Quote:

New findings on marijuana's damaging effect on the brain show the drug triggers temporary psychotic symptoms in some people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors say.

British doctors took brain scans of 15 healthy volunteers given small doses of two of the active ingredients of cannabis, as well as a placebo.

One compound, cannabidiol, or CBD, made people more relaxed. But even small doses of another component, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, produced temporary psychotic symptoms in people, including hallucinations and paranoid delusions, doctors said.

The results, to be presented at an international mental health conference in London on Tuesday and Wednesday, provides physical evidence of the drug's damaging influence on the human brain.

"We've long suspected that cannabis is linked to psychoses, but we have never before had scans to show how the mechanism works," said Dr. Philip McGuire, a professor of psychiatry at King's College, London.

In analyzing MRI scans of the study's subjects, McGuire and his colleagues found that THC interfered with activity in the inferior frontal cortex, a region of the brain associated with paranoia.
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"THC is switching off that regulator," McGuire said, effectively unleashing the paranoia usually kept under control by the frontal cortex.

In another study being presented at the conference, a two-day gathering of mental health experts discussing the connections between cannabis and mental health, scientists found that marijuana worsens psychotic symptoms of schizophrenics.

Doctors at Yale University in the U.S. tested the impact of THC on 150 healthy volunteers and 13 people with stable schizophrenia. Nearly half of the healthy subjects experienced psychotic symptoms when given the drug.

While the doctors expected to see marijuana improve the conditions of their schizophrenic subjects — since their patients reported that the drug calmed them — they found that the reverse was true.

"I was surprised by the results," said Dr. Deepak Cyril D'Souza, an associate professor of psychiatry at Yale University's School of Medicine. "In practice, we found that cannabis is very bad for people with schizophrenia," he said.

While D'Souza had intended to study marijuana's impact on schizophrenics in more patients, the study was stopped prematurely because the impact was so pronounced that it would have been unethical to test it on more people with schizophrenia.

"One of the great puzzles is why people with schizophrenia keep taking the stuff when it makes the paranoia worse," said Dr. Robin Murray, a professor of psychiatry at King's College.

Experts theorized that schizophrenics may mistakenly judge the drug's pleasurable effects as outweighing any negatives.

Understanding how marijuana affects the brain may ultimately lead experts to a better understanding of mental health in general.

"We don't know the basis of paranoia or anxiety," said McGuire.

"It is possible that we could use cannabis in controlled studies to understand psychoses better," he said. McGuire theorized that could one day lead to specific drugs targeting the responsible regions of the brain.

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SDP said:

There has been 2 times in my life, once while a schwag smoker and once while being a regular smoker of good chronic, that i hit some incredible chronic and had "cannabis psychosis". I couldn't hear the words coming outta ppls mouths even though i saw their lips moving, and i would hear them say things that in reflection i know they couldn't have been saying. That comes with the feeling that they are all teaming up or planning something against you and thats why you can't hear them. Everyone is hiding something from you and they are all out to screw you over with it. The ultimate paranoia breakdown.

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I've had that happen to me a few times. The first few times I was actually right about the people working against me to fuck me over. It happened like I thought it would when I was high. When I came down and said "Oh no, you're just being paranoid" and trusted them....I got used.

The most recent time, I came up with the most insaneeeee things. I didn't take them seriously though. I mean, some of the things I came up with were waayy out there. I knew that though, and enjoyed being in that state.

Just felt like saying that.

Legend9123 said:

Doesn't alcohol, a legal drug, do many of the same things to people, Especially violent psychotic outbreaks?

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Yea, and I'd imagine, someone experiencing "alcohol psychosis" is MUCH more dangerous then someone experiencing "cannabis psychosis".

How many stoners you seen "too high" that go around breaking bottles over peoples head, beating their wife and running their car's into trees?

DiscipleofGarcia said:

So these reports from these fascist pigs are completely useless.

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SDP said:

Legend9123 said:

Doesn't alcohol, a legal drug, do many of the same things to people, Especially violent psychotic outbreaks?

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Yea, and I'd imagine, someone experiencing "alcohol psychosis" is MUCH more dangerous then someone experiencing "cannabis psychosis".

How many stoners you seen "too high" that go around breaking bottles over peoples head, beating their wife and running their car's into trees?

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sinenomine said:

Can anyone else picture some poor fuck whos never been high in his life strapped down to a chair in a lab, surrounded by weird guys in lab coats and clipboards, and then shot up with a high dose of THC?

The environment these experiments were run in and the people involved probably had a good deal of influence on the result. If people shot me up with THC in an uncomfortable setting, I'd freak out too.

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