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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

#141

Post by zozbot234 »

acuozzo wrote: post #108
andoando wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> How do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD? By giving a patient the ability & skills to establish a less dopamine-seeking lifestyle while temporarily relieving them of the deficit. Its use is supposed to be coupled with therapy and/or coaching (e.g. https://www.thriveemerge.com ) to ensure that the patient isn't just using it as a lifelong crutch. That's how it's supposed to be done. This approach is more effecti…

Why do you need amphetamines to do this? Why not a legal stimulant? Even something as trivial as coffee can be effective if you take it strategically, i.e. stay off of it completely until the rare times when you need the turbo boost.

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

#142

Post by zug_zug »

Aurornis wrote: post #68
andoando wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> The entire science is based on the patients self reported feelings or the psychatrists feeling of how someone else is feeling. 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 ca…

>> This study is showing that THC, CBD, blends, or cannabis do not improve self-reported feelings over the long term.

Just to clarify, the study is not saying that.

The study is saying "there isn't conclusive evidence at this point, but it leans more toward helping than hurting on many categories". Please read the paper if in doubt.

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

#143

Post by XorNot »

harimau777 wrote: post #136
phainopepla2 wrote: post #32

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.

Shouldn't that be up to bodily autonomy? If someone feels that cocane relieves their symptoms then who is the doctor to say that they don't. Perhaps releaving those symptoms even for a short period of time is worth the consequences.

That's just arguing for drug legalization with extra pseudoscience.

I am all for people doing however much cocaine they feel they need. In broad daylight - let's just drag that into the light and let people go to the dispensary for cocaine hydrochloride, metered, measured and with warning labels.

Because the war on drugs is a stupid waste of time and lives, but no doctor or medical professional has to justify your own stupid actions.

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

#144

Post by cyberax »

andoando wrote: post #56
Aurornis wrote: post #31

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…

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

> How do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD?

By increasing the baseline dopamine? I think the biological mechanisms for the ADHD treatment are more-or-less clear at this point.

Not so much with depression, though.

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

#145

Post by tombert »

paxys wrote: post #61

Title says "helps" but the summary says "it doesn’t effectively treat anxiety, depression, or PTSD". Big difference between the two IMO. 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.

> Plenty of people use cannabis to alleviate symptoms. I don't think they expect to be cured entirely.

Obviously can't speak for everyone, but I know people who do think literally that. They think that weed will actually cure their depression, and they'll allude to some studies about it that I'm pretty sure don't exist and that they just made up.

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

#146

Post by zug_zug »

charles_f wrote: post #128
paxys wrote: post #61

Title says "helps" but the summary says "it doesn’t effectively treat anxiety, depression, or PTSD". Big difference between the two IMO. 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.

Beyond the semantics, this is what the meta analysis(1) actually says in the abstract > There were insufficient data to meta-analyse studies of ADHD, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and tobacco use disorder. There was an absence of RCT evidence for the treatment of depression. Meta-analysis revealed higher odds of all-cause adverse events (OR 1·75, 95% CI 1·25 to 2·46) among those using cannabis vers…

It sounds to me like you didn't understand the paper at all, or are worse willfully misrepresenting.

The paper says "insufficient data" for helpfulness for most positive categories (but leans more positive than negative just doesn't reach 95% confidence), but also insufficient data on most negative categories. It finds 5 conditions it's helpful for, and 3 it hurts for.

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

#147

Post by cyberax »

zozbot234 wrote: post #141
acuozzo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD? By giving a patient the ability & skills to establish a less dopamine-seeking lifestyle while temporarily relieving them of the deficit. Its use is supposed to be coupled with therapy and/or coaching (e.g. https://www.thriveemerge.com ) to ensure that the patient isn't just using it as a lifelong crutch. That's how it's supposed to be done. This approach is more effecti…

Why do you need amphetamines to do this? Why not a legal stimulant? Even something as trivial as coffee can be effective if you take it strategically, i.e. stay off of it completely until the rare times when you need the turbo boost.

> Why do you need amphetamines to do this?

There's also atomoxetine, but it's not very effective.

> Why not a legal stimulant?

Which ones? People absolutely do self-medicate with coffee, ephedrine, or even cocaine where it's available (coca tea). And these stimulants do work, but they have _more_ side effects than amphetamines when used in theurapeutic doses.

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

#148

Post by acuozzo »

zozbot234 wrote: post #141
acuozzo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD? By giving a patient the ability & skills to establish a less dopamine-seeking lifestyle while temporarily relieving them of the deficit. Its use is supposed to be coupled with therapy and/or coaching (e.g. https://www.thriveemerge.com ) to ensure that the patient isn't just using it as a lifelong crutch. That's how it's supposed to be done. This approach is more effecti…

Why do you need amphetamines to do this? Why not a legal stimulant? Even something as trivial as coffee can be effective if you take it strategically, i.e. stay off of it completely until the rare times when you need the turbo boost.

> Why do you need amphetamines to do this?

That's a question for a specialist and/or a medical researcher in the field. It's well above our "pay grade" here.

Anecdotally, I have tried the majority of legal stimulants at therapeutic doses. Nothing works quite like Amphetamines do for me.

> Why not a legal stimulant?

My prescription for it IS legal.

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

#149

Post by cyberax »

sillywabbit wrote: post #73
andoando wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Meth causes brain damage. Dex doesn't.

Meth is also used as an ADHD treatment. I think the reason is just the dosages that are used by addicts compared to people who just need the ADHD treatment.

A typical legitimate therapeutic methamphetamine dose is around ~20mg (up to maybe 60mg a day). A typical dose used by addicts is around 1 gram. And it's usually smoked, resulting in immediate bioavailability.

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

#150

Post by tombert »

Kon5ole wrote: 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 am not sure I'd say I'm "against" it since broadly speaking I don't think it should be illegal, but I am against it in the sense that I really think that absolutely no one should be smoking weed. It's kind of an unearned opinion; I don't know anything about medicine or health or anything like that, but I hated what it would seemingly do to my friends in high school.

I'd have friends that would be more or less down to earth, start smoking weed, then start finding and watching videos of Alan Watts and Carl Sagan and convince themselves that they knew everything in the world about physics and philosophy, and they became utterly insufferable in the process, and whenever anything negative about weed was ever said, they would provide me a lecture about how weed is a cure to pretty much everything and how no one has ever had a negative effect from it ever in history.

I think there's been a huge over correction; there was so much bullshit about the dangers of weed that people started acting like it's some miraculous cure-all and ignoring actual issues.

This was such a visceral turn-off for me that I to this day have never used weed, and the idea of using it still kind of makes me viscerally annoyed. It's entirely possible that my friends were insufferable teenagers purely because teenagers can be insufferable, and that's not even unlikely, but the way I remember it is the weed making them annoying it. Not saying it's rational, just that memory and human brains are weird.

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