4 ms·

If the research procedure really looked like the one described in the article, the results may be as well interpreted in opposite direction: young people with p

If the research procedure really looked like the one described in the article, the results may be as well interpreted in opposite direction: young people with predisposition for psychosis use skunk more often then healthy ones. I'm always shocked how unscient ific the medical research is.

DanBC 12y ago
This report does have benefits. It seems that only people smoking strong cannabis strains, [edit strike]and smoking daily, [/strike] were at risk. UK gov has again said this is a reason against legalisaton but to me it moves us a bit closer.
- IanCal 12y ago
  > It seems that only people smoking strong cannabis strains, and smoking daily, were at risk. This is simply not true. > “Compared with those who never used cannabis, individuals who mostly used skunk-like cannabis were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder if they used it less than once per week, almost three times as likely if they used it at weekends, and more than five times as likely if they were daily users,” the paper notes. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11414605/Super-strong-cannabis-responsible-for-quarter-of-new-psychosis-cases.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11414605/Super-s...
kirsebaer 12y ago
Exactly. Did they carefully check for family history of psychosis? Most of these studies do not look carefully at family history and the ones that do find that heavy cannabis users have more family members with psychosis, fully explaining any link between cannabis and psychosis. Similarly, people who study math have a greatly increased rate of psychosis, but nobody warns kids against studying math because the math-psychosis link is fully explained by family history/genetics. Before people become overtly psychotic there is a long "prodomal" period where they are just a bit weird, in this prodomal period period pre-psychotic people can have an interest in math and cannabis.
zecg 12y ago
I can recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scream https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scr... And here's an excerpt: --- Gabor began to read about a group of American scientists who had carried out something called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It is the most detailed research ever conducted into the long-term effects of early childhood trauma. It looked at ten different terrible things that can happen to a kid, from physical abuse to sexual abuse to the death of a parent, to track how it shapes that child over their lifetime. These scientists discovered that for each traumatic event that happened to a child, they were two to four times more likely to grow up to be an addicted adult. Nearly two-thirds of injection drug use, they found, is the product of childhood trauma. This is a correlation so strong the scientists said it is “of an order of magnitude17 rarely seen in epidemiology or public health.” It means that child abuse is as likely to cause drug addiction as obesity is to cause heart disease.18 Another long-term study, published in American Psychologist,19 followed kids from the age of five until they were eighteen, to figure out how much the quality of your parenting while a child affects your drug use as you get older. When the children were still small, the scientists gave them a task to carry out with their parents—like piling up building blocks—and then they watched how well the parents helped and encouraged them through a one-way mirror. They wrote down which kids had parents who were loving and supportive, and which had parents who were disengaged or nasty to them. It turned out the kids whose parents had been either indifferent or cruel were dramatically more likely to heavily use drugs than the others. They had grown up, they found, less able to form loving relationships, and so they felt more angry and distressed and impulsive a lot of the time. If we can figure out at the age of five which kids are going to be addicts and which ones aren’t, that tells us something fundamental about drug addiction. “Their relative maladjustment,” the study found, “precedes the initiation of drug use.” Indeed, “Problem drug use is a symptom, not a cause,20 of personal and social maladjustment.” ---
- madaxe_again 12y ago
  >>Nearly two-thirds of injection drug use, they found, is the product of childhood trauma. You're aware you don't inject marijuana, right? I mean, the news media in the UK today seems to think you do, but you don't. Either way - your post reminds me generally of Rat Park, which was posted about here a few days back. Addiction as a product of environment and conditioning rather than idiopathic. Oh, and you can't be physiologically addicted to cannabis. Psychologically, sure, but you can be psychologically addicted to American Idol, and I know which I'd rather poison my mind with.
madaxe_again 12y ago
Most drug research tends to treat causality with contempt - my interpretation would likewise be that people with psychotic tendencies are more likely to try cannabis. As to "hash skunk cannabis" which is "as bad as heroin" according to the telegraph... don't make me laugh - or are they seriously suggesting I start shooting up because it's no worse than smoking a joint after work?
unhammer 12y ago
Can you explain what exactly is unscientific about it, for those of us who haven't read the full study yet? From what I gather, this is about the age of onset of psychosis in people genetically predisposed towards psychosis, ie. it's already accepted that the participants have a predisposition for psychosis. I suppose http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Maccabe/publication/259351867_Daily_Use_Especially_of_High-Potency_Cannabis_Drives_the_Earlier_Onset_of_Psychosis_in_Cannabis_Users/links/00b7d5357f7dbeb4ed000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Maccabe/publicatio... is the article; a quick search for the main author also shows e.g. http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/article00725.html http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/article00725.html regarding the genetics. Meta-reviews https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meta%20study%20psychosis%20cannabis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meta%20study%20psychosi... seem to support it as well. ----- EDIT: reading the comments here, I feel I have to mention that yes, alcohol is also bad and possibly worse (definitely worse if you look at absolute numbers) and no, cannabis is not worse than heroin and no, we shouldn't ban everything that can do you harm. That still doesn't mean we should pretend cannabis can never do harm.

DanBC 12y ago

This report does have benefits. It seems that only people smoking strong cannabis strains, [edit strike]and smoking daily, [/strike] were at risk. UK gov has again said this is a reason against legalisaton but to me it moves us a bit closer.

IanCal 12y ago
> It seems that only people smoking strong cannabis strains, and smoking daily, were at risk. This is simply not true. > “Compared with those who never used cannabis, individuals who mostly used skunk-like cannabis were nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder if they used it less than once per week, almost three times as likely if they used it at weekends, and more than five times as likely if they were daily users,” the paper notes. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11414605/Super-strong-cannabis-responsible-for-quarter-of-new-psychosis-cases.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11414605/Super-s...

kirsebaer 12y ago

Exactly. Did they carefully check for family history of psychosis? Most of these studies do not look carefully at family history and the ones that do find that heavy cannabis users have more family members with psychosis, fully explaining any link between cannabis and psychosis. Similarly, people who study math have a greatly increased rate of psychosis, but nobody warns kids against studying math because the math-psychosis link is fully explained by family history/genetics. Before people become overtly psychotic there is a long "prodomal" period where they are just a bit weird, in this prodomal period period pre-psychotic people can have an interest in math and cannabis.

zecg 12y ago

I can recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scream https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245552-chasing-the-scr... And here's an excerpt: --- Gabor began to read about a group of American scientists who had carried out something called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It is the most detailed research ever conducted into the long-term effects of early childhood trauma. It looked at ten different terrible things that can happen to a kid, from physical abuse to sexual abuse to the death of a parent, to track how it shapes that child over their lifetime. These scientists discovered that for each traumatic event that happened to a child, they were two to four times more likely to grow up to be an addicted adult. Nearly two-thirds of injection drug use, they found, is the product of childhood trauma. This is a correlation so strong the scientists said it is “of an order of magnitude17 rarely seen in epidemiology or public health.” It means that child abuse is as likely to cause drug addiction as obesity is to cause heart disease.18 Another long-term study, published in American Psychologist,19 followed kids from the age of five until they were eighteen, to figure out how much the quality of your parenting while a child affects your drug use as you get older. When the children were still small, the scientists gave them a task to carry out with their parents—like piling up building blocks—and then they watched how well the parents helped and encouraged them through a one-way mirror. They wrote down which kids had parents who were loving and supportive, and which had parents who were disengaged or nasty to them. It turned out the kids whose parents had been either indifferent or cruel were dramatically more likely to heavily use drugs than the others. They had grown up, they found, less able to form loving relationships, and so they felt more angry and distressed and impulsive a lot of the time. If we can figure out at the age of five which kids are going to be addicts and which ones aren’t, that tells us something fundamental about drug addiction. “Their relative maladjustment,” the study found, “precedes the initiation of drug use.” Indeed, “Problem drug use is a symptom, not a cause,20 of personal and social maladjustment.” ---

madaxe_again 12y ago
>>Nearly two-thirds of injection drug use, they found, is the product of childhood trauma. You're aware you don't inject marijuana, right? I mean, the news media in the UK today seems to think you do, but you don't. Either way - your post reminds me generally of Rat Park, which was posted about here a few days back. Addiction as a product of environment and conditioning rather than idiopathic. Oh, and you can't be physiologically addicted to cannabis. Psychologically, sure, but you can be psychologically addicted to American Idol, and I know which I'd rather poison my mind with.

madaxe_again 12y ago

Most drug research tends to treat causality with contempt - my interpretation would likewise be that people with psychotic tendencies are more likely to try cannabis. As to "hash skunk cannabis" which is "as bad as heroin" according to the telegraph... don't make me laugh - or are they seriously suggesting I start shooting up because it's no worse than smoking a joint after work?

unhammer 12y ago

Can you explain what exactly is unscientific about it, for those of us who haven't read the full study yet? From what I gather, this is about the age of onset of psychosis in people genetically predisposed towards psychosis, ie. it's already accepted that the participants have a predisposition for psychosis. I suppose http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Maccabe/publication/259351867_Daily_Use_Especially_of_High-Potency_Cannabis_Drives_the_Earlier_Onset_of_Psychosis_in_Cannabis_Users/links/00b7d5357f7dbeb4ed000000.pdf http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Maccabe/publicatio... is the article; a quick search for the main author also shows e.g. http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/article00725.html http://www.sci-news.com/genetics/article00725.html regarding the genetics. Meta-reviews https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meta%20study%20psychosis%20cannabis https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=meta%20study%20psychosi... seem to support it as well. ----- EDIT: reading the comments here, I feel I have to mention that yes, alcohol is also bad and possibly worse (definitely worse if you look at absolute numbers) and no, cannabis is not worse than heroin and no, we shouldn't ban everything that can do you harm. That still doesn't mean we should pretend cannabis can never do harm.