Links on the marijuana-schizophrenia connection:

A simple google search turned up tons of links with articles that support the statement
that there exists a link between marijuana and schizophrenia. I picked out just a few
that seemed to be most focused on the issue.

Some argue there must be a "disposition" for it. But the overall tone is pretty clear: Pot can cause some people who would have otherwise not developed schizophrenic symptoms to develop them.

http://www.ukcia.org/research/can-psychosis.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/library/studies/nc/nc1g_7.htm
http://www.minnesotamedicine.com/PastIssues/January2007TableofContents/ClinicalKumraJanuary2007/tabid1666/Default.aspx
http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/streetdrugs.html
http://bipolar.about.com/od/relateddisorders/a/schizo_pot.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jul/27/drugsandalcohol.drugs
http://www.healthcentral.com/schizophrenia/c/76/44016/schizophrenia
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/34395.php
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=28471&cn=7
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/01/26/studies_link_psychosis_teenage_marijuana_use/
http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Marijuana-Use-Could-Result-In-Psychosis-3088-1/

If you think all the scientists claiming it are part of "a big conspiracy by the government and the pharma companies" (or that all these scientists are actually dumbasses who, unlike you, don't understand the difference between causality and correlation) then maybe you should go and get checked for the symptoms.


(edited to add the wikipedia article for a definition of what schizophrenia actually IS)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia

:popcorn:

without any known unifying causal mechanism.

If so, isn't it the height of irresponsibility to posit a cause? Isn't it similarly irresponsible to blur the distinction between "causation" and "correlation" when presenting such ambiguous data to a lay public?

In short: No. There is a pretty precise definition of what schizophrenia is. A certain type of persistent hallucination.

You're either dishonest, or you have trouble with reading comprehension. Which is it?

From the first two paragraphs of the wikipedia article:

I'm not sure if the poster bothered to take the time to read the links thoroughly before they posted them.

Don't need to be a fancy scientist to realize that our bodies did not evolve to work at their optimum with the ingestion of foreign substances.

These can include processed foods (HFCS), additives, etc., but also smoke of any sort, distilled spirits, and pharmaceuticals.

Naturally derived medications are all well and good but our bodies often react differently even to these.

Defenders of marijuana as utterly harmless are utterly clueless.

Simple common fucking sense.

:patriot:

And its the safest recreational drug around

But for the vast majority, the overwhelming percentage, pot is safer than aspirin.

Where are you seeing this?

But this matters not, I fully support medical herb and decriminalization, even allowing legal growing and selling.

Most are reasonable enough to know that, like practically anything, there are benefits and risks.

I stopped smoking a long time ago but once was a daily toker.

As it got more potent, I stopped liking the high-- I also wouldn't doubt that changes in my body chemistry were involved.

In any case, I stopped drinking too and except for ibuprofin don't ingest anything mind altering.

Among most of my friends and family members who drink and smoke, I usually enjoy their company more if they aren't high.

There are a few exceptions.

Keep in mind that just about everything you eat is a "foreign substance". And we tend to eat a hell of a lot of things that are more foreign than a fucking plant. I'm not denying that pot can have negative effects for some people. But it does more good than harm for the bulk of people. Simple common fucking sense.

"Don't need to be a fancy scientist to realize that our bodies did not evolve to work at their optimum with the ingestion of foreign substances."

Don't need to be a logician, either.

Along with most other mind altering substances. It all appears to make sense on the surface. In a fractional number of people it's possible that altering their mental state with any substance could, possibly cause such a trigger if they're predisposed to the condition. The thing to take note of is that there's never been a study done which can prove this is true.

As another one of their links goes on to say the problem with such research is the cases where there's a person who shows early signs of schizophrenia (undiagnosed) since childhood. Then in his teens he begins smoking pot his symptoms worsen and he's finally diagnosed with schizophrenia in his late teens. The subject was already schizophrenic in such cases before they used any substance, they simply weren't yet formally diagnosed as such.

In these studies there's been no way to determine if the marijuana actually caused a trigger or if the cases were ones of the above scenario. Which is why the National Institute on Drug Abuse has declined to link the two. There are also certain cases of schizophrenia in which smoking marijuana and/or drinking alcohol helps to ease the early symptoms, which has been speculated to increase the numbers of young undiagnosed schizophrenics who use marijuana and/or alcohol.

The problem with proving a theory such as this is they'd have to take a group of young people who are predisposed to schizophrenia and expose them to substances to actually see if the exposure causes them to trigger. A scientifically sound way of proving a point, but not necessarily an ethical one. Without that cause and effect the theory is simply not proven.

I don't even smoke pot, I never liked the way it made me feel. I just don't like it when people play fast and loose with science and then call it fact.

You pretty much have to be schizophrenic to survive in it.

It's really not that difficult.

In my case, pot causes relaxation and nearly 100% stress relief, so I continue to smoke it.

Not that I'm going to take the time to go through all of them, but the first one I read, I see a paper hoping to offer some supporting evidence towards the hypothesis that there's a link between schizophrenia and pot use. The second, which I'm surprised you have the nerve to even link to was a report commissioned by drug warrior Richard Milhouse Nixon, and it links to data from the 40s and 50s. Nixon did his damnedest to demonize marijuana, you actually believe that the The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse from the 1960s is a reliable source? And even reading what is posited there, there's absolutely nothing close to a scientific report linking the two. Please, enough with the junk science.

In return, I found no sites disputing it on solid ground.

So, asking us to prove a negative, huh? Make a bullshit claim and it's OUR job to disprove it rather than for you to provide a lick of evidence supporting your claim? Alright, I'll play your game. Here are sites disputing that claim:

http://stash.norml.org/new-study-casts-doubt-on-cannabis-induced-psychosis-claims-pot-doesnt-cause-schizophrenia/
and
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE4A26JV20081103?feedType=RSS&feedName=healthNews&rpc=22&sp=true

And before you build up the nerve to complain about the 'bias' of my sources, please take a look at what you've posted links to. Big fan of Nixon, are you?

:applause:

Or bananas.

Bananas are a causal link to death.

Shit for that matter, life is a causal link to death.

Paxil can cause suicide.

Oh, back to the pot thing. These studies are nothing until they isolate specifics to pot. Who knows if the study subjects ate bananas and potato starch AND smoked pot, but it was really the bananas and potato starch along with a little Everclear that was the culprit?

I have no doubt that anything can increase the likelihood of schizophrenia. But singling out pot smells big time of big pharma.

And how about all those people who started smoking at 15 and are now 65 still doing it who don't have schizophrenia?

Cain't skeer me.

The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse. Which was commission by Nixon of all people!! He had his own people research cannabis and had his own predetermined outcome in mind and they STILL advocated for its legalization. Nice hit and run job by the OP, btw.

someone with an agenda and not the nerve to stick around to defend it.

Nor do they claim that all schizophrenia is caused by pot. Only some.

Even the widely discredited studies that you've linked to don't make that claim. You do know what a hypothesis is, right?

From the 4th link - (third link was broken)

"In one example, a study interviewed 50,000 members of the Swedish Army about their drug consumption and followed up with them later in life. Those who were heavy consumers of cannabis at age 18 were over 600% more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia over the next 15 years than those did not take it."

Isn't it just as likely - as schizophrenia usually strikes first in the middle/late teens - that these people were already schizophrenic, but undiagnosed, and were self-medicating with a common drug that helped them feel normal? Aren't those with schizophrenia also prone abuse other drugs, including alcohol?

ON EDIT:
"Pot can cause some people who would have otherwise not developed schizophrenic symptoms to develop them."

I can, with as much justification claim "Schizophrenia can cause some people who would have otherwise not smoked pot to toke up."

were all crank and crack users as well. They really liked the uppers.

I suspect that there's some kind of self medication going on.

as those did before. It's not that marijuana use "causes" schizophrenia, but that it "triggers" it and that distinction is of little comfort to those of us who have had young loved ones whose predisposition to schizophrenia was triggered by marijuana use. There are people whose family history predisposes them to get diabetes, but their lifestyle and personal choices can impact whether or not they get the disease.

It is sad that we have people here who appear to be unable to concede the point that marijuana use can have a disastrous and negative impact on the lives of people who are predisposed to mental illness and schizophrenia. Their "don't worry, toke happy" philosophy requires them to dismiss any studies or finding that do not agree with their personal choices. Marijuana is a mind altering drug and its use by young people whose brains are still developing can be very harmful.

pulls up short the notion that the drug use was a TRIGGER for the illness, doesn't it?

Again, people know, deep down, when something is not right and will try to medicate for it. Even before being diagnosed, they are trying to 'fix' something that they cannot define.

I contend you are taking the consequence and calling it the precipitator. Mental illness is the precipitator, and drug abuse is the consequence, not the other way around.

As a 35 year pot user and as someone who has schizophrenic family members (My Mom) this isn't quite correct.

Yes tho ANY drug use can speed up the onset of symptoms, Schizophrenia is a Genetic Disorder...You get it from your parents!!

I have seen schizophrenic symptomatology appear in people using Pot,LSD,Mescaline and a host of other mind altering substances.

Did the drugs create/cause the schizophrenic symptomatology in these people? NO!! It was already there!

Schizophrenia has its onset in ones late teens or early 20's...almost always. and it usually is precipitated by a stressful life occurrence (In my moms case the miscarriage of her third child,being a single parent and the loss of both of her parents,all in the same 12 month period)

Does drug use speed up the onset of symptomatology? Possibly. Does Pot Smoking CAUSE This? NO! NO! NO! IT DOES NOT!!!

In those studies "cause" is used in the sense of "plays some role in the illness breaking out". As in the person would most likely not have gotten sick if he wouldn't have used it.

Because unless you define "wrong" as "right", then you're completely, utterly wrong.

"In those studies "cause" is used in the sense of "plays some role in the illness breaking out".As in the person would most likely not have gotten sick if he wouldn't have used it."

So what the study is implying is that the Person would NOT have developed symptoms unless they smoked pot...Thats BS!! You Will most likely progress into this disorder WEATHER OR NOT YOU SMOKE POT! At best not smoking will slow the process down,But not smoking will NOT Prevent the inevitable from happening!

If I'm crazy, I don't want to be sane.

Kidding aside, most people who know me think I'm one of the most level-headed people around. My experience has been that people who only smoke pot, and don't indulge in alcohol or other harder drugs, are just fine.

Puff puff give. Puff puff give. :smoke:

:) One of the joys of living in Alaska is our very liberal pot law. We've been able to possess up to an ounce for personal use here since 1975. We've got some crazies here, no doubt, but most of them are on the far right and they don't touch the stuff (or at least they say they don't).

(Even She Who Shall Not Be Named has copped to having smoked pot in her past. I believe she needs more of it now, and maybe she'd settle down.)

:thumbsup:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/cannabis.marijuana.schizophrenia.html#support

They won't even have to be read here to be instantly dismissed. Without any suggestion of banning, it would be nice if people might be able to concede that the use of a mind altering drug can have some very negative and devastating impact on some people's lives.

As I said,Yes drug use can Speed up the onset of symptoms it is NOT the CAUSE!!

If you are gonna develop this horrible disorder its gonna happen weather you smoke pot or not....And nothing is gonna stop this from happening. Period.

"Nothing is gonna stop this from happening" is unprovable. People may be predisposed by family history to diabetes also, but that does not mean that "nothing is gonna stop this from happening". You cannot prove a negative, but my daughter's doctors firmly believe that it was her marijuana use that "triggered" her schizophrenia. Might something else have otherwise triggered it? Possibly, but it wasn't anything else it was marijuana use.

on SOME peoples lives. I checked out your links and in the ones that weren't anecdotal or just hypotheses, I found many of the studies include the caveat: that marijuana can have adverse effects on folks with a propensity or history of mental illness, which is pretty common knowledge. Correlation does not particularly equal causation.

See! That was pretty civil.

Since schizophrenia's symptoms usually appear during adolescence and early adulthood, it could well be that people developing symptoms may be attempting to self-medicate with grass. Further, since marijuana use is generally begun during the same period, it may just be that the causes are reversed here. Or, it could just be coincidence.

That's what I'm thinking... very logical post... the OP is batshit crazy.

I grew up with a schizophrenic family member, and a bunch of pot heads. The schizophrenic never smoked pot, and the potheads, despite being related to a schizophrenic, never got the disease.

I have a crack head cousin who got the schiz... but I'm pretty sure crack and pot are sorta different. :)

You were sure he was quoting "famous terrorist" McVay (sic).

Take a break and give your meagre credibility a chance to regroup.

Even if everything you say is true.. the drug war is a fucking farce and a sham. By some estimates, 10% of the population shouldn't drink alcohol in any way, shape, or form--- but prohibition STILL DOESN'T WORK.

Consenting adults need the freedom to make their own decisions about their own bodies, as long as they're not harming or endangering others; even when those decisions are potentially self-detrimental.

Everyone happy now?

What's your point once again, I forgot. And most of all, why do you care if someone smokes weed?

Are you the new medical czar?

Hey, there was an eclipse. Then the crops died.

Eclipses cause crop failure.


A certain percentage of people have a schizophrenic episodes in a day.
A certain percentage of people smoke weed in a day.

Sometimes those two lines intersect. One doesn't cause the other.

And it's clear you barely read any of them, if at all.

Nothing like dragging out shit from Nixon to try to prove your point. :eyes: