Newly published study concludes cannabis precipitates psychosis

It's a different study. These were people with no signs of psychosis before starting to smoke pot.

 

Wow... if i didn't just sift through 6 pages of some of the dumbest fucking stoner posts ever... this thread makes me almost want to quit smoking.. not because of possibly psychosis.. but because i'm being put into the same category as you fucking etards

nothing will ever happen with marijuana if we all act like its the worlds perfect little drug..

 

eace: my study concludes that marijuana keeps me sane eace:

 

I would be highly skeptical of the findings of this study, as it seems to suffer from methodological and statistical problems.

First the study assessed the participants 3 times in 10 years. Random chance can easily account for the findings based on such scant data collection.

Secondly it reports that they controlled for, among other things, the effects of other drugs. Seeing as though the effect of other drugs on psychosis is not really known, I doubt that they effectively controlled for these factors.

Very poor study. Many more studies with a better design and more stringent statistical requirements are needed to settle the question.

 

Doctors don't want people to do drugs = bogus study.

Christ, most medical professionals don't want anyone of any age to partake in any extensive amount of any drug, but especially teenagers. You can hold up weed to be this all so perfect wonder drug all you want but the fact remains psychosis, along with tons of other mental illnesses generally begin showing in the late teens, early 20's, meanwhile beginning in the mid teens teenagers tend to smoke capacious amounts of weed also following the "well binge drinking is for the weekends, but weed is perfect, I can smoke all I want" train of thought, which aside from the physical effects especially on the lungs it can have on a still developing body, taking in unyielding amounts of a psychedelic drug while the brain is still forming can have severe negatve impacts, especially for those with a predisposition to any form of mental illness.

Doctors and researchers are not here to promote the anti or pro weed cause. They're here to promote health, the fact remains from a health perspective no one should really have unsupervised drug consumption of any kind, though in moderation the health effects of numerous drugs including weed can be mitigated to negligible in most cases.

I dare you to find me one researches, one doctor, one whoever though who says their goal is to get teenagers to smoke more weed. It doesn't matter if pragmatically they always will, the fact remains from a medical standpoint teenagers shouldn't be doing any drugs given how rapidly the brain and rest of the body is developing.

Also

Seriously I don't get this mindset stoners have that it's only weed studies that are ever bogus in regards to health. I love drinking as much as smoking, but every time a study comes out showing the negative health impacts of even light to moderate drinking I don't go omg it's the anti-alcohol conspiracy.

It just might be that drugs, even mild ones, are generally not beneficial to your health aside from maybe your stress level, especially when still developing.

 

I'm not saying weed is harmless, but I am saying it looks to me like these researchers are twisting their findings, and then twisting their words about their twisted findings.

They obviously do want to stop use, if you read this stuff. To their credit, they also do quote someone who cites this as a reason to NOT have criminal penalties for weed, which I would, of course, have to support.

I am, however, saying that weed is many magnitudes less dangerous than alcohol, and I don't care what study claims it causes psychosis (until you read the fine print, and see that it doesn't really cause psychosis) there's still no excuse for it's legal status, other than to control people.

 

This is part of the truth IMO- but not the entire truth. I suspect that the money addicted pharmaceutical giants don't want people self-medicating. Plus, marijuana convictions furnish some "low hanging fruit" for ambitious lawyers looking to become DA's in the foundation of a record of "tough on crime" that plays well with the people who are not interested in considering pot anything but a dangerous and addictive threat to "our precious freedom and way of life..." yadda yadda

The premise that leaders actually give a damn about our health, safety, security, etc is completely false- but those concepts are used to cultivate support for maintaining a criminal class- which in truth is necessary to maintain demand for government "services" sold to us as a way of keeping us safe and protecting children.

The older I get the less I think that politicians actually believe any of the tripe they speechify for public consumption... it's just mass manipulation. Keep 'em paranoid and afraid and they're more likely to demand the government "do something". Enough people will take the study at face value and insist it's proof of marijuana's dangers and justification for treating its users as criminals and destroying their lives.

 

It still doesnt address if those people were going to develop it anyways...

That's the REAL mystery to me.

 

So far nobody has mentioned this little quote in the BMJ article - which is not found in any of the other articles, unless I missed it:

"The increase in risk may be modest for people without other risk factors for psychosis, increasing from around seven in 1000 in non-cannabis users to 14 in 1000 in regular users."

Thus the conclusion of "doubling the risk." We're talking about an increase from 0.7% to 1.4%.

The rest of the paragraph talks about much higher risk increase for people with other risk factors such as family history.

But as mentioned previously, there are questions regarding the criteria and degree of "psychotic symptoms."

Personally I'm extremely skeptical of the whole idea of diagnosing psychosis. My wife got me to see a psychiatrist at one point, which I did just to see what happened, and he used a working diagnosis of "delusional disorder" in order to justify trying out a couple of medications on me - neither of which had any effect other than making me feel groggy all the time.

One mental health counselor told my wife I suffered from narcissistic personality syndrome, but after my wife stopped coming to sessions and left me on my own to be "cured," he decided I wasn't narcissistic at all. The obvious conclusion: My wife's presence makes me crazy. I could have told him that.

She then dragged me to talk to her personal counselor, who grilled me mercilessly for some time, and then told my wife, "I don't think he's delusional."

But if I tell you that I have telepathic conversations all the time with other people who often pretend they're not doing that with me at all, I'll wager a large number of you will say I'm definitely delusional. Who's right?

The point is, there are so many questions and gray areas in this whole area of study that it's going to take a helluva lot more studies to really get a handle on what's what. And in the meantime, it seems like maybe some caution is needed by some people in relation to cannabis use - I think I'm one of them, frankly, cuz I had some unpleasant experiences with it - but for most people, for the most part, it really doesn't seem to be a problem, this study notwithstanding.

 

Another point to add is why do other drug users hate/find stoners annoying? mainly because most pot smokers think they are some sort of self righteous person and don't understand why their parents yell at them for smoking pot or why their roommate is pissed about them growing weed in their roommates house... there seems to be more often than not seems to be two types of smokers in the world.. the immature types that never grow up(like the 25 year old dude who was bitching about his parents yelling at him for smoking weed in the house..) or they are self righteous/smug and think that marijuana is the answer to everything.. nothing is wrong with it.. everyone should do it.. forcing it upon people who don't want nothing to do with it.. do you want to sit and listen to a cig smoker tell you why you should smoke.. and nag you about it CONSTANTLY or a drinker ask you why you dont drink and why you should and the health benefits of alcoholic beverages...

/rant

 

When was you able to purchase cannabis like alcohol?. This glass holds no water!! seriously.. no seriously....

 

Those with the least to say always yell the loudest. Those two groups you mentioned may be the loudest, but I don't think they are the biggest. The average-joe nightly toker holds down a steady job and doesn't speak about his use. The middle managers, authors, hog farmers, doctors, etc that smoke daily aren't covertly growing plants in their parent's attics. Granny doesn't shun her bingo pals if they won't hit the doob.

Every stereotype is held to the standards of the loudest and most obnoxious though, so I don't take it too personally. And everybody is capable of being a douchebag regardless of their favorite habits.

 

It seems a lot of people equate free-thinking to "psychosis". lol This study doesn't mean shit to me.

 

No, I didn't expect it would, nor any other study even one finding that being stupid is bad for you.

For those not in complete opposition to reading, here's their 'free thinking' criteria from the article:
-14 delusion items, five hallucination items, and one item on passivity phenomena. Items relate to classic psychotic symptoms involving, for example, persecution, thought interference, auditory hallucinations, and passivity phenomena.

 

I think that is a top notch analysis.

 

I'm being persecuted, my country spends millions upon millions of dollars hunting people like me down for smoking a fucking weed.

My thoughts are being interfered with, my government and many other people in my country spend millions upon millions of dollars trying to convince me all sorts of complete lies about a fucking weed.

Auditory hallucinations as a result of smoking marijuana are well documented, and can happen when you're not smoking if you're a regular smoker. Mild visual hallucinations are also possible, and the drug has a very long half life in the human body. We're talking about long term users who showed these symptoms the most, remember.

Stoned people tend to be passive hippies, in the same manner that tweakers tend to be violent neo-nazi's.

:ssmokeit:

 

Well those persecution thoughts are somewhat rational because they're partly true.

From wiki: Karl Jaspers has classified psychotic delusions into primary and secondary types. Primary delusions are defined as arising suddenly and not being comprehensible in terms of normal mental processes, whereas secondary delusions may be understood as being influenced by the person's background or current situation (e.g., ethnic or sexual orientation, religious beliefs, superstitious belief).

It sounds like you're talking about secondary delusion, which you could hardly count as psychotic in a diagnostic sense or most religious people would be psychotic (maybe not far from the truth).

And I'm pretty sure hallucinations are not normal in waking, sober life. People who get them definitely have some problem. I have them a lot when I'm sick with flu.

I don't think the research is looking into the effects of weed. We all know it causes mental effects, as do most drugs.

 

That's exactly the problem. It's not looking into the nature of weed, in long term smokers. I may not have phrased that very clearly, so I'll try again: (Not ragging on you, I'm serious)

Weed does cause hallucinations, of various and to various degrees, depending on the individual.

Weed stays in the human body a very long time, and can be felt to do so by those consuming it.

As such, it can be expected to have similar effects for the duration of it's effect.

A correlation between heavier marijuana use, more frequent use, or longer use, will result in a higher chance of these hallucinations a longer time from the users last ingestion of marijuana.

Also, please note that this type of hallucination is not dangerous or sanity-threatening, I've had them and found myself in some strange situations, as have most marijuana users, but it's the sort of thing that makes you go "oh, I'm just fucking stoned". It IS a psychedelic, but it's a mild enough one that when it has some common psychedelic effects, it startles some people.

to sum all that disconnected bullshit up: weed is a very long acting mild psychedelic. Psychedelics are so named because they induce temporary, controled (to varying degrees) psychosis. So yeah, when you're high, it's controlled psychosis.