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InvisibleSimplepowa
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Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings?
    #19340558 - 12/29/13 07:28 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Drugs 
The Leaf Online / By Jeremy Daw

Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings?

Mainstream misunderstandings of marijuana are severely outdated.

December 27, 2013  | 

José Antonio Alzate y Ramírez, an eminent Mexican scientist, studied the effects of marijuana on human subjects and became quite alarmed at what he saw. “There is no doubt that the health of the population is a central concern here,” he wrote. “The violent effect of the narcotics proves this sufficiently; it has not been but a few months since a person to whom they administered the drug, I do not know for what purpose, in perhaps too great a dose, lost his mind.” The year was 1772.*

The idea that the use of marijuana causes some form of insanity has persisted for centuries; the notion seems to crop up anywhere that European colonizers encountered indigenous populations using the drug. For example, in British-occupied India, the Englishman George Francis William Ewens wrote in 1904 that “[t]he smallest practical experience of insanity among natives of India is sufficient to convince one that... excessive indulgence in any form of hemp drugs is a very frequent cause of mania.” Ewens reported “a widespread belief... among European medical men practicing among them, that an excess in the use of these intoxicants... is the cause of an enormous proportion of the cases of insanity occurring in the country.”

In the 1950s, Frances Ames studied the effects of “dagga” (an indigenous word for marijuana) on native populations in South Africa and compared the effects to schizophrenia. Then, in the 1960s, American psychiatrists John A. Talbott and James W. Teague traveled to Vietnam to study the effects of cannabis on the native population there. They concluded:

    “Cannabis derivatives, as a causal or precipitating agent, should be considered whenever a young person presents with an acute toxic psychosis with paranoid features... the physician must be alert to the possibility of marihuana psychosis in cases resembling acute schizophrenic reaction, acute paranoid psychosis, or acute toxic-metabolic psychosis.”

The idea has persisted despite numerous debunkings.

As early as 1894, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission report concluded that alarmist tales of cannabis insanity in the Indian subcontinent were exaggerated and that moderate use of the drug was relatively harmless. A 1925 report by the US Army in the Panama Canal Zone reached a similar conclusion:

    “There is no evidence that marihuana as grown and used here is a 'habit-forming' drug in the sense in which the term is applied to alcohol, opium, cocaine, etc.,” the Army reported, “or that it has any appreciably deleterious influence on the individuals using it.”

A 1937 report to the League of Nations agreed.

“It is true that some directors of lunatic asylums in Egypt and British India have estimated the number of psychoses due to the abuse of hashish at 15% or even 30% of all the cases admitted in the course of a year,” the report conceded, “but it is generally held by the experts of Western countries that this percentage must be exaggerated, and that many cases of schizophrenia are dissimulated under the erroneous diagnosis of toxic insanity.”

Similar conclusions were also reached by a 1975 Jamaican study, and a 1980 study in Costa Rica. The 1999 Institute of Medicine Report noted that “for some patients – particularly older patients with no previous marijuana experience – the psychological effects are disturbing” but also described these effects as “generally more severe for oral THC [i.e., Marinol] than for smoked marijuana.”

The report concluded that the psychological effects of cannabis, far from causing incurable psychosis, “are potentially undesirable for certain patients and situations and beneficial for others.”

Now, the most powerful evidence against the supposed marijuana-insanity link has come forth, with the publication of a new Harvard study showing that evidence of increased prevalence of schizophrenia among people who smoked pot in their teens can be explained by genetic and other familial factors instead of any causal relationship between pot and mental illness.

Why, then, does the myth of marijuana and mental illness still persist? Historically, cultural differences surely had much to do with the mistake of science; rituals using cannabis in exotic places like Africa, India and the indigenous tribes of Mexico may have appeared so strange to European eyes as to evoke thoughts of psychosis in the observer. Such first impressions can have a pervasive effect, as shown by the example of marijuana insanity stories from Mexico influencing “reefer madness” dialogue in the United States. But a more provocative theory, advanced by Dr. Andrew Weil (yes, that Dr. Andrew Weil) in the New England Journal of Medicine is that doctors looking to find cannabis psychosis create a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, through which their leading questions of interviewed pot smokers under the influence provoke a paranoid panic reaction which is often mistaken for psychosis. Stoned patients become afraid that they might have a mental illness, the drug experience amplifies that belief, and the doctor goes home, congratulating himself on finding what he was looking for.

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug. Perhaps that's why one still finds serious-sounding people repeating old reefer madness myths, right up to the present day.

*This quote and many other historical facts contained in this article are pulled from Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs by Isaac Campos. University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Author and editor Jeremy Daw became involved with drug policy reform after graduating from Harvard Law School in 2008. He is the editor of TheLeafOnline.com and Cannabis Now Magazine, and the author of Weed the People: From Founding Fiber to Forbidden Fruit (2012), a history of 400 years of North American cannabis policy."

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/why-does-myth-marijuana-and-schizophrenia-persist-despite-numerous-debunkings?ak_proof=1&akid=.1080937.fjOU16&rd=1&src=newsletter941302&t=17&paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark


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Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

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Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion."

---

Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."


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OfflineCamwritesgonzo
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Simplepowa]
    #19341524 - 12/29/13 01:19 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

It's because people are either too afraid or too lazy to think for themselves and when the government propaganda machine is sinking fat money into pumping out skewed numbers and fixed "studies", people really have no need to think for themselves.


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"I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits
"I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson
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OfflineEverything
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Camwritesgonzo] * 1
    #19342073 - 12/29/13 03:19 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

I actually think marijuana can bring out mental illness that would otherwise lie dormant though I believe this is temporary and once long term pot use has stopped for a year the person will probably recover. In the long run it could build character.

Any lifelong chronic mental illness was bound to get triggered at some point though. But who knows, I've seen a lot of people suffer from long term marijuana use.


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OfflineKonyap

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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Everything]
    #19343071 - 12/29/13 07:01 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

shizophrenia is caused by speed


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OfflineMorel Guy
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Konyap]
    #19345602 - 12/30/13 09:36 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

I doubt speed causes true schizophrenia.  Staying awake for a week from speed, could cause some issues.  I don't think weed ever caused someone to see demons coming out of the floor.  Unless they were tripping when they smoked.


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OfflineCan-i-bus
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Everything]
    #19345774 - 12/30/13 10:43 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Everything said:
I actually think marijuana can bring out mental illness that would otherwise lie dormant though I believe this is temporary and once long term pot use has stopped for a year the person will probably recover. In the long run it could build character.

Any lifelong chronic mental illness was bound to get triggered at some point though. But who knows, I've seen a lot of people suffer from long term marijuana use.




It does bring out mental illness IF you have a biological predisposition to mental illness....if you have no family history of mental illness then smoking pot wont cause any issues like that.

If smoking pot caused schizophrenia then the west coast would be heavily populated with schizo's


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InvisibleNeller
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Can-i-bus] * 1
    #19348195 - 12/30/13 07:44 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

I didn't even need to read this article, because I smoke it all the time, and feel just fine. :smile:

What about me? :willfredjoint:

Shut up! :crankey:


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"If there’s one generational difference I notice between my parents’ generation and mine, is that my generation values time over money. And not because we’re lazy either, but because we’re not willing to trade time with the people we love most for a gold watch at retirement."
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OfflinePsytanium
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Simplepowa]
    #19349711 - 12/31/13 02:41 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

I smoked marijuana and hash for 7 years on weekly basis (sometimes daily). New years eve 2010 i decided to cut my relationship with THC. 3 year gone THC free now I'm doing and I'm feeling much better in my life.

Back then, I have done some research on ADD, ADHD, Depersonalization, Schizophrenia, etc... i found that all of them, at some level, have many symptoms in common.

THC triggered some signs of Schizophrenia in me, I couldn't handle the strange feelings while stoned, and i avoided being between people even my closest friends, paranoid, can't think straight, a feeling like a fog around my mind that detach me from reality and words i heard will have negative meanings against me.

But I'm pretty sure that marijuana was a good medicine for me, its like she brought schizophrenia from my deepest mind up to the surface where i could observe it face to face, a situation that is potentially undesirable when the effect is coming up and very beneficial later at the coming down.

Anyway, schizophrenia and its cousins have nothing to do with mental illness and insanity, I think its just a deviation of mentality that will affect all the population over time, maybe i can say, the new age.
So, its not about discard or ignore this mental deviation but rather its about how to handle and control it.

N.B. Psilocybin mushrooms is far more beneficial for me, beyond expectations, no side effects.

Special thanks for mother nature :smile:


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Offlinethedream
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Psytanium] * 1
    #19350711 - 12/31/13 11:09 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

What also may lend false creditability to this theory is that those who have schizophrenia will often times self medicate with marijuana. Doctors and psychologists will commonly ask what drugs their patient who suffers from schizophrenia uses and he/she may tell them they use marijuana which they assume to be a causative factor in their uneducated/poorly informed mind. Thus perpetuating the myth.


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Offlinecircastes
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: thedream] * 2
    #19352799 - 12/31/13 09:03 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

It's just latent schizophrenia that is triggered by pot, it's not caused by it. If it's latent, and you smoke pot, you'll get it. This will eventually be confirmed. I confirmed it for myself by smoking it and getting schizophrenia.


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Offlinesomething cool
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Simplepowa]
    #19356058 - 01/01/14 07:59 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Same myth persists in relation to stimulants and psychosis, when the reality is that the psychosis is temporary, and induced by stress exacerbated by the stimulant - but would be equally prevalent without a stimulant, if the intensity of the stress were made equal.


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Offlinesomething cool
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: circastes]
    #19356155 - 01/01/14 08:32 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

circastes said:
It's just latent schizophrenia that is triggered by pot, it's not caused by it. If it's latent, and you smoke pot, you'll get it. This will eventually be confirmed. I confirmed it for myself by smoking it and getting schizophrenia.




You confirmed only that you started experiencing psychotic symptoms only after smoking - but not that you had latent tendencies towards them, or that the result is final or in any way indicative of a different psychological structuring than any other living creature's. What about the person who confirms, through their own experience, that these effects are entirely reversible, and demonstration of a different mental process than is not clearly-induces psychoses?

I've been all over that map, and I don't think there's anything that cannot be undone in reverse of the same manner in which it was done - overwhelming positive experiences have an antithesis effect on psychoactive experiences, and that effect is generally cemented for the times coming after the experience, regardless of whether they were positive of negative. There is full potential for healing of kinds of mental disorders within this paradigm.

Psychoactive stimulation, buffeted by negative mind values will result in damaging of psyche in potentially all kinds of ways. The reverse is no less true, and is bearing of all the more potential - including potential to uncover understanding of these experiences, and putting in place the mental constructs that ensure that mind negatives no long are effective at damaging psyche.

Buffeting psychoactive experience with resoundingly positive sensations can be hard to organize, whereas doing so with mental negatives, for many people, I would guess most, doesn't take effort, because family, societal, judicial, governmental, and self environments are always sending us many interpreted, thought I think negative interpretation, overall across all peoples, usually correctly notes intentionally negative messaging from all those sources.


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OfflineCamwritesgonzo
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: circastes]
    #19357224 - 01/02/14 03:39 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

circastes said:
It's just latent schizophrenia that is triggered by pot, it's not caused by it. If it's latent, and you smoke pot, you may get it. This will eventually be confirmed. I confirmed it for myself by smoking it and getting schizophrenia.



Let's not forget the relativity to time, place, person, stimulus, etc.


--------------------
"I've always maintained that reality is for those who can't face drugs."-Tom Waits
"I feel the same way about disco as I feel about herpes."-Hunter S. Thompson
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?


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Invisibledurian_2008
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Camwritesgonzo]
    #19360273 - 01/02/14 07:06 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

The neighbor across the street from me was schizo-effective and would run through traffic, when he and his wife argued.

Stimulant varieties were long understood to cause paranoia, probably when taken past the point of rank abuse.

What happens if you give more-sedative strains to a clinically depressed person, especially in high doses?

To me, cognitive liberty means informed consent. You make yourself aware of the side effects, you admit to them, and use responsibly.


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Invisibledurian_2008
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: Psytanium]
    #19360684 - 01/02/14 08:54 PM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Psytanium said:
I think its just a deviation of mentality that will affect all the population over time, maybe i can say, the new age.
So, its not about discard or ignore this mental deviation but rather its about how to handle and control it.




My only frame of reference, to help me comprehend schizoid sensations, is my spiritual beliefs. 

I've been told that rational skepticism is the only thing which keeps them grounded.

So, in my experience, my advice was not wanted.


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OfflinePsytanium
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Re: Why Does the Myth of Marijuana and Schizophrenia Persist Despite Numerous Debunkings? [Re: durian_2008]
    #19366855 - 01/04/14 04:38 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

according to your spirituality, What is your advice and explanation on this topic ?


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