11 ms·

Study finds no evidence cannabis helps anxiety, depression, or PTSD

• int32_64 7mo ago
  It's good to see science confirm what anybody who has accidentally taken too large of edibles dose understands.
  • embedding-shape 7mo ago
    Huh? Like Paracetamol doesn't work because if you take too much you die? Are you confusing "overdosing" with something else here maybe?
  • entropie 7mo ago
    Ive overdosed edibles multiple times and I dont know what you talk about.
    • billfor 7mo ago
      Well how do you know if you overdosed? What else happens besides anxiety and paranoia? Some of the reaction may be genetic, but I think many people have a negative reaction to taking mass quantities of cannabis. I don't know if you want to take a poll here but it's pretty common...
      • entropie 7mo ago
        The fact that someone had a negative reaction to an overdose has nothing to do with how (properly dosed) THC/CBD affects unhealthy (and healthy) people. Many substances can be overdosed on, even though they may not be harmful - or may even be beneficial - in appropriate amounts.
• erelong 7mo ago
  Still ok with it being legal but yeah that doesn't mean it's beneficial
  • lokar 7mo ago
    Yep. Of course alcohol is depressive.
    • LPisGood 7mo ago
      “Depressant” refers to its impacts on nervous system activity, not that it causes feelings of depression.
      • adi_kurian 7mo ago
        Worth noting that it very much can cause feelings of depression, also.
      • malfist 7mo ago
        Tell that to my depression. Back before I got sober days after alcohol were certainly some of my lowest mood days. Its well known that alcohol impares next day production of neurotransmitters responsible for balancing moods. Now I've been sober for 7 years and my depression has been treated, but I certainly remember those days
        • illusive4080 7mo ago
          In alcohol’s case I think you’re masking the depression by drinking which makes you even more depressed when you aren’t drinking.
    • ta9000 7mo ago
      Which makes it all the more weird we see so much negative press about weed on Hacker News but I never see an article about alcohol.
    • tsoukase 7mo ago
      Of course it's not. There is no direct relation. Alcohol is a solvent for nerves and causes chemical damage. Depending on the state of the brain, the effects follow.
• deleted 7mo ago
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• MagicMoonlight 7mo ago
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  • post-it 7mo ago
    How does your "anyone knows" control for false negatives? i.e. how can you be certain that the people you met who aren't "anxious and stupid" aren't also weed addicts?
  • lokar 7mo ago
    What's wrong with people choosing to do drugs if it has no major adverse effects on other people?
• bitxbitxbitcoin 7mo ago
  The studies cited by this metastudy all suffer from the same issue: They aren't studying the cannabis plant at all and even if they are, it's not in the chemovars (chemical makeups) that real consumers are actually consuming - due to cannabis sourcing issues stemming from cannabis's continued illegality. For randomized controlled trials, even in "legal" states, university scientists can't just walk into a dispensary and buy cannabis to then administer to test subjects. That's Post-Prohibition for you. As far as I can tell, most (EDITED FROM ALL) of the studies utilize isolates - and not necessarily in conjunction. For instance, none of the 6 anxiety studies included in this metastudy used THC and CBD together. The headline could read instead: No evidence cannabinoid isolates help anxiety, depression, or PTSD. Cannabis advocates are the first to mention the entourage effect. Cannabis prohibitionists on the other hand, love nothing more than to cite incomplete science.
  • Aurornis 7mo ago
    Using quantified isolates is the correct way to do a controlled study. Dosing is important. Claims that you need a special combination of exactly the right strains are just a way to move the goalposts forever. They could study 10 different strains in controlled trials and the same people would show up to dismiss this study because they weren't using some random strain that has some perfect combination of entourage effect. Using actual plants and smoking would also introduce another major variable, with further claims that the strains they were giving patients were too weak or they were smoking it wrong. EDIT: I don't have time to read every single citation included, but the claim above that they were all THC or CBD isolates does not appear correct. One randomly selected citation: > The short-term impact of 3 smoked cannabis preparations versus placebo on PTSD symptoms: a randomized cross-over clinical trial So the claim above that they didn't investigate smoked cannabis or "entourage effect" is false.
    • lokar 7mo ago
      I think that's a bit of a straw man. You could study one combination that is broadly representative and is much much closer than the isolate.
• Helloworldboy 7mo ago
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• sublinear 7mo ago
  If anything, I think most people discover anxiety with cannabis. It's a shame that first experiences with stress also coincide with that phase of life, so the debate never ends.
• Aurornis 7mo ago
  This is a hard topic to communicate in depression treatment. It's easy to mistake substances that temporarily boost your mood or calm your nerves for effective treatments for an underlying condition. There was a brief period of time before the opioid prescribing backlash when some fringe psychiatrists were proposing weaker opioids as adjunctive treatments for treatment resistant depression. It's hard to fathom now, but opioids were more casually prescribed a few decades ago. I recall some discussion where one of them said they were seeing good initial results but the effects faded, and then it was hard to get the patients off of the opioids when they were no longer helping. Not surprising to anyone now, but remember there was a period of time where many seemingly forgot about their addictive properties. I feel like I've seen a weaker version of this in some friends who turned to THC to "treat" their depression: Initial mood boost, followed by dependency, then eventually into a protracted period where they know it's not helping but they don't want to stop because they feel worse when they discontinue. This wasn't helped by the decades of claims that claimed THC was basically free of dependency problems.
  • wahern 7mo ago
    > but remember there was a period of time where many seemingly forgot about their addictive properties. There was also quite alot of talk about how doctors, by being reticent to prescribe opioids, were inhumanely forcing patients to live in pain, and not being sufficiently deferential to patient autonomy. Moreover, the rhetoric was incorporated into discussions about racist disparities in treatment, given there was some evidence doctors were less likely to prescribe opioids to black patients, suggesting doctors were systematically being cruel. Naturally, the easiest way to dodge those accusations was to simply prescribe opioids as a matter of course. Even in the absence of Purdue Pharma pushing their claims about lack of significant addictive potential, there was already significant pressure to discount the risk of addiction.
    • jounker 7mo ago
      As an aside, it is a well established fact that doctors, as a whole, take the the pain of black people much less seriously than the pain of non-black people.
• cynicalsecurity 7mo ago
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• mihaaly 7mo ago
  But it can cause memory loss, impaired motor coordination, and food craving. Also memory loss.
• wizardforhire 7mo ago
  My initial take from reading the headline was: no shit this is what mdma is for… Tangentially, The etymology nerd in me has been taunted by the current article thats been on the front page for the as of now last 19 hours[1] which conveniently has the origin of the term linked to in the first sentence! [2]… which @suprisetalk also links to in the article description!… So now I’m wondering why mdma has got the street name molly… and if they're not perhaps related? As in molly (aka mdma) has got the name as its used as a guard against these ailments specifically… [1] https://unsung.aresluna.org/molly-guard-in-reverse/ https://unsung.aresluna.org/molly-guard-in-reverse/ [2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard
• monster_truck 7mo ago
  Isn't the lancet the same journal that has published the vax-autism and hydroxychloroquine studies?
  • Aurornis 7mo ago
    The Lancet has been around for 200 years. It publishes weekly. It's a highly regarded journal, but it doesn't mean 100% of the papers published are perfect. If you're trying to dismiss a study because it was published in The Lancet then that's not a convincing line of reasoning to anyone who understands the scientific publishing landscape.
    • SecretDreams 7mo ago
      > anyone who understands the scientific publishing landscape. Anyone genuinely familiar with the scientific publishing process probably holds the most skepticism around publications. I could probably get ANYTHING published if I wrote it well enough. IMO, publications are mostly useful if you're already a bit of an SME in the field so that you can parse snake oil from gold. Certain publishers and institutions also hold more credibility, depending on the topic. Broadly speaking, there's a ton of crap in the journal space and the ratio of crap/good grows by the year. The above view is independent of the current article. But it's embarrassing to see people praise the heck out of publications in 2026 in a vacuum. Reeks of young PhD student vibes. Even nature is not what it was even 10 years prior.
      • Aurornis 7mo ago
        > Anyone genuinely familiar with the scientific publishing process probably holds the most skepticism around publications Healthy skepticism is a good idea The silly notion that being published means it should be dismissed or that we should assume the opposite is true is not healthy though. > The above view is independent of the current article. But it's embarrassing to see people praise the heck out of publications in 2026 in a vacuum. Reeks of young PhD student vibes. I was responding to a comment above mine that said this journal was untrustworthy because of a single news bite they recalled. I specifically said that not everything published in a journal is true! Your condescending “young PhD student vibes” attempt at an insult is rich considering you didn’t even try to acknowledge what I actually said or the context in which I was delivering it. Discussing anything science and research related on HN is such a slog because so many commenters are in such a rush to deliver some contrarian smug take that they’re not even reading what’s written.
• haghding 7mo ago
  me n my quarter brick beg to disagree
• odinthedog 7mo ago
  Matthew Hill offers a great interview on Andrew Huberman's podcast - https://open.spotify.com/episode/26PR93gyNcs8YPlQ9dypW3?si=Vp6SLH8uTYGCjDIHG_LCLQ https://open.spotify.com/episode/26PR93gyNcs8YPlQ9dypW3?si=V... As someone who's used cannabis regularly for over a decade, I tried to start to explain in this body my experience but every sentence written ends with me deciding, "that's too circumstantial to my lifestyle-physiology to include." I think at the end of the day, empirical research's purpose is to get us closer to being able to just make our own decisions surrounding mind-altering drugs. Beyond that, cannabis affects a great deal of systems in our body concurrent to the rest of our environment's effects. Use your autonomy to determine if it's a positive or a negative for you. Don't drive fucked up, please.
  • tannedNerd 7mo ago
    This is the most reasonable take I’ve seen in this whole thread. Alcohol doesn’t reduce anxiety either yet tons of people take it as a social lubricant and it probably does more damage to those consuming it than those who consume weed. So shrug? Just be responsible folks and let people blow off steam how they like without judging it like weed is an 8 ball.
• bobokaytop 7mo ago
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• deleted 7mo ago
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• howmayiannoyyou 7mo ago
  I see problems with this meta-analysis. - Not adjusted for strain, dose or delivery method across all studies. - Not adjusted for receptor downregulation, for which rotation and/or drug holidays would be appropriate strategies. - Not adjusted across all studies for time effect, e.g. 6 hours of relief, 1 hour, etc. I can tell you from personal experience with a related disorder that disciplined rotation of 10mg edible cannabis provides 90% relief, 90% of the time, with far fewer side effects than alternative medications for the same disorder.
• jalla 7mo ago
  So, a meta study. While important, it assumes that the underlying studies are based on solid science. So, why do people use cannabis then?
  • malfist 7mo ago
    Why do people use cigarettes? Cocaine? LSD? Not because they're effective treatments for mental disorders
    • Ylpertnodi 7mo ago
      Evidence?
    • zug_zug 7mo ago
      There some evidence that nicotine may be inadvertantly used as a self-medication for schizophrenia and/or adhd Cocaine is a party drug afaik, I'll give you that one. Hallucinogens have the ability change people's perspectives on the world, often for the positive. Now the current psychiatry lens is you can only have "medicine" if you have a "disorder" but that doesn't really seem to make sense. Why can't you take medicine to move something from average to above-average? So I agree it's not prescribed for treating many disorders, but that doesn't mean it isn't therapeutic.
  • xigoi 7mo ago
    > So, why do people use cannabis then? Because it’s marketed as cool and edgy.
• zug_zug 7mo ago
  Edit: Okay, I've read the meta-study now and I think the summary article isn't representing the picture very well. In particular they found for anxiety there actually seems to be evidence in this exact data set that does help. What they are doing is saying "there isn't 95% evidence it reduces anxiety" therefore "no evidence" even though they mean "some evidence, just not at the statistical significance level" -- it's one of the biggest confusions (and sometimes it feels deliberate) you'll see people do. Also when you have a confidence interval that big it's a red flag. They themselves admit the data is all over the place. In summary, don't assume much from the title of the summary article.
  • Bratmon 7mo ago
    I guess if you weren't around for the 30 years when every marijuana advocate on the planet wouldn't shut up about it being a cure for anxiety, evidence that it is not wouldn't be particularly interesting to you.
    • Ylpertnodi 7mo ago
      [flagged]
  • roywiggins 7mo ago
    The data being all over the place on benefits, but pretty clear on harms, is about as good a reason you could want for experts not to recommend something as treatment. That's what it often looks like when something doesn't work, or doesn't work very well. "The error bars are too big to say it works, so we shouldn't tell people it works" is a pretty good thing to inform people about if that's the case. It's really easy to convince yourself that something works when it doesn't, that's the whole reason why people have to take statistical significance seriously. Maybe it really does work and a really good study could shrink the error bars but that's more hope than anything.
    • zug_zug 7mo ago
      > The data being all over the place on benefits, but pretty clear on harms Uhhh... no? Did you even read it? This research actually found more benefits than harms. I see it only identified two harms both graded very low. Let's just quote here the researcher's own conclusions: "Interpretation There was some evidence that cannabinoids can reduce symptoms of cannabis use disorder, insomnia, tic or Tourette’s syndrome, and autism spectrum disorder, but the quality of this evidence was generally low. Cannabinoids were associated with a greater risk of any adverse events but not of serious adverse events. Overall, there is a crucial need for more high-quality research. Given the scarcity of evidence, the routine use of cannabinoids for the treatment of mental disorders and SUDs is currently rarely justified" >>> "The error bars are too big to say it works, so we shouldn't tell people it works" I can see you didn't really understand my comment. There's a huge difference between not saying something is proven to work, and saying it's proven not to work. This study falls in the former category, by the authors own words.
• poupdich 7mo ago
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• deleted 7mo ago
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• paxys 7mo ago
  Title says "helps" but the summary says "it doesn’t effectively treat anxiety, depression, or PTSD". Big difference between the two IMO. Plenty of people use cannabis to alleviate symptoms. I don't think they expect to be cured entirely. Getting a good night's sleep or being without chronic pain for a few hours is often enough.
  • smt88 7mo ago
    "Treat" != "cure"
  • roywiggins 7mo ago
    It's a meta-study and came to the conclusion that there isn't reliable evidence that it alleviates symptoms of a bunch of stuff: > There were no significant effects on outcomes associated with anxiety, anorexia nervosa, psychotic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and opioid use disorder. There were insufficient data to meta-analyse studies of ADHD, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and tobacco use disorder. There was an absence of RCT evidence for the treatment of depression.
    • contravariant 7mo ago
      They have some more useful figures in the paper, but for a lot of things they're essentially saying there is not enough evidence to support using cannabis yet. The strongest claim is the lack of significant effects for anxiety, ptsd etc. but it varies a bit whether that's because the effect is too small or because it is not studied enough. For anxiety for instance the effect they list in the paper is quite big but the error bars are even bigger so the net result is inconclusive. This is quite different from PTSD where they note little to no effect with small error bars.
      • bfivyvysj 7mo ago
        I don't think I've ever heard that cannabis was a treatment for PTSD let alone a good one. Is this paper trying to confuse people about psilocybin?
• Perenti 7mo ago
  I've always been suspicious of the claims THC helps anxiety. CBD may, but my experience is that high doses of THC without corresponding CBD tends to induce anxiety in many people. I also found the brief notes in the article about MMJ and autism intriguing. I'm diagnosed ASD. I would think the use of THC to manage overstimulation could be problematic, as it tends to make colors and sounds and flavours _more_ intense. Conversely, indica strains tend to slow you down. DISCLOSURE: I use large amounts of high potency cannabis flower with CBD/CBG edibles for intractable neuropathic pain. I also smoked a hell of a lot of weed in my 20s and 30s. I've more experience of Pot than most. MMJ lowers my pain a bit, and reduces suffering a lot. Its the suffering that makes life difficult.
  • bitxbitxbitcoin 7mo ago
    Without getting too much into the sativa/indica dichotomy - in my personal experience, I find the secondary metabolite profiles (terpinolene as opposed to the beta Caryophyllene dominant profiles associated typical with 8 week “indica dominant hybrids”) associated with longer flowering cultivars to be preferred by those dealing with what would might be undiagnosed ASD related things. Would love to hear your experiences. What is the longest flowering cultivar you’ve tried, versus the shortest, and difference in effects on your ASD?
• Kon5ole 7mo ago
  American media has really been shockingly pro weed/cannabis for the past 20 or so years. Really astounding to witness considering the well known downsides to human health and cognitive function. Main characters smoke weed as a cool disobedience, in sitcoms even. Wonder what is behind it, from my perspective it's quite remarkable.
  • themafia 7mo ago
    People were smoking weed even when it was socially unacceptable and illegal. Then they were going to jail for a decade or more because of it. This simply did not make any sense. I believe most of this is a backlash effect. Weed was the worst thing ever. Weed is the best thing ever. Eventually weed will be in the same category as coffee.
    • XorNot 7mo ago
      I'd be real happy if we landed on "edibles" and not smoking though. Just about all drugs would benefit from people doing the unobtrusively.
  • anon84873628 7mo ago
    Because the Schedule 1 prohibition was ridiculous. This is the cultural pendulum swing to normalize it and push legalization.
    • t-writescode 7mo ago
      The DARE program just had to tell the truth, but they didn’t and it made everyone question how bad everything really was, if pot wasn’t a problem. Full agree here. Unfortunately, history is what clarifies why pot is SO HUGE now rather than being something indifferent about, like it should be.
  • ecshafer 7mo ago
    Since the 1960s and the emergence of the New Left, and the introduction of the Frankfurt School and 60s post modernism into academia, there has been a widespread belief amongst a large segment of the population that everything traditional is wrong. A social stigma is merely ignorance, that which is seen as bad is actually good, traditions are wrong. All of these things need to be overturned for the enlightenment. Since society deemed marijuana bad, it is therefore good. As those people who were went through that indoctrination in the 60s as students got older, they got into power. They took power in universities. By the 90s they were pushing all of the ideas as the status quo. Students in the 90s then took those ideas, and when they got into power in Media, they pushed those ideas into all movies and tv.
• m0llusk 7mo ago
  Studying the effects of recreational drugs is similar to studying diet in terms of the level of complication. The headline "No evidence" is a good example of the discourse about this subject. There absolutely is such evidence, but this new analysis comes to different, potentially more robust, conclusions from the same data. As long as results are presented in this way a meaningful shared comprehension of the situation is likely to remain out of reach.
• j45 7mo ago
  There seems to be more information out there about the effect on the brain with cannabis and it doesn't always seem great long term. Might be different for THC/CBD in different ways.
• psyclobe 7mo ago
  It certainly helps with boredom but quickly losses it's effect after repeated use. I am calling it quits for now it's been making m a little crazy and I want to see what life is like without it for a while.
  • epolanski 7mo ago
    It's way better trust me. Only smoke when at parties and in company. Alone smoking is terrible. You enjoy the first, then you know very well how you feel the following ones. Only the bad effects of being lazy, tired, sleepy, none of the pros.
    • Schmerika 7mo ago
      > Alone smoking is terrible. You enjoy the first, then you know very well how you feel the following ones. > Only the bad effects of being lazy, tired, sleepy, none of the pros. ... You are allowed to stop at one you know.
• cluckindan 7mo ago
  ”The findings are based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of 54 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) conducted worldwide over a 45 year period (1980-2025).” This review seems dubious considering the huge gap in motivations and scientific rigor between 1980 and 2025.
  • varispeed 7mo ago
    That's classic with most cannabis studies. They sound like they started with a conclusion and then worked their way back fitting the data.
    • cluckindan 7mo ago
      It would be easy, too. Find all studies on the subject, find correlations between some parameters and the results you want/don’t want, add those parameters in your inclusion/exclusion criteria. Who even replicates review articles?
• econ 7mo ago
  Not entirely on topic: If pot is illegal people will grow extremely potent variaties. If it's normal you get very tasty variaties that give a mild buzz even if you smoke pure joints all day. It's like comparing a casual light beer with the 90% moonshine or 45% bathtub gin sold during prohibition.
  • jcul 7mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_prohibition
  • tombert 7mo ago
    We can acknowledge that weed might be bad for people while also acknowledging that it probably shouldn't be illegal. There's no contradiction. I think alcohol is bad for people but I don't think it should be illegal. I also think weed is probably bad for people but probably shouldn't be illegal.
  • MaxfordAndSons 7mo ago
    Idk, you can still find outrageously potent weed in states where it's recreationally legal. But maybe it's just a residual from the fact that it was illegal not that long ago and binge consuming it is still quite normalized?
  • Loughla 7mo ago
    I have found the exact opposite of that. Illegal weed was mild buzz and fun. Legal weed is EXTREMELY potent. They want to pack as much THC into the legal limit as they can.
  • bitxbitxbitcoin 7mo ago
    I think it is very on topic! For people using cannabis as medicine in both legal and illegal markets, the trend to buy higher THC potency products is all about stretching their medicine with their limited budget. To continue your analogy, it’d be like buying 90% moonshine, diluting it 20:1, and then drinking it as a mixed drink the same potency as a casual light beer. Of course, if only 90% moonshine is available, cuz of Prohibition or Post-Prohibition, then you’re going to have more people “binging” as opposed to “budgeting.” The THC percentage variation in different varieties varies from say 0-35%. The better analogy for prohibition’s effects are for the explosion in concentrated forms like hash oil specifically. That is the same prohibition pressure that turned opium into heroin.
• epolanski 7mo ago
  I have been a smoker for more than a decade and I don't think it has any good impact on any of those. In fact, it's quite the contrary. The only times when it's really enjoyable is when you're with someone and you chill out and lightens the mood. But overall it's a drug which I haven't seen bringing any good effect on people's mental health.
  • cluckindan 7mo ago
    That seems biased: if you only notice the people who act out due to their mental health issues, you will not notice the people who use cannabis but don’t have any issues with mental health. Furthermore, people with mental health issues are known to self-medicate, which will introduce a bias if the correlation is seen as causation.
• renewiltord 7mo ago
  The entire point of the drug research is to make them palatable to authorities through plausible lies. American culture does not permit enjoyment for the sake of it. So you have to make up some stories and say “there is some evidence that psilocybin helps depression” or whatever and then slowly leak it towards legality. I mean if I told you I wanted to have fun you’d lose your mind. But if I told you I needed to heal you’re fine with it. So I make it so I’m always ill and needing pharmacological therapy.
  • hananova 7mo ago
    To be fair, ever since I’ve started weekly psilocybin microdoses for depression I’ve been able to stop my regular anti-depressants which had some nasty side effects. And in those 3 years, I’ve had exactly zero depressive breakdowns like I used to have. I don’t really enjoy the feeling of a normal dose of shrooms, but with a microdose below a noticeable effect (sometimes I overshoot a little and it gets a little warm and tingly), I have in fact had a huge quality of life increase. I guess in some ways “not wanting to die regularly” could be seen as “having fun” by some people, and I’m sure that if a proper study was done the result would be inconclusive. I mostly think that the inconclusiveness in these depression studies has much to do with a lack of understanding of what depression even is and thus a lot of them have people with very different root causes of their pathology all being labeled “depression.” But it works for me, and it works very well. (And 2g of shrooms per month is also dirt cheap compared to expensive anti-depressants.)
  • zug_zug 7mo ago
    I find your comment more interesting than the rest of the discussion. Specifically American culture does not permit enjoyment for the sake of it. Sometimes I feel that way too, but I'd love to hear more on your theory of this.
• arbirk 7mo ago
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• temp0826 7mo ago
  Working with ayahuasca for several years in a traditional (Shipibo) context has showed me just how bad cannabis can be- it is more difficult to clean out of the body (energetically/spiritually) than any other drug. It creates so many associations in our mind- memories, relationships, pains, emotions, etc.. When "on the path" (meaning, apprenticing and learning how to work with ayahuasca), it really needs to be cleaned out for useful visions to open up (to work on other people) and to be able to cleanly connect to and call in the medicinal spirits/doctors (through the icaros/songs). It can really blunt dreams, intuition and senses. (Yah this probably sounded woo-woo, but I am speaking from a different, non-western context/lens that views this as a spiritual malady. So take that as you will)
• stego-tech 7mo ago
  This is not entirely surprising, as the evidence was always weakly correlated. I say this as a proponent of legalization, mind you. Cannabis, like alcohol and tobacco, is a vice. It definitely helps with some physical ailments (like helping stimulate hunger in cancer patients), just like alcohol and tobacco can with other ailments, but it’s not a panacea for mental health disorders. We need to stop marketing these things as curatives when they’re mostly just coping mechanisms or social lubricants. We’re doing more harm than good by leaning into the “legitimate pharmaceutical” angle.
• varispeed 7mo ago
  Millions of people use it because it helps them, but trust some edgy scientists who say nope it doesn't. These gaslighting studies are unhelpful. For me cannabis has been life changing, no more pain killers and I live very much pain free. But I read studies claiming cannabis doesn't help with pain. Then you'll have anti-drug crusaders taking these headlines and abuse people for whom cannabis made massive positive difference. To those scientists: Go fuck yourself.
• 01100011 7mo ago
  As a middle aged guy who has used pot on and off for decades and no longer really enjoys the high, I'll say weed is good for two things: Old man joint pains. Not headaches, broken bones, etc. But it nearly erases achy joint pain for me. Being angry. I am much less angry in general when I'm smoking a bit every couple of days. That said, when I take a break I feel like my testosterone goes through the roof. I get more irritable and, TMI, I get a lot more spontaneous boners.
  • mountainriver 7mo ago
    Weed is great for my anger and sleep. I’ve never found as good of a sleep medicine for someone who wakes up too early. I also had debilitating anger in my teens and weed really helped calm that down. I’ve been off it for years at a time and I still can’t get past my anger without it. That said my memory is shit
    • 01100011 7mo ago
      It has at times worked well for sleep. One thing I've noticed though is that nothing works consistently for me. While weed and/or melatonin helps me get good sleep, both can leave me groggy/hungover during the day. What's weird is that I don't mean it varies night-to-night, but like for a period of, say, 9 months I'll sleep better on melatonin then it starts to leave me hungover so I'll switch it up and try weed and maybe it works fine for a few months then I get daytime sleepy/sluggish. Recently I just quit everything yet again and now I sleep well for 6.5 hours, wake up refreshed, and have a lot more alertness and motivation during the day. My past experience says this will last for a while until I yet again find I need weed or melatonin to get more than 4 hours. I don't get it.. probably other factors in my life affecting my sleep.
      • mountainriver 7mo ago
        I feel the same way, I'm constantly cycling sleep meds
    • swed420 7mo ago
      I found it used to disrupt my ability to fall asleep, and I didn't dream, or at least didn't remember doing so. It also impacted my memory when awake, which makes sense if it was messing with my sleep cycles. However, I was able to fix all of those problems by consistently ceasing use 4 hours prior to going to sleep.
• rcakebread 7mo ago
  Reading that study sure didn't help with my anxiety, depression or PTSD either.
• mapontosevenths 7mo ago
  From the paper itself: "54 trials were identified for inclusion (2477 participants...) ....24 (44%) of these trials had a high risk of bias, and the certainty of evidence for most outcomes was low."
• snissn 7mo ago
  I’m digging through the paper. It’s a meta analysis paper.. they have six studies they analyze on anxiety treatment and they (footnotes 40-46) have positive results in terms of cbd showing a significant effect on anxiety reduction. I’m not invested in figuring out exactly how this study came to represent what it claims but it seems like a joke
  • snissn 7mo ago
    Ok I see so they have six studies that they found to indicate effective treatment of anxiety with cannibanoids but their meta study only found six trials with 50 people so the significance / n count is not high enough. So the study is a null result ie they don’t have enough data not they’ve disproved it. In fact their data supports the hypothesis. Then the coverage on science daily misrepresented this. Here's citaiton 40: https://www.nature.com/articles/npp20116 https://www.nature.com/articles/npp20116 "Cannabidiol Reduces the Anxiety Induced by Simulated Public Speaking in Treatment-Naïve Social Phobia Patients" Pretreatment with CBD significantly reduced anxiety, cognitive impairment and discomfort in their speech performance, and significantly decreased alert in their anticipatory speech. The placebo group presented higher anxiety, cognitive impairment, discomfort, and alert levels when compared with the control group as assessed with the VAMS.
• jrflowers 7mo ago
  > “Though our paper didn’t specifically look at this, the routine use of medicinal cannabis could be doing more harm than good by worsening mental health outcomes, for example a greater risk of psychotic symptoms and developing cannabis use disorder, and delaying the use of more effective treatments,” he said. I like how confident the author is to just say stuff that’s not covered by his study while promoting his study. “I didn’t look into this but I bet pot is bad!” doesn’t solicit a lot of confidence in the neutrality of the guy who previously brought us hits like “Does smoking weed lead to doing heroin?” and “Is ChatGPT good for doing medical research?”
• deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
• DANmode 7mo ago
  Correct. It’s a nervous adaptogen. Not the fix.
• rurban 7mo ago
  Please, everybody knows this already. It only helps against pain. It's structurally equivalent to one part of chemotherapy.
  • Gud 7mo ago
    Who is this “everyone”? I smoke weed because it helps with my anxiety. Is it a perfect “treatment”? lol It gives me some respite, that’s it.
    • rurban 7mo ago
      Every professional psychiatrist and doctor
      • Gud 7mo ago
        Ok dude, everyone says so.
• tsoukase 7mo ago
  Cannabis had never an official indication for any psychiatric disease. At least in my country medical cannabis is prescribed only for chronic pain. Irrelevant fact is that 95% of people take it just to get high. The mechanism of action suggests its effects. There are enough other substances for this purpose.
• dzonga 7mo ago
  again this is why there's less trust in science these days. there's lived reality vs what you wish reality was (lab conditions) some people do find relief in marijuana etc to treat pain, some people find relief in treating ptsd with LSD while at the same time - we find more cases of psychosis from marijuana telling someone their lived experience is a lie is very foolish and looking down on people.