"Weed has a 40 percent chance of making you psycho! But the chance of it happening remains low. Are you confused? See? That's evidence that your mind is already breaking down!"

Eek gaads! Damn Reefer!!

Dave's not here man!

Your analysis made me laugh my ass off,Nezua. I think it's been one of the funniest essays I've read in a long time.:)

My new theory is this (and I believe it's a lot more accurate than the theory the *article* is trying to promulgate): 40% of all medical researchers and statisticians hired by pharmaceutical companies manufacturing anti-psychotic drugs go psychotic upon investigating a plant species threatening to make people neurologically healthier.:)

Either this was good or I was reading this in between BONG HITS ...

I don't want to shock anyone too much (LOL), but this kind of "science" linking correlation to causality happens all the time. One area I'm more familiar with, but gets even less questioning than this one is that of whether being overweight is correlated or causes health problems. There are some brave folks trying to break down this lie, much to the chagrine of the multi-billion dollar weight loss industry in this country.

And just so I don't get pilloried to much for this "news," causality between activity level and health problems HAS been established. The same CANNOT be said for how much a person weighs.

Wow. You just totally killed my buzz.

Dude, I feel 40 percent more psychotic just reading about it. What about people self-medicating? How about we study alcohol and psychosis?

alcohol is an "aggression enhancer," which i found very interesting to learn. meaning any person who takes enough of it eventually becomes violent. it is a property of the chemical's effect on human physiology.

but in regards to what you mention, i assume you know the term "alcohol dementia". and of course, the late stages of alcoholism does bring about psychosis, or rather the condition known as "wetbrain" which is not technically "psychosis," but total destruction of the brain.

"aggression enhancer"
"alcohol dementia"

Oh boy. No, I didn't know the words for it. I'm trying to read article. THanks.

i slam cigarettes unilaterally. but i dont mean to do so with alcohol. when i talk of alcohol's properties like this, i do mean chronic and excessive use of it.

Alcohol makes me violent ? Well, no worries. Just sit on the other side of the room when those two-and-a-half beers make me pass out. That way you'll be out of kicking range. But please, don't YouTube my quasi-inert carcass. I hate that.

Hey, please do slam excessive & chronic use of alcohol! If I reacted weird it's because the symptoms were so familiar. It's as if they were describing a person I know. So it sort of freaked me out.

i do mean chronic and excessive use

Hehe, you said chronic, man. Hehe.

Oh fuck, that was stoners' humor.

oh snap. good one.

(and NL, i dont mean to dismiss your good points, please dont take it that way)

ms_xeno, the worst is when they photograph you with shaving cream on your face, or hot dogs in...well. yeah. don't pass out at a party.

and, on the serious tip, i dont mean alcohol will make a person violent in a night. i'm talking about a long-term effect, such as the depressive quality of alcohol, which wont make someone necessarily sad in one night, but over a long term can bring them low.

No problem Nez. I'm just sorry to have killed your buzz - they're not easy to come by these days.

On a more serious note, your diary just reminded me how I've come to distrust things that come across as "fear mongering" on health issues - especially when there is some corporate entity that rakes in the dollars due to the fear. And the weight issue is one that caused lots of havok in my life - so its personal. And interestingly enough - the progressive side of the political world seems to have bought-in even more so than the conservatives on this one. I'm just trying to occassionally do my part to spread some truth.

I don't smoke dope anymore and I don't drink much alcohol either {about a quart a year} but I certainly miss them, and if I could drink a glass and smoke the nightly chronic, I would. Kidney complications keep me from these wonderful pastimes.
After 30 years of pot smoking, I stopped. I became depressed and I also had sleep problems. I had smoked from the age of 15 to 45.
But also, and until this day, now 10 years later, I cannot put up with the stress of managing employees and dealing with clients in the architecture and building trades, and as a result, I have cut my interactions with the business and with humans way back, in fact, to the minimum.
I'm seriously thinking of starting to grow and eat the herb again, instead of inhaling and see what happens.
Life was definitely smoother and calmer in the Cannabis years. I second Nez's contention that civilization makes you psychotic, and weed may be acting as a buffer.

FWIW, to me it looks like the study concludes that the risk increases by forty percent, not forty percentage points.

Here's the difference: Imagine that the study concluded that smoking weed increases your chance of developing psychosis by 50%. That would be the same as concluding it increases your risk by half. Now let's say that 1% of the population develops a psychosis. If weed increases your 1% risk of developing a psychosis by half, then weed smokers would have a 1.5%(1% x 1.5) chance of developing a psychosis not a 51% (1% + 50%) chance. Similarly, a 40% increase from a 1% chance would mean a 1.4% chance. So a relatively large increase in an already low risk might still leave you with a fairly minimal risk.

That said, the 40% increase might still be complete BS.

yeah, i used to use those rolling papers made of math book pages, too, but after a while they gave me a headache, i stick with rice paper strawberry trapezoidals now. ;)

thanks for the tutelage, tho, i get ya. not very funny, but certainly informative.

The worst part is I drool in my sleep. The cats think I'm part dog.

Nezua, my own observations have been that pot is more an amplifier of personality than alcohol, which is indeed a depressant in anything but small doses. The potheads I've known who were sort of calm people before smoking would get super-laid back afterward. The ones who were vaguely prickly and paranoiac before would get VERY paranoid afterward.

YMMV, of course.

A couple of New Year's parties ago, I had half a glass of good red wine with about a half-postage stamp's worth of pot brownie and felt as wonderful as I'd ever felt before, or have since. It's just a good thing that I asked the host beforehand what the proper dosage for somebody who rarely consumed the killer weed would be. :D

I wonder what the purveyors of modern-day reefer madness would make of that...

Working in a hospital, not once have I ever seen a person come in for marijuana psychosis or some other serious effect because of it. Okay once a young female did come in because she felt :"weird,out of it" and thought she was "gonna die". Naturally they gave her Lorazepam (Ativan) which by itself in the long run is highly addictive and potentially life threatening.
Meanwhile I cannot begin to tell you how many patients come in for alchohol poisoning and/or the related accidents and violence caused because of it. I cannot also begin to tell you the wrath that cigarettes wreak on the human body as well as it's spirit.
What would good ol' Robert Nesta Marley say?

Yeah, I've never known someone to become scary and mean on pot, whereas my life has been littered with mean drunks. Littered, eh, that makes them sound like trash, that's not what I feel. And there aren't mean drunks in my personal life right now, I'm just saying - I do have a resentment against the promotion of alcohol as legal and not a big deal but marijuana gets villified. I don't know if anything in constant excess is a great idea, but I do believe that the drive to alter consciousness with substances is a deeply human one, and not just the simple, self-help-y, pop psychology kind of "self medication" or "escape" or whatever. I know people do those things too, and like others here, I don't fucking blame them. It's just my opinion that getting high and liking it is pretty basic human normalness. And I don't even do it anymore myself, so I don't have much of a stake in seeing it that way, it's just what makes sense to me. Now could we get some ativan for all the scaredy cats who keep slamming pot and preventing its peaceful existence?

yes, neither do i think its so simple as "escape" or "self medicating" at all times. i am where you are on it. in fact, one of the things i learned while studying all this was that each member of the animal species has a way to alter their consciousness, and that even kids do it naturally (holding breath til passing out almost, forced dizziness, etc). and as adults we seek altered consciousness in many ways. even orgasm is momentarily elevating our consciousness to a different plane, and that is part of why we seek it.

as with many things, life is nuanced, and not really here to be soundbitten, as much as we like to make it seems so in this culture.

the US gov't TOP concerns on weed use:

1) no one will want to fight
2) users will become aware of TV programming
3) will no longer have impulse buying desires
4) may live longer needing less medical assistance
5) will see through the lies of TAX
6) just might be happy with what they have
7) WILL UNDERMINE THE MONEY MAKING MACHINE!

. . . . no wonder it is illegal

Psychotic? Damn! They must be smoking lots better shit than the stuff I get!

Nezbuzz:

I have a brother, 48 yoa, who is paranoid, angry, scared and just plain crazy. He's had cancer and a number of other health problems. He is essentially, a ward of my older brother and he lives in my late mother's house, obsessively washing clothes and keeping shades drawn and doors double locked. He smokes pot everyday and has done so for about 35 years. He also ingests massive quanities of any prescription pain killers or mood altering drugs he can get his hands on and he did drink himself nearly to death for about 20 years, but I'm sure it's the pot.

I am so fucking sick of listening to the Narcocommandos preach about the dangers of pot, while they are, in many cases, drug abusers (alcohol is included) themselves.

Me, I just want to smoke a little of the sacred herb so I can get brave enough to find me an uppity black mexican woman--I can do the lazy part.

yes, damn. he might not be a good spokesman for NORML. and i'm sorry to hear it.

maybe it's the world, tho.

or the pot, i don't know.

Hey, on my self-medicating comment, did that come off negative? I hope not. I'm not saying that self-medicating accounts for people enjoying substances. I drink and I had no problem with weed either, until I got really paranoid once.

I was just wondering about correlation vs causality. A 1.4 times higher rate of psych-wateva among users of a Substance could be people who start smoking because they're already got a problem. I drank way too much for some years, and I was self-medicating for sure.

no wonder it's illegal

But Johnny ! Think of the corresponding boom for purveyors of snacks, not to mention for all-night diners and convenience stores-- if only they would legalize it !!