Comment by lmg643 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lmg643 | Hacker News Reader

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That's a great and positive way to look at vaping. Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia, which will likely dwarf the pot economy in both direct and indirect costs.

-- edited to add citations --

Spent about 10 seconds finding these using Brave search. For folks who can't resist snarky comments, you have to admit it's strange that this is not at least acknowledged amidst a state-by-state push for legalization.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2424288/

>> "There is now reasonable evidence from longitudinal studies that regular cannabis use predicts an increased risk of schizophrenia and of reporting psychotic symptoms. These relationships have persisted after controlling for confounding variables such as personal characteristics and other drug use. The relationships did not seem to be explained by cannabis being used to self-medicate symptoms of psychosis."

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst...

>> "The results from these longitudinal analyses show the proportion of cases of schizophrenia associated with cannabis use disorder has increased 3- to 4-fold during the past 2 decades, which is expected given previously described increases in the use and potency of cannabis."

So where's the schizophrenia epidemic among pot-smoking hippies? It's had like 50 years to surface, man.

In all seriousness, there are a number of cohorts where this should be showing up with some regularity. Can you point me towards any of them?

All the hippies I know are still out there hippie-ing and living their lives, going to Dead shows, and so on. And, from my experience, they seem to be an unusually vigorous group for being so old.

I feel like there's some selection bias. Your friends who you know years ago but fell off the grids are the ones who are most likely to be experiencing mental health issues.

FWIW, the homeless encampments and chop shops by me have plenty of people in the ~50 y/o pot smoking hippie demographic. The local paper even did a profile on a dude named Coconut who is 56 years old and has been following the Grateful Dead/Dead & Co. on all their tours since 1992. He was just killing time until their tour came around later this month.

“Nobody knows you when you’re down and out”

Of course, survivorship bias and all that. But when I look at most communities of old folks, everyone else seems a lot more... decrepit

They committed suicide. The suicide rate has been steadily rising in the 44-64 bracket. Or they are reclusive conspiracy theorists. That's my experience at least. I know a (shrinking) number of people I would definitely say are gripped by cannabis psychosis. There's no way it's not a real thing.

> Every time I hear about "medical marijuana" I think about the probable link to schizophrenia

Have you considered that perhaps schizophrenics seek out drugs? Something like 70-90% of schizophrenics smoke cigarettes. Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?

> Do cigarettes cause schizophrenia, or do schizophrenics seek out cigarettes?

Or literally anything, besides their sometimes awful default state consciousness?

Every time my wife smokes the devil’s lettuce she craves a black man. Citation needed, btw.

I’ve always felt like research into drugs has always had polarising bias in both directions.

It is very immature research when you compare it with the designer drugs that go through the federal FDA process, where there are multiple phases of clinical trials all for a single use case. And then all the side effects that are found in a controlled study are listed on the side of the packaging.

The state process is completely absent of any research, and the community is relying on anecdotes for an infinite set of use cases. Side effects listed, if any, are based on the same anecdotes. I’ll give that an F for Failure. I’m not for putting dealers or users in prison, I can acknowledge that the consumer protection is absent.

How would the fda go about testing the convergent effects of all the different chemicals when the ratios shift significantly and the means of consuming them change what actual chemicals reach which parts of the body? Distill/synthesize each one, mix them in every permutation, and dose representative patients in every possible way?

By applying the boot to your neck, overdoses are reduced by 50%. Getting an accredited healthcare professional to tell you the boot is good for you reduces it a further 25%.

They would study a single consumption method as a solution for a specific ailment. All side effects would be documented and told to researchers or consumers.

Doesn’t that invalidate any existing research also?

Any links about that probability?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7442038/

>We have evidence suggesting that cannabis use, primarily THC in cannabis, in genetically predisposed or at-risk populations, leads to earlier diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia. This tells us that THC in cannabis has a small causative effect on schizophrenia.

A small effect on people who were already at risk. The sky is hardly falling with legalization.

>earlier diagnosis of psychosis/schizophrenia

Emphasis mine. This seems interesting to me. Earlier diagnosis is not more diagnosis. It could just mean that due to illegality, these people got into contact with mental health professionals earlier than they would have otherwise. Also getting the diagnosis earlier. But not being more schizophrenic.

I'm generally pro-legalization, but if marijuana is shown to make people schizophrenic who would otherwise not become schizophrenic, it's a big deal. It has severely affected their lives and those around them. Tobacco doesn't give everyone lung cancer after all, some are more at-risk than others. Quantitatively determining that risk, doing cost-benefit, etc, is important, but I don't think this should be dismissed out of hand as immaterial.

Yes that would be a big deal but that's not what the evidence is saying.

OP:

> probable

Citation:

> The relation between cannabis and schizophrenia needs further investigation. We need more case-control studies and clinical trials with a larger population to get conclusive data.

From the current data, we can conclude that the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) component of cannabis can be the main culprit causing psychosis and schizophrenia in the at-risk population. THC can also be the one exacerbating symptoms and causing an adverse prognosis in already diagnosed patients.

It is a well-known fact that many of the abuse substances cause psychosis, which is a part of the schizophrenia spectrum; cannabis is one [9]

Nevertheless, the fact remains that schizophrenia and psychosis walk hand in hand alongside with cannabis use. Cannabis has many strains with different ratios of components. The ratio of THC and CBD is the most important psychotomimetic property of any cannabis strain [14]. When a healthy person uses cannabis, he experiences relaxation, euphoria, and a decrease in anxiety and boredom. However, they might also have some undesirable effects like paranoia, grandiosity, agitation, hallucination, cognitive impairment, disorganized thinking and behavior, and depersonalization [17]. People predisposed to the development of psychotic illness are more vulnerable to the psychotomimetic effects of cannabis, more specifically, THC [16,17].

Per se cannabis does not cause schizophrenia or psychosis. However, we have longitudinal data supporting the causal link between cannabis and psychosis [18].

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