Depressed Teenagers Making Themselves Worse With Marijuana Says US Government Report

An extensive analysis of longitudinal studies on marijuana use and risk of mental illness later in lifeshowed that marijuana use increases the risk of developing mental disorders by 40 percent. The risk of psychosis increases with frequency of marijuana use, from 50 to 200 percent among frequent users.

The authors conclude that “there is now sufficient
evidence to warn young people that using cannabis could increase their risk of developing a psychotic illness later in life.”13
Other studies also show a strong relationship between marijuana and schizophrenia. A study fromNew Zealand showed “a clear increase in rates of psychotic symptoms after the start of regular use” of marijuana.14 Another 21-year longitudinalstudy showed that marijuana use was associated with psychotic symptoms and suggested a causal relationship.15 A study published in Schizophrenia Research found that cannabis use seems to be a specific risk factor for future psychotic symptoms.

I think that the report makes 2 good points, teenagers that are going through depression should stay as far away as possible from cannabis and that habitual use of it can increase your chances of developing mental disorders.





[edit on 14-5-2008 by Bunch]

[edit on 14-5-2008 by Bunch]

Read the article and the whole time I'm thinking, of course people that reported depression are more likely to have tried pot... They're looking for a fix or a bandaid to help them out, pretty typical human response and when you're young you look for whats easily available. Most of the time thats a friend or a friend of a friend that can get you grass or booze and you'll try to drown it out the way they see an old man finish off a stressful day.

So if people that are depressed are obviously more likely to seek self medication, then is it the pot that's causing the cause or is it the result? They obviously presented one side of it, but logically it does make sense that people that are feeling depressed are seeking out their own fixes, and you know what they say about the simplest answer...

As an aside I'd like to say that ANYONE not in a good state of mind be it from chronic depression, something that's happened in your life to bring your mood down, whatever it is...... Do NOT use psychoactive drugs then! It's always been my belief that if you're in emotional turmoil you need to sort that out and get your life in order before you decide to take a "break". It's just so damn easy to use them to help get through those times, but we learn best and grow much faster if the feelings are dealt with head on vs masking them with a crutch.

Also, I think it's sad how many kids are depressed now days, but I believe some of it just comes from hormones at that age, I know I had times where I felt the world on my shoulders. And all that weight was just created by me and I hadn't felt anything yet.

reply to post by Bunch


These so called research results are not always the truth mate.

For example earlier in the thread I posted two quotes from the governments own research that stated MJ causes no mental illness and that it is not addictive.

Why would the gov say that and then contradict themselevs at another time? And knowing the motivation of the government which statement is most logically true? Obviously the one I posted, no?

There is a reason they want it to remain illegal and it's not because it's dangerous. Check your sources, and then look at all the evidence and history of it's use and the contradictions. You can only come to one logical conclusion.

reply to post by HaTaX


You are right on the money mate, and if you go talk to a mental health professional they'll say the same thing.

People self medicate, and they'll use what's easily available and cannabis is easier to get than alcohol. And thank god w whole let safer and better for you.

The whole point is the government don't want kids smoking pot they want them taking anti-depressant. It's all just business as usual, one drug dealer trying to kill off the competition from another, or others...

One thing a lot of people over look is the fact that the "gatway drug Myth" questionair failed to ask one imoportant question


"did you ever consume alcohol before trying MJ"


think about your personal past, which is the REAL gateway drug here??

I think many of you (most?) will have tried a sip of beer or two growing up BEFORE MJ ever came into the picture....

Use some common sense people

I am all for the legalization of pot. Even though pot may arguably be less harmful than legal drugs like alcohol and prescription medications, it does not mean pot is completely benign. Pot odes have negative side effects and can be particularly harmful for certain types of people.

Marijuanna, like alcohol, is a depressant. When depressed people take depressants, they make their depression worse, even though they get a temporary high. We would all agree that depressed people should not get drunk every day. Similarly, depressed people should not be getting stoned every day , either.

reply to post by hotpinkurinalmint


Thats a very good point that you make. To negate the fact that using cannabis in excess could result or lead to something negative is just naive. Specially if you already have a mental condition or if you just using in excess for habitual use.

Your analogy with alcohol is right on the money, a lot of people drink but just a few become alcoholics, so where do we draw the line with MJ?

First Question.

1. Where did the Money come from, that paid for this study?

Chances are, if you follow the trickle, you would end up at the back door of a Alcohol, Tobacco, or Pharmaceutical Corporation. Or in the very least a friend of a friend of the doorman.

Another paid for report brought to your by your (haha) Government. One thing to remember is, this is just business. Marijuana is a very very strong competitor for each of these industries. 3 vs 1. Bad odds for the little bud that could.

Despite this report, everyone should please remember the facts.

1. Cigarettes kill around 400,000 (bet its higher) people a year in the US.

2. Alcohol kills around 75,000 people a year in the US (also shortens the life of heavy drinkers down 30 years).

3. Doctor approved Pharms kill 100,000+.

4..... There is not one known death that can be solelycredited to Marijuana.

Again, I don't know why people have a hard time grasping the above data, its so clear.

No deaths vs. 100s of thousands (millions a decade vs 0 a decade). How many people have died in the last century due to those products? Hundreds of millions. Again, those products in the last century are like 100 holocausts (Please remember this is an under estimate, how many in the world have died due to these products?). Marijuana not so much.

Again, every year those products kill our family, friends, and us. We all know at least one person, who has died as a result. But yet, it's legal. It's like having a government backed serial killer.

Seems like Population control, is better then betterment.

Second Question.

Isn't this Propaganda and not a real scientific study?

White House study. What is a white house study? Where's the hard facts with stats, timelines, specific results, and numbers?

What think tank is working on the Marijuana campaign. Seems like this just part of a project. Something to divert away from the growing State's that support Medical uses of the plant. More states push forward, more propaganda comes out. It's a teeter totter. Truth vs BS.

I'll reason, that this study might fall into the realm of BS. I would rather believe a tale about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny's adventure to the Tooth Fairy's house for Halloween, then anything this administration pushes out.

In my personal dealings with the plant.

I'm a smoker. I have a nice life. Nice job. Nice Degree. Great Bank account. Zero Depression. I've smoked everyday for the last 5 years.

I have no parking tickets, zero accidents, zero days missed at work (hard job dealing with up to 20,000 dollars in sales a day( i'm a customer service manager, shipping director, salesman), a loving relationship with a girlfriend. Haven't been involved in any fights. I create music, art, play video games, walk my dog, pay the bills on time, so on and so forth.

However, I am just me. I can not push my experiences onto others. Granted, everyone is different.

I'm just sick of senile Uncle Sam trying to say what I know is BS. I am saddened that the hard numbers (the deaths) escape thought in the mainstream, and masses. Money is what moves our government. Money is what moves a study being pushed to be perceived as fact. Money kills millions.

That makes me feel a deep state of sadness for our state.

Marijuana, not so much.

You all want to know what REALLY leads to other HARDER drugs? I can tell you that it is not MJ.

Here is the list of REAL Gateway Drugs:
Alcohol
Cigarettes
Coffee


Do you want to know why? How easy is it for kids to get into their parents liquor cabinet, how easy is it to get someone old enough to buy beer (or any other kind of alcohol?), how easy is it to get cigarettes? How EASY is it to get coffee? Star bucks here I come! And I don't have to be any particular age to get a hold of an upper like coffee!

Society is very, very backwards IMO....

Anything about pot that comes from the lying Bush cabal is total hogwash. They cherry pick data that has no conclusions and then lie and act as if their is a causal factor, and there is not. Some people should not use it, and some people with mental disorders may be made worse by it, so they should refrain...but for the other 99.999% of the world there ios nothing wrong with moderate use, and even heavy use shows no serious issues.

The liars concentrate on pot because they make a fortune keeping it illegal until the Big Pharma can make a foprtune using rip off's from the original...and of course they never admit they were wrong, ever.

Virtually every statement they make has to be diossected to see the lies underneath...there is NO science linking any problems to pot, only allegations and suppositions. The American College of Physicians, with 140,000 members, just signed on more pot research and want the filthy DEA to back off.

It is a sick and disgusting fact that scum bag whiskey swilling and coke sniffing closet gays like Bush and his evil master Cheney the blackhearted can spew lies about a God given herb and laugh while they take money from the corporate bribers...sick.

Marijuana and .... diseases:

Glaucoma - Lessens nerve pressure in the eye.

Cancer - Reaches the part of the brain that suppresses pain; also stimulates appetite and combats nausea associated with chemotherapy.

HIV/AIDS - Combats nausea, stimulates appetite to fight wasting syndrome.

Fibromyalgia, severe arthritis and other chronic pain disorders - Works as an analgesic to stop pain.

Multiple sclerosis - Can help relieve spasms and contractions.

Epilepsy and seizures - Can prevent seizures in some patients.

How long will they continue to fill up our jails with innocent people for what they choose to do in their spare time. In that case why don't we put everyone in jail?

A while ago, I dealt in the weed trade. I smoked an UNGODLY amount of weed EVERY day...and not once did I ever get depressed. Sure, some mornings I woke up feeling retarded as #%$&, but the haze always dissipated by noon or so. I was never violent or anything besides happy really. Also, it didn't "kill" any brain cells, or at least not near enough to affect me as I have a pretty damn high IQ. So, the government LIES! I vote REVOLUTION! Take up thy swords!

Originally posted by Torsten
A while ago, I dealt in the weed trade. I smoked an UNGODLY amount of weed EVERY day...and not once did I ever get depressed. Sure, some mornings I woke up feeling retarded as #%$&, but the haze always dissipated by noon or so. I was never violent or anything besides happy really. Also, it didn't "kill" any brain cells, or at least not near enough to affect me as I have a pretty damn high IQ. So, the government LIES! I vote REVOLUTION! Take up thy swords!

You might wanna edit your post immediately. Very delicate subject to touch specially when your discussing actually DOING drugs.

reply to post by Bunch


More government propaganda. Here, take this new pill. The FDA hasn't tested it, but Pfizer did and they said its ok so you're fine.

Cannabis is the safest 'drug' (I wouldn't even classify it as a drug) in the world, and yet its schedule I. What the hell?

I am sick of reading this propaganda from the white house of all places, which receives billions of dollars in tax revenue and lobbying cash from pharmaceutical companies, about what I should and should not put in my body.

Cannabis is an anti-depressant. You won't read that in any government study because then the DEA would be out of a job.

You heard me, anti-depressant. Kids are smoking cannabis because it wards off depression.

ONDCP is a front for the drug-pushers of washington. The most beneficial plant on the face of this planet is illegal for a few reasons:

1). Profit; Cannabis can clothe, feed, house, and cure people of many ailments.

2). Ignorance; People believe biased reports like this one and suck up Hearst publications' propaganda on the 'evil weed'

And others, mostly linked to profit.


[edit on 5/14/2008 by biggie smalls]

Originally posted by Bunch
To negate the fact that using cannabis in excess could result or lead to something negative is just naive.

Again your are showing your ignorance to its use. What is 'use in excess' exactly?

Take Irvin Rosenfeld as an example. He smokes legal cannabis, as one of the very few people who were given legal cannabis by the government for his bone spurs (same thing I have in my spine). He has smoked cannabis (free lucky bastige) constantly everyday for years and is a very successful stockbroker...

video.google.com...

There are hundreds of thousands of successful pot smokers. To label all pot smokers as lazy and addicted because of the actions of a very few people is stupid and backwards. We can tolerate many things far more dangerous than MJ and not even think about it.
Look around you and at your workmates and I'll bet most of them smoke pot and you wouldn't even know it.

See the government agrees that cannabis is beneficial and has admitted as I have proved. Isn't it obvious what's going on, regardless of whether you personally like the stuff?

You really have to wake up and realise the stuff you're presenting in this thread is BS propaganda. Maybe you don't really care about the truth?

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


Why are you putting coffee in the gateway drug category? I think a 44 oz coke with HFC and a host of other chemicals is much worse for you. Or maybe you just mean caffeine how ever you get it. I don't think you can single out one type of beverage as I know people that love sodas as much as i love coffee. I'd also have to say that I know of very few lives that have been destroyed by caffeine. You can drive just fine on it, no body does testing at the work place to see if you have caffeine in you. Its actually encouraged by most employers.

reply to post by biggie smalls


You my good sir, pretty much nailed the subject. Good job.

ANOK,

you're my hero. down with prescribed opiate medication for mild to moderate pains and aches, which addict people chemically in the same way as Heroin. in fact, at the molecular level, it is only mildly different from Heroin, hits the same receptors in the brain, and causes a similar withdraw syndrome and hard physical dependancy over time.

you could smoke 100lbs of marijuana a day until you die of lung cancer and I guarantee you that if someone locked you away for 30 days without access to it, you'd be over it by day number 2. when i say "over it", I mean just the mental aspect, the truth and knowledge that something you enjoy doing you can no longer do for 30 days. NOT that you'd even get sick, you do not get sick. Marijuana does not cause physical dependancy to a point where withdraw symptoms present themselves and the brain no longer functions properly.

The brain may change, or go through a back and forth change as you introduce and take away THC from the brain, but it will not cause you to have seizures, shakes, vomiting, diarahea, muscle cramps, dehydration, profuse sweating, lack of sleep, lack of appetite, painful abdomin cramps, hard depression where you just feel like offing yourself, if only you could garner the willpower to remove your pathetic self from the bed you've soaked in your own sweat, but your bones and muscles just hurt too bad, you just can't do it.

I'm not going into stories, I'm not incriminating, I am saying this. I know from personal experience what happens when the body is exposed for long terms to both of these in question, the MJ and also opiate treatment, and let me tell you .. opiates make MJ, even a very bad MJ habit, look like the difference between an addiction to crack coc aine versus a cigarette addiction. Wait, thats not even good enough, cigarettes are more addicting than marijuana and also cause a mild, although unpleasent withdraw.

I guess nothing truly compares, does it? God's gift to mankind since the creation.

I know this board doesn't advocate drug use or the discussion of pro-drug use things, and I don't encourage people to go out and get high, but my stance on the subject is that MJ definitively helps with too many conditions to be ignored.

I have Tourette's syndrome, ADHD and a learning disability, which I was diagnosed with at the age of 8. I suffered from the same crap with parenting and teachers wanting to have me medicated to control me, and was placed on a great deal of different medications. You see, during this time, Tourette's syndrome was not as widely known (I am older now of course) and there weren't any definitive medications proven to 100% help. In essence, I was one of the early guiney pigs. NONE of these drugs helped. IN fact, a few made my tics worse; a couple others made me gain an incredible ammount of weight (at roughly 10 years old, 5'2 or 3'', I was almost 250); another made me sleep CONSTANTLY; and another made me have incredibly violent outbursts of anger.

Suffice it to say,I said enough is enough with the bull drugs that were being shoved in my throat, and went off them scompletely. Naturally, my tics didn't improve over time, as I was having no medication. Then one of my childhood friends, who happens to have gone through the same thing as me, told me that up here in Canada (Toronto) you could get legalized to smoke pot if you had a legitimate medical condition, one of them being Tourette's Syndrome. More research was showing that MJ helped with tics and other symptoms of TS, and that is when smoked as well.

I can attest that my tics are pretty much 100% GONE after I smoke, and I began smoking because of this. Don't put a damper on this fine plant. Again, I don't encourage you to all go out and smoke, but I am simply giving some anecdotal evidence that my medical condition is helped by using it.

As for depression..I don't understand where this article is going.. I thought it was widely considered to be fact that MJ does nothing but uplift one's state of mind and being, not depress it. It just seems like another blatant swipe from the third war America is losing.. The war on drugs.

reply to post by ANOK


My opinion regarding this issue I have come to them by life experiences, and I have said earlier that I have very succesful friends that use MJ but have had others that become addicted and it destroy their lives. I dont deny the fact that MJ has proven to be beneficial in the treatment of some illnesses so I dont know why you calling all that I have said here on this thread propaganda. I have also stated that MJ should be legalized.

To me there is no difference between alcohol, coffee, cigarettes or MJ in the sense that people would do or use whatever they like and they should be able to excercise their right to do so as long as they dont put other people in harms way. Dont you think that driving while in the effects of MJ would be a good thing? I know the effects may vary depending on the individual and thats why I believe it should be regulated. I personally dont smoke, never been attracted to it, but I do drink and very responsibly and it drives me nuts everytime that I hear someone getting killed by a drunk driver.

The other point that I want to make is that may be MJ is not good for all individuals or to treat all conditions and thats something that need more study, so the same way you dont agree with this study I have my serious doubts with the articles you have presented.