Long-Time Cannabis Use Linked to Psychosis in Young Adults
Findings released of a study funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, show that use of marijuana by young adults and teens can contribute to later psychiatric illness.
The study concluded that persons who had used marijuana for 6 years in their early adulthood were two times as likely to develop a delusional disorder, or psychosis like schizophrenia. The test subjects who used marijuana were also 4 times more likely to score high on a list of psychotic-like episodes, even if they used marijuana for less that 6 years.
The study was conducted using 3,801 young persons born between 1981 and 1984. Within the group, 228 pairs of siblings were tested, to rule out any factors such as environment, genetics, and home life that could contribute to metal disorders. Of the siblings tested, those who had used marijuana reported a significantly higher number of psychotic and delusional episodes. Lead study author, John McGrath, who is a professor at the Queensland Brain Institute in Brisbane, Australia, said this study provides startling evidence that the younger you use marijuana, and the longer you use the drug, the more likely you are to have symptoms of a psychotic illness. 
Well sure, people that smoke pot tend to be a little more adventurous. What the hell is a psychotic experience according to these people? I’d rather be at the mercy of a deranged idiot who was stoned, than one who was drunk. At least the stoned one would FORGET to kill you. Mellow out, people. If you did the same study with people that drank alcohol, you’d get similar results.
A more accurate headline would be “Psychosis causes drug abuse”
The lead of the study also said that we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions, and that more studies were needed to determine the mechanism of this correlation. Since people who had isolated psychotic experiences were more likely to commence marijuana smoking… We need to find out exactly how the two are related, are people predisposed to psychosis seeking marijuana, or is the marijuana predisposing people to psychosis?
It’s still unclear – but a little psychosis is not that disturbing. Doctors provide medication all the time that increases your risk of psychosis – benzos, chantix, over-the-counter cough medicine. The rate of non-affective psychosis disorders in this study is actually well below the number of schizophrenics in the population as a whole. We expect 1 out of every hundred people to have schizophrenia. 80-100 people out of 3800 is well below that.
What bothers me most about this study (or really the reporting on it) is that no where do I see any distinction made between psychosis on the drug or off the drug. 233 people who smoked had at least one hallucination – was that while high or not? I would assume the creators of the study would have made such a distinction, but there’s no way to tell unless it gets reported!
LOL! Wow, they’re STILL trying to push the smear campaign! Isn’t this the same garbage they were spewing in the reefer madness days? All of this only a week after the big news was that the baby boomers have become the second largest group of pot smokers in the nation. Yeah, right… Psychosis… What cleverly misleading, hallucinatory bull will they come up with next?
Yet another “nonscientific” article that owes its findings to anti-marijuana crusaders who will completely bake any data to point in the direction they need it to.
National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, cannot be taken seriously, especially when considering the outrageous funding they receive from their anti-pot government, and their joke of a PM Rudd. Here’s a real study, with factual observations that don’t hinge on using an emotionally and psychologically challenged segment of the population to draw conclusions that are at best a tangent of a reality few of us will ever know:
4. “Tetrahydrocannabinol is a very safe drug. Laboratory animals (rats, mice, dogs, monkeys) can tolerate doses of up to 1,000 mg/kg (milligrams per kilogram). This would be equivalent to a 70 kg person swallowing 70 grams of the drug — about 5,000 times more than is required to produce a high. Despite the widespread illicit use of cannabis there are very few if any instances of people dying from an overdose. In Britain, official government statistics listed five deaths from cannabis in the period 1993-1995 but on closer examination these proved to have been deaths due to inhalation of vomit that could not be directly attributed to cannabis (House of Lords Report, 1998). By comparison with other commonly used recreational drugs these statistics are impressive.”
Source: Iversen, Leslie L., PhD, FRS, “The Science of Marijuana” (London, England: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 178, citing House of Lords, Select Committee on Science and Technology, “Cannabis — The Scientific and Medical Evidence” (London, England: The Stationery Office, Parliament, 1998).”
I will personally testify to the extreme safety cannabis gives to someone, in stark comparison to alcohol, cocaine, or heroin. Every wife’s tale is a load of crap too, and I still enjoy a nearly eidetic memory, even though I’m going on 20 years of daily usage of marijuana. I still run, workout, and enjoy a variety of challenging activities that I rarely do when I’ve used these hard substances in the past. If there is a drug that can be deemed safe, marijuana’s the only on the list!
So let me be real clear now. If you target a subpopulation of unstable teenagers, let alone the ones that openly admitted to using a substance that is illegal, you will easily be able to connect their psychoses to just about all of the criteria you’ve deemed “negative.” Think of it this way: The brown dog is bad, so all brown dogs must be bad. There is an obvious physical connection here, but the manner in which you hop from the individual to the whole is generalized to a point that a brown dog collective can be whatever the individual dog is, as long as you have enough individual brown dogs with similar behaviors.
Word to the wise, if a study uses “may” or “might” in every assertion it presents, then they’ll also have to admit that the whole endeavor may be a stinking load of shit, or anything in between. Subjective science depends on its data for any credibility it may possess. Teenagers with genetic mental disorders aren’t a credible group to assess, especially if one wants to discover a statistical analysis that could be a larger segment of a real population that does smoke marijuana. 4K EMO kids that have been brainwashed by the inexperienced is just plain arrogant, and shouldn’t be publishable in any respectable journal of any science!
In the end, there’s nothing more ridiculous than these soft science psychologists, who believe their tenuous assertions that are utterly subjective, deserve the critical praise hard science delivers through its adherence to perfect objectivity. And that’s why I will continue to laugh at your joke for a profession, which relies on biased assertions of irresponsibility.
Don’t get me wrong, psychology has a purpose, and can be immeasurably helpful to the individual who seeks answers from it willingly. But in this case, it’s nothing more than a cheap, silly fraud, which every real scientist on this planet instantly recognizes for its FAUX data, which has been produced to further a political sham. Thank goodness it’s just about time to smoke another joint too, because after this adventure into ridiculousness, I deserve the chance to float away from it with a smile on my lips!
Guess what else is “linked” to psychosis……. ALCOHOL, but of course that doesn’t matter.
I’m sure there is a study somewhere that definitively shows that the overwhelming majority of pot smokers turn out to be complete losers. Whether or not they started out as losers would be the relevant question.