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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

#81

Post by cj »

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 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 a couch potato. That’s more dangerous than any other effect IMO.

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

#82

Post by smt88 »

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.

"Treat" != "cure"

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

#83

Post by trinsic2 »

Aurornis wrote: post #12

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…

Yeah this has been my experience with THC. I never took it for depression, but it was always a temporary thing. I doesn't treat anything IMHO. its a symptom relief at best.

it works pretty good as a temporary relief from anxiety.

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

#84

Post by Loughla »

ecshafer wrote: post #77
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.

Since the 1960s and the emergence of the New Left, and the introduction of the Frankfurt School and 60s post modernism into academia, there has been a widespread belief amongst a large segment of the population that everything traditional is wrong. A social stigma is merely ignorance, that which is seen as bad is actually good, traditions are wrong. All of these things need to be overturned for the enlightenment. Sin…

Alternate theory: there's a shit load of money to be made with legal marijuana so it will be mainstream just to ensure those paychecks keep coming. And for media, it's a low hanging trope that if you want your character to seen edgy but not dangerous, you have them do safe drugs like marijuana. It's easier than the weeks of story it would take to let the audience know they're just slightly anti establishment.

I'm not sure I buy your theory even a little, to be honest. The children of the 60's have, by and large, gotten FAR more conservative as they've gotten older.

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

#86

Post by landl0rd »

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.

Well, it's not that simple. It's reasonable to expect that you could see some increased level of oxidative and excitotoxicity. It's harder to draw a bright line around the dopaminergic system specifically because some level of neuronal death is expected over the course of a lifetime. We lose 5-10% starting with middle age yet don't tend to show parkinsonian symptoms until 60-80% are gone.

It's pretty reasonable to expect reversing DAT and inhibiting VMAT2 increases oxidative flux, the question is really how much not if. Methheads certainly get "brain damage", but is nudging the average loss from 5-10% to 7-12% "damage"? Is it meaningful? Over 30, 40 years that could very well add up.

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

#87

Post by j45 »

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

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.

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

#88

Post by johnisgood »

Aurornis wrote: post #74
andoando wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have a problem with the study or its conclusions, just the parent post I was replying to. >Recreational drugs make you feel good temporarily. That's literally why people do them. The point Im making is this is true for a ton of psychiatric or even non psychatric treatments. And to be perfectly clear Im not saying you should be treating your anxiety with weed, even if it does help you

> 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 it either.

Same with amphetamines for ADHD. And yes, if you take much more, you will experience side-effects ("cause harm when abused"). Opioids are not an outlier at all.

> Recreational drugs make you feel good temporarily

Drugs are only recreational if you take them recreationally, there is nothing that makes them inherently recreational.

And we have not discussed MDMA, which is considered a hard "recreational" drug, yet there are lots of benefits for treatment of PTSD, for one, similarly to psychedelics.

... or ketamine for depression, which is now approved by the FDA, even.

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

#89

Post by roywiggins »

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.

It's a meta-study and came to the conclusion that there isn't reliable evidence that it alleviates symptoms of a bunch of stuff:

> There were no significant effects on outcomes associated with anxiety, anorexia nervosa, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and opioid use disorder. 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.

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

#90

Post by t-writescode »

anon84873628 wrote: post #76
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.

Because the Schedule 1 prohibition was ridiculous. This is the cultural pendulum swing to normalize it and push legalization.

The DARE program just had to tell the truth, but they didn’t and it made everyone question how bad everything really was, if pot wasn’t a problem.

Full agree here. Unfortunately, history is what clarifies why pot is SO HUGE now rather than being something indifferent about, like it should be.

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