Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

jamanetwork.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 330 posts

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#281

Post by pfannkuchen »

smt88 wrote: post #259
pfannkuchen wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure a lot of these are cherry picked to paint a picture (not by you, but by the sources you have read). A lot of people are broadly against psychoactive substance use. The generous interpretation of why they are against it is because the rules of social interaction are set up assuming a certain level of mental presence and self control, and some psychoactive substances cause some people to lose the abilit…

Untrue. A minority of people are opposed to abusing substances that cause a loss of control, which is why alcohol is the most popular psychoactive drug.

The majority of people used to be against marijuana, but there is a time delay in opinion changing and law changing (unless you live in a dictatorship and the dictator shares the opinion).

I am not personally against marijuana at all, I just like to understand the perspective of people I disagree with.

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#282

Post by gaganyaan »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #227
nemo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the actual words and statements of the historic people fighting the actual drug war, they seem implausible and even cartoonish, and they absolutely drip with racism. While the reality was partly incredibly racist malicious actors deliberately ramping up the drug war, it was also an incredibly malicious right-wing culture war - imprisoning peace activists was a stated goal of the architects of the drug war…

I’m pretty sure a lot of these are cherry picked to paint a picture (not by you, but by the sources you have read). A lot of people are broadly against psychoactive substance use. The generous interpretation of why they are against it is because the rules of social interaction are set up assuming a certain level of mental presence and self control, and some psychoactive substances cause some people to lose the abilit…

So you're just guessing, because of a gut feeling?

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#283

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

m0llusk wrote: post #205

This is potentially interesting, but it is important to bear in mind just how tricky mental disorders are to characterize robustly. Psychiatry does not have a record of strongly reproducible results. All of these primary criteria, cannabis use disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression are frequently diagnosed differently by practiced professionals. One of the more academic investigations of addiction, the book High…

> the very concept of "cannabis use disorder" may not really make sense.

I've known people who used cannabis the way alcoholics use alcohol - if it wasn't a use disorder, I don't know what is. The concept is valid and can apply to sorts of things from gambling, pron, online gaming even. If the use becomes problematic then its a problem, 'use disorder' is the just the name for this.

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#284

Post by nemo »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #227
nemo wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the actual words and statements of the historic people fighting the actual drug war, they seem implausible and even cartoonish, and they absolutely drip with racism. While the reality was partly incredibly racist malicious actors deliberately ramping up the drug war, it was also an incredibly malicious right-wing culture war - imprisoning peace activists was a stated goal of the architects of the drug war…

I’m pretty sure a lot of these are cherry picked to paint a picture (not by you, but by the sources you have read). A lot of people are broadly against psychoactive substance use. The generous interpretation of why they are against it is because the rules of social interaction are set up assuming a certain level of mental presence and self control, and some psychoactive substances cause some people to lose the abilit…

The Federal drug war was architected by specific men with an agenda effecting specific laws that cracked down severely on drug use. Not all popular opinion was pro drug-use, but the public weren't writing laws and pushing the agenda, and there wasn't broad popular support for mass long-tern incarceration of drug users. Nixon was one of the architects along with his cabinet, you can read their internal discussions - they were shockingly racist. Pay attention specifically to the people in power who were responsible for starting the drug war, other random people's opinions really are irrelevant.

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#285

Post by pfannkuchen »

nemo wrote: post #284
pfannkuchen wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure a lot of these are cherry picked to paint a picture (not by you, but by the sources you have read). A lot of people are broadly against psychoactive substance use. The generous interpretation of why they are against it is because the rules of social interaction are set up assuming a certain level of mental presence and self control, and some psychoactive substances cause some people to lose the abilit…

The Federal drug war was architected by specific men with an agenda effecting specific laws that cracked down severely on drug use. Not all popular opinion was pro drug-use, but the public weren't writing laws and pushing the agenda, and there wasn't broad popular support for mass long-tern incarceration of drug users. Nixon was one of the architects along with his cabinet, you can read their internal discussions - t…

> mass long-tern incarceration of drug users

This is different from the ban overall, which is what the GP post was discussing. I don't dispute that sentencing lengths for a crime could be or were determined by specific individuals.

I dispute that the ban broadly can be attributed to this, and that, by implication, the public opinion at the time was caused by some sort of propaganda brainwashing.

Also just want to add that a common trope of anti-minority sentiment is that the majority group believes that the minority group engages in immoral behavior. This does not logically imply that the majority group's belief in the immorality of whatever behavior was caused by anti-minority sentiment.

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#286

Post by rickydroll »

whompyjaw wrote: post #162
01100011 wrote: post #22

Obviously people with mental discomfort are more likely to seek comfort in mind altering substances. That said, as someone who is bipolar, has bipolar friends and has used cannabis for a significant portion of my half-century on Earth, cannabis usage is proportional to mood instability in myself and my friends. I have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile whe…

i appreciate you sharing this. ofc, it's only one anecdotal piece of evidence, but i have been a bit torn about my use of cannabis at times. i sometimes feel it maybe helps, but i wonder if that's just the short term side effects that seem to calm me, and the long term effects (even if only using once a month) make my emotions more unstable...

I live with bipolar as well and have avoided cannabis use because when I did smoke it, I was severely depressed afterwards. Recently I had some dental work that did not go well and I was on one of the Oxy formulations for a few days to deal with pain. I had a bad reaction to the Oxy and I found that 5 mg pot gummy's in conjunction with Tylenol provided better pain relief. When the pain faded enough that I just needed Tylenol, I didn't experience the usual post use depression.

I experiment with the gummy's afterwards and found that the depression post usage effect was still present. Something about using them as pain relief changed how my mind responded to THC.

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#287

Post by hydrok9 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #275
jliptzin wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many societies would have made marijuana illegal had the US not done so first and then forced the rest of the world’s hand?

Not convinced. Look at Singapore. I doubt they would care what the US does. Anyway, after the US legalizes everything for “freedom”, I’m not sure that many countries will follow suit.

You're wrong about that. Every non-theocratic/ hyper-conservative country will legalize it sooner or later

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#288

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #218
quickthrowman wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being addicted to alcohol is easily an order of magnitude more destructive to a person and the people around them than chronic marijuana use. It’s not even close. I’ve been to inpatient chemical dependency treatment twice, once for opiate addiction and once for alcohol addiction. There were 0 people that were inpatient for marijuana use.

Just because alcohol addiction is worse for you, doesn't mean weed is good for you.

[deleted]

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#289

Post by hydrok9 »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #150

There is some discussion around cannabis bans and their causes in their thread. One aspect that isn’t discussed much but could be very relevant to differing opinions here is that different people respond incredibly differently to marijuana. Some people experience various, mostly mild, forms of cognitive impairment such as sleepiness, thinking everything is funny, and memory issues. Other people seem to enter a state…

William Burroughs famously said of weed, "I LOVE this stuff. It makes me THINK!"

Re: Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

#290

Post by nemo »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #285
nemo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Federal drug war was architected by specific men with an agenda effecting specific laws that cracked down severely on drug use. Not all popular opinion was pro drug-use, but the public weren't writing laws and pushing the agenda, and there wasn't broad popular support for mass long-tern incarceration of drug users. Nixon was one of the architects along with his cabinet, you can read their internal discussions - t…

> mass long-tern incarceration of drug users This is different from the ban overall, which is what the GP post was discussing. I don't dispute that sentencing lengths for a crime could be or were determined by specific individuals. I dispute that the ban broadly can be attributed to this, and that, by implication, the public opinion at the time was caused by some sort of propaganda brainwashing. Also just want to add…

Again, please read the actual words of the actual policy makers of the criminalization of drugs instead of speculating and imagining what people might have thought.
Post reply on HN