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Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

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Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#251

Post by slumpt_ »

m0llusk wrote: post #248
SquishyPanda23 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It makes you dumb" was one of their favorite cut downs. Well, it does measurably decrease IQ. And at least in teens, this reduction seems like it may be permanent.

After more than 30 years of daily cannabis use with occasional tolerance breaks I recently took an IQ test along with a series of mental evaluations and was in the 99th percentile. So maybe cannabis took me down just enough to avoid being one of those Mensa jerks? 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 p…

That’s an excellent line of research to dive down. You’re going to get some folks here sweating, though.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#252

Post by octokatt »

Prevalence of smoking tobacco is also dramatically higher among schizophrenic people [0]. Before marijuana use is demonized for causing schizophrenia, it would be worthwhile to more robustly prove these results.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19794359/

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#253

Post by jefftechentin »

slumpt_ wrote: post #240
jefftechentin wrote: post #232

Seems like we are leaving the cultural moment that presented Marijuana as a glorious panacea which would open your third eye if only you let go of your fear. Our culture was so scared of the stuff before, maybe we needed to paint an unrealistically bright picture to find the courage to leave the cave. To the unfamiliar it can be a thrilling adventure, to others it can serve as inspiration. It feels like it has mental…

No reason to be wary of recreational use. No more so than you might of caffeine. Not everything is for everyone and that’s 100% ok.

> No reason to be wary of recreational use. No more so than you might of caffeine

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.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#254

Post by thaw13579 »

jklinger410 wrote: post #88
warent wrote: post #3

This would not surprise me at all. But I'm curious to know if they got the causation backwards. Maybe people with schizophrenia just have a higher likelihood of smoking marijuana

Untreated neuro-divergent people tend to use recreational drugs for medicinal purposes. And psychoactive drug usage is directly linked with the early onset of otherwise dormant schizophrenia, as well as a myriad of other mental disorders. 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,…

To be clear, there is science that is compatible with THC increasing the risk of psychosis (and perhaps that CBD is protective). I would agree that some are self medicating, but the data also shows that dosage, THC/CBD mixture, and age of use each elevate psychosis risk over random controls [1][2].

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...

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#255

Post by throw420420 »

I would take this with a grain of salt. Research on illegal substances is highly restricted.

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.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#256

Post by lojack »

mthoms wrote: post #201
macksd wrote: post #47

>> In 1995, 2% of schizophrenia diagnoses in the country were associated with cannabis use disorder. In 2000, it increased to around 4%. Since 2010, that figure increased to 8%, the study found. 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 mari…

Anecdote: My half-sister is a diagnosed schizophrenic and life-long weed smoker. It seems to me (and her doctors agree) that the two are absolutely related. 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).…

correlation != causation

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.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#257

Post by alisonatwork »

Loic wrote: post #239
mthoms wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote: My half-sister is a diagnosed schizophrenic and life-long weed smoker. It seems to me (and her doctors agree) that the two are absolutely related. 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 am sorry to say that you are most likely right. My father is[0] a psychiatrist in big psychiatric hospital in France (1500 beds, only psychiatry, nothing else) and he told me again and again that he was against the legalisation of marijuana because of this. The problem is that once you trigger schizophrenia you need to live with it, all your life... Note that he told me so, even if his work during the last 15 years…

I am pro legalization because I think people should get to make their own decisions about what they put in their own bodies, but I definitely agree that this aspect of marijuana use is somewhat downplayed by many of its advocates.

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.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#258

Post by oneil512 »

mnowicki wrote: post #227
seph-reed wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get schizophrenia from smoking pot. But I also know people who get it who've never been pot heads. 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) j…

~18-25 IIRC is the normal age for prodromal schizophrenia to occur(the early phase where symptoms begin to manifest) so that makes sense. If you don't get it by that age it's extremely unlikely to start experiencing symptoms at an older age, there are younger children with schizophrenia but it's still much less common than people first noticing it around their early 20s. And in your first sentence, do you mean you ge…

Did you have these when you were high, not high, or both? How old are you now and what has become of them?

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#259

Post by code_duck »

mullingitover wrote: post #79

I've seen someone have a textbook psychotic break while consuming a lot of cannabis. Radio was sending them secret messages, coworkers were government spies, believed they were Jesus (and normally they'd been a confirmed atheist). 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 pan…

It would be interesting to know more about the hypoglycemia link. I contracted type one diabetes as an adult, somehow, and was hesitant to try anything for the first time after that including alcohol or cannabis. I wear a continuous glucose monitor and as far as I can tell, cannabis has no effect on my blood glucose.

Re: Schizophrenia linked to marijuana use disorder is on the rise, study finds

#260

Post by mnowicki »

hattmall wrote: post #33
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. I hang out at this one bar and this 22 year old I talk to really thinks he "gets it." Incredibly cocky and arrogant a lot of times. He's fun to talk to but when he get's on a major BS kick I gotta tune him out. I'm only 5 years older than him but the contrast in experiences is stark to say the least. It really makes me wonder if I was ever that arrogant too.

[flagged]

yeah true. I think it'd be best for others if they stopped being liberals.

(\s btw)

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