeah I used to smoke a lot and produce a bit. I stopped after a while.
And yeah, I generally recommend that other folks try not smoking...
but it's not like you're getting "more" career than other folks have. It's just different.
Like good on you if that's what you want to do, but from where I sit I could say the same thing about career minded folks who substitute their work for an identity.
I get being terrified you're gonna get pushed out on the streets and all, but yeesh.
I don't wanna get up the corporate ladder. The people who arrange the work I do are nice and all, but it's not like the sales staff and the mild sociopathy they develop are living some sort of elevated life or something just because they make more money and have nicer cars.
Good on you for recognizing that you want something different and pursuing it, but not everyone agrees that "more career" is the same as more life.
Surely we all see that happen to most people, including non-users?
I think you are creating a narrative about pot use, and you are ignoring correlation.
I mean I still love weed, but everyday / all day just isn't that great. All good things in moderation.
Honestly, I only care about long term memory.
Short term was mutilated by todo apps and calendars already.
I want to reserve my memory for interesting ideas and moments. Not groceries and vacuuming.
This thread is making me think my way of prioritizing and doing is, not novel, but different than the replies is all.
I play guitar and piano, I don’t own a TV, I do use a tablet for movies but once or twice a week. I play Tetris on my kids Switch rarely, otherwise got bored with video games years ago, I don’t use social media. I exercise daily but don’t watch sports.
I have a lot less cultural “noise” in my face than many, yet I live in a big metro area.
Maybe that affords me the mental bandwidth to work with weed?
Personally I can't smoke it anymore, I get super anxious now and nervous. I don't enjoy it, but I can see why some people who enjoy it would rather avoid any kind of mental doubt/disagreements.
I've heard so many people say the same thing, that they used to enjoy using cannabis, then some years later they find it induces anxiety, jitters and nervousness - I wonder what the mechanism behind this anxiety is?
Is it as simple as "modern" cannabis strains having much THC than older ones, or is it something else, possibly age-related, like thyroid hormones?
There was always strong weed, and hashish; it just means you either consume less or fall asleep.
Hormones are possible, I guess.
At least when I were lad (in UK), we only got brick weed (which I remember was a good bit less strong than hash), but it was almost exclusively Moroccan hash we got, and even though that is a "concentrate", THC levels have traditionally[0] been lower, and CBD levels significantly higher, than much of today's modern cannabis flower.
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303871898_The_main_...
On the hand every single person I know who abused weed (including me) by wake and baking themselves for years have stopped smoking basically because every time they smoked their heartbeat would go to 9000 and they just couldn’t feel good on it anymore (by good I mean just “not feeling like I am having a heart attack in purely physical way”)
Just to be clear it has nothing to do with paranoia, just physical effects - I don’t feel afraid, it’s just that there are no good effects anymore.
Weed never destroyed my life. I was a hugely high-functioning addict to be honest. But there’s no way I can smoke and not get my heartbeat to the moon.
So please, just stop this misinformation. You just never smoked enough of weed to get there.
Unless you dive deep into the latest chemical/terpene profiles or live in a legal state you may not have heard that much of the type of high actually comes from a compound effect of the terpenes present and level of THC to CBD to CBG to CBN. Every single strain and plant to plant should be thought of as a concoction of sorts.
Says man who, earlier in the same thread on weed-induced arrogance, writes, “my experience is the opposite.“
1) I would not suggest that marijuana use correlates with any particular behavior very much.
2) The only thing I have noticed in common among some heavy users was stereotypical stoner behavior, primarily forgetfulness and absent-mindedness. They are usually aware of this, which means it does not present as anything remotely like arrogance.
In line with that, if what you write is true, it would be consistent with the idea that they have vices which cause them suffering which they then proceed to numb instead of dealing with the vices. So if they suffer from envy and pride, this will make them miserable people, so they smoke to numb the suffering. It's basically a way of coping with the consequences of denial about those vices: an intentional disintegration of the intellect to prevent conscious realization of one's vices because they can bear down on one's conscience. The only true way out is moral reform, but if you don't want to repent and face the consequences of repentance, if you are a slave to your pride and to your passions, then you will look for something else to kill the guilt and the pain.
the directionality could be the inverse: e.g. insecurity driving people to social overcompensation as well as cannabis as a reprieve or escape from their anxieties
My experience with cannabis use using a simple activity.
Sober, I can clean my office without much thinking and if I had to repeatedly do it, I’d probably do it the same fashion every time.
On cannabis, I’m able to see what I believe to be the more or most efficient way of cleaning my office, garage and rooms. I could probably come up with a few ways or road maps for doing so.
I don’t know what it is. Maybe there’s a higher level of dopamine from using cannabis that influenced me to have so much attention and focus on such a menial task.
I have been told that I’m usually not there mentally and never arrogant; and my friends are pretty outspoken.
But I see the objective as cleaning the room, not having a clean room, so a subjective experience of being more engaged and enjoying it more is intrinsically valuable.
If it takes a lot longer or the results aren't as good, that changes things, sure, but this can be settled with a timer and a before/after photo. Controlling for degree-of-mess probably adds so much noise that this probably isn't useful in practice.
On the other hand, Amphetamines would definitely help you clean your office more efficiently; but you wouldn't want to stop there!
Unfortunately, these words are vague and will only facilitate people projecting their own definitions onto them in order to either support or deny your claim.
If there is a CEO making 500% more than some engineer, and some engineer complains about that, then someone may say, "Hey that person is just some engineer, how self-important and arrogant to complain to the CEO like that", but for me it's self-important and arrogant for the CEO to think the pay is proportional, and brave and commendable for the engineer to speak up.
I have known many assholes. Some were teetotalers and some used cannabis.
Be careful to let your own self-importance and arrogance allow you to think you can or should outright label someone else, or explain another's behavior, especially by pointing at only one facet of their life that you happen to be privvy to.
I'm worried that OP is just looking down on their pot-smoking peers through the lens of stereotypes with a "that's a lot of confidence for a pothead" attitude instead of recognizing that they're legitimately happy, confident people - traits they likely aren't as critical of when they comes from others.
What words you label it as feeling like are subjective.
I notice people from all walks of life can feel entitled, and narcissistic. I’m sure some have been stoners.
What I've seen in weed users (myself included when I was in my 20s) is a tendency towards magical thinking and enjoying/accepting fantasies.
A sober individual's brain is operating on standard (often societally installed) reward mechanism, including "succeeding" on certain self-evaluated measures like "contributions to society"
It's commonly said that weed makes you "OK with being bored". i.e. standard reward mechanisms mentioned above don't really matter much when you're high.
It has nothing to do with narcissism or sense of superiority as you call it, just that their reward mechanism doesn't include things like "how much am I contributing to society". Apathy is a better word for it.
Most stoners in particular people who smoke a lot and for a long time at least in my experience become apathetic and to a degree dependent on their environment. They rely on others to organize their lives, even get simple chores done, they become sort of lethargic. And when you have an individual like that who also acts indifferently towards it you create (I think a justified) negative perception.
There is selection bias at play, as someone with an admitted negative perception of stoners you probably haven't put yourself in many situations where you might meet counterexamples.
In my experience, I've met many stoners whose driving force is empathy and compassion and not narcissism and apathy.
Anyway, keep in mind any substance abuse is often an amplifier of issues that already existed.
Occasional recreational use is one thing but people who are high every day, they aren't able to be as present as they would be if they were sober, and in changes them in I think usually negative ways. Not even because of the particular drug they're using, but because of the patterns of behavior that come with those levels of consumption.
Actually I think you have a point and it probably stems from the way in which MJ modifies your dopamine system.
In any case, the reason I ultimately gave up smoking it is it makes my overall psychological health worse. I take a more cynical and negative view of things, even if it makes me mellower and temporarily happy. It affects my memory and my motivation, even as it increases my interest in things(so it slightly helps with ADHD, but effective net benefit to my job is zero). It also costs a hell of a lot of money unless you can grow it yourself these days(thanks, legal weed).
Smoked for 16 years constantly, quit for 2, resumed a couple times to help with various issues in mid life, but at the end of the day I quit because it's just not in line with my goals for my life. Weed helped me stay in bad life situations and compromised my ability to plan an effective way of changing my circumstances. It works for some people, I get it. My friend is a paraplegic and loves it for pain. I love the benefits to joint pain and general mid-life aches. That pain relief is what led me to never really dealing with my back problems until now though.
Have you considered you attract a certain type? The long time smokers I know live remarkably normal lives. Kids, jobs, etc
In my experience it is those who love to flout their sense of superiority by shitting on users who are arrogant. But shit can flow both ways and when I'd point out that they too use "drugs" they'd get very defensive.
Back in the 80s my cocaine using friends loved shitting on weed users. "It makes you dumb" was one of their favorite cut downs.
My alcohol drinking friends who didn't smoke weed loved to cast the aspersion that weed smokers were "drug users". When I started pointing out that alcohol was a drug too they all very loudly denied it because couldn't stand the idea that they were "drug users" too.
And along with and within those two groups are those who do prescription drugs. It was pretty strange to be accused of being a "drug user" by people taking codeine and Xanax and Quaaludes, ect.
When I pointed out the serious side effects of alcohol, both personal and to our society at large as compared to weed smokers they started shutting up about that when talking to me.
Since Colorado legalized it those kinds of encounters have been far less common, and I've certainly appreciated it. And because of that I'd probably be far less likely to be accused of being arrogant nowadays.
Well, it does measurably decrease IQ. And at least in teens, this reduction seems like it may be permanent.
Here's a couple studies that seem to disprove that myth about weed users but, like all of these studies, they really cannot claim to be conclusive. Still better than most I've seen though:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/marijuana-may-not...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/twins-study-finds-no...
But good job cherry picking a study. Hope it makes you feel better.
You didn't cite or include a link to even one. You just tossed a load of bullshit here and hoped it would stick.
By the way... one of those cherry picked links goes to Scientific American's website. Hard to do better than that even if you are picking cherries.
Generally I expect some basic scientific literacy on HN. But of course I should have learned by now to expect science denialism when ego is at stake.
If you want a concrete source look at any of the studies that cite the twin studies, including the meta-analysis from this year.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medici...
Scientific American is not a peer reviewed publication. They are science journalism and they aren't even particularly careful about their analysis. They posted an article in 2017 claiming cannabis might make you smarter:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/marijuana-may-boo...
It might be interesting and revealing to see the correlation between casual cannabis dismissal and low or reduced IQ, but of course that goes against the popular narrative and looking for potential errors isn't where most scientists focus since that isn't super glamorous or likely to get citations from publication.
If your main hobby/recreational activity in life is smoking weed (certainly not judging anyone) then you'll likely only associate with people who enjoy the same things, if anyone at all.
This leads to a very narrow world-view where you're the center of that world. Going out and meeting people, doing different activities, taking on new jobs and roles, going to school and getting an education all really help to humble people and make people realize that most of us are all very similar in our pursuit of happiness.
Even in parts of the US where its been legal to smoke pot for some time like California, the social stigma of meeting up for drinks at a bar regularly and meeting up to smoke pot regularly are not equivalent. Your employer might even drug test you still.
I would argue this woman was sufficiently arrogant that she thought it was socially acceptable to invade my personal space because I was a stoner. Perhaps I myself was more arrogant when I was younger, in the spirit that user warent mentioned below. On the other hand, I'm not the type to spontaneously invade the space of others.
After I stopped smoking, I talked about this a friend who also quit weed around that time, and he said it was the same for him. (Okay, so it's two data points.)
Make of that what you want, but there is a correlation. That doesn't mean weed turns people into assholes necessarily, but it can certainly amplify preexisting tendencies in that direction. I'm pretty sure the same goes for various other drugs as well - I never spent time around cocaine or methamphetamine enthusiasts, but I've been told, some people have a tendency to become real assholes on cocaine. And of course there's alcohol, which definitely helps all kinds of unpleasant personality traits to float to the surface.
As a Canadian where weed is legal, I can say I've not had this experience at all. A lot of folks here use it, at all ages and all personality types. Very unusual for me to meet someone who uses it and for them to strike me as any different than the average Canadian.
Indeed, no discussion of the existing link between schizophrenia and tobacco smoking, in conjunction with the increased availability of marijuana?
You mean like every study I've ever read? I can't recall the last time the conclusion didn't say something like, "In our study X appears to be associated with Y, but more research is needed to understand the relationship."
You're right, though, that this article leaves many questions unasked. We know that people who are schizophrenic are far more likely to smoke cigarettes, but there is evidence to suggest they're more likely to smoke before their first episode as well. So is tobacco causal? Probably not. Instead, there are probably precursor symptoms to diagnosable schizophrenia that drive tobacco use: anxiety being the main one. Anxiety and marijuana has already been studied with conflicting results, probably because it's hard to determine out whether people with anxiety are drawn to marijuana (or heavier usage) or whether heavy usage causes anxiety.
There are reasons to think marijuana use can cause schizophrenic episodes - sometimes a first episode - but that use may not increase the risk of developing the disorder when viewed in a 20-year window. In other words, it happens sooner. So according to the article the number of schizophrenia cases linked to cannabis use disorder increased by 4x. I'd like to know whether schizophrenia diagnoses overall changed significantly.
I am not saying there are no risks. But I am agreeing that the article does a bad job of analyzing the science.
"The findings could help explain the "general increase in the incidence of schizophrenia that has been observed in recent years" and provides some support that the "long-observed association between cannabis and schizophrenia is likely partially causal in nature," the study said."
OK then...
So basically, let's keep watching Canada's national legalization and Switzerland's targeted trials to see what the population level impact is.
I told him I thought it was caused by losing the baby and he insisted that had nothing at all to do with it. I knew for sure he was wrong, but he refused to even consider it. But there was more to it than that.
Her grandmother was clearly schizophrenic, and her mother was probably was too. Just a few months before this her mother told me she "hated" our first child because "she looks like you" (it was me she was referring to).
This was in 1986. 15 years later, in 2001, a woman name Andrea Yates murdered her five children and that was when psychiatrist first diagnosed severe "Post Partum Depression" as the cause of what led her to do that.
During those years in between I had pointed out that connection many times to psychiatrists and everyone of them told me I was wrong and they all loved to make the point that I didn't have the credentials to offer a diagnoses of cause. But what I did have that none of them had was real life experience watching my wife slide into schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is genetic and stress is a trigger. It often doesn't show up until one is an adult. By that time almost anyone will have taken a puff of weed and if a doctor asks them "have you ever used marijuana" and they say "yes", in my experience it doesn't matter how often, using it just once, even years prior, is enough for them to associate cause and effect.
Truth is you can learn something from anyone if you listen to them. If you don't, you won't. What I learned is psychiatry is still pretty much bullshit and the medical profession still doesn't understand the causes or how to treat schizophrenia effectively. They manage it by giving those suffering with it drugs that are akin to turning their patients into slobbering "zombies" so they can manage them.
"I knew for sure he was wrong, but he refused to even consider it... [even with family history]."
I have seen stuff like this a few times, and it is usually the sign of a bad doctor. If there isn't a positive test for something and you're ignoring other evidence, how can you say it absolutely is one thing or the other. This is extremely common with vaccines when providers say it is completely safe and write off adverse events as unrelated without any evidence to support the claim. Vaccines are generally safe, but adverse reactions can occur. If you have doctors underreporting to the VAERS system, then the system will not catch the rare events because the data is too incomplete to show significance.
Edit: why downvote? Here's a paper acknowledging limitations like under reporting. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15071280/
It's kind of hard to excuse not taking the time to know the risks though. And in this case (covid) I've noticed a very interesting common line of thought. Over and over I've been told on FB "There a 99.5% chance you'll survive" by those who've refused to get vaxxed. (I live near the nation's latest hot spot, Branson, MO).
It's really been closer to a 98% survival rate here and if you frame that same subject differently by saying "You have a one in fifty chance of dying" it "feels" a lot different.
Still, the risk of vaccines has been both downplayed and exaggerated and it's kind of saddening to see how sides have been taken by our popular news media sources here in the U.S. and the divisiveness that's caused.
I think we've all had the opportunity to fully understand the risks with the corona virus vaccines if we wanted to look into it. But if our sources were only and any of the Big TV News Corporations we got a very tilted view. Much the same as I got from my first wife's doctors.
All that said, I think Fauci has done a very good job of telling us where we stand. The media has used him like a ping-pong ball and that's pretty sad.
I thought this varies widely by age group, sex, and comorbidities? For example, a 30 year old man has a 99.97% chance of survival. And this doesn't even account for comorbidities. Now 3 in 10k is still a relatively large risk, but nowhere near 1 in 50. So the value proposition varies greatly by age group and risk factors, including lifestyle risk factors like WFH v in the office.
For example, I was invited to diner at a restaurant by my in-laws. We had eaten outside there before, so I assumed that was happening again (or I would have declined). Instead they got there first and got an indoor seat for some unknown reason. The vaccine is about 95% effective at preventing serious infection and death. My father in law is in an age group with mortality rates about 4% (and be has multiple comorbidities). He started lecturing me about how I need a vaccine NOW when his risk of dying even with the vaccine was multiple times higher than mine (5%x4%=.2% v .03%).
Now that was months ago, and I planned on getting my vaccination later when more data was available right before going back to the office (in the process now), where I would essentially be guaranteed to contract the virus if I didn't. My strategy seems to have worked for me since we are now learning the J&J vaccine might not be as effective as the others against delta and I was also able to view the VAERS data, as shoddy as it may be, for specific events in my age group to select the vaccine with lower rates (Pfizer).
"Still, the risk of vaccines has been both downplayed and exaggerated and it's kind of saddening to see how sides have been taken by our popular news media sources here in the U.S. and the divisiveness that's caused."
I completely agree.
"I think we've all had the opportunity to fully understand the risks with the corona virus vaccines if we wanted to look into it."
I agree on short term risks. There is one area that I couldn't find much info on - autoimmune conditions. My concern is that these conditions can take years to show up in many cases. We are using our own cells to grow the spike, so what happens if our immune system keys off other proteins that still exist on the cell in addition to the spike protein? It appears that severe covid infection generates higher numbers of autoimmune antibodies than the general population, so there is some risk of that even if one is not vaccinated. There just really isn't much info out there on this.
https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/11/18/covid-infection-fatalit...
Anecdotally, this seems to be a common viewpoint among doctors. As soon as you admit to using marijuana, in any amount, then suddenly any health issues are caused by marijuana. Asthma? Caused by weed. Trouble focusing? Caused by weed. You vomited? Must be cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome.
I'm taken away by your story and would like to connect, please. I have a similar experience and I'm working on a research project in AI that is related to this. Please drop me a note me aee at berkeley edu I couldn't find your contact info in your profile.
The "component cause" makes sense... marijuana and other psychedelics don't necessarily cause schizophrenia in most people, but for some people it may serve as a trigger. There's some evidence that trauma in childhood may have a similar impact.
I believe research has said similar of opiates. Heightened sensitivity to pain is one of the symptoms of opiate withdrawal.
It stands in contrast to other medications where withdrawal isn't counter-indicated by the underlying condition. I.e. amphetamine withdrawal doesn't really exacerbate ADHD. It's not a pleasant thing, but stopping the medication only sends your ADHD back to baseline, not below.
Another similarity to cigarettes and opiates is that they don't cure anything, they merely treat symptoms.
Not a doctor, but I don't think you're at risk of those problems if you take them every 3-4 months. They're great for acute symptoms like that because of how effective they are. They're not good for chronic symptoms, though, because of that feedback loop.
Not so much with amphetamine (which is weakly reinforcing at recommended doses), but for nicotine, I know ADHD folks who have straight quit for a couple months, then go back because their life has become a complete shambles and it doesn't seem to be getting better.
They are extremely helpful since I'm bipolar. They give me a buffer for highly stressful events, so I'm not dealing with both anxiety and the event. Having anxiety the next day sucks but avoiding a manic or depressive episode is worth that.
Some people like the high from THC, which might make someone go in the direction of psychosis, it can be very stimulating.
For people whith a background of psychosis, they might like the CBD part, which makes them relax and feel less stimulated and aroused.
IMO, drug use is a symptom and not the cause. That said, we didn't have 75% THC vape back in the day and now everyone is doing CBD with wonderful new Delta-8 and there's not a shred of research on it.
There is no science to state that psychoactives cause these mental disorders. In fact, current medical science states the opposite, that psychoactives do NOT cause, but exacerbate, certain mental disorders.
Considering that both psychoative drug use and mental disorder rates are on the rise (some would argue due to improved screening, treatments, etc) I'm not sure how anyone could draw a conclusion from this.
If they want to prove that psychoactive use can cause mental disorder, they should approach it from a bio-chemical perspective.
The interesting thing is the "Use of Marijuana to Self-Medicate BD" study is useless. Monitoring a small number of bipolar people for 6 days will give you completely random results. It's too short a period to remove moods from the equation.
It would be great to do double blinded experiments to test this more definitely, but we don't due to unethical reasons. I think the differential legalization will provide useful data along those lines, though it will take some years.
I also think it's important to distinguish between THC "exacerbating" an existing mental illness and triggering psychosis in otherwise healthy people who have a predisposition, due to genes and early life experience. We still don't have a clear idea exactly how to say who's predisposed. Plenty of reasons to take caution, in my opinion.
[1] https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24625/the-health-effects-of-cann... [2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...
It's fair to say that it triggers the early onset of a "dormant" mental disorder.
My point being to say that it "causes" anything other than that trigger is currently unsupported.
Citation please. Drug usage tends to begun around the same age schizophrenia is typically diagnosed.
Edit: Carbon Monoxide, not Carbon Dioxide. And some additions since this is a tad controversial.
Here is one source - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/3340105/
Marijuana inhaled is bad for your body. End of story. Let's not pretend like it's some panacea that the government doesn't want us to know about. It shouldn't be illegal, but a lot of people on here lie to themselves that somehow the harmful effects of CO aren't bad just because it's marijuana. I feel like there is some major cognitive dissonance among pot smokers equivalent to religious people that get upset when you say there is no god.
That being said, pot simply has a lot less stuff in it than tobacco smoke. Also, almost no one is smoking a pack of day of joints.
Fortunately there are other alternatives too, like sugar free candies.
Meanwhile, it's super easy to pick up a pack of cigarettes and suck down 5-10 of them in an evening.
Sometimes it feels like people who don't smoke really have to justify it hard. All these justifications they come up with which really aren't even an issue. Maybe they're afraid of it, and don't want to admit it... If you don't wanna smoke it, don't smoke it. There's nothing wrong with that. But some of the reasons I read to not smoke weed are ridiculous.
There is also the risk of getting an illegal cannabis cartridge tainted with Vitamin E, which can be avoided completely if one is lucky enough to live under a medicinal or recreational regime.
It can't be said that vaping is completely harmless, but it's safe to say that responsible blends are orders of magnitude less harmful than inhaling smoke.
There are also vaporizers that use dry plant material directly without liquids, e.g. from Storz&Bickel, Arizer, Pax, etc.
So no, it's not harmless, but it is in fact less harmful, which is why people keep telling you that.
Also, there's plenty of other options for ingesting THC these days.
I think you'd get a similar reaction if you said "bikes and motorcycles both have two wheels, thus riding one has all the same risks and dangers as the other". Obviously you'd be right, you can split your skull on either, but you don't go 70+MPH on both.
Usually you'll be back to normal the next day, but will have had a memorable experience, and sometimes mushrooms produce long-term relief from depression.
I'm definitely not an expert with this, but it seems to me it is often a good idea to take a chance with some carefully chosen drugs.
If you can barely manage anxiety on your own, weed is is a force multiplier for your fears.
However, I’d be willing to try again in the future as it becomes more available in vape form and try micro dosing it. The smallest hits to see if I can get a modest calmness.
Low doses (5mg of edible or under, for me) have been amazing for my sleep and (very relatedly) anxiety.
The effect of 10mg of same (yes, I know, that's lightweight amounts still) on an empty stomach were... very different. I can definitely see how that would induce anxiety. The disconnectedness and extreme short-term-memory forgetfulness was certainly alarming. I felt about as impaired as when I've been pretty damn drunk, but with a much stronger memory-related effect.
Luckily, just going to sleep much earlier than I'd intended solved the problem. Unlike with alcohol, I woke up the next day feeling great, and had, surprisingly, excellent recall of the sequence of events the night before, despite in-the-moment having great difficulty remembering why I was where I was, even.
YMMV, obviously, but now I know to treat an evening with higher doses (should I try that again) as rather less medicinal than a low-dose evening.
That's a really good point. I commented elsewhere in this thread, similar experience to you with small doses. I always make sure to take the stuff with food.
people talk about set and setting + harm reduction over and over again.
If you’re gonna do a drug and be reckless you’re gonna have a bad time.
I think this is very much a YMMV situation. I certainly don't recommend it as the only solution. It has been useful to me as a medicine, though, in the same way I might take a cough suppressant during a serious cold.
Note that the negative effects of cannabis on depression aren’t immediately obvious, as the drug itself makes users temporarily feel better. As such, people tend to associate cannabis with an immediate improvement of symptoms, yet can’t quite pinpoint the long-term downward trend in their depressive symptoms that occurs due to long-term changes of repeated consumption. There is also some concerning evidence to suggest that traditional depression treatments are less effective when someone is consuming cannabis.
One of my good friends is a professional therapist who is very open about her own personal cannabis use. However, she says she spends much of her professional time convincing depression patients to stop consuming cannabis, with positive results for those who can follow through.
Eventually, he was so angry that he blanked out. He told me he found himself in a hyper lucid state, but in absolute darkness and in a state of pure dread.
He felt the presense of millions of dead egos that were "roaming" like zombies in this strange environment. Some were screaming like their skin was being pulled from their body, some were tormenting others. A total nighmarish trip.
He was so shocked by this experience that he stop smoking pot that very evening and never touched it again.
I started smoking more (due to stress) and trying to complete a new project (financial difficulty) and it was just a nightmare.
It's noticeably more difficult to concentrate and retain new information when I am ingesting regularly.
Learning a new programming language, even having just had a few joints the night before, is so much more difficult that it would be without the Cannabis. I honestly felt like I was losing my mind.
I'm not even talking about being high while learning/working... just having the cannabinoids in your system from a few days ago really soaks and coats the mind.
So I've cut it out, for now.
In fact I believe weed changed me for the better. May sound cliche but now I'm deeply interested in philosophy and technical concepts and aptitudes (like programming), and actually my whole attitude towards life got really bright and mature, with myself and with others.
I'm not saying weed alone made that, but definitely helped me. As I said, at least for me concentration, in this case facilitated by weed, is life changing.
After a few hours of coding well I start thinking about another very small dose of Cannabis... which won't work because you just ingested a few hours ago and you need to up the dosage... rinse and repeat.
And I only smoked them right before bed to help with sleep. I don't enjoy "being high" typically.
I don't like getting "high on THC" alone which is what most of the commercially grown cannabis has been selected for over the past few decades of prohibition.
That being said it is much easier to program in the morning after a night of smoking cannabis than a night of drinking.
My quest to find the best combination of drugs for programming has been long. Just vaping nicotine and drinking strong tea seems to be near the pinnacle. Sometimes we miss the simple solutions right in front of our eyes.
I tried that a decade ago... ended up in the Cardiologist with a heart monitor for a week because I was blacking out just stepping out of my programming chair.
After they took a look at the data, they just told me to cut down on caffeine and nicotine.
Stimulants are not always the simple solution for everybody.
I’m not in a financially stressful situation, but have been under a lot of performance stress in recent jobs. I found the best routine for myself was meetings during the day + whatever coding I could fit.
Where it gets interesting is at night, I would have a Coke Zero for a small caffeine kick and vape a bit of weed - not a lot - and put on some tunes. Then I’d be totally in the zone and code several day’s worth of work in a night. Sometimes even more.
I was praised for high productivity, and got a lot of work done. I don’t do it as often now, trying to maximize my sleep and my current work has more inter-team tension... but overall I get less work done now.
It definitely was a cheat code to enter the zone for a good 4-6 hours at night, and helped me perform at a higher level than I normally would.
Worth noting I wasn’t avoiding anything or using it as a tool for comfort. I think that can blur the line into an addiction or avoidance mechanism that can be harmful.
I have noticed great programming ability on Cannabis in the evenings... that's how I raised myself in a nutshell.
I think the productivity is directly related to the sheer lack of stimulation the night-time environment affords you. No light, no sounds, nobody awake, nothing else to do. You can code or sleep, that's it.
I used to stay up all night, getting very high, and programming very well... but society wouldn't stand for it.
Sometimes when I do smoke my joint to go to sleep, I get crazy good ideas and motivation and code great for a few hours.
But then I am forced to wake up at "a decent hour" (society) and the next day is pure shambles/no-work.
I can't say i perform any worse in any regard than i did before (didn't use to partake a few years ago). But i also eat clean, sleep enough, exercise and so on. I also keep my tolerance in check. The latter may be because of the CBD, that should in theory also prevent some of long term effects of THC.
Bottom line, i think it's is highly individual to the person and also what product is used. Cannabis is a highly complex substance, unlike say alcohol (IMHO). You may have to try out a few combinations before you find one that suits you and your chemistry/biology.
https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0TCtJMra0yDY...
sugar sugar
call me late at night
by daylight
stomach busted
not feeling right
heart burnin'
I need oxygen
sweet and sour more addictive
than your oxycontinThe DSM 5 recognizes substance-related disorders resulting from the use of 10 separate classes of drugs: alcohol; caffeine; cannabis; hallucinogens (phencyclidine or similarly acting arylcyclohexylamines, and other hallucinogens, such as LSD); inhalants; opioids; sedatives, hypnotics, or anxiolytics; stimulants (including amphetamine-type substances, cocaine, and other stimulants); tobacco; and other or unknown substances.
https://www.verywellmind.com/dsm-5-criteria-for-substance-us...
No. This is the problem with pieces like the original article. "Schizophrenia link to marijuana use disorder" sounds VERY similar to what you just said. But they mean completely different things.
1- This study is specifically noting a correlation (note not causal relation) between 2 disorders, Schizophrenia and marijuana use disorder. Not everyone who drinks is an alcoholic, and not everyone who smokes weed has a disordered relationship with it. The article about the study even points out the methodology shouldn't be translated to the population at large of pot smokers who don't seek treatment for their usage. 2- The study specifically notes that their results have not been replicated. Their results aren't even really anything other than "we crunched some numbers and found a relationship between 2 things". There are all sorts of great graphs here: https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations that show exactly how "useful" this information might be.
tl;dr- This study is not saying Schizophrenia can be caused by smoking any amount of weed, but too many people will think it says exactly that.
> our findings will have to be replicated elsewhere
Check
> "long-observed association between cannabis and schizophrenia is likely partially causal in nature,"
Weasel words.
If they had printed their article on toilet paper at least it would be good for something.
From the current data, we can conclude that the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) component of cannabis can be the main culprit causing psychosis and schizophrenia in the at-risk population. THC can also be the one exacerbating symptoms and causing an adverse prognosis in already diagnosed patients. Even though CBD shows therapeutic effects and THC opposing effects, the data is minimal and low safety and efficacy warrants more research. The relation between cannabis and schizophrenia needs further investigation. We need more case-control studies and clinical trials with a larger population to get conclusive data.
So, something seems to be going on, but there's not enough data yet.
Years from now, the cannabis industry may face the product liability problems the tobacco industry did in the past, and the vaping industry is facing now.[2]
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32839678/
[2] https://www.cand.uscourts.gov/judges/orrick-william-h-who/in...
Then a year or so ago I smoked some legal weed from a dispensary. And that shit almost killed me.
I was nauseated and sweating and I vomited repeatedly for like two hours. And I couldn’t control my thoughts. They got dark very quickly. Like voices in my head telling me to kill myself…it was fucking insane…
So naturally a few months later I tried it again, assuming it was just something with that strain or whatever. And it happened again. And I’m not even talking like I smoked a whole joint. I smoked maybe four puffs from a bong.
I know that’s not evidence of any kind. It’s just my reaction. And my wife smokes daily to help with the symptoms of medication she takes. She smokes fairly heavily and the worst thing that happens to her is she gets hungry.
I don’t know what the difference is between “modern” weed and the grown-in-the-ditch North Carolina weed I smoked in my youth. But it is not the same thing.
Several differences.
You know if the street stuff was an indica, sativa or hybrid? Some people react much, much worse to specific strain types than others. I'm one of those. I can't smoke strong indicas or I basically have panic attacks.
Modern strains can have upwards of FOUR+ TIMES the thc content... I've seen cheap strains in dispensaries that were above 30%. Old cheap street skunk was maybe 6 to 8% if you were lucky.
You smoked like you smoked before, ignoring the differences in potency, so you gave yourself a much higher dose right off the bat... with no tolerance from being a regular smoker.
Someone who isn't an alcoholic isn't going to be able to drink a bottle of Jack like a habitual drinker is.
Doctors in Canada are well versed in this actually. The standing advice I have gotten from every doctor I've seen is to ensure some CBD content in the cannabis at all times to reduce the impact of the substance. That said, there's a push to have higher and higher concentrations of THC as a cost-saving measure, which is not generally considered a good thing.
I suspect that cannabinoids and the cannabinoid system act somewhat like the opioid system, where the brain will react differently to the substances depending on tolerance. In the latter system, chronic opioid usage changes the sedative effects associated with that class of drugs to stimulant-like effects.
Similarly, people with no THC tolerance who consume it get anxiety as a side effect, but for chronic users, they get anxiolytic responses from it.
The whole anecdote that weed is _exceptionally_ stronger than it used to be in the past is not well proven. In the 70's people were alleging weed is 20x stronger than in the 60s, in the 80s alleging it was 7x stronger than in the 70s. In the 90's alleging it was 40x stronger than the 80s. And so on. People repeat it because someone goes from cold turkey to sucking down a huge toke from a vape pen in 2021 and get high as balls, not taking into account they probably vaped the equivalent of a whole joint in one action.
Its a trope that's never been born out by any real data.
As soon as the cannabis consumption stopped, the psychosis stopped. They started smoking again, symptoms came back.
I'd also done some googling to try to understand why some people have panic attacks, and there seems to be a link to cannabis and hypoglycemia for some people. Hypoglycemia can cause: psychosis and panic attacks.
> RESULTS Compared with placebo, THCV significantly decreased fasting plasma glucose (estimated treatment difference [ETD] = −1.2 mmol/L; P < 0.05) and improved pancreatic β-cell function (HOMA2 β-cell function [ETD = −44.51 points; P < 0.01]), adiponectin (ETD = −5.9 × 106 pg/mL; P < 0.01), and apolipoprotein A (ETD = −6.02 μmol/L; P < 0.05), although plasma HDL was unaffected. Compared with baseline (but not placebo), CBD decreased resistin (−898 pg/ml; P < 0.05) and increased glucose-dependent insulinotropic peptide (21.9 pg/ml; P < 0.05). None of the combination treatments had a significant impact on end points. CBD and THCV were well tolerated.
[1] https://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/39/10/1777.long
I like to think I am of stable mind. I have never had a drug experience that had overwhelmed my sense of self or being. I have a couple times felt overwhelmed physically, to the point of exhaustion, but my mind kept pace and knew how to navigate the experience. But I’ve also experienced moments where I sensed a certain line was on the verge of being crossed, where the sense of self/being would not be my ultimate experience. Again, I don’t feel as though I’ve crossed that border myself but I have a rather high tolerance.
I recognize these moments to be quite dangerous to those less grounded in their sense of self. I would not be surprised that such an experience could lead to psychosis.
The potency of commercially available strains now are on a completely level to the ones I consumed during college. This research is absolutely necessary.
The crazy part is as that smoking weed ameliorated the symptoms in the short term, so there is a strong psychological reinforcement to keep smoking even though it is actually causing the background symptoms.
If your using a strain that has high THC and not much in CBD. CBD being the compound to safe-guard, governor the effects of THC you end up in a trip that can spiral out of control causing negative effects.
If you add a CBD strain to the mix. Which are high in CBD and contain trace amounts of THC to your normal method usage, these tend to level out the percentages.
My take is this: If your not mentally fit, high THC can cause you to go off the edge compared to strains with lower amounts. The same can be said for Wine and the alcohol volume.
And I talk from personal experience from being in a psychosis episode caused by cannabis.
-- Edit: I have my own downvote brigade. Yay - Just seems odd that every post I post on HN gets down-voted.
I believe your explanation on the strains are on point.
When using the vapor method, very high in thc, sometimes I do experience psychosis or schizophrenic symptoms. My perception of reality does change a bit during peak affect but disappears after wearing off.
When smoking raw cannabis the regular way, I experience a more calming affect; emotionally tolerable and focused mindset.
Pinine and terpinaline for example are more likely than other terpenes to cause anxiety and paranoia at higher concentrations, meaning >1%. I don’t know if they contribute psychotic episodes though.
Respectfully, I think it may largely be because your post has many odd grammar and spelling errors, and a confusing sentence and paragraph structure. As a result, the post is difficult and awkward to read.
I don't think the downvotes have much to do with the actual content of the post. The content of everything you said is obviously 100% correct. It's just - again, with all due respect - written in an especially peculiar and very grammatically incorrect way.
Many of your posts seem to be like this, and I think that's probably mainly why you seem to get downvoted often. It's not what you're saying, but how you're saying it. (If English isn't your first language, I understand that it's unfair, but that's just how people seem to react.)
However if that is truly reason of down-votes and, I will admit some of my comments have been lack-luster contain down-votes, understandably. I do have a learning-disability in English then that's act of discrimination in a way. I can't call upon on those who do and so if the down-votes are truly "I can't read your text and I am not going to bother to put effort in to trying to understand, I am down-voting." is very petty of the user.
However I do not think it's grammatical errors at all. It feels too coincidental, but you could be correct and if that is, then I'll work on it. Thank you for the input.
If you have a C/C pair at AKT1, your risk of developing schizophrenia jumps from slightly-below-average if you don't smoke marijuana, to over 7x average if you smoke every day [0].
If you've done 23andMe, you can check your own genotype for this risk.
[0]: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/mari...
If you live in a legal jurisdiction, please do try a balanced and/or cbd-only strain if you are someone who has had problems with anxiety from many thc-only strains.
"Question Has the population-attributable risk fraction for cannabis use disorder in schizophrenia increased over time, as would be expected with increasing use and potency of cannabis?
"Findings In this Danish nationwide, register-based cohort study, the population-attributable risk fraction for cannabis use disorder in schizophrenia increased from approximately 2% in the period to 1995 to approximately 6% to 8% since 2010.
"Meaning These findings may indicate that cannabis use disorders are associated with an increase in the proportion of cases of schizophrenia.
"* The results from these longitudinal analyses show the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis. This finding has important ramifications regarding legalization and control of use of cannabis.*"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia_and_tobacco_smok...
People have been saying or alluding to any psychedelics triggering schizophrenia for a long time.
Like, its almost dismissive and toxic, people want their psychedelics to be safe so bad that they'll tell people "you should have known that your were predisposed to schizophrenia before you took this, therefore your experience is invalid, its safe ya'll!"
Instead of these binary approaches to advocate for legality or illegality, I would just like normal clinical trials done and side effects listed in tiny print at the bottom of the bottle. This shouldn't be that hard of an ask, many approved drugs have "you may get suicidal thoughts and also might randomly die without doing the suicide" as a side effect, which seems worse than schizophrenia and these aren't scheduled drugs at all! Just do the studies and let us know!
If the population, independent of other conditions, has an increase in marijuana use disorder, then that same increase would be present in the subset of the population that are diagnosed with schizophrenia or related disorders.
And is the trigger causal or catalytic?
I have a knee-jerk reaction to calling problematic drug use a "disease". "Disorder", as you've described it, does seem like a reasonable term.
To the unfamiliar it can be a thrilling adventure, to others it can serve as inspiration. It feels like it has mental costs though. Being wary of regular recreational use seems warranted.
Not everything is for everyone and that’s 100% ok.
You should be wary of caffeine use, especially if your culture does not have any rules about its use, or complete enough understanding about its effects. We like drugs because they work, but the problem is we do not know what they do over larger timescales or how to fit them into your life. Weed is a relative newbie in the average American's life and we would be silly to not respect the drug enough to be wary.
Feel free to be wary. Many of the rest of us will enjoy our lives otherwise without perpetuating unnecessary and by and large scientifically unfounded, culturally-based fears of reasonably innocuous substances.
Beware the “Snoop Dogg pool party” indeed.
Also, the environments they need to navigate requires understanding tattoos, colors, signs and tons of other subtle social cues in order to not become a target or deemed to be weak. There may be an under-reporting of instances of schizophrenia, but on a whole these brothers aren't showing signs of schizophrenia due to over use of marijuana.
And really, our current laws are just used to arrest someone, who might be an overall good person, besides the social stigma of "weed smoker". I really do beg anyone who is conservative on this issue due to the POSSIBILITY of someone developing schizophrenia, to maybe consider this as magnitudes less harmful than the use of marijuana policy to target black men; specifically black boys; and putting them in jail and ruining their future. You have to understand the environments they are coming from; so just saying "stay off the dope" is very callous and uninformed. Your life experience isn't the template for everyone.
I know this is a touchy topic on HN, but I really do hope we are able to open our circle of trust to people we wouldn't normally think about.
I plan to read this article to understand if they are just seeing selection bias.
That said, a friend of mine developed a psychosis after using Marijuana while he was still a teenager. Although there had been cases of Psychosis in his family before, not Marijuana induced though. It stopped eventually but came back years after when he took other drugs as well combined with a very stressful life situation, things went downhill afterwards.
That's already years ago, but my understanding that I got from reading articles about this topic at the time was that this activated some sort of latent psychosis. I also read about a proposal to introduce a "Cannabis driver's license" that could be made at a pharmacy. So people would be able to check before they take it. There are also people that feel positive effects of Marijuana, me included.
The evidence seems to strongly indicate that nicotine is a powerful antipsychotic. When smoking was widespread it's possible that many schizophrenics were self-medicating in a basically effective way. The trend is probably particularly acute among cannabis users. 40 years, I'd expect that nearly all cannabis smokers were cigarette smokers. (Non-smoke consumption being essentially a rounding error back then.) Nowadays the sizable majority of cannabis users probably don't smoke cigarettes whatsoever.
Source? It's commonly known that there's a very high nicotine use rate among people with schizophrenia, but I haven't heard that it has antipsychotic properties. It likely temporarily helps with certain symptoms, but doesn't necessarily reduce psychosis.
I think it may generally be used as self-medication for the negative rather than the positive symptoms of schizophrenia.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/01/11/schizophrenia-no-smoki...
Rather, it says a single study found that, when controlling for confounders, smokers in their sample were less likely to get schizophrenia, and heavy smokers were much less likely to get schizophrenia. (When not controlling for confounders, they were more likely to get schizophrenia.)
First, "antipsychotic" doesn't necessarily imply "reduces chance of developing schizophrenia". Modern-day antipsychotics generally seem to be blunt instruments designed to dampen acute states of psychosis at that moment, often by doing things like antagonizing dopamine receptors.
Something that lowers the risk of developing schizophrenia won't necessarily be an antipsychotic in this sense, even if it could be considered anti-"psychotic disorder development". As far as I know, nicotine doesn't work as an antipsychotic in the sense of it helping to stop an ongoing psychotic episode. It may temporarily improve functioning for someone in such a state, but it may not make them feel less delusional or paranoid, for example. Or at least I'm not aware of evidence of that. And, conversely, I don't know if taking antipsychotics actually reduces the chance of developing schizophrenia if you aren't currently diagnosed with it.
And this is just a single study, cited by the author of Beware the Man of One Study (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-...). He definitely is not trying to claim that this is overall strong evidence for nicotine being a powerful antipsychotic. As he mentions in it, controlling for confounders is very complex and difficult.
So, it seems plausible it could possibly help reduce the chance of developing schizophrenia, but there's definitely not strong evidence of it at this time. The only strongly supported phenomenon I know of is that schizophrenics very commonly use it, with some evidence that it may temporarily reduce negative symptoms and improve cognitive functioning.
"Researchers have mostly studied the effects of cannabis and nicotine on people with schizophrenia. But they’ve also found that other things that alter your nervous system and mood (called psychoactive substances), like alcohol, can trigger first-time psychosis."
Source: https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/features/alcohol-schizop...
IOW, if you have predisposition to schizophrenia (family history, previous psychotic episodes), you should avoid mind-altering substances.
Edit: word
They're not as annoying as coke heads or tweakers, these are more extrovert and kinda obvious, while smokers are often more silent, God knows what's going on in them.
I wouldn't associate it to weed until it's 100percent proven, to understand the human mind will take a lot more time.
Now, does tobacco cause schizophrenia or do schizophrenics seek out tobacco?
Now, s/tobacco/marijuana/g for the above sentence.
[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6163.2006...
That said, I would love more research on the topic as it is a wild west right now.
It makes me calm but lazy and not wanting to socialize. When I'm high I want to quit but when I am not high I am quite anxious and always looking for something to ease me up...
Perhaps if a test for this gene was widely available, the negative effects of the drug could be greatly limited in the community.
This link between marijuana use and schizophrenia will be tenuous at best. Look deeper (into an article published on the well-respected academic journal that is CNN) (a intern probably wrote your article) and you'll find nothing but unscientific hogwash, irrelevant sample sizes, questionable procedure, and just about everything else you usually find that isn't helpful when the subject being discussed is repleat with cultural bias instead of fact.
In short, this is pseudoscientific poppycock written and published to sell you ads.
> Many researchers hypothesize that cannabis use may be a "component cause," which interacts with other risk factors, to cause the condition.
anyone I know thats a heavy pot smoker tends to become unstable....
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/marijuana-mental-illness-viol...
I've been meaning to read further about that connection because like the author I had never heard of that idea before and everything before it was like taken to be Reefer Madness paranoia.
:O
I love that they think that smoking weed is causal to schizophrenia...but aren't considering the opposite.
Correlation. This is not been proven causal (which, btw why is it never phrased such that “people inclined towards schizophrenia are more inclined to abuse drugs” which seems like a pretty obvious line to me but I just work in medical publishing, I’m not the actual doctor).
Remember everyone: someone is funding all research, often times they have an agenda and a good press agent when they get some results they like. That said, this piece very specifically says “we can’t conclude a causal relationship, we need further research” (or, more specifically, funding for our research)
I’ve found that every single time I smoke marijuana there is a synergistic effect with the ADHD stimulant medication that is left in my system and I get the effects of Schizophrenia. It might just be serotonin syndrome but that’s just as bad. I don’t have any family history of schizophrenia whatsoever but people with ADHD are 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia. However, if it is non-reoccurring, according to the DSM-IV, it doesn’t yet count as schizophrenia.
I think my episode was triggered by all of the following things combined: “marijuana, stimulant medication synergy, fear of Covid-19 anarchy in the streets (hey! It was a valid fear for a little while!), drinking alcohol too frequently reduced the logic and judgement side of my brain, seeing the scary side of Instagram Reels shows when it knows you’re behind a VPN, not getting enough sleep due to heavy work deadlines, the scare mail I was received about various deaths, the news reports of all of the deaths in news, and a darn drone that hovered over my house for too long at the wrong time.
Fortunately there is good medication that knocks the schizophrenia out. Highly effective stuff. Both Olanzapine and Quetiapine Fumarate work excellent at stopping the schizophrenia in it’s tracks and getting your sleep back on track. However I was resistant at first to take medication or trust advice. I had experienced a total breakdown of trust in the world. The fear side of my brain had totally hijacked and overrode the logic side of my brain. My amygdala overrode my frontal cortex and I was focused on survival. I didn’t know what paranoia was legitimate and what was overblown. For one, which I mention with a heavy sigh, I didn’t know if my loved ones were agents that just looked like my friends..
I philosophize that paranoid schizophrenia is caused by fear while catatonic schizophrenia is caused by both fear and a lack of trust.
When I questioned my two loved ones independently and their stories matched up, I thought that the odds I was the crazy person was high. I was then willing to talk to a general practitioner and a psychiatrist and they gave me those prescriptions I mentioned above. Just tell them you that you’ve been paranoid, want to be lightly tranquilized, and want to catch up on your sleep.
I’m happy to say I have not had any relapses into schizophrenia since then! But I had to distanced myself away from my friends that smoked marijuana to do that because it influenced me to smoke too. I couldn’t do that though until I had made new friends in person first which hasn’t been easy… and still isn’t easy. My primary goal for 2021 is to make more close friends.
Cancer detection improved and people thought that meant cancer rates are up but, to my current knowledge, no one knows which is true.
I’m not going to accept this is marijuana causing schizophrenia given this. Society, their specific DNA, family life, could be, and marijuana use is merely exposing it, and enabling proper diagnosis.
H/t Judea Pearl
2) Cannabis is more and more cut with synthetic cannabinoids which are notoriously bad for the brain and mind.
3) Long-term Cannabis use is not evenly distributed but focused on people with a certain personality open for such an experience.
4) Cannabis has been and still is illegal in most places. That alone will foster a tendency for paranoia.
5) Just as with other drugs, some people aren't able to control their consumption and that's never good for you.
6) Long-term Cannabis enjoyment in the face of prohibition will solidify the realisation that our society is inherently fascist and narrow-minded. (I can confirm that from personal experience.)
Do you have a link to support that?
My take away lesson was that it's too hard to recover from group 1 and move on.
That is my personal study and that's all I need to know. The scientists can figure out the rest, I don't know how much a factor drugs and alc play, there's always other factors as well.
My hometown is notoriously supportive of cannabis consumption, and one of my high-schools has a well rated jazz programme.
Of my smoking buddies, one is a multimillionaire platinum artist, several are successful and sought-after session musicians, and those are just the music geeks. In general my social cohort have had successful lives, and cannabis doesn't strike me as a relevant variable in that success.
Some of them also fell off and had a hard life. Those tended to be the ones from single-family homes, living on government assistance. Even that wasn't a universal, but in terms of correlation it really stands out.
Some of my close friends are among what I call the professionally sane (they work in mental health) and they seem as susceptable to delusion and paranoia as anyone. I don't worry about being crazy anymore, as when you see what the bar is, I only need to be be less crazy than most of everyone else. 80th percentile is sufficient for most purposes. Post pandemic, mental health isn't something you manage or exercise, it's just a poker game.
Like a fox. ;)