8 ms·

> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly beli

> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the opiods I had used in the past. Some of the more "miracle" claims, however, seem pretty suspect to me and I'd want some reliable reseach. What makes you skeptical of so many claims?

grawprog 7y ago
I've definitely experienced the anti-inflammatory properties and the anti-nausea effects allowed my mom to keep food down while going through chemo. It was the only thing that would take away her nausea. I do agree with the parent poster about the more miraculous claims though and I think, personally those more miraculous claims create skepticism for the actual benefits. I kind of wish everyone took a more level headed approach to drugs in general. Every drug out there has some benefits and drawbacks. Without proper study, we're potentially missing many benefits and won't fully understand all the drawbacks. This includes approved pharmaceutical drugs too. Too many drugs get rushed out without fully understanding the side effects until people start suffering or dying.
yarg 7y ago
The treatment of Dravet syndrome with CBD seems to have genuine damned near miraculous results. And yes, the pain relief is very real.
derefr 7y ago
Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the compounds in marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing marijuana itself as a way of delivering those compounds. It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists. † For what it's being prescribed for, I mean—pain, nausea, anxiety, etc. THC, in its function as a psychedelic, may function as a treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (i.e. for much the same purpose LSD/MDMA/etc. are being investigated for.) But nobody's prescribing medical marijuana for this use-case right now; they're prescribing it for things where the presence of THC seems pretty irrelevant to the goal.
- dbingham 7y ago
  In the case of pain treatment, it seems likely that the psychoactive affects of THC may be a large contributor to its effectiveness. In that it distracts you from the pain. And there are a lot of people who are going to be more comfortable taking a plant in its natural state, than using an isolated compound that's been through a processing plant they have no control over, and which depends on a regulatory structure they have no faith in to tell them its safe (and what they are expecting). Basically, there are a lot of people very skeptical of the corporate drug system (for good reasons, frankly), and the availability of natural herbal medicines does (for the most part [aside 1.]) no harm to them, and actually can do quite a bit of good. If they don't trust aspirin, then let them use willow bark. 1. Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are some herbs that are considerably more dangerous and harmful than the useful compounds isolated from them. But there are also many herbs that are perfectly safe to use, and still effective to one degree or another. In some cases, they are every bit as effective, and even safer, than the isolated, concentrated alternatives (see St John's Wort).
  - derefr 7y ago
    I would argue that if they don't trust aspirin, they should buy a kit that lets them make aspirin (or salicin, rather) at home from willow bark. Still safer than consuming arbitrary unknown amounts of salicin, together with whatever else is in the bark besides salicin. Let me put it this way: the big-pharma drug manufacturing (and more generally, medical-equipment manufacturing) pipeline is set up such that the only thing about a drug that should be able to kill someone, is if the drug's active ingredient itself has a bad interaction with their body. Something like medical marijuana, meanwhile, can kill you by heavy-metal soil toxicity; by pesticides; by coincidental allergens in non-active-ingredient plant matter; etc. None of these things will be checked for when you get a dose of medical marijuana. An analogy: would you trust IV saline solution that's just salt that someone poured into "carefully collected rainwater" and then put into a bag? Even for an immunocompromised patient (i.e. exactly the kind who consumes medical marijuana for e.g. supportive cancer treatment)? No; you'd distill the water, wash and recrystallize the salt, and basically do everything else you can to ensure that "salt and water" is all that's in the "bag of salt and water" you're putting into the patient's bloodstream. Because that's how you ensure that some random variable doesn't creep in and mysteriously make them sick in a way that's impossible to diagnose.
vmchale 7y ago
There are other anti-nausea drugs lol. Maybe it's useful if nothing else works but come on.
sawyerjhood 7y ago
I tend to agree with grawprog. I think it is powerful in cases like chemo (I had a friend who used MM on chemo and it curbed his nausea like no other drug could). For chronic pain I think it is better than opiates, but I'm not sure that the side-effects out-weigh the benefits. My mother has knee issues and is a MM user, but the marijuana is not helping at all with the root cause (she is severely overweight at 5ft 4in and over 300lb). Mainly I think that I see medical marijuana as being over-prescribed where there are better solutions. I personally don't have any problems with marijuana overall as I am a recreational user.
cmrdporcupine 7y ago
For myself cannabis literally has the opposite effects -- increases inflammation and pain (I have chronic back pain). So I think it's right to be skeptical because the compounds themselves have extremely variable results.
- tudelo 7y ago
  This is very surprising to me -- have you done any research in to this? I would be interested to go down the rabbit hole but if you did some of the research already maybe we can be efficient humans :D
- deleted 7y ago
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01100011 7y ago
IME, weed is shit for headaches and great for arthritis or pain from working out. It also reduces the amount of opiates you need to take, post-surgery. That said, I feel better without it. To each their own.

grawprog 7y ago

I've definitely experienced the anti-inflammatory properties and the anti-nausea effects allowed my mom to keep food down while going through chemo. It was the only thing that would take away her nausea. I do agree with the parent poster about the more miraculous claims though and I think, personally those more miraculous claims create skepticism for the actual benefits. I kind of wish everyone took a more level headed approach to drugs in general. Every drug out there has some benefits and drawbacks. Without proper study, we're potentially missing many benefits and won't fully understand all the drawbacks. This includes approved pharmaceutical drugs too. Too many drugs get rushed out without fully understanding the side effects until people start suffering or dying.

yarg 7y ago

The treatment of Dravet syndrome with CBD seems to have genuine damned near miraculous results. And yes, the pain relief is very real.

derefr 7y ago

Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the compounds in marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing marijuana itself as a way of delivering those compounds. It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists. † For what it's being prescribed for, I mean—pain, nausea, anxiety, etc. THC, in its function as a psychedelic, may function as a treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (i.e. for much the same purpose LSD/MDMA/etc. are being investigated for.) But nobody's prescribing medical marijuana for this use-case right now; they're prescribing it for things where the presence of THC seems pretty irrelevant to the goal.

dbingham 7y ago
In the case of pain treatment, it seems likely that the psychoactive affects of THC may be a large contributor to its effectiveness. In that it distracts you from the pain. And there are a lot of people who are going to be more comfortable taking a plant in its natural state, than using an isolated compound that's been through a processing plant they have no control over, and which depends on a regulatory structure they have no faith in to tell them its safe (and what they are expecting). Basically, there are a lot of people very skeptical of the corporate drug system (for good reasons, frankly), and the availability of natural herbal medicines does (for the most part [aside 1.]) no harm to them, and actually can do quite a bit of good. If they don't trust aspirin, then let them use willow bark. 1. Obviously there are exceptions to this. There are some herbs that are considerably more dangerous and harmful than the useful compounds isolated from them. But there are also many herbs that are perfectly safe to use, and still effective to one degree or another. In some cases, they are every bit as effective, and even safer, than the isolated, concentrated alternatives (see St John's Wort).
- derefr 7y ago
  I would argue that if they don't trust aspirin, they should buy a kit that lets them make aspirin (or salicin, rather) at home from willow bark. Still safer than consuming arbitrary unknown amounts of salicin, together with whatever else is in the bark besides salicin. Let me put it this way: the big-pharma drug manufacturing (and more generally, medical-equipment manufacturing) pipeline is set up such that the only thing about a drug that should be able to kill someone, is if the drug's active ingredient itself has a bad interaction with their body. Something like medical marijuana, meanwhile, can kill you by heavy-metal soil toxicity; by pesticides; by coincidental allergens in non-active-ingredient plant matter; etc. None of these things will be checked for when you get a dose of medical marijuana. An analogy: would you trust IV saline solution that's just salt that someone poured into "carefully collected rainwater" and then put into a bag? Even for an immunocompromised patient (i.e. exactly the kind who consumes medical marijuana for e.g. supportive cancer treatment)? No; you'd distill the water, wash and recrystallize the salt, and basically do everything else you can to ensure that "salt and water" is all that's in the "bag of salt and water" you're putting into the patient's bloodstream. Because that's how you ensure that some random variable doesn't creep in and mysteriously make them sick in a way that's impossible to diagnose.

vmchale 7y ago

There are other anti-nausea drugs lol. Maybe it's useful if nothing else works but come on.

sawyerjhood 7y ago

I tend to agree with grawprog. I think it is powerful in cases like chemo (I had a friend who used MM on chemo and it curbed his nausea like no other drug could). For chronic pain I think it is better than opiates, but I'm not sure that the side-effects out-weigh the benefits. My mother has knee issues and is a MM user, but the marijuana is not helping at all with the root cause (she is severely overweight at 5ft 4in and over 300lb). Mainly I think that I see medical marijuana as being over-prescribed where there are better solutions. I personally don't have any problems with marijuana overall as I am a recreational user.

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

For myself cannabis literally has the opposite effects -- increases inflammation and pain (I have chronic back pain). So I think it's right to be skeptical because the compounds themselves have extremely variable results.

tudelo 7y ago
This is very surprising to me -- have you done any research in to this? I would be interested to go down the rabbit hole but if you did some of the research already maybe we can be efficient humans :D
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deleted 7y ago

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01100011 7y ago

IME, weed is shit for headaches and great for arthritis or pain from working out. It also reduces the amount of opiates you need to take, post-surgery. That said, I feel better without it. To each their own.