Doctors: Pot Triggers Psychotic Symptoms
AP: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
LONDON
Oh!
… Is that why I keep thinking the world is coming to an end?
Here’s another study done by the Brits on pot. I wonder why all these “studies” are appearing more frequently on the news services. But this article says on one hand that these studies are not conclusive, and yet they want the government and medical communities to agree that marijuana in not a benign drug, and move it up in class, reversing current cultural trends.
There’s definitely something else behind this because you can come to the same conclusions if you studied the daily use of coffee, sugar, chocolate, salt, aspirin, and a hundred other “benign” and culturally accepted substances if taken to excess. There would absolutely be some measurable increase in some side affect if you take anything into your system without some balance. I can’t wait for the long term affects of staring at computer screens is going to have on everyone’s eyesight, or the impact of text messaging on progressive arthritus in the hands and fingers. Scuse me, I feel a psychotic episode coming on. I think it’s Episode 8, the Revenge of the Menacing Umpire.
Study: Even Infrequent Use of Marijuana Increases Risk of Psychosis by 40 Percent
Friday , July 27, 2007
AP. LONDON
LONDON – New research suggests even infrequent use of marijuana could raise the small but real risk of psychosis by 40 percent.
The scientists found a more disturbing outlook for “heavy users” of pot, those who used it daily or weekly: Their risk for psychosis jumped to a range of 50 percent to 200 percent.
Doctors have long suspected a connection and said the latest findings underline the need to highlight marijuana’s long-term risks. The researchers said they couldn’t prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis.
One of the study’s authors said there could be something else about marijuana users that lead to the psychoses.
The research, paid for by the British Health Department, is being published Friday in medical journal The Lancet.
bullshit i say!
good luck ICC…I hope they make it legal instead…I would have to move back there of course if that happened.
Hey Dan, hey Dan, hey Dan. Nice to read you ole man!
you too fone.
i’ve gone too long without the aid of your wisdom
I would very much like to find out who funded these studies and also who the “many experts” are that expect mary jane to become a class B drug. I also like the fact where they say that
“There could be something else about marijuana users, “like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses,” Zammit said.”
Basically saying that there studies could never fully be proved because the psychoses can be caused by many other factors.
I tell you this: I don’t need a fucking study to tell me about the damaging effects of pot on the brain. Since I quit 6 years ago, after 15 years of use, I experience serious, debilitating depression. I suffer terrible sometimes. I never had that before I became a stoner. In fact I didn’t start getting depressed till after I started smoking pot.
If I could do it over I’d never have touched the stuff. I totally regret my drug use but eh, its part of me and who I am. Makes me mad sometimes tho.
But to quote Phillip Pullman from “The Amber Spyglass”: “And if you help everyone in your worlds to do that, by helping them learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious…”
Pot is not the way.
and it gives you the munchies, like so bad.
Did you take other drugs during the 15 year period? Because some of my friends tell me the same depression stories but they think it is from rolling and to much molly, not from budz.
^A likely story. 
Well yes I did other drugs, many other drugs, but there is no doubt pot smoking causes these problems.
And so do the other drugs.
We should atleast have a fair warning if we are to do these things and we should know what we are getting into.
^A likely story. I don’t see how in your mind there is “no doubt” its just the weed. Its the same exact thing this article says, It says it may be the weed but there is no way to know its not other things.
^Then I guess there is only one way to find out Sir Smells… from your own experience. You have read the warning label. Good luck.
From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maia-szalavitz/reefer-inanity-never-tru_b_58353.html#thc
Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot
Posted July 30, 2007 | 11:25 AM (EST)
Read More: Breaking Media News
stumbleupon :Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot digg: Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot reddit: Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot del.icio.us: Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot
Watching the media cover marijuana is fascinating, offering deep insight into conventional wisdom, bias and failure to properly place science in context. The coverage of a new study claiming that marijuana increases the risk of later psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia by 40% displays many of these flaws.
What are the key questions reporters writing about such a study needs to ask? First, can the research prove causality? Most of the reporting here, to its credit, establishes at some point that it cannot, though you have to read pretty far down in some of it to understand this.
Second – and this is where virtually all of the coverage falls flat – if marijuana produces what seems like such a large jump in risk for schizophrenia, have schizophrenia rates increased in line with marijuana use rates? A quick search of Medline shows that this is not the case – in fact, as I noted here earlier, some experts think they may actually have fallen. Around the world, roughly 1% of the population has schizophrenia (and another 2% or so have other psychotic disorders), and this proportion doesn’t seem to change much. It is not correlated with population use rates of marijuana.
Since marijuana use rates have skyrocketed since the 1940’s and 50’s, going from single digit percentages of the population trying it to a peak of some 60% of high school seniors trying it in 1979 (stabilizing thereafter at roughly 50% of each high school class), we would expect to see this trend have some visible effect on the prevalence of schizophrenia and other psychoses.
When cigarette smoking barreled through the population, lung cancer rose in parallel; when smoking rates fell, lung cancer rates fell. This is not the case with marijuana and psychotic disorders; if it were, we’d be seeing an epidemic of psychosis.
But readers of the AP, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and Reuters were not presented with this information. While CBS/WebMD mentioned the absence of a surge in schizophrenia, it did so by quoting an advocate of marijuana policy reform, rather than citing a study or quoting a doctor. This slants the story by pitting an advocate with an agenda against a presumably neutral medical authority.
Furthermore, very little of the coverage put the risk in context. A 40% increase in risk sounds scary, and this was the risk linked to trying marijuana once, not to heavy use. To epidemiologists, however, a 40% increase is not especially noteworthy-- they usually don’t find risk factors worth worrying about until the number hits at least 200% and some major journals won’t publish studies unless the risk is 300 or even 400%. The marijuana paper did find that heavy use increased risk by 200-300%, but that’s hardly as sexy as try marijuana once, increase your risk of schizophrenia by nearly half!
By contrast, one study found that alcohol has been found to increase the risk of psychosis by 800% for men and 300% for women. Although this study was not a meta-analysis (which looks at multiple studies, as the marijuana research did), it certainly is worth citing to help readers get a sense of the magnitude of the risk in comparison with other drugs linked to psychosis.
Of course, if journalists wanted to do that, they would also cite researchers who disagree with the notion that marijuana poses a large risk of inducing psychosis at all, such as Oxford’s Leslie Iversen, author of one of the key texts on psychopharmacology, who told the Times of London that
“Despite a thorough review the authors admit that there is no conclusive evidence that cannabis use causes psychotic illness. Their prediction that 14 per cent of psychotic outcomes in young adults in the UK may be due to cannabis use is not supported by the fact that the incidence of schizophrenia has not shown any significant change in the past 30 years.”
Such comments don’t help the media stir up reefer madness, which they’ve been doing, quite successfully, for the last few decades. Perhaps covering the marijuana beat makes you crazy.
^written by a stoner
Schizophrenia isn’t the danger. However I did have a friend or two that did develop schizophrenia from lsd. But who’s to say it wouldn’t have developed anyway. Still lsd was the catalyst in both cases.
Psychosis is not limited to schizophrenia. Psychosis being characterized by illusions, delusions, hallucinations, mental confusion and lack of insight into his condition on the part of the patient. The latter being the most important aspect I observe with pot smokers, they don’t see themselves as being sick or having any problem whatsoever. It just points to this lack of insight and delusion that “everything is alright”.
Now, of course, not everyone that ever smokes pot will have such a state of delusion but among longtime heavy smokers it becomes apparent. Just as illness is easy to spot among longtime alcoholics.
Again I never noticed my illness till I stopped the drug and my mind cleared.
In anycase it is clear to this former longtime user that pot robs the mind of clarity and mental health. Propaganda from either side cannot sway my conclusions from 2 decades of pot association.
hmm, interesting observation ICC.
Oh and I suppose we should outlaw food and sugar because people over eat and develop obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and a host of other diseases.
Look, its all about the choices people make. Whether the gov’t bans something or not is largely irrelevant. Pot is illegal but easily accessible. All you need is to be is in the know. The whole point here is one of education and understanding. Knowing precisely what a substance will do to our bodies and mind. Taking responsibility for our life and not relying on the gov’t to light our way. Being your own steward.
Info like these articles on the dangers of pot are there for education.
^Alright, thats it, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!!!
::kneels then wonders what next?::