7 ms·
This point of view makes no sense to me. If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. All the psychiatric s
by andoando 7mo ago
This point of view makes no sense to me.
If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. All the psychiatric studies are already based on self assessment.
Second, a lot of psychatric treatments are temporary, ending whenever the medication is stopped or wears off so I dont see how this would be any different
- Aurornis 7mo ago> If you take it and you feel your anxiety is lessened, that's the greatest proof you can ask for. This mistake has been made many time throughout history. Cocaine was originally believed to be a viable treatment for depression. Opioids and amphetamines too. You take them and you feel good for a while, which was mistakenly equated with treating depression. Many drugs will make you feel good temporarily by blocking certain feelings or tricking your brain into feeling good. This is not the same as treating a condition. You can think of actual treatments as working closer to the source to reduce the problem, not temporarily overriding it with a powerful drug-induced sensation.
- noosphr 7mo agoAlcohol too. It's not a cure. It's a high.
- mapontosevenths 7mo agoIm unaware of any frequently medicated psychiatric disorder for which there is a cure. Are all psych meds just "a high"?
- mikkupikku 7mo ago> Cocaine was originally believed to be a viable treatment for depression. Is it not?? Sure there's the addiction and harm from abuse that make it less than ideal for long term use, to put it mildly, but weed isn't coke so what's really the argument here?
- DANmode 7mo agoAcetaminophen blunts the parasympathetic nervous system…what do you think cocaine could be capable of?
- mikkupikku 7mo agoTylenol causes depression, got it. Advise to take seriously.
- DANmode 7mo agoYou don’t need to put words into my mouth to justify using coke, it’s fine.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- andoando 7mo agoHow do amphetamines treat the source of ADHD? Psychiatry as its practiced has no idea as to what depression even is under the hood. The entire science is based on the patients self reported feelings or the psychatrists feeling of how someone else is feeling. What you're saying is something else, that drugs can produce long term harm despite short term improvements
- Aurornis 7mo ago> The entire science is based on the patients self reported feelings or the psychatrists feeling of how someone else is feeling. This study is showing that THC, CBD, blends, or cannabis do not improve self-reported feelings over the long term. You can use pedantry and wordplay all you want, but no matter how we look at this study it does not show positive effects. > What you're saying is something else, that drugs can produce long term harm despite short term improvements Recreational drugs make you feel good temporarily. That's literally why people do them. They also cause harm when abused. These are all obvious and well known facts.
- andoando 7mo agoI dont have a problem with the study or its conclusions, just the parent post I was replying to. >Recreational drugs make you feel good temporarily. That's literally why people do them. The point Im making is this is true for a ton of psychiatric or even non psychatric treatments. And to be perfectly clear Im not saying you should be treating your anxiety with weed, even if it does help you
- Aurornis 7mo ago> The point Im making is this is true for a ton of psychiatric or even non psychatric treatments That point wasn't intended to be taken in isolation. I was making statements about how long-term treatment of an underlying condition is not the same as taking a drug which temporarily masks a problem or induces altered mood states. The fact that a drug has acute effects, good or bad, is separate from any conversation about chronic effects. For depression, anxiety, and other conditions it's the chronic effects that matter. The acute effects almost become side effects at that point. For some drugs, getting to long-term treatment involves tolerating the acute effects while your body adapts
- harimau777 7mo agoI mean, aren't they effective treatments? As someone who has had depression literally as long as I can remember, being able to releve my symptoms when I really need it, even for just an hour, would be life changing.
- mapontosevenths 7mo agoAcetaminophen also does not provide long term benefit. I am still glad its available when I need it. It reduces suffering in the moment, which is sometimes the entire goal.
- phainopepla2 7mo agoDuration of effect matters when it comes to successful treatments. If we take your position and apply reductio ad absurdum, we could say that cocaine is a highly effective treatment for anxiety, although of course we know that in the not-so-long run it has the opposite effect.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- andoando 7mo agoBut a lot of psychatric treatments are just that. Treatment for ADHD for example is giving ampethamines (which btw are chemically no different than a low dose of meth), which have a duration of 3-6 hours and its back to worse than baseline after the effect has worn off.
- Aurornis 7mo agoThere are multiple treatments for ADHD, including alpha-2 receptor agonists and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors. Some of them show patterns of increasing efficacy out to a year (the length of the study). The reason amphetamines are used for ADHD but not depression is that they've been studied to show that the ADHD improving effect can remain for many months, while the mood-improving effect will taper off quickly if you take them every day. Almost everyone who takes ADHD stimulant, feels a mood and motivation boost ("so happy I could cry" is the common phrase) and then is disappointed when that mood boost stops happening after a few weeks or months will learn this. Attention enhancement is less prone to tolerance, though it still accumulates tolerance too. There are some studies showing that the effects of stimulants in ADHD diminish substantially on a multi-year time frame, and it's probably not a coincidence that many people (though not all) who take stimulants discontinue after several years.
- sillywabbit 7mo agoMeth causes brain damage. Dex doesn't.
- 7mo ago
- olyjohn 7mo agoI think the problem is that, at least in my experience, you end up with more anxiety once the initial high wears off. Paranoia is an extremely common side effect of Marijuana, and so are nightmares with prolonged use. And once you kinda get into a routine with it, you have a hard time quitting, because your overall anxiety is raised, and you need it just to get back to a normal functioning level. My guess is that this is due to the effects that THC has on blocking your REM sleep. Without the proper REM sleep, it seems pretty common to be anxious and foggy-brained.
- cluckindan 7mo agoTHC cannot both ”cause nightmares” and ”block REM sleep”, because nightmares happen during REM sleep. People who suffer from nightmares may benefit from less REM sleep. It’s much more refreshing to sleep in a non-REM state and wake up normally than it is to repeatedly wake up in cold sweat and be afraid to go to sleep again.
- altmanaltman 7mo agoDoing ten shots of tequila is a 100% scientifically proven cure for social anxiety then. If you take it and your anxiety lessens, that's the greatest proof you can ask for! Let's just completely ignore the crippling morning hangover and liver damage
- tapoxi 7mo agoBut I don't think we've seen cannabis, especially when not smoked, have anywhere near the health risk of alcohol.
- altmanaltman 7mo agoSure but my point was that you cannot have an argument where you go "yeah this happens so it's good" while you disregard everything else (it's a different question on how bad it is compared to alcohol etc). But if we follow the logic of the original comment, then it's valid logic since "hey it works so its scientifically proven!" You can replace alcohol with something else to highlight that as well, like how putting out a kitchen fire with a bucket of gasoline is a good idea. It completely covers the flames for a split second! Why worry about the explosion that happens immediately after? So my comment wasn't about alcohol vrs cannabis but rather how that kind of logic is short-sighted and faulty.
- Shog9 7mo agoI mean... Yeah. Alcohol is very well documented and even more widely used for exactly this purpose BECAUSE it works. The side-effects are often terrible. This is also true for many widely-prescribed drugs, and has been even more true in the past. The folks I've known on MAOIs were pretty wrecked.
- cluckindan 7mo ago”The folks I've known on MAOIs were pretty wrecked.” And then one must consider that tobacco smoke and coffee both contain high levels of MAOIs.
- zdragnar 7mo agoPsychiatric treatments return a person to a baseline that can be managed with therapy or healthy coping mechanisms. Chasing a high is not a treatment, it merely defers the problem. As tolerance to the high builds, patients lose the therapeutic value but have gained crippling dependency and addiction.
- jzb 7mo agoThere’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety. For one thing, treatments for anxiety only target the anxiety: they don’t impair the person the way that weed or alcohol does. (They can have other side effects, of course.) Drugs for anxiety treatment do wear off, but not the same way that weed or alcohol does: something like Celexa takes a few weeks to build up in the system, and don’t lose effect 12-24 hours later if you miss a dose. I’m not sure how long you’d have to stop before it loses efficacy entirely. I’m not Nancy Reagan, though: I would not advise people to self-medicate with booze or pot if they’re suffering from depression or anxiety, but I’m not going to preach at anybody who is doing so and thinks it’s working for them. I will say that I’ve seen that end badly, though. I can think of three people I’m close to who’ve tried it and have had problems with addiction: all of them are now sober and (I believe) on regular antidepressants.
- andoando 7mo agoIm prescribed adderall for ADHD. It is a high. You feel more positive, more productive, more forward looking for a few hours and its back to baseline or worse when you crash. As for impairment, it really depends. If weed removes your anxiety and lets you relax, its benefit could be greater for what youre doing than the impairment it causes. And adderall, SSRIs can cause impairment of sorts too.
- cluckindan 7mo ago”There’s a difference between intoxication and treating the chemical imbalance behind depression or anxiety.” There is no significant, rigorous evidence that depression or anxiety are caused by an inherent ”chemical imbalance”.