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Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

sciencedaily.com

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Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#111

This is a hard topic to communicate in depression treatment. It's easy to mistake substances that temporarily boost your mood or calm your nerves for effective treatments for an underlying condition. There was a brief period of time before the opioid prescribing backlash when some fringe psychiatrists were proposing weaker opioids as adjunctive treatments for treatment resistant depression. It's hard to fathom now, b…

Isn't the problem with psychological dependency that drugs generate basically a artifical depression, so more drugs are needed to basically feel normal again? Thus saddling a already existing problem with the same on top?

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#112
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As doctors Psychiatry should definitely look at imaging of the brain. One place I'm aware of that works from imaging as well is Amen Clinics in the US.

we don't understand the brain well enough for images to be of any use. amen is a fraud.

Would love to learn more about how this is the case (both assertions). Mind sharing?

Neuroscience seems to be coming through with more and more understanding using technologies like fMRI and others the past 5-10 years. There is definitely some understanding there.

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#113
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

”There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety.” There is no significant, rigorous evidence that depression or anxiety are caused by an inherent ”chemical imbalance”.

Am I an idiot or is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that the cause is our individualistic hyper competitive culture?

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#114
The entire point of the drug research is to make them palatable to authorities through plausible lies. American culture does not permit enjoyment for the sake of it. So you have to make up some stories and say “there is some evidence that psilocybin helps depression” or whatever and then slowly leak it towards legality.

I mean if I told you I wanted to have fun you’d lose your mind. But if I told you I needed to heal you’re fine with it. So I make it so I’m always ill and needing pharmacological therapy.

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Cocaine was originally believed to be a viable treatment for depression. Is it not?? Sure there's the addiction and harm from abuse that make it less than ideal for long term use, to put it mildly, but weed isn't coke so what's really the argument here?

Acetaminophen blunts the parasympathetic nervous system…what do you think cocaine could be capable of?

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety.” There is no significant, rigorous evidence that depression or anxiety are caused by an inherent ”chemical imbalance”.

Am I an idiot or is it not glaringly obvious to everyone that the cause is our individualistic hyper competitive culture?

There are plenty of historical records of people having anxiety or depression.

There's almost certainly a link between the prevalence and modern, always-on culture, but to suggest that it alone is the cause is blatantly wrong.

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just like how Hydrogen peroxide is chemically no different than a low dose of dihydrogen monoxide?

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#118
post #81
post #66

American media has really been shockingly pro weed/cannabis for the past 20 or so years. Really astounding to witness considering the well known downsides to human health and cognitive function. Main characters smoke weed as a cool disobedience, in sitcoms even. Wonder what is behind it, from my perspective it's quite remarkable.

I think it became socially acceptable because there’s not a huge reason to hate on it. The risks to cognition and health exist, but they’re no where near as bad as alcohol or cigarettes (and the negative effects basically don’t exist at low, even moderate doses) The biggest negative effect of using weed regularly is it seems to slowly kill people’s motivation to do stuff over time. It will turn just about anyone into…

>I think it became socially acceptable because there’s not a huge reason to hate on it.

That may be but I see no reason to encourage it either, which is what I feel is happening.

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point Im making is this is true for a ton of psychiatric or even non psychatric treatments That point wasn't intended to be taken in isolation. I was making statements about how long-term treatment of an underlying condition is not the same as taking a drug which temporarily masks a problem or induces altered mood states. The fact that a drug has acute effects, good or bad, is separate from any conversation abo…

You keep ignoring the fact that what you just said applies to current medications used to treat depression and anxiety. They do not treat the underlying issue long-term, and if you stop them, you are worse off than before due to rebound effects, and even if those effects subdue, your depression and anxiety returns. And just to add to this for clarification, antidepressants may treat depression, but it does not cure i…

The problem with your argument is it's whataboutism. Your argument's conclusion should be that even prescription drugs aren't necessarily good.

Really what is wrong is that most prescription drugs do show less tolerance. Yes, prescription drugs have tolerance, but not as fast as recreational drugs taken at recreational doses.

Re: Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

#120
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we don't understand the brain well enough for images to be of any use. amen is a fraud.

Would love to learn more about how this is the case (both assertions). Mind sharing? Neuroscience seems to be coming through with more and more understanding using technologies like fMRI and others the past 5-10 years. There is definitely some understanding there.

not clinical understanding, not in any useful way. its another tool for study, but my understanding is that aside from some very high level structural information, there's sadly not that much to be learned from watching the flashing lights.
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