Posted on 11/21/2004 9:15:23 PM PST by april15Bendovr
The truth about marijuana. Me
Posted on 11/21/2004 9:00:46 PM PST by april15Bendovr
I was asked to write this for my hospital newsletter. I hope it will help people here to understand a little bit better.
The truth about marijuana As a psychiatric counselor, many clients report to me that at an early age they suffered from anxiety, stress, agitation and depression. In an effort to avoid or treat their problems, many decided to medicate themselves with alcohol, marijuana or other street drugs. And while the problems of alcohol addiction are well-known, there is a popular myth that marijuana is an innocuous and harmless drug. Unfortunately, marijuana's addictive repercussions can be just as devastating as alcohol.
The Hazelden Foundation, which runs treatment centers for chemical dependency, has produced an educational documentary videotape titled "Marijuana, the Escape to Nowhere," about addictive issues, side effects and marijuana's use as a mood altering substance. Participants in the video report resorting to acts of desperation, such as scraping bongs and pot pipes and pulling their bedroom dresser out from the wall, to retrieve just enough marijuana to give them their next high. Many of my clients as a psychiatric counselor have recounted the same kinds of behavior.
I believe it's imperative that our society understand the addictive nature of marijuana and its harmful side effects. The drug has gained support from people with various ailments who praise the drug for its potential use in treating pain and nausea medically. Although there's a synthetic prescription pill developed for this purpose (Marinol), advocates for smoking the leaf continue to push for marijuana cigarette legalization. Advocates also argue that pot has few and short-term--side effects, if any. I believe such a claim is dangerously wrong.
In Oldsmobile car ads, the slogan was: "It's not your father's Oldsmobile." Well, the same can be said for marijuana today. Hazelden reports the amount of THC (the main active chemical) in marijuana has increased 5 times since 1974, with the typical strength today being 15 percent. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Intelligence Division December Report 2000 states that a form of marijuana called BC Bud (British Columbia), with Canadian growers using sophisticated cultivating techniques, has increased THC levels from 15 percent to 25 percent, compared with 2 percent in 1970.
There's evidence to support claims of long-term damage. Studies referenced in the Hazelden booklet "Marijuana: Current Facts, Figures and Information," by Brent Q. Hafen, Ph.D., and David Soulier, show long-term and permanent damage. This book cites research using instruments to trace brain waves, showing slight changes in the brain's electrical activity from marijuana use. Other studies cited in the book, using electrodes placed deep inside the brain stem, showed that the effects of marijuana use lingered. Researchers at Tulane University studied long-term effects, revealing damage to brain cells and nerve synapses in monkeys. A 2-month to 5-year study at the University of California Davis revealed, via CAT scan, damage to the brains of monkeys from long-term use.
Visual signs of long-term pot smoking are poor motor coordination, uncontrolled laughter, a lag or hesitation between thoughts, and unsteady hands. At one time, these were all thought to be short-term side effects--now known in many cases to be long-term with frequent use, according to a 1968 study by researchers W.H. McGlothin and L.J. West, published in the Hazelden booklet mentioned above. Other linked side effects include a symptom called amotivational syndrome, in which people become passive, apathetic, unmotivated, hedonistic, unconcerned about the future, unable to make plans and increasingly introverted.
A marijuana information fact sheet from the National Institute on Drug Abuse states that THC kicks off a series of cellular reactions that lead to the high after smoking. It rapidly passes from the lungs into the bloodstream, which carries the chemical to organs throughout the body, including the brain. THC travels inside the brain, where it connects with THC receptors on nerve cells. The areas of the brain with the most THC receptors are the cerebellum, the cerebral cortex, and the limbic system, which includes the hippocampus. This is why marijuana affects thinking, problem solving, sensory perception, movement, balance and memory. (For a more detailed image of the brain and acute side effects of marijuana, visit www.drugabuse.gov/ResearchReports/marijuana/marijuana3.html.
In 2001, 12 million Americans aged 12 and older used marijuana at least once in the month prior to being surveyed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse in its 2001 Monitoring the Future Surveys. Students who smoke pot get lower grades and are less likely to graduate from high school compared with their non-smoking peers. Researchers studying the survey compared test results of marijuana-smoking 12th graders and non-smokers; in standardized tests of verbal and mathematical skills, the pot smokers scored significantly lower. The same NIDA Monitoring the Future survey of 129 college students found that someone who smokes pot once daily may be functioning at a reduced intellectual level all of the time.
Other Hazelden-reported side effects include damage to the lungs: Marijuana cigarettes have 15 times more tar content than tobacco cigarettes and 50 percent more cancer-causing hydrocarbons than cigarettes. Liver biopsies of long-term marijuana users show significant damage. It effects the heart due to reduced oxygen to the blood stream. It causes cell damage--tests on animals show changes in gene structure. These effects are becoming more apparent to the public. Information in the National Institute on Drug Abuse marijuana fact sheet shows that marijuana-related hospital emergency department visits in the United States recently experienced a 15 percent increase.
If all these negatives are not enough, I recently discovered more: On Nov. 23, 2002, The British Journal of Medicine published a study linking frequent marijuana use at a young age to an increased risk of depression and schizophrenia later in life.
Without knowledge, education, and an understanding of the problems and myths of marijuana, it is dangerous to advocate for such a drug. If we do not discourage vulnerable young people from using marijuana, the future could be very grim for our country. With the increase of THC levels and the apathy about marijuana, I unfortunately see a preview of that future and fear more mental health and overall health problems as a result.
Yes, 'we' probably can! Apparently, you can't! (Uh, oh. Are you kinda buzzed right now?)
"What is your point on pot - again?"
In a nutshell, I would treat it like alchohol, but no bars I don't think. Oh maybe you could have bars, but not to start. Oh heck,no bars, you can't smoke in bars anymore as it is!
If people don't want to go that far, I would certainly authorize it for medical use.
Pot is the ONLY drug I would legalize, if I ruled the world.
When "tax dollars" are at work .."things are taken away from you for the common good" (HC)
No matter how many times I post this I will not gain friends as a result. If I can educate a few and learn from the posts then I have gained in other ways. I work with people that have destroyed their lives and try and help them to rebuild. I get pain and rewards from seeing both and that is my point.
> Frankly, I could care less, but when you guys smoke and drive (or drink, sniff, snort, shoot or swallow and drive) it potentially affects others. Other than the dude who ate Twinkies and used it for a murder defense, I've never heard of a guy high on potato chips causing an accident. But, you say, alcohol is legal.
Yes, but I can sit by a person who is having a drink, and it doesn't affect me until he gets into his car and drives into somebody or loses his temper, etc. I would have to smell the pot, and I don't want to do that. If you do it by yourself or sit around with a group of buddies and contemplate things, nobody will likely bother you while you're doing it in the privacy of your home.
How so? Not everyone that smokes a joint on Saturday night is a high school kid or a college student. Try to see through the stereotypes. Do you really think all that weed grown/imported into the US is used by kids or lefties.
I am proof that it is not true. I have smoked pot most of my adult life and never voted for a democrat. My dad (USAF pilot)was an alcoholic and got sober when he was 47. I never drank. He and I had a little talk one day. He asked to try some weed. He could not feel the effects because they were so mild compared to alcohol...and it was very strong stuff. I asked him why he drank. He said because it was fun and he liked to get high. I said "that's it exactly. Same here, different drug." He got sober because he realized it had taken over his life and destroyed his family and his career. He was not religious but accepted that AA and the 12 step program was the only way he could do it. He became active in AA and founded 2 chapters. He was sober 28 years until he died at age 75. We share the determination for sobriety late in life. I am sober now and have been for some time, and there have been other occaisions when I have been sober for years. I think it is foolish to think that smoking pot is not bad for your health. It is irrelevant to try to decide if it is as bad or not as bad as cigarettes. I also believe that things that you do and the reasons that you do them change as you age. Alcohol and cigaretts are legal, and they are both demonstrated to be addictive and detrimental to your health. They are also mulit-billion dollar industies with entrenched constutencies that resist prohibition and promote prohibition of competing choices. People like to get high and have fun. Drug laws are in need of serious, sober review without hysterical sloganeering. There is a gangster subculture associated with drugs that is reminiscent of the gangster culture of the alcohol prohibition years. Pot should be legalized, regulated and taxed. Cocaine and heroin and pcp and LSD and estacy (sic?) should be illegal and the dealers vigorously prosecuted, while the users should be remanded to treatment programs.
And, Liberaltarianism is the virus that perverts Conservatism.
Thanks for being the irrelevant 2% of the political population.
THC is highly adictive and has a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect on some people. No drugs are safe unless used in moderation.
I think pot should be legal. It is indeed bad for you, but so are many things in this world.
Alchohol is clearly a more dangerous drug than pot. You can get so drunk in a couple of hours that you can't even stand up, or worse, you die of alchohol poisoning.
You can't overdose on pot, it's impossible. You can only get so stoned, no matter how much pot you smoke. Which blows out of the water the whole arguement about the BC Bud being so dangerous because of the high THC content. If you have strong pot it just means you smoke less.
Look at tobacco and the hundreds of thousands of people it kills each year, yet it's legal. How can the government say that pot is too dangerous to legalize, yet the two legal recreational drugs we have today kill so many?
Up top the article mentioned that pharmaceutical companies came up with Marinol for sick patients as a replacement for pot. Drug company to patient: "Don't smoke pot, that stuff is dangerous, but here ya go, take this THC pill instead. Is it good for you? Who knows, but Marinol is our synthetically made THC which is patented, which means we make money when you take this. We don't make money when you smoke pot because we can't patent a plant. So remember, unpatented drugs that you take are bad for you because we don't get our cut. Got it? Great!"
"It assist in dividing, isolating and dumbing down America"
Ok, lets try that again, How So? Just making the statement means nothing, explain your statements.
Agreed and anyone can be addicted to anything to an extreme if they have an addictive personality. Its to bad there is virtually no education to the public on the effects of marijuana while at the same time many wanting to make it legal. The side many don't want to see is the business end. To make it legal would mean it would have to have a filter on it with a lower THC content. Many people would be upset with their new high they receive bringing me back to my original point of addiction.
Are they isolating because of marijuana use or because of an institutionalized sobriety industry that needs to feed its own addiction to court mandated profits.
You wouldn't collect one of these paychecks would you?
And just how do you tax Water Sunshine and Dirt? This is why it is still "Illegal"/UnTaxable.
Shut down the Alphabet Channels (ABJazerra & Her Sister Stations)!
Vote with your Remote!
But, I Have A Plan
Zippo Hero
Seven Dead Monkeys Page O Tunes
Visual signs of long-term pot smoking are poor motor coordination, uncontrolled laughter, a lag or hesitation between thoughts, and unsteady hands. At one time, these were all thought to be short-term side effects--now known in many cases to be long-term with frequent use, according to a 1968 study by researchers W.H. McGlothin and L.J. West, published in the Hazelden booklet mentioned above. Other linked side effects include a symptom called amotivational syndrome, in which people become passive, apathetic, unmotivated, hedonistic, unconcerned about the future, unable to make plans and increasingly introverted.
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