61–70 of 244 posts
Plenty of people use cannabis to alleviate symptoms. I don't think they expect to be cured entirely. Getting a good night's sleep or being without chronic pain for a few hours is often enough.
So, a meta study. While important, it assumes that the underlying studies are based on solid science. So, why do people use cannabis then?
Not because they're effective treatments for mental disorders
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This point of view makes no sense to me. If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. All the psychiatric studies are already based on self assessment. Second, a lot of psychatric treatments are temporary, ending whenever the medication is stopped or wears off so I dont see how this would be any different
Duration of effect matters when it comes to successful treatments. If we take your position and apply reductio ad absurdum, we could say that cocaine is a highly effective treatment for anxiety, although of course we know that in the not-so-long run it has the opposite effect.
Edit: Okay, I've read the meta-study now and I think the summary article isn't representing the picture very well. In particular they found for anxiety there actually seems to be evidence in this exact data set that does help. What they are doing is saying "there isn't 95% evidence it reduces anxiety" therefore "no evidence" even though they mean "some evidence, just not at the statistical significance level" -- it's…
DISCLOSURE: I use large amounts of high potency cannabis flower with CBD/CBG edibles for intractable neuropathic pain. I also smoked a hell of a lot of weed in my 20s and 30s. I've more experience of Pot than most. MMJ lowers my pain a bit, and reduces suffering a lot. Its the suffering that makes life difficult.
Wonder what is behind it, from my perspective it's quite remarkable.
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This point of view makes no sense to me. If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. All the psychiatric studies are already based on self assessment. Second, a lot of psychatric treatments are temporary, ending whenever the medication is stopped or wears off so I dont see how this would be any different
Doing ten shots of tequila is a 100% scientifically proven cure for social anxiety then. If you take it and your anxiety lessens, that's the greatest proof you can ask for! Let's just completely ignore the crippling morning hangover and liver damage
The side-effects are often terrible. This is also true for many widely-prescribed drugs, and has been even more true in the past. The folks I've known on MAOIs were pretty wrecked.
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> If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. This mistake has been made many time throughout history. Cocaine was originally believed to be a viable treatment for depression. Opioids and amphetamines too. You take them and you feel good for a while, which was mistakenly equated with treating depression. Many drugs will make you feel good temporarily by blocking ce…
How do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD? Psychiatry as its practiced has no idea as to what depression even is under the hood. The entire science is based on the patients self reported feelings or the psychatrists feeling of how someone else is feeling. What you're saying is something else, that drugs can produce long term harm despite short term improvements
This study is showing that THC, CBD, blends, or cannabis do not improve self-reported feelings over the long term.
You can use pedantry and wordplay all you want, but no matter how we look at this study it does not show positive effects.
> What you're saying is something else, that drugs can produce long term harm despite short term improvements
Recreational drugs make you feel good temporarily. That's literally why people do them.
They also cause harm when abused.
These are all obvious and well known facts.
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This point of view makes no sense to me. If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. All the psychiatric studies are already based on self assessment. Second, a lot of psychatric treatments are temporary, ending whenever the medication is stopped or wears off so I dont see how this would be any different
There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety. For one thing, treatments for anxiety only target the anxiety: they don’t impair the person the way that weed or alcohol does. (They can have other side effects, of course.) Drugs for anxiety treatment do wear off, but not the same way that weed or alcohol does: something like Celexa takes a few weeks to build…
As for impairment, it really depends. If weed removes your anxiety and lets you relax, its benefit could be greater for what youre doing than the impairment it causes. And adderall, SSRIs can cause impairment of sorts too.
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Duration of effect matters when it comes to successful treatments. If we take your position and apply reductio ad absurdum, we could say that cocaine is a highly effective treatment for anxiety, although of course we know that in the not-so-long run it has the opposite effect.
But a lot of psychatric treatments are just that. Treatment for ADHD for example is giving ampethamines (which btw are chemically no different than a low dose of meth), which have a duration of 3-6 hours and its back to worse than baseline after the effect has worn off.
The reason amphetamines are used for ADHD but not depression is that they've been studied to show that the ADHD improving effect can remain for many months, while the mood-improving effect will taper off quickly if you take them every day. Almost everyone who takes ADHD stimulant, feels a mood and motivation boost ("so happy I could cry" is the common phrase) and then is disappointed when that mood boost stops happening after a few weeks or months will learn this. Attention enhancement is less prone to tolerance, though it still accumulates tolerance too. There are some studies showing that the effects of stimulants in ADHD diminish substantially on a multi-year time frame, and it's probably not a coincidence that many people (though not all) who take stimulants discontinue after several years.