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Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking in circles. >Objectively worse performance in life and in mentally taxing work. Very interesting! I'd love to learn more. Please show us the data supporting this assertion. >Go smoke a massive bong hit then do a calculus exam and compare your score. I don't smoke, so I took a cannabis edible or vaped some concentrate. My calculus exam score improved. Now what? You still haven't provided any evidence fo…

> Very interesting! I'd love to learn more. Please show us the data supporting this assertion. You can't demand a study/citation for someones personal experience. That is absurd. You are being an absolutely illogical clown. I was talking about my opinion and direct personal experience. I explained this multiple times but you are incapable of understanding this basic concept. "Objective" means observable and measurabl…

Please stop insulting me, thanks. I will ignore your hostility for now.

>You can't demand a study/citation for someones personal experience. That is absurd.

Personal experience is subjective. I am not questioning your subjective experience, because that would indeed be absurd.

What I am questioning is your claim that cannabis is objectively neurotoxic. I am asking you to substantiate your claim about this supposed objective fact.

Where is the evidence? Show us.

>Objective" means observable and measurable.

Correct. Observable AND measurable. Observing is not enough to claim something as an objective fact. Where are your measurements about these observations? Where is the evidence about the "objectively neurotoxic" effects of cannabis?

>Are you genuinely so clueless that you believe no one can perceive anything objective about their own performance and abilities and actions in the external world?

Perception is inherently subjective. Feelings are not facts.

You are welcome to perceive all sorts of things, but that doesn't make these perceptions factual, objective, or even grounded in consensus reality. Some people perceive that the Earth is flat. Does that make Flat Earth an objective fact? Obviously not, because we can disprove these perceptions with concrete replicable measurements using instruments that do not wholly depend on the fallible perceptions of humans.

You keep using the word objective without any evidence, and when questioned about it you deflect by saying it's a subjective observation. Which one is it?

This entire conversation feels crazy-making. What I am trying to explain to you is the scientific method, something most children learn in grade school.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has not been proven to be neurotoxic, so I'm not so sure over your reference of semantics. I only consume edibles, as the smoke is too harsh for my lungs. This study does not have a definitive answer as to whether cannabis is actually the cause or trigger for schizophrenia.

Go to Google Scholar and search for "neurotoxicity of cannabis" You can find studies showing that even pure THC is neurotoxic. It depends on dosage and frequency.

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#283

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Sorry, neurotoxic ? That's not a settled debate; not remotely. There are many reasons to believe cannabis is neuroprotective. Especially when using safe, high CBD, high cannabinoid varieties; a rather vital distinction. And it's not semantics, because you can't make the assumption that people would "never have become psychotic without the drug". On a population scale, such an effect would have stood out by now if it…

> That's not a settled debate; not remotely. In my opinion it is neurotoxic, based on studies I have seen (such as this one that we are commenting on) plus my own direct personal experience. Even without the psychoactive components, the smoke is carcinogenic (like tobacco) and toxic to all cells, including neurons. Go take a massive bong hit, then tell me your mind and lungs feel healthy. Cannabis is blatantly toxic…

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#284

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> Cannabis is blatantly toxic filth No, it isn't. It's medicine, and remarkably harmless recreation. It saves many lives, and enhances quality of life for millions of people. It has a smorgasbord of health benefits. It does have side effects, and drawbacks. It's not a panacea, and it doesn't suit every one. It's not for kids (except when it's medically worth it). But calling it "blatantly toxic filth" is wildly infla…

> No, it isn't. It's medicine, and remarkably harmless recreation. Try reading the article before commenting.

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#285
post #220

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I'm very much for individual freedom when it comes to drug use, assuming you aren't hurting others. I think in the push for cannabis legalization, many people have forgotten that cannabis is a psychedelic drug. While it's not the same as LSD or psilocybin, it can definitely change perception and thinking. In 1996 I had a psychotic episode from LSD, and developed generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder. I alwa…

Very similar experience here. I had a psychotic episode last summer on shrooms, and have since struggled with anxiety. I definitely agree that if you have any pre-existing mental health issues at all, using psychedelics is playing with fire.

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Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference between a direct cause and a potential trigger for a condition with specific endogenous prerequisites. There is no universal trend of people consuming cannabis and developing schizophrenia.

Is it like a catalyst?

Sometimes, but not always. In chemistry, catalysts can help initiate or facilitate chemical reactions, but there is often another input required to kick start the process (e.g. heat). A catalyst won't do anything if there are other things missing.

We know that cannabis can act as a catalyst for schizophrenia, but we also know that not everyone who is predisposed to schizophrenia develops it 100% of the time after cannabis use. There are degrees of predisposition, and a bunch of other factors that contribute to this.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#287

You have these cells in your brain called Microglia. They are responsible for cleaning up neurons and plaques and other weird proteins. These Microglia are activated by the firing neurons which release 2-AG and AEA (Anadamide). AEA binds to the CB1 receptor in these Microglia. 2-AG binds to CB2. THC binds to CB1. CBD binds to CB2. Autistic adults have significantly low blood serum levels of AEA. Autistic people’s neu…

As someone on the spectrum, it had amazing therapeutical effects on me.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#288

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> Autistic adults have significantly low blood serum levels of AEA. Autistic people’s neurons prune slower. Schizophrenic people’s neurons prune faster. These are all group-level findings, meaning they aren't true for every individual. You can do a study and find that there is a statistically significant difference in mean X between two samples – autistic vs control or schizophrenic vs control. But pretty much always…

> This is why a number of researchers have been arguing that diagnosis-centric research is a dead-end. Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?

> Just sounds like they've been diagnosing by symptom because they didn't know the actual etiology. Once it's known shouldn't they just change the diagnosis to be the new, more specific condition? Seems like diagnosis is still the goal?

Well, we don't know the aetiology (in most cases), so while restructuring diagnosis on the basis of aetiology is defensible as a long-term goal, we are nowhere being able to achieve that yet. The argument is, designing research around the current symptom-focused diagnostic categories is blocking progress in research. Two people with the same diagnostic label may have completely different aetiologies, two people with the same aetiology may have completely different labels, two people with the same aetiology one of them may have a label and the other may have none – the same underlying brain dysfunction may manifest with very different symptoms in different individuals, depending on its interaction with other biological factors, and their social environment. If we want to understand "what's really going on", it can be better to put everyone in the same sample (both diagnosed with various diagnoses and undiagnosed), then look for patterns in that big sample. I think this paper is a great example of doing that, with the help of machine learning – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-019-0631-2 – but it needs replication.

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#289
post #251

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He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthu…

That sounds like "just following orders" with extra steps.

I'm certainly not trying to defend the guy. If anything, I think a lot of people in the "autism community" want to defend him (even if only to a degree), in part because they feel some emotional attachment to the label of "Asperger's" and are trying to shoot down the argument "we shouldn't use that label because it is named after a Nazi collaborator"

For all of Asperger's sins, he was too humble to actually name a disorder after himself – he called his disorder "autistic psychopathy". Lorna Wing renamed it after him, because the word "psychopath" had become very stigmatised, and Asperger was using it in an older and broader sense than current discussions of "psychopathy", which is prone to confuse the uneducated layperson. Wing was actually one of the people trying to defend Asperger–before her death, she wasn't aware of the further historical research published on this topic after she died, and who knows whether she would have revised her position if she'd lived to see that–it is understandable she'd want to defend one of the major decisions of her career–and she was (at best) dimly aware of this aspect of Asperger's history when she made that decision

I will admit to myself sometimes using "Aspergian" in describing some of my own personality traits, not because I necessarily agree with the term, but simply because it is a useful shorthand which my listener is likely to understand, and as much as I'd love to dump all these details and more on them, it risks overwhelming their time, attention and comprehension

Re: Heavy marijuana use increases schizophrenia in men, study finds

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's not a settled debate; not remotely. In my opinion it is neurotoxic, based on studies I have seen (such as this one that we are commenting on) plus my own direct personal experience. Even without the psychoactive components, the smoke is carcinogenic (like tobacco) and toxic to all cells, including neurons. Go take a massive bong hit, then tell me your mind and lungs feel healthy. Cannabis is blatantly toxic…

> Cannabis is blatantly toxic filth No, it isn't. It's medicine, and remarkably harmless recreation. It saves many lives, and enhances quality of life for millions of people. It has a smorgasbord of health benefits. It does have side effects, and drawbacks. It's not a panacea, and it doesn't suit every one. It's not for kids (except when it's medically worth it). But calling it "blatantly toxic filth" is wildly infla…

Most medicine is toxic to some degree. It's all about the cost vs the reward.

I like sugar, salt and caffeine. I consume them to a degree that causes me low lever physical harm. I enjoy them and am happy with the cost. Many cannabis users do the same with cannabis but some seems to think it's a magic cure all. I'm strongly sceptical of such claims.

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