I’m glad this research is being done. I don’t use cannabis, but I also don’t frown upon it. However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis recently have changed from “it’s a drug, but it isn’t that bad” to “it is completely harmless”. Which in my opinion is very dangerous and could harm entire populations before we have enough research. In my opinion, it should be considered similar category as alcohol, cigarettes, fat and sugar, a national health issue and research needs to happen asap on various short term and long term effects.
>However some of the conversations on the use of cannabis recently have changed from “it’s a drug, but it isn’t that bad” to “it is completely harmless”.
Or even worse, "it's nothing but beneficial!". And yes, I'm a semi-regular "user"
This is something I've seen too. There are people that are pro-medical cannabis because of it's miraculous uses to the point of only using different forms of cannabis in lieu of any other medication. While I believe there's some things cannabis is great for, but I'm not convinced it's that magical. Since we've been prevented from studying it properly because of bullshit laws, we've got some things to look into still.
People cannot cope with even the slightest gray area, so they end up saying and doing ridiculous things. Everything has to be 100% good or 100% bad. The political environment makes this worse: if you concede anything at all, it will simply be used as a weapon against you.
Of course, it took decades to get people to acknowledge that the harms of some drugs were far less than the harm caused by policing them, and that the harms had been wildly exaggerated for political reasons, so it's not really surprising that people will jump to deny any harm in case it gets banned again.
Yeah, you censor only ideas you’re afraid somebody might agree with. A related phenomenon is accepting anything a “thought leader” says as long as that person gives (or implies) a “reason.”
> woke cult doesn’t allow any disagreement with any piece of the transgender narrative.
sigh please don't use terms of abuse such as "woke cult" on HN.
And yes, people are being incredibly defensive because there are a number of misinformation campaigns circulating trying to get trans healthcare banned for everyone. The war on drugs, for testosterone and estrogen.
I’m not going to stop using accurate language just because it makes you feel bad.
They are a cult. It’s a group of people who fervently worship an ideology filled with hatred, falsehoods, manipulation and deception. They even have original sin, and excommunication.
All under the guise of protecting oppressed people.
However if they actually cared about the causes they claim, then they would try to make their ideas as easy to digest for the average sane person as possible. But it’s not actually about helping people, it’s about moral superiority and pushing people away who aren’t “pure” enough.
But for starters how about the idea that a trans-man doesn’t just identify as a man, but is a man. In other words, embracing delusion and denying biology.
Or how about girls feeling uncomfortable in their own bathrooms and locker rooms because a biological male is allowed in their safe space?
Or how about the stuff that’s just plain silly. Like this recent Men’s Health article where a straight man is told that his preference for a real vagina is actually a vulva fetish and that he’s actually bisexual since “technically” a woman and a trans-man can both have vulvas.
> I suggest this binary positioning is a very American phenomenon
I really don't think so. Binary thinking is something I've personally noticed and thought about for a while, and I think it stems from the human brain just trying to simplify things. In most scenarios, it is far easier (and time efficient) to only consider the 2 extreme options rather than the entire spectrum of possible options, even if those two extremes are far worse than the alternatives.
Plus, I've seen Europeans do the same thing all the time [0]. Remember, polarization (which is really just an extension of tribalism imo) isn't an American condition, it's a human condition.
Can you post a source for any claim that theyre harmless? I don’t think any reputable researcher has ever said that, but they have started talking about potential for positive effects, which is a far cry from “if you take this it will ruin your life”.
I don't think there are any researchers saying marijuana is anything but beneficial. It's every day people. Same thing for psychedelics. There was a thread on LSD the other day and I had to point out twice that HPPD happens as a result, and is a disorder that can cause significant mental distress. Honestly I think it only does a disservice to the cause to make claims like that
Agreed, it is the general public propagating this. Just go onto Reddit and you’ll see it everywhere.
For cannabis I find the attitude pretty scary, having been a daily user myself several times (including now) and dealing with the side effects. It does have negatives. I would hate for everyone to have to learn that the hard way or for them to misidentify the causes, though even those side effects are pretty mild - some are acutely bad like CHS but it’s more the mild anhedonia as you sober up that I think is the worst.
For psychedelics, having dabbled myself, I can confidently say the worst case scenario is very bad and often not talked about. A bad trip can be an intensely traumatic experience. I think it would be possible to get PTSD from such an experience. Ironically my own bad trip was precipitated by lighting up a bowl about 5 hours after taking LSD.
I also go through phases of daily use. Quit for awhile, then dip back into it to I.e. deal with flu symptoms, special occasion, or when I really feel the need to disassociate from life’s stresses.
I won’t go so far as to say it’s addictive for everyone but it’s is incredibly addictive for me.
Daily symptoms include:
* wake up more tired
* wake up with mild morning sickness
* wake up a bit foggy
* higher tolerance to caffeine
* less general stamina
* memory a notch worse in general
* less energy for physical activities
* increased anxiety while sober
* slightly higher sense of paranoia/conspiracy
—-
Notably I consume only edibles and tinctures, which I think is the driving factor for the mild morning sickness.
The morning sickness is called Cannabis Hyperemesis Syndrome(CHS). Well technically the symptoms may need to be more acute (vomiting), but I am pretty sure it’s the same mechanism and cause, just milder.
At my peak of consumption I also had it mildly with morning nausea. Though at the time I wasn’t using edibles or tinctures at all, almost exclusively oil cartridges.
It's not super addictive to me currently. When I was a youth I used to great excess and it eventually drove me to using harder drugs - one of which, xanax, or alprazolam, nearly ruined my life. I had to take anti-psychotics for years to deal with the absolute mental clusterfuck that poly drug use, but especially xanax, left me with. I stopped all psychoactive drug use, even alcohol, for quite a number of years. At least 5.
I currently only use legal D8, D0, and broad spectrum hemp CBD/CBG/etc. tinctures and edibles. Not daily, maybe 2-3 times a week, after work or on weekends. I mix the three, with a small amount of D0, maybe 5-10mg, maybe 35mg D8, and the broad spectrum to near excess. My experience of your symptom list:
* wake up more tired - If I'm up too late (like I am now) the grogginess can be worse.
* wake up with mild morning sickness - Not the stomach thing that people tend to talk about. I even have to take some pretty nausea inducing medications each morning and even those don't give me nausea. Strong stomach, I guess.
* wake up a bit foggy - Sometimes, especially if I take too much tincture, I have a bit of fog and things "glow". A bit like the afterglow of a psychedelic trip in terms of the way everything seems kind of bright and fuzzy and pleasant and I feel a bit dull.
* higher tolerance to caffeine - Hadn't noticed this one explicitly, but I think I have been having two coffees or energy drinks more often since I started using again in the past couple of years.
* less general stamina - I don't get this one, though I think I'm less apt to use the stamina. Physically or mentally it is no problem compared to not using I think.
* memory a notch worse in general - Definitely true. Most noticeable when watching Jeopardy. I totally failed tonight's Knighted Actors category, only getting Sean Connery, when I absolutely knew and could see the faces of the other 4 answers, but just could not come up with their names. It doesn't seem to affect me much in my work - I definitely think the perspective shift and enabling of more creative and abstract and unusual thinking is a net positive despite the minor memory drawbacks.
* less energy for physical activities - I actually find it enhances my desire to do physical activities. Lifting and cycling are both greatly enhanced experiences for me when under the influence, I find.
* increased anxiety while sober - Don't really get this, except perhaps when I drink too much caffeine.
* slightly higher sense of paranoia/conspiracy - Well, my baseline (see intro paragraph...think "holy shit the government is going to assassinate me and is talking about it openly on television") for this is so abjectly high that I don't notice it at all, or I do notice it briefly while pursuing some random stoned line of thought and laugh at the absurdity.
Psychedelic popularity goes in waves, but it never really "takes off" the way stimulant and opiate use does. I suspect it's due to the radomness of bad trips, basically.
There's been some interesting research that for most drugs, effects are heavily mediated by expectation - if you don't expect to enjoy it, you almost certainly won't, and the effect it has on you is likewise very learned - there are many cultures where they don't believe alcohol makes you more social, for instance, and where consequently, it doesn't.
But psychedelics are the big exception. They really do "work". But the flip side of that while you may get a wonderful experience despite not expecting one, you may also get a very bad one. And "guidance" isn't reliable in avoiding it, precisely because it's not expectation driven like other drugs.
I don't know if it's happening more now than in the past, but it's really just magical thinking -- people believing something is true because they want it to be true.
Moderation is so key otherwise you start believing your own thinking
It’s a tool and it’s easy to get into a way of life(the high life). That is what is more addictive I find.
I have definitely come to a point where I can see myself in others usage and it’s clearer to me that while all it’s ‘benefits’ are something great the key is to finding how to bring that into reality without having to invest it.
Question: Are US cannabis dispensaries run by independent qualified medical professionals, or are they simply businesses interested in flogging cannabis to everybody to make as much profit as they can [1]?
Given the (bonkers IMHO) profit motive of the US medical industry, I suspect the latter, though I'd be interested to hear from those with experience.
[1] Given some of the stuff I've read online, I'm pretty sure they would prescribe cannabis for an ingrowing toenail if you asked.
In most states it is a free for all, especially in non-medical stores. A few of the medical only states require them to be dispensed by a pharmacist, but that is the exception.
Plenty of people are, in fact, saying just that. In fact, I was told not too long ago that it kills cancer cells. Oddly enough, the guy who told me that just went in for a biopsy of a growth on his vocal chords...
I think some of the confusion stems from the fact the “medicinal” happened in some places before “recreational” happened. At least that’s how it played out in Massachusetts.
It required a prescription, so doctors were saying to take it, so it gives it more of a vener of safety.
Plus it’s not like it wasn’t readily available for people to try before.
> I think some of the confusion stems from the fact the “medicinal” happened in some places before “recreational” happened. At least that’s how it played out in Massachusetts.
People are actively marketing it as a pseudo-medical treatment (like OTC drugs, or vitamins), beyond the medicinal designation. I searched for a random dispensary in Watertown MA, and clicked the first edible on their site [1]. The description of the item is below…
> Go plant-based pills use an optimal blend of plant medicines, caffeine, and cannabis to create an all-natural performance enhancer for your brain and body. Go’s key ingredients increase blood flow to the brain and body in order to boost mental and physical energy and stamina.
This is not at all uncommon to find at various dispensaries and products. Even for products that don’t have additives (as the above one appears to). If you google “cannabis cure cancer” or “cannabis cure X” you;lol find countless thought pieces about how theres new evidence from one random trial that may blow open the door to curing whatever with cannabis. It’s got a very eastern-medicine meets wives-tales meets snake oil vibe.
Or even worse, "it's a sure-fire one way trip to an early grave via hell. Winners don't do drugs. Just say no." It hasn't gone away, people continue to go to jail because of this belief.
Beyond that when the idiocy of such claims are laid bare and it is evident that it was an insane, designed to scare, mountain of evidence-free lies "for the greater good - if we save even one child...", people stop believing what is said by "authority" on a kind of wholesale basis. Can you blame them? "Weed is a healthfood" isn't really much worse than the just say no truth disaster. People made money out of both sets of lies as well.
The pandemic really laid it in stark relief the amount of "authority propagated claims" that were actually wholly evidence-free and the lack of critical assessment of evidence by such authority (remember the "masks don't work, can't be transmitted through the air" line sprouted by people in white coats with PhD after their name claiming "the science"? Be they WHO, Fauci, NHS and all the rest of them?) We all actually had to go and do all that assessment of evidence and probability for ourselves because the authority was both lying and incompetent. No doubt many of us got our assessment "wrong" in avoidable ways if the highly trained had not also decided to "lie for the greater good" and merely stated what was known with the appropriate estimate of its certainty. [1]
It's always a mistake to knowingly tell lies leaning on the podium of authority, the interest always comes due and the rate is more than just unreasonably steep.
How bad is this one going to be? The incarceration level is bad enough by itself.
"What's the evidence for that?" When this provokes anger rather than being directed to published results, it's time to be /very/ suspicious. There hasn't ever been a reckoning for those who claimed authority to repeat lies, demanding their resignation at the minimum seems appropriate.
Decades of trained and qualified anointed robe wearing doctors and scientific researchers believing and repeating something in a textbook, copied from another textbook which got it from a grandparent textbook and never actually asked "what is the evidence in support of that? Where are the studies and replications?" It's really sobering. Do you think the places where you go indoors have updated their airflow accordingly yet? Do we have government minimum standards in building codes yet or even "in the pipeline?" Will you believe "authority" next crisis?
I used cannabis heavily for a significant portion of my life, participated in cannabusinesses over a decade ago, dealt it, etc... Also glad this research is being done. Pot is not purely evil or good. It's a complex stew of chemicals with varying effects on various people at various stages of their development. We need to continue to understand its effects while being cautious about promoting its use.
We assume that the loss of inhibition will automatically make people more likely to interact. But what if a person would like to interact less in the moment, but feels compelled to do so via social rules? In this case, being less inhibited would make them less sociable, not more.
The loss of inhibition is culturally learned, not biochemical. You can relax and let loose because society judges you less harshly when drunk (and, if you have internalized it, you judge yourself less harshly too). In some cultures it's not present at all, and even in some you may visit it's much weaker. Be aware of this if you get drunk as a tourist.
Alcohol binds to the GABA receptor mimicking GABA, hence providing a calming feeling. It allows people to feel less anxious in situations they might normally feel awkward. That is definitely not cultural.
Drinking regularly may desensitize your GABA receptors and hence cause a person to end up with more anxiety as a result of drinking. I rarely drink because I found it was exasperating my mental health issues.
That binding to GABA receptors "gives a calming feeling" is at best vaguely accurate. And even if it was accurate, there is in any case a mile from that to reducing social anxiety. Other "downer" drugs don't make people more outgoing, despite binding to GABA receptors, because we don't ascribe those qualities to them.
Even emotional states such as happy, calm, afraid etc. are higher level phenomena that don't map nicely onto hormones and neurotransmitters. The same low-level signal may even be interpreted in different ways depending on circumstance. There's a classic experiment with niacin demonstrating this, but like so many old behaviour experiments, it's ignored in favour of more "white coat" neuroscience these days.
It has different effects on people, some even turn violent. But a large group report being less inhibited in social settings. Thing is even a glass does it but few know when to stop, especially when young. Id get drunk sometimes when I was in my 20s and after being sociable for an hour or so I’d get giddy drunk.
So I in fact need alcohol chemically, like psychiatrically, under limited conditions. Limited. I payed for and received medical advice, that when I went out and partied, make sure to take my medication with me and take it then too, alcohol is too risky for and deficit too much downside. It's synergistic sometimes.
In a lot of ways in the US i see the issue here coming down to prohibition. If Marijuana was legal and regulated then the FDA could prosecute fraudsters that claim the drug is “completely hazard free miracle herb that doctors HATE”.
Of course irresponsible fools are taking advantage in a gap in the law to make short term profits.
The FDA could go after any merchants making those claims, but for the most part those memes are spread by randos on reddit/etc. The FDA doesn't and shouldn't go after random people saying stupid shit they probably earnestly believe.
The FDA does and should if the person spreading the bs about the Miracle Cure That Has Doctors Mad is also selling the miracle cure. Thats the real issue.
I feel like a lot of the boots-on-the-ground evangelist/sales people in this industry are themselves victims of fraud who have been sucked into pyramid schemes (now more commonly referred to as multilevel or network marketing for obvious optics reasons) and that society wouldn't especially benefit from bringing the hammer down on them.
I think there's a deeper problem here with the relationship between patient and doctor being undermined by a dysfunctional medical system, such that doctors can't spend any time with patients, patients can't afford to see doctors, and even when the stars align patients can't always rely on doctors to believe them and take them seriously. I think there's a reason why the particular empathetic and loving rhetoric of new-age bullshit is so appealing; it counters the sterile and often kafkaesque experience people have navigating the medical system.
I can totally imagine how much nicer it might be to drop by a friend-of-a-friend's house, in my neighborhood, where they give me a tarot reading, listen to my problems and validate my perspective, sell me something at a price that won't bankrupt me and that feels safe and natural, and they have all the time in the world to explain their theory on how it all works.
Obviously it matters whether or not the medication works and whether or not the provider knows what they're doing. But I think the problem is that there's a dysfunctional relationship here, not that law enforcement aren't cracking down sufficiently. And also that the people likely to have their lives turned upside down are losing money on the whole proposition, and are themselves just probably well-meaning people who are trying to hustle for a better life, and don't understand the harm they're causing.
Oh I completely agree with you there. Thats the way underground/illegal economies work generally. They identify a need not met by the legal market and charge a premium for something that they say addresses it.
Personally im fine with it if you (bad/nonsense example) buy tree bark from your guy marketing it as organic aspirin. I take more an issue when whats being sold as organic aspirin is closer to sugar flavored with arsenic
As I said, the FDA can go after the merchants. But most of the people spreading dumb meme beliefs about cannabis aren't selling it. If the FDA wants to make a meaningful dent in the spread of these beliefs, they'll have to earn the public's trust and convince people of the truth.
The FDA deals with enforcing standards on anything that is medicine (or claims to be) regulating vendors and suppliers. They’re able to enforce standards on any legal drug, however mj is still illegal at the federal level, leaving it to the DEA to enforce and they dont really care about standards and safety so much as seizing large sums of money from drug deals.
This. I have been having these conversations with my peers for over a decade. For aong time the narrative from my cannabis-using peers basically fell into the narrative that it wasn't bad at all for physical of mental health. I always took a more nuanced view, and point out that little research had been done during the illegal years. I always had a feeling that there was a cat to come out of a bag, and cannabis users have fought me tooth and nail on that point.
Fat includes transfat. This back-and-forth does an excellent job of underlining GPs point about those being complex subjects that require study and nuanced explanation.
Transfat? What is that? Oh, it’s that dietary fat which is illegal where I live and hence completely irrelevant to me.
There is hardly a back and forth here. Fat is essential and a lot of is not harmful.
The best you could do is to point out that heavily processed vegetable oils are harmful and probably give you too much omega-6. The cure? Just switch to things like olive oil and animal fats.
Compare this to sugar (also mentioned by the poster).. Which is... not essential to anything. Your body does not need it. It is actively harmful. Carbohydrates however can be fine, and fiber is good, but the particular kind of carbohydrate known as sugar (like the two molecular compounds more or less) are no bueno.
It's not that complex, actually. The vast majority of fats, all the natural ones, basically, are fine. Healthy, even. The weirdass plastic fats created by injecting hydrogen into vegetable oil are not fine.
Palm oils in particular are not very healthy and are suspected to be a leading cause of diet-induced heart disease. Not all fats are created equally, or in equal proportions. Palm oils are high in specific saturated fats that are linked to cardiovascular disease.
Palm oils are some of the most common fats found in prepared foods, especially foods that need solid fats at room temperatures. The majority of peanut butter preparations on shelves in the US have had all of their peanut oils removed and then replaced with palm oil for "better" texture and to prevent separation.
Plenty of Skippy's products have palm oil in them instead of peanut oil, and when I've looked, the "creamy" varieties of peanut butter tend to use palm oil for texture and stability. Store brands do the same thing in my experience.
Adding a little for texture is very different than removing the peanut oil and replacing it with palm oil. If that were the case, the saturated fat/total fat ratio would be much higher and the palm oil wouldn't be the 3rd ingredient listed after sugar.
What an interesting, and dare I say nuanced, point.
Let’s add to it how good fats can become bad through releasing free radicals, which happens at approximately the same temperature that a lot of animal fats are cooked at.
A few years ago, I did some reading on PubMed to figure out what fats are best to cook with. Came to the conclusion that extra virgin olive oil, which papers use the acronym "EVOO" for, is best for frying, whether that's pan or deep frying, and cooking in general.
It's high in monounsaturated fats and studies found that various compounds in EVOO prevent the formation of free radicals, volatile organic compounds, aldehydes like formaldehyde, etc compared to other cooking oils.
One study looked at the use of frying oils over time, since the longer the oils are heated, the more they decompose into harmful compounds. EVOO won out on that, too, and significantly inhibited the creation of harmful products. This would be relevant for restaurants, which tend to reuse oils over long periods of time, or anyone that cooks big meals for themselves or others. If you're going to be standing over a pan cooking for hours at a time, it's worth reducing the amount of harmful compounds you'll inevitably breathe in.
Typically refined oils are preferred for frying because they can be used at higher temperatures, but I've found cooking with EVOO to be just fine, just don't cook things at temperatures where it might start smoking.
Adam Ragusea does a lot of well researched videos around food science, and did one around using olive oil, even past the smoke point, fairly recently - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_aFHrzSBrM
Some good interviews with food scientists, etc. Interesting for anyone wanting to learn a bit more on this subject.
I've swapped to using EVOO for most anything where it won't be too overpowering of a taste.
I recently bought ghee for the first time from Organic Valley. Looking at their website, I don't see how it's 30% palmitic acid, could you please clarify?
Palmitic acid is called like that because it was first isolated in palm oil but it's naturally occurring in animal fat and breast milk because it's naturally produced by them.
Its not they are adding palm oil to butter and ghee, it's the because palmitic acid is not unique to palm oil (well some unscrupulous producer do adulterate ghee with palm oil but let's not go there yet what I'm saying apply to pure ghee)
Very interesting point. Do you have any of your preferred research papers handy?
I went searching just now out of curiosity and did find this one [1] which indeed affirms what you're saying.
Personally, I reach for ghee when I want a neutral oil (e.g., for cooking scrambled eggs). And, like you, I reach for some fancy EVOO for everything else. I have to confess my approach to get here was a lot less scientific though; I mostly settled on these two using the metric of deliciousness.
Last one is about acrylamide, which I believe there is little evidence to believe it's harmful (it's been a while since I've actually looked at studies on it), but I assume the conditions that produce it also end up producing compounds that can be harmful.
Your body produces palmitic acid on its own, 30% of your fat is palmitic acid yourself produced. Reducing consumption of palmitic acid mostly reduces your quality of life, a balanced diet with a good biscuit and noeccessive calories does much more than eating dry, sandy biscuits and excess on sugar later on.
> Excess carbohydrates in the body are converted to palmitic acid. Palmitic acid is the first fatty acid produced during fatty acid synthesis and is the precursor to longer fatty acids. As a consequence, palmitic acid is a major body component of animals. In humans, one analysis found it to make up 21–30% (molar) of human depot fat,[16] and it is a major, but highly variable, lipid component of human breast milk
Yeah but I bet people that are sold on palm oil is evil are on low fat diet. And that the calories from fat they don't consume come from carbohydrates, not proteins.
That's a strange assumption and certainly isn't true for me. I limit carbohydrates as much as possible. The majority of my calories come from fat and protein.
Olive and avocado oil, flax seed oil, oil from fish and meat. I think there's a difference between eating palmitic acid that's part of a larger fatty acid profile in meat, and being conscious of just how much saturated fats you're eating, versus refined palm oil that's mostly been refined down to palmitic acid itself. If you're eating peanut butter, you might be literally eating refined palm oil by the spoonful, versus a relatively small amount of palmitic acid in meat.
Fine, true, palm oil is one of the rare exceptions. But the point is, this is not a tremendously complex issue. A person of average intelligence can learn about partially hydrogenated trans fats, and one or two other fats to avoid, and master this whole issue in a few minutes.
That describes both partially and fully hydrogenated fats, but only the partially hydrogenated fats contain trans fat. As far as I know fully hydrogenated fats are not any more unhealthy than other saturated fats.
- Genetic predisposition to heart disease / diabetes
- Types of fat and quantities consumed
- What else does your diet consist of
Edit: and these are just some risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. There's plenty more nuance still if we want to talk about quality of life, energy levels, digestive function etc...
It never fails to amaze me how the benefits of hindsight can cause us to forget how little we used to know or how long it took us to learn. This is the exact type of science that we’re arguing needs to be extended to cannabis.
Go feign surprise somewhere else, mate. Fat was the dietary scapegoat for decades because the powers that be wanted to sell us cereal-dominated diets, not because there was some amazing science that proved (at the time) that fat was bad and carbs were good.
There's many brands which have fully-hydrogenated oil, but I'm not aware of any still using partially-hydrogenated (what people typically mean when they're talking about trans fats), and I don't believe they're allowed to now.
It’s a symptom of polarized mindsets. For years the mainstream sentiment was “cannabis is evil and deadly”. Instead of correcting to a less extreme position, we overcorrected to an equally extreme position in the opposite direction.
> In my opinion, it should be considered similar category as alcohol, cigarettes, fat and sugar
You should look closer at the risks of caffeine. Someone was in the news dying from an accidental ingestion of a large dose just a few days ago. And there’s been some evidence for a while now that high doses of caffeine in energy drinks can lead to delusional behavior.
Coffee is not just caffeine, it contains many other psychoactive chemicals and some of them like to stay in brain fatty tissues for extended periods of time.
Your data is not representative, but your conclusion sounds reasonable to me. The fact that cannabis is forbidden while much more destructive drugs like alcohol are promoted in our culture is ridiculous. If only we treated cannabis the same we treat tobacco or alcohol :/.
The primary positive effect of cannabis in the general population is probably that it tends to interfere with alcohol consumption, due to excessive sedation. This probably explains the lack of negative population-level effects of cannabis legalization. The most concerning effect of cannabis is its tendency to increase heart rate.
Quite a bit of research is available on the effects of cannabis use — the problem is that people don't read it.
Bronchitis? I've known a lot of marijuana smokers, and I don't recall any of them ever having bronchitis.
>Mental health (associated risk of schizophrenia, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, Cannabis use disorder)
Small but >1 ORs for a rare disorder like schizophrenia (base rate ~0.02%) sound scarier than they really are. Many recreational activities are associated with a similar increase in the risk of concussion (base rate ~1%), and yet they are actually recommended for general health. Correlation of recreational drug use with depression/anxiety has a causal direction problem.
Others in this thread have linked studies about the effects on the heart. It remains to be seen what the long-term risk profile is.
That might be the complete slide but it is not the complete picture. This disorder for example causes pretty extreme digestive issues, and it has not been in the medical literature for very long.
some haphazardly chosen references from a 2013 bibliography on the subject, compiled by someone who probably doesn't want her name showing up in an internet forum.
Aryana A, Williams MA. Marijuana as trigger of cardiovascular events: speculation or scientific certainty? Int J Cardiol 2007;118:141-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2006.08.001
Bachs L, Morland H. Acute cardiovascular fatalities following cannabis use. Forensic Sci Int 2001;124:200-3.
Cappelli F, Lazzeri C, Gensini GF, Valente S. Cannabis: a trigger for acute myocardial infarction? A case report. J Cardiovasc Med 2008;9:725-728.
Jones RT. Cardiovascular system effects of marijuana. J Clin Pharmacol 2002; 42(11 Suppl.):58S-63.
Sidney S. Cardiovascular consequences of marijuana use. J Clin Pharmacol 2002;42(11 Suppl.):64S-70S. (Found no association.)
Tormey WP. Royal College of Pathologists’ autopsy guidelines on sudden cardiac death: roles for cannabis, cotinine, NSAIDs and psychology. J Clin Pathol 2012;65:187-188.
so there's a starting place to look into it.
maybe the intervening 9 years have demonstrated that it isn't an issue.
> I'm not aware of any proponents of driving while high.
> Again, who's advocating for pregnant women to consume cannabis?
I thought the comment was making clear what was considered a risk, not what is being advocated? People certainly do drive while under the effects of cannabis, I've known a few. I don't know anyone who consumed it while pregnant but I'm sure they do exist.
> I'm not sure anyone thinks you should smoke a bunch of drugs before studying for finals.
> The most concerning effect of cannabis is its tendency to increase heart rate.
Can you please tell me why you think heart rate is more concerning than the psychological effects? Effects which the paper itself mentions and you seem to downplay for some unobvious reason to me.
For me, the difficulty is discerning causation from correlation. Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of them have obvious mental issues. I am interested in knowing the root cause of mental issues, because then we are given the opportunity to affect behaviours to improve people’s lives. A correlation is often little help to anyone but other researchers.
I didn’t read the paper but the abstract didn’t allude to any insight into causation versus correlation. If an abstract of a paper ignores that issue, then I often don’t bother reading, because there is not enough value from studies measuring correlation (for my personal use for any information).
> Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of them have obvious mental issues
If there’s a causal link, I wonder in which direction is more common? I know kids from my neighborhood who now smoke a lot of weed. I think most of them had issues long before trying weed and weed was more of an escape for them, much like booze is for many.
Psychological effects are, in general, reversible. Also, they tend to be dose-dependent, and rather obvious. It's easy to avoid them by limiting consumption. I stopped smoking weed for other reasons, but I didn't really care if my memory formation was impaired after 9 PM. Effects on the heart, on the other hand, can build up for years without much warning, since most people don't get regular EKG.
> Anecdotally I know plenty of cannabis users, and many of them have obvious mental issues
Do they have actual, diagnosed "mental issues", or are you judging that some of their behavior is out of the norm for your experience and thus it must be a mental issue?
Yes, I have acquaintances and friends with diagnosed mental illnesses that smoke weed. Also the same but don’t smoke.
Yes, I have acquaintances and friends with no psychological problems that smoke weed. Also the same but don’t smoke.
Yes, I have acquaintances and friends with “undiagnosed” psychological problems that smoke weed. Also the same but don’t smoke.
No, I am not a professional psychological specialist.
Yes, I have some experiences to be able to make intelligent “non-professional” judgements about psychological problems. My definition of a psychological problem is one where the problem is seriously negatively affecting ones life, and ones skills are not successfully mitigating or correcting the problem. Environmental issues have a part to play in that. My friends and acquaintances have a wide range of ages.
You seem to be fishing for something - perhaps you could have just made your point instead (with caveats).
Disclaimer: I don’t use any form of THC or CBD. No strong reasons against it, just not my thing. I certainly have nothing against those that want or need to take THC or CBD.
Sure, I was fishing. I guess I should have just outright said "Your individual experiences with individuals in a group are invalid when discussing things that can be empirically studied, such as the effects of using cannabis on various groups," and went on with my day.
By the way, labeling an undesirable group with "mental issues" has been done many times in the past, sometimes even with "good" intentions.
A well-designed study may be more revealing, but the individual experiences are legitimate and should not be discarded solely because studies are possible.
A strong enough signal will show in a sample of one.
With a correct model, cause and effect can be predicted without any samples (scientific progress often occurs this way).
And some people’s intuitions are remarkably astute. Albeit there are a lot of people who have incorrect intuitions and don’t know it.
A cannabis example would be strong paranoia after one sesh. More ingrained paranoia (qanon?) that I have seen linked to regular heavy usage doesn’t feel to me to be a stretch of the imagination.
More likely, they probably can't wade thru the noise to find it - search cannabis and health and be prepared to search thru hundreds, if not ten's of thousands of pages of propaganda claiming that it is nothing but good for almost any health condition you have - real or imagined.
If you search PubMed, you will find case reports of other similar incidents. Now, no denying this is an extremely rare adverse effect, but still a quite frightening one. (Also worth stating, many of these reported cases of cannabis-induced psychotic penile self-amputation involve no known history of gender dysphoria.)
I have a feeling that these individuals (I could only find two in my pubmed search) were suffering from schizophrenia, not cannabis-induced psychosis. Maybe you could make the argument that the cannabis caused the schizophrenia, but that's still a different diagnosis.
In the case you link the guy had smoked weed for two years prior with no apparent issues. Yes his psychosis resolved after he stopped using cannabis, but he was also treated from that point onward with anti-psychotics (the kind you would treat schizophrenia with). It was probably the anti-psychotics, not the cannabis cessation that made him not psychotic.
I hear this argument every time someone does something bad on psychedelics and cannabis. I’ve also heard that, if the patient had no history of schizophrenia or related disorders, they must have just had it latent and were bound to get it anyway.
Bottom line is there is no way for any individual to really know if they have latent schizophrenia anyway, and I think it’s a conveniently non-disprovable explanation for why psychedelics and cannabis aren’t bad.
I think calling cannabis bad or good is a false dichotomy. Sometimes peanuts kill children, that doesn't make peanuts "bad". Maybe cannabis causes schizophrenia in rare cases, does that make it "bad"?
In this specific case, the authors started him on a treatment for schizophrenia and he got better. Why continue him on this treatment if they thought it was simply the cannabis that caused it (as he would abstain from then on). Also, they increased his dose prior to discharge.
I'm not arguing that cannabis didn't cause his schizophrenia, just that this doesn't sound like cannabis induced psychosis, which is a different diagnosis with different prognosis.
I've long had this sense, that if I started smoking weed every day, I probably would develop psychosis sooner or later. I feel like my connection to reality is at times somewhat tenuous, and heavy cannabis could easily disturb it enough to break it entirely. I suppose I could be wrong, but that's a hypothesis I'm not going to test.
I do think some people can have that "latent" potential yet have the good fortune of never activating it – and cannabis definitely has the potential to do so (although most recreational drugs probably can given sufficiently heavy long-term use).
(I tried cannabis once, years ago, I could see why people like it but I didn't feel any great urge to repeat the experience – and worries like this also discourage me – which is probably for the best.)
See this paper – Veeder TA, Leo RJ. Male genital self-mutilation: a systematic review of psychiatric disorders and psychosocial factors. Gen Hosp Psychiatry. 2017 Jan-Feb;44:43-50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2016.09.003 Epub 2016 Sep 14. PMID: 28041576.
To quote its abstract:
> Data were obtained from 173 cases: genital mutilation (n=21), penile amputation (n=62), castration (n=56) and combined amputation/castration (n=34). Common psychiatric disorders included schizophrenia spectrum (49%), substance use (18.5%), personality (15.9%) and gender dysphoric disorders (15.3%)
So, while it is almost 50% schizophrenia spectrum, substance use is the second most common cause (although personality disorders and gender dysphoria are not far behind, and the difference between the three might not be statistically significant.)
Thanks, I searched for cannabis specifically which would explain why this didn't show up. I imagine much of the substance use auto amputations are in people who do things like PCP.
Good point, I edited it to add a note. I should have warned people but I forgot.
Also, my mother is a doctor, and when I was a teenager (even tweenager) I used to love to read her medical journals and textbooks–it has made me rather immune to the unsightly images they sometimes contain–although, interestingly, images which I can view nonchalantly in a medical context will still freak me out if divorced from that context.
I know some who don’t touch a drop of alcohol. Maybe some early 20 yos do but that lifestyle can’t be too productive, pot and alcohol amplify eachother’s effects and get you seriously intoxicated
It’s still a DUI if you drive on it. The week after it was legalized in my state, a person managed to put their car through the second story of a home. The toxicology report showed the only thing in their system was cannabis.
Cannibis can be in your system for weeks or months, so take the authority reports that the accident was caused by cannabis intoxication with a grain of salt, and assume that absent other evidence it might be that the user in this case wasn’t high at the time.
I’m not saying this to say no accidents has been caused by cannibis, but that there’s currently no way to tell current level of cannabis intoxication. Authorities will use the lack of nuance in their favor.
> Cannibis can be in your system for weeks or months
No.
You are confusing the tests for cannabis metabolites (that can tell if you smoked weeks ago) to tests for THC, the substance that gets you stoned and leaves the bloodstream as you sober up.
A driving impairment test will test for THC, not metabolites. Nobody cares if you smoked last week, only if you are under the influence when driving.
In the UK, having 2ug / litre of THC in the blood is a drug-driving offence. At a minimum you will loose your licence for 1 year.
> 2ug / litre of THC in the blood is a drug-driving offence
So I can have up to 8ug of THC in my blood? If I took 0.1mg (100ug) of THC (and would be very NOT high in this case, as it is 1/100th of a "normal" dose) I would probably be over the limit in that case, so sure they may be able to test for THC in the blood, but the limit is so laughably low as to effectively ban cannabis users from driving.
this is probably the second-most studied thing in forensic toxicology after alcohol use.
> Cannibis can be in your system for weeks or months
and the levels of active compounds[1] in somebody recently using, vs someone months away from use look very different, and their nature will generally work to the benefit of the defendant when reviewed by a competent forensic toxicologist.
[1] - not a yes/no from shitty screening methods; that kind of information comes off of quarter-million dollar mass spectrometers. they should be able to separate all of the inactive and active compounds from each other, enumerate them and list their exact concentrations in the blood.
Show me that they could tell if I was smoking one hour ago versus one day ago? That’s the point here, I bet they can’t even reliably tell one week versus one hour. Maybe they can tell off I had only smoked several months ago, that won’t help me tomorrow if I smoke today before dinner.
A traffic collision is not evidence of inebriation, though, since people get in collisions when not inebriated. I'm talking about someone following them that saw them weaving, not holding a phone, perhaps nodding asleep, or maybe even someone saw them smoking a joint, then a just-lit joint was found at the scene.
Driving high and drunk are idiotic to equate. Not saying you can't be impaired high, but people can also drive after a joint better than anyone after equivalent alcohol intoxication.
This smells like teetotaling more than evidence-based discourse.
This is an interesting claim, or I'm reading it wrong. Wouldn't "equivalent intoxication" mean the driver in both cases equally shouldn't be behind the wheel?
Somewhat related, but I'm still curious how they test marijuana intoxication level in drivers. Is there an equivalent BAC-type test, especially considering how long weed stays in the system?
> Wouldn't "equivalent intoxication" mean the driver in both cases equally shouldn't be behind the wheel?
No, "equivalent" here is general-purpose intoxication, not something calibrated to driving. Since the effects are so different, we should expect significantly different levels of driving impairment to be likely.
That the drugs work in very different ways so we shouldn't assume they have the same intoxication profile? I feel like that's basic knowledge.
For where I say we're looking at general purpose vs. driving-specific, that just seems to me like the most reasonable statement they would have been making.
I think the confusion might lie in the use of your term "equivalent intoxication" then. Especially when you then mentioned their different intoxication profiles. How exactly would you define equivalent intoxication levels in something with different intoxication profiles?
Not my term, but some kind of test might make sense, or the average of several things. I mean, how do you define intoxication levels at all? You can't just, like, measure reaction time and say you're done.
Yeah it's not easy with alcohol either. Many people have almost no impact on their cognitive abilities or reaction times with a BAC of .08, while others could be legal to drive with a .06 but shouldn't be.
Any time I had used cannabis I felt like my IQ dropped 20-30 points and I would lose hours of my day where it was difficult for me to learn. It made doing household chores not terrible, but brought out a lot of panic inducing moments and erratic behavior. I was thinking about a 100k other things while doing one thing. Later on I realized I wasn't even doing that one thing so well. Anything that drops cognitive abilities for a moment is going to be awful long term and especially for babies.
I know a lot of people think cannabis isn't bad, but it is intellectually dishonest to disregard the broader effects of effects on cognition. I say that as someone who used to smoke a ton of cannabis.
Not having to rely on drugs to find calmness has made a profound change in my life, and I can't believe that I used to turn to weed, alcohol, etc. when all I needed to be permanently (key word) happy was already present within me. Prior, when the effects went away I spent just as much time craving and suffering heavily.
That being said I don't think it should be criminalized or anything like that. It is up to adults to do whatever, but it is useful to be honest as well. Not everyone uses it for epilepsy, none of the dispensaries here sell CBD products. Its all high THC products meant to "fuck you up"
31 year old adult that smoked weed daily from like 16 on until about 28.
Always thought I was "treating my anxiety" with weed. Nope, it absolutely was just making it worse. I quit for a few months and the anxiety got worse. Dad then died of a congenital heart condition. Symptoms of the heart condition mimic anxiety.
Took 9 years of doctors telling me "it was a fluke" my dad died of it/ that there's no way I had that condition showing symptoms in my 20's. That it was weed and smoking cigarettes. Finally had a doctor take me seriously. EKG showed nothing (Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia symptoms aren't just gonna show up on command). Got a 30 day halter monitor. Proved I have it and would've died within a few years without meds.
Got on heart meds and 80% of my anxiety dried up. Didn't really feel the need to smoke weed anymore outside of for fun.
Not trying to say everyone that can empathize with this post has IST - but, self medicating is real, and you need to advocate for yourself in medicine to try and get true care.
Every other month I do a Twitter thread on being a young adult with heart symptoms and not being taken seriously because of young age or smoking cigarettes, etc. We have a little club of 12 now - 11 people I've helped walk through the bullshit Byzantine procedures a young adult needs to go through to get a heart condition diagnosis. Always happy to walk anyone through the process who might see this post.
Basically shoots and ladders and logic puzzles with medical professionals to get your 30 day halter monitor - but it's so worth it for a diagnosis.
Sounds like you and I have similar reactions to marijuana. From “that smells great” to “I’m talking, but I can’t remember what I was going to say” in just three tokes.
What I’ve come to understand though is that for many other people, marijuana makes them feel great - sharp, alert, at ease and in control. I can empathize with the idea that “this can’t be bad!” even while acknowledging you’d have to be very deluded to smoke anything or consume any psychoactive drug while pregnant just because definitive proof of harm is lacking.
Not necessarily surprising, but important research. There is a big difference between that 20-30 IQ acute effect and lifelong disorders from exposure across the placenta. We will have to see if research continues to point to morbidity; in the meantime, probably best to stay away from pot while pregnant.
It's a lesser of evils in my case. If you can give up weed and everything else too, great. But for me personally, I tend to drink a bit more when I have no weed, not hugely more, but I'd be very surprised if having no weed around is better for my health, vs increased alcohol consumption.
Obivously no drugs at would be the ideal. But often this kind of health stuff is about compromises.
My experience exactly. Thank you for describing this so well.
I think the greatest problem with marijuana discourse is that it ignores the large variability in effects. For me, and apparently for you and for many others, the description above is exact (which I found entire
extremely enjoyable, of course). For others it’s very different, allowing them to function completely normally.
The amount of research over last decade has been huge, even outside of this. It used to be the only way companies could research cannabis was by getting really crappy samples from a government grow house, but with legalization the supply of research samples and the quality of researchers willing to work on it has grown considerably.
This is a direct safety issue. I used to moderator one of the bigger cannabis subreddits and one of the bigger questions that always came up was whether it was safe to smoke while pregnant. The answer I always gave was that we just don't know, and so it should be avoided. The lack of research though meant that people couldn't make informed decisions, and the stereotype around cannabis being safe meant that people did not always err on the side of caution. Now there is something concrete we can point to.
It's odd this is getting so downvoted. A lot of projection perhaps? We don't know the answer and there's good research showing cannabinoids in sperm. Why's it so outrageous to suggest that until we know the answer, don't birth a kid with a weed tinted fertilizer?
The answer above is neutral, yours is not "don't birth a kid with a weed tinted fertilizer". There are many things that hypothetically could be bad and we do not have the answer. Which is we normally go by the opposite approach:
What data do we have that indicates, that high sperm is bad?
As far as I know, none.
(A pregnant mother smoking is a whole different story)
If that's what you think my response says then you didn't read it at all. I literally said that I would tell people "we just don't know, and so it should be avoided". Not "we don't know". I said "We don't know, so avoid it". That's a very different statement than what you're quoting- literally the exact opposite of your "it's not safe" quote.
Inhaling any burnt organic matter is known to be bad for peoples health. Theres a mechanistic explanation for it too: smoking causes incomplete combustion of organic matter creating a soup of volatile organics and slew of carbon particulates, many with activated surfaces. CO, formaldehyde, CN, etc. even CO2 which is toxic at high concentrations (its not merely an asphyxiant like it is for a fire).
Smoke is bad. Full stop. exposure to smoke, cigarettes, diesel fumes, interstate, etc while pregnant is harmful to the baby. This has been known for decades.
So the answer should have been: "we don't know the effects specifically of pot on pregnancy, but we know smoking is bad while pregnant. So, while we don't know about pot-cookies, joints are bad."
Pretty much everyone I know who uses cannabis vaporizes these days, so no burning involved. That said these sketchy vape cartridges are pretty scary at times and I'd love to see that regulated and tested like tobacco products are.
Regardless of how it's ingested though I imagine that once it gets into the bloodstream it's getting into the fetus, and I'd absolutely want a bunch of high quality peer reviewed studies saying that it's safe before I'd be willing to indulge while pregnant (not that it's an option for me, testicles and all).
> So the answer should have been: "we don't know the effects specifically of pot on pregnancy, but we know smoking is bad while pregnant. So, while we don't know about pot-cookies, joints are bad."
No it should not have been. You removed all warning outside of smoking, and that's reckless.
It does seem like a weak reply to me - it's too equivocal. "We don't know" implies that it's anybody's guess, and that it should be avoided only out of an abundance of caution. Some people will interpret that response as "there's no evidence it's bad, so it's probably fine."
In fact there's plenty of evidence it's bad, both direct (the linked study is not the only one) and indirect (we know that smoking in pregnancy is bad, and that drugs affect the fetus, and that fetuses are sensitive). If you polled medical professionals, they would all say it's probably bad. The likelihood that it's perfectly fine is small.
Just as a baseline, we know smoking cannabis is unsafe because it’s smoke going into your lungs. That’s never healthy. Any particulate inhalation is bad for your lungs.
I think a lot of people think it’s “safe” is it’s been used for thousands of years and has relatively well tolerated. It’s nice to get more specific info like this though.
>one of the bigger questions that always came up was whether it was safe to smoke while pregnant. The answer I always gave was that we just don't know, and so it should be avoided. The lack of research though meant that people couldn't make informed decisions, and the stereotype around cannabis being safe meant that people did not always err on the side of caution.
My friend (a bit crazy) once told me he wondered the same thing when governments and pharmaceutical companies would say the Covid jab was safe for pregnant women. Or at least, that there was “no data” suggesting it is harmful.
Pregnant women were included in the original safety studies (not by design, if you have 40k people some of them will become pregnant) and there were no safety signals. On the other hand we had pretty good information early on that being pregnant was a major risk factor in getting severe COVID.
Same goes for the disease. It’s not a great situation when both the vaccine and the disease are new. FWIW vaccine side effects that are detected a long time after administration are incredibly rare [1].
“ 6 exposures (unplanned pregnancy; maternal alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco use early in pregnancy; pregnancy complications; and birth complications) independently associated with significant but small increases in CBCL total score. Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself. However, odds of exceeding this threshold became significant with 2 exposures (OR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.47–2.36), and increased linearly with each level of exposure (OR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.31–1.47), up to 3.53-fold for ≥4 exposures versus none”
IIRC, earlier research by Bledsoe and Davies at UWashington found lots of confounding factors for maternal drug use. For example, alcohol use by crack users during pregnancy was effectively universal making it likely that the crack-baby epidemic in the 90s was most likely FAS. I believe they also found no correlation between marijuana use and developmental delays.
Alcohol and tobacco cessation are heavily pushed on you the second you begin to try to conceive. Doctors tell you there is no safe amount of alcohol. The only place weed was even mentioned to me was in the Mayo clinic guide to pregnancy, once.
You are a dozen times more likely to get the smoking lecture and hundreds of times more likely to get the booze lecture at any given time.
This is going to be confounded surely... parents who use cannabis during pregnancy are not 'the same as everyone else except they use cannabis'. They probably, or might I say, almost certainly, have higher rates of psychiatric disorders, the propensity for which they pass onto their children.
So the size of the effect will be less than what is claimed, but in any case don't use cannabis during pregnancy.
These association studies are near useless. Every positive behavior and positive outcome are correlated, and every bad behavior and outcome are correlated.
Mothers who get high during their pregnancy are different from mothers who don't.
A more informed one would be looking at women with seizures that are treated with cannabis and comparing them to women with the same disorder who aren't. There are still differences but they'd be smaller.
I read this right after I got back from the marijuana store where a pregnant woman was buying weed. It made me uncomfortable. It just seems risky to me to take intoxicants while the babies brain is forming.
Well, here's some anecdata: it kept my wife from dying from hyperemesis gravidarum (non-stop vomiting during pregnancy to the point of rupturing eye vessels, vomiting blood, dehydration, ketosis etc.)
The other medications the hospital offered didn't work, and even those came with their own fetal risks.
So it was either abort the baby, try cannabis, or probably die. Our child is now older and performs well cognitively, e.g. speaks three languages fluently.
Well I didn't give her a look. She wasn't even aware that I was there. But yeah, I think your wife has the right strategy, because there are people who will say something.
I know that's what you got, and I'm wondering where you got it from. How does my wife buying me a beer increase the risks for birth defects for the fetus she carries?
Damn, thought I laid it out quite nicely in short form.
It's a good thing in general to have a society that cares about whether a pregnant women is putting their baby at risk - and you simply can't have that without false positives. For every false positive making it a touch more awkward to purchase beer (the smallest price I can think of to pay) you get a ton of great things like general empathy. The society that cares that much probably also grabs a dead roach out of a strangers baby's hands right before it eats it unbeknownst to their parents, for example.
Your comment comes off as: How dare people care about an unborn baby having an entire life of misery if it ever-so-slightly infringes on my right to have a slight buzz for an afternoon.
Not saying you are one, but this is a great example of what my generation will pull "Ok boomer" out for: the general attitude of "Don't make my fun time ever-so-slightly more inconvenient just to preserve [society|the environment|anything that will last beyond their death]".
I understood exactly what you were saying, but felt no compunction to respond to your implied point because, basically, I thought you were being a dick.
And now I know why. Because you read my comment as uncharitably as possible, and because of that, now I'm a bad person in your eyes who needs to be shamed or scorned. I'm honestly surprised you didn't accuse me of beating my wife in a rage when she doesn't return with the single 12 oz can of of 4.5% beer that I requested.
And thanks for the lesson on gen-z slang. Out of curiosity, what are kids calling self-serious blowhards these days?
Showing people who degenerate culture why that is is empathy.
On a related note my generation confuses kindness with empathy way, way too often, it's a terrible millennial habit.
Anyone familiar with boomer memes knows being flippant towards having to care a bit more is a huge part of it. It's easy to understand.
They grew up with a booming economy, peace, less value towards preservation and externalities, greed is good, and an America-centric worldview… Millennials had multiple wars, two large recessions, two rounds of QE, and a small fraction of equivalent prosperity at the same age.
They got all the benefits of the boom and none of the downsides while the younger generations are paying. When you see a kid who was raised totally spoiled complaining “I don’t want to throw away my trash, the bins all the way over there” when you're working as a garbage-man you roll your eyes and say....
I think the real problem- and something I'm hoping more research can help with- is that marijuana is a medicine for a lot of people. It prevents seizures, reduces or stops migraines, and (this one is really important considering the context) reduces nausea. Sometimes people have to balance between a bunch of crappy options.
This isn't always the case, of course, but it's hard to judge what someone is going through from the outside so I tend to just give the benefit of the doubt. What would be nice would be if we could figure out why cannabis helps with these issues and provide a more direct treatment.
Yeah- and with a lack of research available there are a lot of people who limited their cannabis intake or didn't reduce at all during pregnancy.
A lot of this comes down to balancing risks- which is absolutely something that should be done while consulting a doctor. If someone is so nauseous they can't even maintain weight, let alone gain that healthy baby weight, then it's possible a small amount of marijuana may be more healthy for them despite the risks.
To be clear though I'm just advocating a lot more research on the subject, and personally would err on the side of caution when it comes to things that aren't heavily researched.
To add to that it isn't just "serious" prescription medications that may need to be discontinued; a variety of OTCs from Aspirin to PeptoBismol can also pose a risk to anyone expecting.
Yeah, it's not like getting drunk, where alcohol actually is a toxin and you can kill yourself with an overdose.
I find if I have alcohol early in the day enough to get a buzz, after I sober up I still will feel tired and sluggish. Do a wake and bake - get stoned for an hour or two and then I feel totally normal the rest of the day. Weed isn't toxic (although inhalation of smoke may be).
My wife has picked up marijuana for me while pregnant from a dispensary before because it was right next to another business that she was already at. Please don't be so quick to judge others.
Weed is bad for you, what a shocker. Like all drugs you have to weigh the positive effects with the negative. Generally it's bad to do most rec drugs if pregnant or around kids.
Edit: there is one aed drug I haven't tried, vimpat. Maybe that could stand in, but it overlaps with another I take already, and isn't really meant to be used together. I risk flopping around on the ground playing with those drugs, when after years I'm just now toning down other symptoms like temporary blindness and cluster headaches. Maybe you could call those quality of life things, but they are probably breaking my brain down a bit.
We do a lot of things other than those just to survive.
The thing to talk about these days is "quality of life".
If cannabis helps, and a person wants to use it, it's not really my business.
Anandamide receptors. They don't only respond to weed- cannabis happens to be the only plant we know of that produces large amounts of THC or CBD. Anandamide is a chemical our body makes to stimulate those receptors "endogenously" (IE, for its own inner working). The purpose of anandamide receptors is still quite cryptic, or rather, I would say fairly subtle- it seems to "enhance the experience of pleasure in response to reward".
I know my mother smoked cannabis when she was pregnant back in the 70s (hippie parents etc). Maybe it wasn't related to that, but I did experience a number of mental disorders from my childhood to my late 20s.
> In 2018, 4.7% of pregnant women reported cannabis use and 5.4% did in 2019
Holy cow, one in twenty woman are admitting to getting high when pregnant. I wouldn't have ever thought it that high. But then again, both my and my wife's moms smoked pot while pregnant.
One of my pet peeves is the oft repeated slogan “it’s not addictive”. And by definition, that’s true. But neither is Methamphetamine. But people still throw it around like it’s some kind of scientific blessing that you can’t form a dependency.
Also, I think the true cost of marijuana is the opportunity cost - it’s not just what it does to you, it’s what it takes from you - your motivation, potential etc. And it’s really quite toxic to your long term mental health, in devilishly insidious ways - and is usually accompanied by aggressively-defended self deceptions.
“Addictive” only applies to substances which cause physical withdrawal symptoms - coffee, cigarettes, xanax, heroin, alcohol. But drugs such as methamphetamine and cannabis technically aren’t addictive because they don’t cause any physical withdrawal symptoms.
I’ve noticed this too. I think “habit forming” might be a better phrase - coupled with potential impacts to life, divided into positive and negative impacts (positive such as tooth decay, impacts on physical and mental health; negative such as lack of motivation, reduced general ambition, lack of initiative for non drug related activities, reduced concentration, altered perspective and so on) might be a better framework.
Cannabis might not be as obviously life ruining as hard drugs such as alcohol, meth and heroin - but it’s no less debilitating for society to have people re-orient themselves away from traditional goal-seeking behavior (such as finding a job or starting a family).
There are people who spend 80% of their time with a cup of coffee; it's not without side effects either, they risk e.g.: increased blood pressure, anxiety, trouble sleeping.
"Associated with" is basically meaningless in human or health studies.
I'm not saying there isn't a causal link here, there probably is. I'm just saying this isn't science, it's excel. So we should do some actual science and know rather than just creating an ever bigger list of "associated" risks that no one can remember or compare or make much use of.
Good to see more research on cannabis but I find studies by association to be incredibly easy to push in one direction or another.
I'd be more inclined to believe that parents who smoke cannabis during pregnancy are more likely to be bad parents or live in a bad environment, which result into issues with their kids 15 years later.
Or maybe they keep smoking around their kids over their lifespan and that prolonged exposure is causing problems in the adolescence.
I find it hard to believe cannabis crossing the placenta would be causing issues 15 years after exposure and not affecting the children before.
Plenty of young kids are diagnosed (even overdiagnosed if we want to talk about the subject) with behavioural issues. Why is this study not finding any evidence of that?
My wife uses cannabis for pain management and she used it through pregnancy. Her OBGYN was aware and didn't recommend against it. Our daughter is 6 now and we still think about it. Anything she has trouble with, I always wonder; did we do this to her? Though I don't know that there was a better choice available.
Are there effective painkillers that don't have risks for developing babies? Is good for a developing baby to be receiving constant stress hormones from a mother in intense pain?
I can't read the whole article, but just by opening its link it changes from a definitive conclusion to a "may affect". It wouldn't surprise me if weak correlation was presented as causation.
An interesting point to view at any drug (including alcohol and even coffee) is presence of social stigmas.
Coffee has very mild (almost none) social stigma associated with its consumption: ppl would recommend to drink less if you are obviously overconsume it.
Alcohol has somewhat harsh social stigma starting from certain point and actually some encouragement in small doses.
Cannabis seems like has no stigma (outside of some circles) in small doses and somewhat mild for overconsumption.
No research, just my observation, but i would like to see one.
During pregnancy I'd assume almost any exposure to anything that is not essential nutrients, pure air and pure water is bad to some measurable effect if we could measure it.
Could someone help me understand the mechanism of action that triggers mental problems from cannabis consumption? I recall it being a trigger for psychosis in some cases.
only spitballing, but everyone has intrusive thoughts, and we tune them out to various degrees
weed can be a kind of thought dis-inhibitor, and can take any thought that crosses your mind and make it the most important thought you've ever had (see also: thinking your stoned ideas are revolutionary inventions, until you sober up and realize you've re-invented the tea kettle)
And wouldn't you know it, the title does not match the findings:
> Among these 6, none increased the odds of crossing the threshold for clinically significant symptoms by itself.
The linked article bizarrely focuses on cannabis, but they looked at "unplanned pregnancies", "maternal alcohol, marijuana and tobaccos use in early pregnancy", "pregnancy complications" and "birth complications". The only finding:
> Children exposed to multiple common, adverse prenatal events showed dose-dependent increases in broad, clinically significant psychopathology at age 9–10.
Where is the article lecturing us about the dangers of unplanned pregnancies so everyone can kneejerk react to it? (Also, why is this study mixing in alcohol use, which is of course already strongly proven to lead to all kinds of disorders..)
The only way I could be sane as a scientist (I'm an ex-scientist) is by ignoring large parts of the literature. In fact, I think one of the greatest skills a scientist can have is to know when not to read a paper or even really consider the title.
My own work in science was deeply quantitative and the bar for evidence was very high. Nearly every time I read a clinical paper (with the exception of professionally run clinical trials with a good statistical design and rigid adherence to protocols), it takes only a little time to find an "invalidating statement"- a description of methodology or a core assumption or a common mistake- for me to realize that investing further time is simply not worth it.
It doesn't mean that I necessarily believe the opposite of the paper, but rather fall back on my own prior assumptions/null hypothesis explanation.
It's dangerous to impute causality here given the potential for confounding environmental factors. Consider the chief finding that multiple such exposures had a more significant effect than individual exposure ... and what kind of home environment would tend to be associated with multiple of these exposures, including unplanned pregnancy, and use of alcohol, marijuana, and tobacco during pregnancy.
Also, note that this article is a press release from the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
A lot of people are driving on it, too. I'm seeing a record number of red lights being run in Manhattan of all places. General disorder or correlation?
Addiction, self-medication (eg. pain/nausea relief), escapism, peer pressure. To name a few.
I used to be sceptical about weed addiction, and then it happened to me. It was relatively difficult to quit even though the habit was severely impacting my work and social life. In the end not having any weed around helped a lot. If you have an easy endless supply, boy, you're in trouble.
If you enjoy weed, consider having a strict limit (eg. max 1 smoke per week). If you smoke every day, you might find yourself unable to quit when need arises (eg. pregnancy, yours or your partner's).
Also, you know, doctor recommended medication. And not just the "weed doctors" do it either, my conservative neurologist even told me to smoke THC heavy marijuana.
I smoke every day. It absolutely impacts my work and social life, as without it I'm a painful ball of irritation that would have to be on opiates to get anything done.
I think it's more addictive than people think. I've known a few people who I think have a problem, but they become violently confrontational if you say it might be addictive for some. I may get comments and downvotes along these lines.
I guess some people may also have some exposure from before they realize they're pregnant. That probably also happens with things like alcohol. I think I've heard some say that's not a big issue, though.
When someone mentions addiction people think heroin addiction, but yeah people can become psychologically dependent on cannabis too. I know I did, many years ago.
> but they become violently confrontational if you say it might be addictive for some
Going out on a limb here but it might be in the same spirit as a similar response to "Strong encryption is for child abuse and terrorism" / "Bittorrent is for pirating movies" in that it's true in some cases but is used as a popular discourse wedge to promote governmental overreach
I asked a then-pregnant still-weed-smoking coworker of my fiancée about this, she said "it isn't that bad for the baby, at least compared to alcohol or meth", and another coworker (female, roughly same age) agreed that "meth and booze are really bad for pregnant women, but weed not so much". from the sound of things (this was on a car trip to a nearby Native American reservation where the then-pregnant girl's parents lived), among this strata of people at least, if you get pregnant, you should definitely stop drinking and consuming meth, but weed isn't a big deal. no idea how this entered the public subconscious but there you have it.
At least they’re not okay with meth and alcohol while pregnant… Or they never consume meth and use the ruse to normalize weed consumption. I my books nothing is worth risking for the baby’s health
> I my books nothing is worth risking for the baby’s health
That's a bad book.
Everything has risk. If you think you're not risking, you're deluding yourself. Trying to avoid "unnecessary" risks is only marginally better. You need to know how big the risks actually are, or your biases will mislead you.
So probably about 20% of women who may become pregnant smoke marijuana, and 75% of them stop when pregnant, before adjusting for whether they are aware of the pregnancy. There are usually a few irresponsible individuals in any group.
thalidomide is still prescribed and is a highly effective drug. What's your point? The entire narrative about thalidomide completely oversells what happened and distorts people's understanding of drug safety.
This is a backlash from anti-cannabis disinformation. People were told lies about how dangerous it is for decades, and now people don't know what to believe.
To steelman this argument (to the extent that I can): we can in fact attribute a great deal of harm to highly processed ingredients, while there are a number of plants and animals humans have lived with and eaten for millenia, and we've identified the natural products that are poisonous. Weed is one of the plants that humans have coexisted with and consumed for millenia, and societies with high weed consumption don't appear to be significantly sicker than ones that don't.
(I can't think of a way to steelman around the fact that there are many toxic plant and animal substances, and some highly processed ingredients are completely harmless)
And water comes from burning fossil fuels too, but I doubt that water would be good for you. Ibuprofen comes from the bark of tree IIRC, but that pill is a lot better than the soup you’d have to eat to get not nearly the same effect. Everything is natural. I really hate that argument.
> I really think all men should withhold all judgement of women, pregnant or not.
No. The right to an opinion and to express it is not contingent on ones gender or gender expression. It is perfectly reasonable for people to make observations, conduct scientific research, form opinions, and discuss those opinions even if the outcome of such doesn't personally affect them. And, in point of fact, it's /strictly necessary/ for societal level issues.
It isn't people you're talking about, it is only men. The issue is only men are giving their opinion, which they feel very strongly about, and it is a circumstance they, biologically speaking, can never experience.
So please take the advice of another man: whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. A woman's right to do as she pleases with her body is as absolute as a man's right to do as he pleases with his body.
We're not talking about the right to bodily autonomy, we're talking about doing scientific research and forming and expressing opinions. By your logic, we should rip down all the signs legally mandated in bar bathrooms informing people that alcohol during pregnancy causes birth defects.
While the article concerns a study, I responded to the OP of this thread, which is scrutinizing, "Why are pregnant women smoking weed to begin with?"
Now you have just advanced a straw man argument, as the topic of this thread is not research nor your defense of opinions, but rather, scrutinizing pregnant women.
It’s exactly what I said it is and you are engaged in politically motivated reasoning as evidenced by other subthreads and not making good faith assertions. The only one straw manning others is you.
Should men not tell women not to drink alcohol while pregnant? Men can't understand what it is like to be pregnant. What right does a man have to control a women's body?
I tolerate it all the time. I live in a society that tells me I can't jaywalk, speed, drink and drive and everything else there are laws against. These crimes a victimless and yet I still follow them (for the most part). When I don't I accept the risk I am given a ticket or am arrested.
What about a doctor giving medical advice? You want to listen to that type of person, do you not? That's not "telling you what to do", it's offering a medical opinion which is typically sought out.
So, most doctors would advise against alcoholic beverages during pregnancy, I hope.
Alcohol has been in use for ~7000 years yet society only began broadly recognizing it as harmful during pregnancy in the 1970s. [0] I don’t think the form of your argument holds any weight. Would you make the same claim regarding the use of alcohol during pregnancy?
This is a straw man argument. You have introduced alcohol to set up your straw man so that you can attack it. As such, your argument is fallacious, and would be no different if you had used bleach instead of alcohol. Neither bleach nor alcohol is cannabis.
Let me be very clear, I am not disagreeing with your point. Nor am I agreeing. I’m simply stating that your conclusion does not follow for the form of your argument, and providing an alternative example.
Now you are being evasive, and your example is still a straw man.
The form of my argument is that it is significant that there are not massive amounts of psychosis historically correlated to cannabis use, like we should have seen if this study is valid, and we really would have noticed. You're suggesting no one noticed alcohol was bad, either, but this is false. In fact, alcohol has been widely recognized as being destructive since it first became popular. That no one did any studies on the effect on fetuses until the 1970's is incidental, as anyone should have been able to guess this correctly without a formal clinical study.
Regardless of alcohol being a poor replacement for cannabis in example or metaphor, it is still a straw man argument.
I disagree. I think there is a lot of misinformation flooding the nets and the news, and this is provably true. Psychosis is a pretty obvious condition, and it was not difficult to observe psychosis thousands of years ago. Cannabis has been in wide global use since at least 8000BC, and yet... there just historically aren't enough crazy people for this to remotely pass the stiff test.
I've personally seen someone with bipolar disorder enter a months long psychotic episode after exposure to small amounts of THC. That is how I know it's a thing.
It happens.
I think psychotic illnesses are complex and there is no one cause. THC can be a factor. This is also what the Google results I linked you to said
Unless they regularly entered bipolar episodes after imbibing a small amount of THC I'm not sure you're making a claim here. You saw it happen one time to a person who also goes into bipolar incidents without it and now it's the THC's fault? It isn't a very convincing anecdote.
I bet they drank water before the bipolar episode too.
There are any factors that cause such an episode in someone with susceptibility. I'll repeat: [it is] complex and there is no one cause. THC can be a factor. This is also what the Google results I linked you to said
Correlation is not causation. And even to suggest small amounts of THC can cause "a months long psychotic episode" is absurd, especially because it is an ordinary risk of being bipolar. If a mentally healthy individual was sent into a month's long psychotic episode immediately after smoking a bong, then maybe, and that is still a huge maybe.
Again, cannabis has been in use recreationally and medicinally for more than 10,000 years. There are billions of users on Earth today, but psychotic episode remains a vanishingly rare event among users, insignificantly so. The general scientific consensus still remains that weed is harmless. But these days conservatives have gone overboard in twisting the facts to promote their nanny state agenda. I expect that, given recent assaults on rights, pregnant women alone are going to remove them from Congress.
But by all means, please believe what you wish, just don't expect anyone else to support your fantastic beliefs.
> but psychotic episode remains a vanishingly rare event among users, insignificantly so.
I don't think that's likely to be true at all. Single digit percentages of all humans have a psychotic disorder. If cannabis had no effect and such an event is coincidental, we would certainly not call it "vanishingly rare".
> But these days conservatives have gone overboard in twisting the facts to promote their nanny state agenda.
To be clear I explicitly said this is not a reason to ban on criminalize the substance. Just to not be in denial about it.
Anyway, the Google search I sent to you has plenty of sources who agree with my position.
You can not win an argument promoting false facts. Far less than one percent of the population will suffer a psychotic episode, between 0.25% and 0.64%.
If being told what to do is intolerable to you, then stop telling others what to do. You are not in charge, nor are those with your false beliefs.
You seem confused here. I never told you what to do. Not once. I've said it explicitly several times and you appear not to be reading.
Nor have I given you any false information. I said single digit percentages for psychotic disorders. About 4% of the population has bipolar (bipolar I can involve psychosis) and about 1% has schizophrenia.
> Single digit percentages of all humans have a psychotic disorder.
This is false, and that was what I meant. BPD is not a psychotic disorder, even if psychotic episodes are possible, they are rare. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder, but at a rate of 0.45%, not 1%.
It is estimated only about 5-10% of everyone in the world will ever experience a psychotic episode in their lifetime. If 4% are bipolar, then only 0.2%-0.4% of those will ever experience a psychotic episode, making it quite rare. Among bipolar patients, the real danger is depression, as they will all experience that. But if they do experience a psychotic episode, it is usually the first indicator of BPD, leading to diagnosis, education, and treatment.
> It is estimated only about 5-10% of everyone in the world will ever experience a psychotic episode in their lifetime
Single digit to double digit percentages.
> Among bipolar patients, the real danger is depression, as they will all experience that.
Iirc you don't need depression to fit diagnostic criteria of bipolar I. Just a manic episode will do it.
Depression will lead the sufferer to seek treatment. Mania and psychosis will make their life hell and possibly have them harm others, but they will think they are ok.
I think maybe you haven't been close to a particularly bad case of bipolar I. It can be very similar to schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia. People can hop around these diagnoses because they can be hard to pin down and professionals can disagree.
> it is usually the first indicator of BPD, leading to diagnosis, education, and treatment.
That's a fairly optimistic scenario. Spoken like someone who has not seen a loved one deny the illness and avoid treatment.
Psychotic symptoms occur at a higher rate in people with BPD than in the general population.
> What are psychotic symptoms in bipolar disorder?
> Psychotic symptoms are sometimes found in people with bipolar disorder, particularly in the manic phase of the illness.. [snip] ..
> Moderate quality evidence suggests the prevalence of visual hallucinations in people with affective psychosis is around 15%, and the prevalence of auditory hallucinations is around 28% [snip. These rates] are higher than general population rates (7%).
> I would gladly trade all Republican political prospects for criminalizing abortions
We already know the results of that bone-headed idea. Criminalizing abortion does nothing to stop abortion, it only denies women the ability to have a safe abortion. Criminalizing abortion only serves to maim and kill teenage girls. Which is the lesser of two evils, the loss of an unknown potential, or the loss of a known viable individual? I am sure you've heard before the famous wisdom of George Santayana:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
When the criticism boils down to "you aren't doing what we tell you to do," or "I don't approve what you do with your body," then, oh, no, when directed towards women by men this is nothing less than misogyny, and denying it doesn't cut the mustard. Leave women alone, and then we'll know you're not a misogynist. Otherwise, the descriptor fits.
Saying something is real, does not make that thing real.
You are not the gatekeeper of what is and is not "misogyny".
Leave women alone? Are women somehow ordained with a shield against any criticism? No one can ever criticize a woman-- following that logic... women are always correct?
That sounds authoritarian to me.
Definition of authoritarian
1 : of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority 2 : of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people an authoritarian regime.
__________
The logic in: criticism != hatred is quite sound.
a definition of criticism: the expression of disapproval of someone or something based on perceived faults or mistakes.
a definition of critique: a detailed analysis and assessment of something
a definition of hatred: intense dislike or ill will
The issue is no one has any place scrutinizing or judging another because it is hypocritical. That is the wisdom behind Matthew's 7th chapter. If you are perfect and make no mistakes, only then you can judge without hypocrisy. People do what they want, and they live with and are responsible for their decisions. Scrutiny from the peanut gallery doesn't enter into it. Mind yourself, and no one else, but if your compulsion and distaste gets the better of you regarding any behavior whatsoever of pregnant women, be prepared to be labelled, justly or not.
I don’t know, it seems equally likely that mothers with pre-existing mental disorders self-medicate with cannabis to self-soothe. There have been numerous studies showing such things. For example, why is nicotine use highly correlated with mental illness? Nobody is saying that cigarettes are associated with mental disorders.
In Canada, we have neighbours who smoke weed and cultivate plants. It is pretty terrible .. our yards are so small and close together, we smell weed all the time. Pretty much since the laws have relaxed, we have not been able to use our yard in peace. We are concerned as we are exposing our kids to second hand smoke. The effects can't be good. Million dollar houses and this is the crap we get.
How much smoke can a few people smoking cannabis possibly produce, and what tiny fraction of that can get into your house?. I bet you wouldn't complain as much about your neighbors burning wood/coal during a barbecue and that releases way more toxins that also can't be good.
If people are going to smoke something I would rather them do it in their house. Even though cannabis is legal where I live I have never been into a public space where people where stinking up the place. The same cannot be said for tabacco. I'm glad at least most of the cannabis users seem to be doing it in their homes.
