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Comment by segasaturn | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is my personal experience as well. For small anxieties, weed helps, but for large and meaningful anxiety it makes it much worse.

As much as people hate to admit it, booze and cigarettes are much better for coping with anxiety, and Cheaper Than Therapy as the kids like to say.

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I guess that's only "much better" if you consider anxiety worse than alcoholism, liver failure, and lung cancer.

So we're pretending smoking and vaping weed doesn't cause lung cancer? Still?

Not in the quantities you'd find medicinal for anxiety... and most people I know who have government weed up here in Canada take it in edible form.

If you’ve studies showing vaporisation of cannabis induces lung cancer I’d sure like to see them.

Aren't we still only really a decade out from when vaping became popular? Seems like evidence would currently be hard to come by.

It’s closer to thirty years in terms of initial cannabis vaporisation with more significant usage in the last twenty at least. Unless you are referring to the newer vape pen style which may be closer to a decade.

10 years and tens of millions of users means insufficiently abundant evidence?

It's like the fearmongering around MDMA, which claims that there will be delayed harmful effects from meddling with your brain chemistry, but hundreds of millions of users and decades later where is the widespread harm? Arguably it proves that it's one of the safest drugs on earth.

Of course controlled studies are rigorous, but widespread use must also lead to widespread harm if it exists. There may be hidden harm because it's a small effect on a large population or only harms a small population, but that just means it's relatively safe.

Given that cancer takes decades to pop up, I think it's disingenuous to compare it to MDMA.

True, it could be safe, but how long does it take for lung cancer from smoking to appear?

Not sure about lung cancer, but we know enough about the negative health impact of air pollution that a little common sense should tell us that putting random garbage in your lungs is unlikely to be good for you.

So far the evidence seems to show that smoking and vaping cannabis does not have nearly the potential for lung cancer that tobacco smoking does. It is associated with various respiratory ailments (under heavy use). And it may have a slight protective effect against some cancers.

As usual, more and higher-quality data would help elucidate the source of the protective effects.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8975973/

> The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) study (2018) concluded that long-term cannabis smoking is substantially associated with increased respiratory symptoms (i.e., cough, phlegm, and wheeze) and more frequent chronic bronchitis episodes than experienced by non-smokers.

[snip]

> By contrast, recent outbreaks of respiratory illnesses associated with consumption of mostly unregulated Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing vaping products have so far resulted in 2807 hospitalizations and 68 deaths in the United States, with additional cases being investigated in Canada (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020, Government of Canada, 2020).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_electronic_ciga...

> E-cigarette vapor contains many of the known harmful toxicants found in traditional cigarette smoke, such as formaldehyde, cadmium, and lead, though usually at a reduced percentage.[25]

that's e-cigarettes, which I wasn't talking about.

Nicotine has been found to be oncogenic. If weed is consumed without tobacco, it might actually be safer than tobacco. I‘m not saying that’s a safe bet, but the jury’s out.

Source? Find me something that separates nicotine from smoking.

It's been studied.

From a quick search: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.34643

How about this one week old review: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01668-1

So we’re still pretending smoking and vaping are anything alike?

There's a saying I heard, which goes a little something like:

"You can't use a coping mechanism to heal from an issue/ wound/ trauma. It's basically just replacing one addiction for another."

I'm paraphrasing. But I agree with that statement (which isn't to say that healing is an easy or simple process).

my analysis of my own experiences is that weed smoothens your emotions. the lows are higher and the highs are lower. but then again, I’ve never dealt with major anxiety beyond a few brief stints

however, I would be extremely shocked if cigarettes and alcohol are better for it than weed. cigarettes are basically buying yourself low-level intermittent anxiety, and alcohol, unless you’re a genuine alcoholic, is just a rollercoaster of ups and downs that will likely result in future memories for you to be anxious about. that’s my experience anyway

Are booze and cigarettes actually cheaper than therapy?

No, and the booze and cigarettes are also going to do damage, whereas a therapist is unlikely to do damage.

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