July 08, 2005

• Oh, thank God! I've been sooo worried. (loads another bowl)
• Hmmm...what about this one? I think most people underestimate the danger of getting mental problems by smoking pot. I mean, heroin bodycounts make their way into the newspapers but who cares about mental illness - statistics? (at least here in germany, noone does.) I've seen plenty of people leaving their homes for a longer stay at a mental hospital - because of weed... Just sayin'...
• People with existing psychoses have episodes triggered by cannabis; it doesn't create psychosis in people who are not already ill.
• That's what they all say. Yet I don't know what this should mean. That maryjane is not intrinsically evil, just as, say another plant is not evil in virtue by being itself? Sure thing! But I still prefer the counterfactual scenario: If X wouldn't have smoked ten pipes a day, he wouldn't have developed a psychotic episode. That of course does not imply that everyone smoking pot will become crazy or so.
• if one does not trigger the psychoses, it will eventually swell up to proportions that trigger itself. marijuana just speeds up a process and that ain't bad. better to get it out in the open than let it snowball below the surface. pot does a body/mind some good. even carl sagan says so
• 1969! Where have those great times gone? But things were different then and that especially counts for the amount of THC in cannabis plants. Today a plant has about a 5x higher amount of THC than back then - at least in europe, where you can find amazingly big cannabis farms in the netherlands. And those guys are no longer the romantic gardeners that one would like to think of when having his/her evening pipe. The way those plants are genetically manipulated would make the typical enviromentalist weed-smoker shiver in his boots (when confronted with a similarly grown tomatoe). That's no longer the way it was in the 60s.
• all that might be different though in America...
• No, in America it's all hydroponic and one in basements or closets. There is quite a bit of unsettling genetic manipulation, but cannabis is the ideal plant to do it with. Micheal Pollen's The Botany of Desire has a really good section on this.
• "There was time for only one question, said the moderator, and San Francisco oncologist Donald Abrams, M.D., was already at the microphone: "You don't see any positive correlation, but in at least one category [marijuana-only smokers and lung cancer], it almost looked like there was a negative correlation, i.e., a protective effect. Could you comment on that?" "Yes," said Tashkin. "The odds ratios are less than one almost consistently, and in one category that relationship was significant, but I think that it would be difficult to extract from these data the conclusion that marijuana is protective against lung cancer. But that is not an unreasonable hypothesis." Now wouldn't THAT be totally sweet!
• BBC's Panorama did a very interesting programme on teenage dope smoking and mental illness about 6 weeks ago. The evidence of some sort of link seems overwhelming - but the programme said some people have more of a genetic disposition to being affected than others. Mrs Dotcom is a GP who specialises in drug misuse which has (sadly) rather revised my attitude to dope ...
• 5x the THC just means you need to smoke 1/5th the amount for the same high. it really doesn't take a lot of smoking to get high and that is probably one of the reasons it doesn't correlate to lung cancer. furthermore, drug misusers and casual marijuana smokers need be distinguished to make any real argument.. . .just like we'd all scoff the fool that throws all drinkers into dante's pits of alchoholic despair. there are people that drink alcohol and don't misuse it. there are people that smoke pot and don't misuse it. and don't call it dope..it just ain't politically correct. you might give my bud a complex.
• also, one could make a solid argument that teenagers that make the choice to smoke marijuana have pre-existing conditions for mental illness. . .and i don't just mean genetically. What in their environment has them making a choice to do illegal drugs at an age when they are not emotionally, mentally, or (dare i say) spiritually prepared for it? i didn't smoke until i was old enough to fully process the experience. this came after university and personal studies into addictive behavior, substance abuse, world religions, comparative mythology, shamanism, philosophy, the connections between physics and ancient eastern wisdom, and so on. throwing a 14 or 15 year old kid into the world of the marijuana high without a perspective and without self-awareness and without the tools to make it a functional high would likely contribute to any impending psychological crack up.
• joint years ( joints per day x 365 ) So, just how "old" is everyone here? Damn interesting stuff here
• What in their environment has them making a choice to do illegal drugs at an age when they are not emotionally, mentally, or (dare i say) spiritually prepared for it? Try peer-pressure for one. Hell, it doesn't even need to be pressure IMHO. Perhaps in some cases those with "pre-existing conditions" may have an inclination for choosing to smoke marijuana, but the statement that "teenagers that make the choice to smoke marijuana have pre-existing conditions for mental illness" seems awfully backwards to me. In my case, the first time I inhaled [*cough *cough] was with a small group of trusted friends. We were having a grand fucking good time. We found ourselves on top of hill in the middle of a heavily-wooded area. Someone pulled out a joint - one thing led to another... It was an experience that was quite fun and memorable. Did we all have a pre-existing condition for some mental illness? If so, I'd like to know what the hell is wrong with me!
• Not all of you, perhaps some of you. People with a prediisposition toward mental illness may be more likely to participate in illegal activities or behave in ways that majority culture finds unacceptable. Marijuanna is a fairly accessible and harmless way to do both.
• Marijuana does not make you crazy. There is no such thing as a chemical that makes you crazy. It is not possible to introduce a chemical into a sane person's brain that turns them into a permanent psychotic, any more than there is a chemical you can introduce into a person's brain to make them a permanent genius. The brain does not work like that. Saying so is equivalent to the 'reefer madness' scare shit that went on in the '30s, like you're immediately going to turn into a murderer if you smoke one joint. Or that it is chemically linked to heroin addiction. These are myths that have been scientifically laughed out of the court. I tell you this from the perspective of a person who has 2 schizophrenics in his immediate family, who has worked with neurologists for over 10 years in dealing with neurological issues in this family. Marijuana will trigger psychotic episodes in people with a predisposition for that, same as emotional stress will do it, same as alcohol will do it. It happens, but it is not the marijuana, it is the pre-existant chemical inbalance in the brain. If Marijuana made people crazy, there would be a lot more people running around psychotic than there are now, believe you me. Everyone who hangs around smokers knows one guy who went over the edge, but because mental illness is a social stigma, you only notice them. You don't notice the doctors, writers, lawyers, etc. You only notice the train wreck. It's true, teenagers and people prone to depression shouldn't smoke marijuana. They also shouldn't drink or drive too fast, either. There is an element of risk in life. Imbibing a psychoactive chemical is not a risk-free venture, but at least we know that the disadvantages are not as bad as they are made out to be by many. It's up to the adult to make the decision with their own body. Personally, I wouldn't be alive without cannabis, I would have committed suicide long ago; it's gotten me thru' some bad times. I highly recommend it to everyone but nutcases. ;) Don't smoke it, kids. Honestly. That way it leaves more for me. BTW I'm really dry at the moment.. help? :D
• sugermilk, i should have clarified -- in certain cases. i think there are countless undocumented situations where high school students get their smoke on and have an enriching experience and are completely well adapted and developed human beings later on in life. in using myself as an example, i meant that i, for one, was certainly not ready at that age. most (not all) of high school students are probably not ready to do pot or alcohol or shrooms (etc) responsibly. if i would have continued to give into peer pressure when i was in high school, i'd be behind bars.
• also, the situation you described sounded more like mature consent than high school peer pressure. on preview: i'm with chy - though i'm a nutcase and i highly recommend it to myself. i've been dry for almost 10 months now. . . and this seems to be heavily contributing to higher frequencies of obsessive compulsive behavior. damn korea!
• Why do kids start doing drugs? I don't think one should take a disposition for mental illness into account when trying to answer this question, since there are a lot of much easier and more plausible answers around: eg they might be just curious (as I was), they might have had some typical teenie-problems (as I did) or they were just tryin to be as cool as the other kids (yup!). That's a whole bunch of reasons to explain the phenomena 'why kids start doing drugs'. The other question, namely whether cannabis can cause psychotic episodes, shouldn't be answered with reference to some kind of egg-hen problem, just to keep maryjane in its nice n innocent light it often is seen. It's a drug, it messes with the brain (admittedly sometimes that's really nice & helpful), but everyone should know what he/she is doing with his / her grey matter.
• off topic: david lee roth is replacing howard stern. how pathetic. and this after tucker carlson replaced bill moyers. what next? dennis miller replaces jon stewart? sheeeesh! i need to mess with my grey matter.
• Thanks for the clarification uhmyang. Point well-taken. Personally, I wouldn't be alive without cannabis, I would have committed suicide long ago C'mon, don't give the bud all the credit! Something tells me that something more powerful and wise is stirring upstairs. Also, I must say that you sum this subject up very eloquently each time it has manifested itself on MoFi. On preview: also, the situation you described sounded more like mature consent than high school peer pressure. Ok, you may have a point there. Perhaps it was 60% mature consent, 40% peer pressure. Damn... I surrender!
• monkeyfilter: where high school students get their smoke on and have an enriching experience
• I broke my.. ass. The doctor's report said broken ass. Fuck.
• all that might be different though in America... posted by Encephalon at 12:47PM UTC on July 08, 2005 No, in America it's all hydroponic and one in basements or closets.(Weezel) In Sequoia National Park, renowned for its majestic trees, rangers confiscated eight tons of marijuana in a single week last September. "We have a tremendous influx of Mexican growers," says Ross Butler, a special agent for the federal Bureau of Land Management. "They are sophisticated. They have guns. And we don't know much about who they are."Time magazine article How nice it would be if it were all hydroponic or small personal use backyard growers. I do not necessarily buy into Time Magazine's scary scenarios about banditos in the National Parks, but another article that I looked for (but didn't find) showed the empty bottles of pesticides and fertilizers that National Park based growers used and dumped--following the effluent stream after finding dead fishies is how Ranger Rick tracked down the desperados, who had an encampment of about 30 men in the wilderness of a Mt. Shasta area park...
• /applause for Chy My own personal experience, I started smoking pot at age 17. I smoked a great deal of pot in college and for several years after simply because I enjoyed the mind-altering experience. I stopped smoking it regularly because it frequently make me feel paranoid and maudlin, if I smoked it excessively. However, I was slightly neurotic before I smoked it, and I'm still slightly neurotic now. There has been no major brain change. And I smoked it every day for several years.
• On preview, I'm not applauding your broken ass. Sorry to hear about your ass crack.
• Cannabis as a risk factor for psychosis: systematic review - Eleven studies were identified examining the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. Seven were included in the meta-analysis, with a derived odds ratio (fixed effects) of 2·9 (95% confidence interval = 2.4-3.6) Early use of cannabis did appear to increase the risk of psychosis. For psychotic symptoms, a dose-related effect of cannabis use was seen, with vulnerable groups including individuals who used cannabis during adolescence, those who had previously experienced psychotic symptoms, and those at high genetic risk of developing schizophrenia. With the odds of psychosis normally at 2%, a 6% risk basically means that cannabis-triggered psychosis isn't random viz. you have to be vulnerable. A broader point that should be raised, is the definition of psychosis. According to Western science, depersonalization..etc are psychotic symptoms i.e. unwanted artifacts of brain functioning. To some smokers, it's the desired endpoint. IOW, which constitute acceptable mental states and which don't,is a culturally-derived thing. Western culture, at large, having not had exposure to psychedelics or cannabis as a drug, have looked upon such states as "psychosis". This is not to say that all degrees of psychosis are just social categorizations, but the stage at which they are serious impediments is farther than what medicine and Western society places the boundary at.
• The problem with pot is that it makes you see through all the bullshit society has been programming you into. That`s why it scares the ruling powers that be. You`re supposed to walk in a certain line and if people to start questioning authority, who would fight their wars, and do their dirty work, when they can just say fuck it and be stoned all day? This is old news, it was decided that pot did`nt cause cancer back in the seventies. It`s just the circle game they play to keep it from ever being legalized. Soon there will be another study saying it does indeed cause cancer. An interesting article concerning the legalization of marijuana, if you have not come across it, is The Shadow of the Swatika--The Elkhorn Manifesto, The Real Reason the Government Won't Debate Medical Cannabis and Industrial Hemp Re-legalization-- http://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html
• Crazy anti-drug people: stop insisting pot is horrible and putting people in jail for it- it aint helping.. Crazy pro-drug people: stop insisting pot is wonderful for you and has no bad effects whatsoever - it aint helping.
• I think that's the point, Dr Jimmy.
• I think that's the point, Dr Jimmy.
• ...the danger of getting mental problems by smoking pot. if by "mental problems" you mean, "baked lol"... anyway, check out marijuana myths & facts. and if you support marijuana law reform be sure to check out NORML and then get active.
• Get clear, Wedge. You can't do any more good back there. ;)
• Crazy anti-drug people: stop insisting pot is horrible and putting people in jail for it- it aint helping.. Crazy pro-drug people: stop insisting pot is wonderful for you and has no bad effects whatsoever - it aint helping. drjimmy11, the point is, the balance is not right in the middle. NORML acknowledges "Some cannabis use is harmful; most is not.". No serious reformer suggests that no one is harmed by cannabis, but for the DEA, a drug has potential for "abuse" solely on the basis if it can be used nonmedically. Instead of looking at cannabis as a bad drug with some good effects or good drug with bad effects, it should be evaluated on context. And in balance, most use isn't harmful, and that doesn't deny that some is. In simpler words, there's no grounds for a delicate balancing act.
• The truth, though, from a long time druggie: this post was not meant to promote cannabis, merely to announce a finding and dispel a myth. If I was a parent, I would certainly try to prevent my kids from smoking pot until they were working and out of the house, or had demonstrated mature control over their own lives. I would be far happier, mind you, to hear my kids were smoking pot and listening to music up in the attic room than going out and drinking beer surreptitiously. Anyway, you can't fucking control your kids lives like robots, and parents who try to do so make a big mistake. Kids will just kick away harder. I've never honestly seen anyone do anything violent or stupid under the influence of pot, I'm sure someone somewhere must have, but from my experience, alcohol is far worse for youngsters and adults. The worst I ever did was walk around the woods looking at squirrels and imagining I was an Elf, or listening to Rush's seminal album Moving Pictures up in Andy Pearson's drum room in Bekesbourne and talking about time travel. Also sex is really good when you're stoned, just ask Darshon.
• ...or listening to Rush's seminal album Moving Pictures up in Andy Pearson's drum room in Bekesbourne and talking about time travel. Heh. Substitute 2112 for Moving Pictures and change the names & places, and that was me.
• Did someone here order a pizza?
• Dave's not here.
• >The problem with pot is that it makes you see through all the bullshit society has been programming you into. That`s why it scares the ruling powers that be. The "ruling powers that be" have two options for dealing with revolutionaries like yourself: 1.) throw your ass in jail for twenty years, or 2.) let you sit there and be stoned and do nothing like stoned folks do. Neither option causes them any particular trouble. If you enjoy being stoned, go to it, but don't make it into a revolutionary act.
• The "ruling powers that be" have two options for dealing with revolutionaries like yourself: 1.) throw your ass in jail for twenty years, or 2.) let you sit there and be stoned and do nothing like stoned folks do. Neither option causes them any particular trouble. If you enjoy being stoned, go to it, but don't make it into a revolutionary act. STB: Thank you. I've had to sit through that same lecture about "the man" way too many times while trying to make a purchase from some self-righteous hippy. Nothing bores me more than someone who needs to justify their lifestyle.
• What drjimmy11 said.
• "The ruling powers that be", if you have`nt been convicted of felony marijuana possesion with intent to sell, then maybe you should listen to "self-righteous hippy". Nothing bores ME more than someone who needs to justify their lifestyle.
• Nothing bores ME more than someone who needs to justify their lifestyle. Well, at least we agree. :-)
• Nothing bores ME more than someone who needs to justify their paragraphs. Ragged right forever!
• Nothing bores ME more than.. what whuh.. uh um.. fuck I'm really hungry.
• MonkeyFilter: fuck I'm really hungry
• No serious reformer suggests that no one is harmed by cannabis, but for the DEA, a drug has potential for "abuse" solely on the basis if it can be used nonmedically. For the record, I am a member of FAMM (families against mandatory minimums), and the stories I read in their magazine about people in jail for 90 years for pot "crimes" make me sick. Maybe you are right about the "serious" reformers, but there are a lot of not-so-serious reformers out there and I dont feel they're helping very much. I think reforming the insane sentencing guidelines has to be priority number one- if people still get a traffic ticket-type thing for smoking pot in public, that would honestly be fine with me.
• ps: FAMM website *nice to know this is blocked by my work as a "drugs" site, even though it is a lobbying organization to reform sentencing laws.
• if people still get a traffic ticket-type thing for smoking pot in public, that would honestly be fine with me. Great, get cops with quotas to go after pot smokers. If one just wants money, tax it and ban public smoking. but there are a lot of not-so-serious reformers out there They are the ones who are (wrongly) extrapolating from their benign personal experience. The true picture is at the population scale.
• I've never honestly seen anyone do anything violent or stupid under the influence of pot, I've seen plenty of behavior I could label as befuddled and/or lethargic, but your dead right about the violent bit. Me and my friends have joked about this for years (decades!?!) The line goes something like this: "Dude, if I could get up off this couch I would kick your, your.... um, your... what were we talking about?
• This article is bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. This is somebody who hears what they want to hear, then tells the world what they heard. As a research scientist, I hate this type of person. We spend years doing careful research, making damn sure we don't overstate our results. Then a journalist, perhaps 'journalist', reads our publication or hears us at a conference, and tells the world that smoking pot doesn't cause cancer, or being a little overweight is healthier than being within the doctor-recommended BMI range, or that a cure for mad cow disease is just months away. Fucking assholes. The first sentence tipped me off that this guy doesn't know what he's talking about: 'Marijuana smoking -"even heavy longterm use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airwaves, or esophagus, Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.' It certainly doesn't cause cancer of the airwaves, because airwaves don't get cancer - nor are they a part of the human body. It's not a spelling mistake - he mentions airwaves a few times in the article. He just misheard the word 'airway', and didn't bother to actually read Tashkin's research. If he did, he would have found that there is an increased risk for malignant primary adult-onset glioma associated with smoking marijuana. "Individuals who smoked marijuana at least once a month had an increased risk for MPAG, although no dose-response relation was observed." (2.8-fold increased risk) - from The Risk for Malignant Primary Adult-Onset Glioma in a Large, Multiethnic, Managed-Care Cohort: Cigarette Smoking and Other Lifestyle Behaviors in Journal of Neuro-Oncology, 2004. That's another thing I hate - the article doesn't actually cite the research, or give you enough info to find the study from which Gardner is semi-quoting results. Maybe it just isn't published yet, and Tashkin is about to publish a paper that goes against everything he has found before linking mj smoking with cancer. But I doubt it. (Also, the Sidney paper the article mentions did find an increased risk of cancer with smoking pot, just not lung cancer. And although it sounds impressive that they studied 64,000 people, only ~1400 had cancer, and since the mean age was 33, there's a good chance that the cancers people were expecting just hadn't shown up yet.)
• (applauds dr. j) 'Twas something on Google News this week along the lines of a survey (PDF) of local American law enforcement agencies, which identified (or spun, I suppose) methamphetamine as the U.S.'s biggest drug problem. There is much more harmful stuff on the street than pot.
• I've never honestly seen anyone do anything violent or stupid under the influence of pot I have seen it plenty of times. Up until I went to college, I believed the myth of the benign hippie laying down and listening to Dark Side of the Moon. But then i saw plenty of people get violent while high (usually drunk as well) - like just about any intoxicating drug, it releases inhibitions. People who are likely to have violent urges in the first place will be more likely to act on them when stoned. Not saying pot "causes" it, but it happens. I also saw plenty of benign laying down and listening to Pink Floyd, mind you
• oh and ps same conversation at MeFi, where debate seems to be centered around if the poster was justified in using all caps in the headline...
• But then i saw plenty of people get violent while high (usually drunk as well) Confounding factor? where debate seems to be centered around if the poster was justified in using all caps in the headline Go read it again.
• Marijuana baked in cookies, brownies, etc., surely is much safer? Having safely quit a long term tobacco habit, I don't like to inhale marijuana smoke, meself, for fear it would lead to the hard stuff. Digs deep in freezer for last brownie, inspired by thread.
• the one thing psychologists can tell us for sure is that they know nothing for sure. the conversations here about violent behavior and psychoses account for 'correleations'. and while my MBA coworker insists that statistics don't lie, those of us in the social sciences know that correlations never prove causations. the human pscyhe is a far too vast and complicated fabric to make judgements of causation based on chi sqaures and factor analyses. "Statistics can prove anything. 60% of all people know that!" - Homer Simpson
• It`s a NORML article, and the founder of NORML destroyed any crediblilty it had built up when he "narked out" his advisor. see http://www.hightimes.com/ht/news/content.php?bid=193&aid=24 And a little side note, John Kerry was in full support if not behind the "paraquat spraying scandal" of the seventies.(reported in Counterpunch). Everytime there has been a serious debate over the legalization, that bitch "cocaine" has managed to overshadow it. When they started smoking cocaine--crack- all hope was lost forever of it becoming legal.
• *giggles helplessly*
• As stated above, I think the article is crap. Doesn't mean the research is crap, though. So I've just emailed Dr. Tashkin for a copy of his study, or summary of the research. If he gets back to me, I'll post it here.
• Or rather, I'll post my thoughts on it here, probably not the actual article or summary (unless Tashkin requests it).
• Man, somebody's gotta open a window in here.
• Oh wow, man. All in all it's just one more brick in the wall. O-M-G. *falls over giggling* *looks for snacks*
• *thankful for latest monkeycdswap, esp schad cd right now*
• Thanks, yentruoc, let's get some facts in here.
• Let's rock those airwaves! Other minor fact problem: joints per day x 365 isn't joint-years, it's just joints per year. I'd like to know how Tashkin really calculated it.
• well, I can't claim to have closely read every single comment here (or the main link, as it happens) so sorry if someone already said this, but an important thing to keep in mind re mental illness and drug use, of any kind, is the self-medication angle. even if you havent had some psychotic episode yet, but have an incipient illness of that severity, you may already feel quite a need for something to...relieve you, of difficult or unpleasant feelings/thoughts/etc., many mentally ill people who are undiagnosed or lack resources for proper medical care wind up using drugs (including alcohol) to try to feel better... I worked with the children of a lot of self-medicating mentally ill (and socially ill, if you will) people, its very very common.
• I'm a teenager, I smoke, nobody "made" me do it but myself, and I'm completely sane. I'm not sure what else to say, or how to say it.
• A follow up to the "BBC's Panorama" programme that dickdotcom linked to above. Cannabis and psychosis: The evidence
• >and I'm completely sane. This is pretty subjective...
• Reefer Inanity: Never Trust the Media on Pot
• Okay.