Posted on 03/23/2005 12:33:10 PM PST by Crackingham
i think i'm the only one who got the joke
They haven't addresssed causality.
Does use of cannabis as a teen lead to greater chance of developing schizophrenia in adulthood, or are those subject to expressing their latent schizophrenia in adulthood more likely to self medicate with cannabis when young?
Most forms of mental illness result in some kind of attempted self medication before they are diagnosed.
So9
I am not fanatically opposed to marijuana, but did see one person (a friend), who was kind of borderline on the mental health continuum anyway, clearly descend into psychosis/schizophrenia after beginning heavy use. About three years later, in the early 70s, he committed suicide. I can't say for a fact this wouldn't have happened anyway, but I am positive the use of the drug in his case precipitated it. Other people, of course, are not affected that way.
I don't know about cannabis use, but I can tell of the experience of a neighbor I have.
She had schizophrenia in her family, but was always fine as far as we knew. One night the kids had a News Years Eve Party, and the next thing ambulances were there. Supposedly the friend overdosed on drugs. They got her out of it, and sent her home.
Within a few months the girl started acting very strange. I spoke to her on the street and I thought, this girl is schizophrenic. The break with reality, the god complex, etc.
I called her older sister and she said she was taking her for evaluation, and sure enough that was the diagnosis. Her case became very severe, and many, many years later she is still in a halfway house.
It's anecdotal, but I've always wondered, how much was due to that night, if anything.
Then the converse of that finding would seem to be a conclusion that it is harmless to the vast majority of them.
haha......watching and waiting.......draw the blinds and hide from the secret police that are behind every shrub....or we could do some coke and get even more paranoid.....
Lame science, too:
Psychotic symptoms were measured using 10 items from something called Symptom Checklist 90. Participants were asked if they had certain ideas, feelings or beliefs that commonly accompany psychotic states. The researchers did not look at actual diagnoses, and the symptom checklist is not identical to the formal diagnostic criteria listed in the DSM-IV manual. Perhaps most important, they only used 10 "representative" items from a much larger questionnaire.
These 10 items focus heavily on paranoid thoughts or feelings, such as "feeling other people cannot be trusted," "feeling you are being watched or talked about by others," "having ideas or beliefs that others do not share." This presents a big methodological problem, because it is well known that paranoid feelings are a fairly common effect of being high on marijuana.
But the article gives no indication that respondents were asked to distinguish between feelings experienced while high and feelings experienced at other times. Thus, we are left with no indication at all as to whether these supposed psychotic symptoms are long-term effects or simply the normal, passing effects of marijuana intoxication. While it's possible the researchers had these data and didn't see a need to report them, the failure to do so is downright bizarre. It's like reporting that people who go to bars are more erratic drivers than people who don't, without bothering to look at whether they'd been drinking at the time their driving skills were assessed.
Teaching women's studies at your local university.
Whew! Dodged a bullet there. I was 16 before I had smoked 3 times.
Ok, so where's the population cohort of schizophrenics to go along with the boom in marijuana use in the 60's and 70's?
Jeeez, man. Don't you remember the Clinton Whitehouse? The rest were all shot in Viet Nam.
Good Lord, DuPont...lay off! You got the stuff outlawed. Your corner on the nylon and other artificial fiber markets isn't at tisk. Enough with the propaganda.
Not in the amounts that most casual users smoke. Schizophrenia and psychosis aren’t necessarily related either.
"We're not saying that cannabis is the major cause of schizophrenia," said Robin Murray of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who led the study. "But it's a risk factor."
"I don't think we can deny it any longer," said epidemiologist Mary Cannon of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, based in Dublin, who helped carry out the research in New Zealand. "Cannabis is part of the cause of schizophrenia."
These are two statements that may well contradict each other. The first suggests a "risk factor" neither confirming or denying the contribution made by cannabis in the development of schizophrenia, the second statement seeming to confirm the contributory effects.
There's a cause and effect mistake made here. We all remember that nearly all heroin addicts drank milk at some time in their lives, therefore (might state Mary Cannon) "we can deny...no longer" the fact that milk causes heroin addiction.
Just a comment on the sloppiness of the story and the two quotes made.
I hope you're kidding. 3/10 = 30/100, not 3/100 or 3%...
Bull, I smoked weed all my life and this never happened to me, yes it did, no it didn`t, I say I ain`t talking to you, you shut up, no you shut up, your it no your it no your it
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