Study says 1 joint increases chance of mental illness by 40% (merged)

At least its only pussy old GB. (no offense to British citizens, you are all cool, but i don't like your govt much more than i like mine).

GB (haha this means Great Britain, not the OTHER GB) seems to have been mustering up these scare tactics for a while with cannabis. I remember that glass bead shit was relatively recent too...I think not to long around the time they dropped it from a Class A to a class C. Then a barrage of these biased reports , most likely intentionally biased, to further attempt to convince people of the ills of pot.

This is what I think of there so called "mental illness" pot exacerbation issue:

-What's a physical disorder versus a mental one? A physical disorder, say, a broken arm, has ramifications for the individual's ability to interact with his PHYSICAL environment; then, to a less direct extent it can have several social impacts as well, but they are not so pronounced to the injured person as the physical limitations of a broken arm.
Whereas mental disorders, generally speaking, impact one's ability to cooperate and integrate with the society that one is a part of (or not a part of, once they throw you in the loony bin). OBVIOUSLY, there are exceptions to these generalizations, however for this argument that is not necessary to detail.
The point is, what do you get in a society where the drug is frowned upon, demonized, and citizens are barraged with "information" (dogma)about the ills of the drug?

WEED HAS BEEN USED SUCCESSFULLY FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, AND I HIGHLY DOUBT THAT ITS CONTEMPORARY USE IN BRITAIN OR OTHER POLICE STATES INDICATES ANY ACCURATE LINK BTW THE SMOKING OF WEED AND MENTAL 'ILLNESS".

Furthermore, what the F*** is a "disorder" anyway. Frankly, a of people I know who accept the fact that they have a "disorder" are weak minded pussy's dependent on the (guess who) LEGAL drug company's. In my early 20's I SLAMMED into a mental disorder. I did drugs, (including weed) before it. During it. After it.

Instead of demonizing all of my problems into one silly fucking plant, I reviewed my entire life (often times on psychedelics including LSD in addition to pot), and eventually found that although my problems were deeply rooted, they were also manageable, and in some cases, beneficial.
So if someone tells you that you have a "disorder", be sure to personally analyze what they mean by disorder, in the following light: A DISORDER CAN BE AN ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGE IN THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT.

-thank you, and peace out, you crazies!
 
RavenousBlonde said:
'You only need to see one person whose mind has been altered and life irreparably damaged, or talk to their family, to realise that the headlines are not scaremongering but reflect a daily, and preventable, tragedy.'

However, others questioned the link, pointing out there has been little change in rates of schizophrenia in recent years despite the rise in cannabis use and the increasing strength of the drug….

…Thomas Palmer

Mind warped by smoking skunk: Thomas Palmer

Son of a nurse at Broadmoor Thomas Palmer butchered two of his friends during a woodland walk after his mind was warped by smoking skunk - a particularly potent form of cannabis.

Then aged 18, he virtually beheaded 16-year-old Steven Bayliss and repeatedly stabbed Nuttawut Nadauld, 14, near their homes in Wokingham, Berkshire in September 2005.

Palmer had started using the drug at 14. He told doctors he had not been smoking on the day of the killings but admitted to using skunk regularly in the weeks before the brutal attack.
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I, as many others already have, have a bone to pick with the ridiculousness of this article. The part about you only need to see one case to believe is beyond stupid as this is a report about a population not anecdotal evidence. As well as the lack of proven causality. As well as dose titration in response to subjective effects. No more drug is given than the most burnt out hippie smoked back in the day. Dosage curve might be a little steeper, but all the research towards cannabis' innocuousness still applies.

As for little Stevie Palmer. He didn't smoke pot that day. And what is regularly? Here in the states I've seen studies that state that once a month is regular usage. Certainly not my regular usage. Alcoholism defined as 21 drinks a week for men and 14 for women. 20 drinks a week is dandy yet one joint (non-quantified joint harumph...) is regular usage.

Peace,
PL
 
StoneHappyMonday said:
Now you're being silly. Generally speaking, lung cancer appears to take much longer to develop than supposed psychosis induced by drug use. We are being presented with example after example of young adults, mainly aged 20-30, who are being said to develop psychosis possibly after only one joint.

No other factors and variables are being taken into account. For example in the UK we have permanently high unemployment, where 1,000,000+ (+ a lot) is perfectly acceptable. Where the divide between rich and poor has gathered pace. A society based on the attainment of material goods. A society that is writing off more and more young people in school from an early age. Etc etc.

On this basis, those of us living here, particularly those of us who have been part of a drug sub-culture for 30 years, have one or two little cynicisms to overcome before we swallow any more reefer madness. We can see the political machinations behind this. Its a shame your enquiring mind cannot.
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it's a shame your inquiring mind cannot accept that we simply have a difference of opinion on this issue. i believe that there is causal link between cannabis and mental problems. i think it's silly to believe that getting stoned all day every day for years and years couldn't cause problems for some (even many) people. i honestly don't see how anyone could dupe themselves into believing that.

secondly, you claim that "No other factors and variables are being taken into account." this is totally untrue. every single study i've read on the link between cannabis and mental problems has taken the time to correct for confounding factors. obviously, the studies have their limitations as is always the case with a quasi-experimental design. never the less, in my view and experience, the evidence supports the hypothesis that smoking large amounts of cannabis may cause psychotic spectrum type mental disorders. i don't believe one joint could, except for someone who was already on the breaking point. but cannabis abuse over a number of years takes its toll on the mind. i know this from experience and i don't need any scientist to tell me.
 
WEED HAS BEEN USED SUCCESSFULLY FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, AND I HIGHLY DOUBT THAT ITS CONTEMPORARY USE IN BRITAIN OR OTHER POLICE STATES INDICATES ANY ACCURATE LINK BTW THE SMOKING OF WEED AND MENTAL 'ILLNESS".
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that's why they did the dutch study on a group of people where cannabis use was highly accepted. guess what? the link still persisted.
 
Guardian on cannabis schizophrenia claims

Just thought i'd reproduce this here


Cannabis data comes to the crunch
By Ben Goldacre, The Guardian
Saturday July 28 2007

You know when cannabis hits the news you're in for a bit of fun, and this week's story about cannabis causing psychosis was no exception. The paper was a systematic review and then a "meta-analysis" of the data which has already been collected, looking at whether people who smoke cannabis are subsequently more likely to have symptoms of "psychosis" or diagnoses of schizophrenia. Meta-analysis is, simply, where you gather together all of the numbers from all the studies you can find into one big spreadsheet, and do one big calculation on all of them at once, to get the most statistically powerful result possible.

Now I don't like to carp, but it's interesting that the Daily Mail got even these basics wrong, under their headline "Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%". Firstly "the researchers, from four British universities, analysed the results of 35 studies into cannabis use from around the world. This suggested that trying cannabis only once was enough to raise the risk of schizophrenia by 41%."

In fact they identified 175 studies which might have been relevant, but on reading them, it turned out that there were just 11 relevant papers, describing seven actual datasets. The Mail made this figure up to "35 studies" by including 24 separate papers which the authors also found on cannabis and depression, although the Mail didn't mention depression at all.

They also said that "previous studies have shown a clear link between cannabis use in the teenage years and mental illness in later life". They then described some of these previous studies. These were the very studies that are summarised in the new Lancet paper.

But what was left out is as interesting as what was added in. The authors were clear - as they always are - that there were problems with a black-and-white interpretation of their data, and that cause and effect could not be stated simply. For ongoing daily users, as an example, it's difficult to be clear that cannabis is causing people to have a mental illness, because their symptoms may simply be due to being high on cannabis all the time. Perhaps they'd be fine if they were clean.

It was also interesting to see how the risk was numerically reported. The most dramatic figure is always the "relative risk increase", or rather: "cannabis doubles the risk of psychosis", "cannabis increases the risk by 40%". Because schizophrenia is comparatively rare, translated this into real numbers this works out - if the figures in the paper are correct, and causality is accepted - that about 800 yearly cases of schizophrenia are attributable to cannabis. This is not belittling the risk, merely expressing it clearly.

But what's really important, of course, is what you do with this data. Firstly, you can mispresent it, and scare people. Obviously it feels great to be so self-righteous, but people will stop taking you seriously. After all, you're talking to a population of young people who have worked out that you routinely exaggerate the dangers of drugs, not least of all with the ridiculous "modern cannabis is 25 times stronger" fabrication so beloved by the media and politicians.

And craziest of all is the fantasy that reclassifying cannabis will stop six million people smoking it, and so eradicate those 800 extra cases of psychosis. If anything, for all drugs, increased prohibition may create market conditions where more concentrated and dangerous forms are more commercially viable. We're talking about communities, and markets, with people in them, after all: not molecules and neuroreceptors.
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I do have a soft spot for debunking :)

[Edited for format/separated personal comments. f to the f]
 
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Nobody ever looks on the bright side of these studies. Nobody ever mentions how cannabis may help the dormant schizophrenic be everyone that they can be. Maximal selves-realization, in other words.


Seriously, I think it's entirely plausible that cannabis may trigger a latent mental illness in some users. Virtually all chemical substances trigger undesirable side effects in some people.

The question in my mind is not whether it may do so-I think it's safe to assume that it will in a certain percentage of users-but rather, whether that percentage justifies characterizing the substance as an inherently unsafe one.

In this case, I would agree that the figures cited sound ludicrous.
 
burn out said:
it's a shame your inquiring mind cannot accept that we simply have a difference of opinion on this issue. i believe that there is causal link between cannabis and mental problems.
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I believe cannabis may trigger pre-existing problems. I don't see what evidence you have to say that cause has been established.

i think it's silly to believe that getting stoned all day every day for years and years couldn't cause problems for some (even many) people
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I think its silly to state many people in that sentence without qualifying it with what constitutes many.

But besides that you are once again missing the political context. The emphasis is not on years and years of smoking. We are being presented with reefer madness-like stuff about one joint equalling psychosis. I think Glowbug put it well in the last post.

whether that percentage justifies characterizing the substance as an inherently unsafe one.
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Going to college precipitates psychological breakdown and suicide in many (if we're using your definition of many, i.e a few hundred) - are we saying that pushing yourself educationally is so dangerous we'd better stop degrees now?

i honestly don't see how anyone could dupe themselves into believing that.
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30 years of drug culture meeting hundreds if not thousands of other users.

secondly, you claim that "No other factors and variables are being taken into account." this is totally untrue.
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Interesting use of the word 'totally'. Come on then, give me all the examples of these cannabis studies that operate within a political framework that takes into account the pressures to succeed materially in an ever-widening class divide. That compares the rise in so-called cannabis-psychosis cases with the concomitant rise in unemployment and lack of opportunity for the most disadvantaged. Show me the large-scale studies that successfully separate poly-drug use from cannabis users only.

I remind you, I don't doubt any chemical may trigger pre-existing conditions in some people. I am asking you to justify the presentation of these statistics in this latest report.

but cannabis abuse over a number of years takes its toll on the mind. i know this from experience and i don't need any scientist to tell me.
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No. You 'know' that large-scale cannabis use MAY take a toll on the mind. And for someone who is prepared to argue against the 'cannabis lobby', which usually entails criticizing us for being so dogmatic in our blinkeredness, you sure have an over-definite way of stating your own side.
 
Just thought of something...

Given this is a British study and those darn Limeys smoke tobacco with their ganja it seems plain that it is self-medicating behaviour as something like 90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. I'm sure the anxiolytic effects of cannabis are part of that as well.

There is no way to support the thought that the actual chemicals induce psychosis. There is just a relationship that they tend to appear together. Cannabis lifestyle can be one that isn't healthy and leads away from important stabilizing relationships. Another important aspect of schizophrenia management.

Peace,
PL
 
I believe cannabis may trigger pre-existing problems. I don't see what evidence you have to say that cause has been established.
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the fact that the link still persists even people screened for pre-existing problems. healthy, "normal" people with no history of mental illness are still at a greater risk if they smoke cannabis. the fact that heavy cannabis use has long term physiological affects on the brain. the fact that i've experienced mental problems from years of heavy cannabis usage.

of course as i've said over and over again, you can't prove a causal relationship through quasi-experimental designs, so if you don't want to believe there is a causal relationship, then don't. but in my own opinion, there is one. also, saying that cannabis may trigger pre-existing problems is kind of like saying tobacco can trigger latent lung cancer, since not all tobacco smokers get lung cancer (in fact most don't). but the fact that there is no way to tell the difference between someone who is susceptible to tobacco induced lung cancer and someone who is not makes essentially makes it acceptable to say tobacco may cause lung cancer.

I think its silly to state many people in that sentence without qualifying it with what constitutes many.

But besides that you are once again missing the political context. The emphasis is not on years and years of smoking. We are being presented with reefer madness-like stuff about one joint equalling psychosis. I think Glowbug put it well in the last post.
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i never said i was defending the british media's assertions, i am simply saying i believe there is some truth behind the notion that cannabis leads to mental problems.

Going to college precipitates psychological breakdown and suicide in many (if we're using your definition of many, i.e a few hundred) - are we saying that pushing yourself educationally is so dangerous we'd better stop degrees now?
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first off, your analogy is flawed because it can be argued that the benefits of acquiring a degree outweigh the risks while the benefits of being a heavy cannabis user do not outweigh the risks. secondly, i'm not saying cannabis should be illegal or all usage should cease, i'm simply saying i believe cannabis (especially long term heavy usage) can cause mental problems.

30 years of drug culture meeting hundreds if not thousands of other users.
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all the criticisms you apply to the studies apply here as well. if you meet one hundred people, chances are at least some of them will be fucked in the head. if you meet one hundred cannabis smokers, again, chances some of them will be fucked in the head. you will have no way of knowing what caused what though.

for example, if you met me in real life, chances are you wouldn't be able to tell that i had been heavy cannabis user or that i still suffer mental symptoms from it.

Interesting use of the word 'totally'. Come on then, give me all the examples of these cannabis studies that operate within a political framework that takes into account the pressures to succeed materially in an ever-widening class divide. That compares the rise in so-called cannabis-psychosis cases with the concomitant rise in unemployment and lack of opportunity for the most disadvantaged. Show me the large-scale studies that successfully separate poly-drug use from cannabis users only.

I remind you, I don't doubt any chemical may trigger pre-existing conditions in some people. I am asking you to justify the presentation of these statistics in this latest report.
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no study is perfect. but if you search "cannabis psychosis" on pubmed you will find numerous examples to browse over.
 
Pimp Lazy said:
Just thought of something...

Given this is a British study and those darn Limeys smoke tobacco with their ganja it seems plain that it is self-medicating behaviour as something like 90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. I'm sure the anxiolytic effects of cannabis are part of that as well.

There is no way to support the thought that the actual chemicals induce psychosis. There is just a relationship that they tend to appear together. Cannabis lifestyle can be one that isn't healthy and leads away from important stabilizing relationships. Another important aspect of schizophrenia management.

Peace,
PL
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Evidence from 6 longitudinal studies in 5 countries shows that regular cannabis use predicts an increased risk of a schizophrenia diagnosis or of reporting symptoms of psychosis. These relations persisted after controlling for confounding variables, such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relation did not seem to be a result of cannabis use to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis. A contributory causal relation is biologically plausible because psychotic disorders involve disturbances in the dopamine neurotransmitter systems with which the cannabinoid system interacts, as demonstrated by animal studies and one human provocation study.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...ez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
 
That's one way to say it is "plausible". Wonder if there are concurrent positive effects.

It helps with mania and the converse for some... let's just say I know a guy... heh heh...

Peace,
PL
 
Never trust the media on pot
Huffington Post

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.

Link
 
i think n4k33n summed it up perfectly in that post, it was a perfect argument against burnt out's views.

burnt out, i believe your drug use released a latent mental disorder at an earlier stage than usual or maybe you smoked some pot and experienced a psychotic episode so you automatically linked the two. pot can aggrevate psychotic disorders but it can also treat them, as with all psychedelics. but the fact remains, pot doesn't 'cause' psychoses.

ps. the mind is manipulated and altered by events, people, substances, experiences in life, some of it is negative some of it positive. its up to you what you do with the negative experiences. is a negative drug experience a pointless journey? absolutley not.
 
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