Cannabis that people are using for anxiety is probably making it worse
wsj.comUsed to smoke like a chimney in my teens. Because I was into computers at a young age I learned how to make money to feed this habit. It wasn’t like hydroponic weed or anything like that but it was a lot. I could go through an ounce within a few days without batting an eye.
Then at some point I started to grow up and my mind changed and weed started to make me extremely anxious and paranoid. I would take long breaks and then try it once a year or something and it would make me feel so disoriented about life it wasn’t very fun at all. Still get flashbacks just writing about it now.
Haven’t smoked for 10 years and don’t miss it. It was probably just another escape mechanism for me anyway given my circumstances back then.
But I do know other people (some who used to be friends) that had similar experiences of having their feelings/psyche amplified to unbearable levels.
If it helps you it’s great (especially if you have a really bad condition) but otherwise.. it’s an absolute waste of time and just numbs you to all-familiar state.
same exact happened to me, i would love to smoke a joint and close my eyes, listen to music and just go on a journey, and then one day i ate a too powerful edible cookie, and it ruined it all and just gave me anxiety. I think it was the overdose in that cookie that changed something in my brain to make me dislike the feeling
Similar experience. I used to love it on my teens and early 20s, but now it just makes me feel tweaky and anxious so I’ve stopped completely. Probably for the better
It's scary how in my circle so many are now regularly consuming marijuana-derived products to cope with work anxiety, insomnia, etc. One of the reasons is that in Quebec it's now a government monopoly and is sold in specialized stores (Société québécoise du cannabis - SQDC) which gives it a certain societal approval. The stores have employees who are very knowledgeable and will talk to you about the benefits of products and how they can help with your particular ailment, exactly like in a pharmacy.
It's the same in Michigan.
I used to support legalization and was a proponent of patient first planning and sales interaction.
Instead it's used as a cover to run the dispensaries as covert pharmacies.
Doctor visit style. You go in, wait in a lobby, one patient at a time, describe your ailments or symptoms, describe the effects you desire and they make suggestions on which strains and products would be best for you.
Weve gone recreationally legal since then and most stores are still set up this way.
Some are dropping the pretense and are full on commercial outlets now. None of the pagentry around medicinal help. Just wall to wall shelves and a line out the door.
Noticed this recent change just a week ago when my local shop switched from patient-based to full commercial when they demolished the privacy wall and just serve people as fast as possible now.
Not sure which is best. I did always feel the previous model was a bit shady.
> Michigan
> Doctor visit style. You go in, wait in a lobby, one patient at a time
This has less to do with pretending to be medical and more to do with physical security. It's a cash business; think through how you'd rob a dispensary. If the employee escapes and you're the only customer in the room, you aren't taking hostages. The "examination room" is a mantrap.
If they're starting to not do this anymore, I'd take that to mean they finally found insurance to cover their more-substantial losses.
I don't think it has anything to do with security. These places have always had a fully armed guard(s) and lots of concrete columns, metal gates, etc.
The store near me had a lobby about 10x100ft. There was a simple glass door separating it from the shoppping area which was just counters around the perimiter and pegboards on the wall.
The shopping area at this location sometimes had more than one employee working, sometimes they would handle two patients at a time. Perhaps 3 people at most back at a time.
They just removed the wall and pushed the counters and pegboards up into the lobby. From outside the building you look inside and every wall and shelf is filled with product.
I really do think it was just above moving more product.
I'm telling you the old way was for security.
The shopping-in-captivity experience is not shared by any other business-- not your bank, not your pharmacy, not your doctor. It's inefficient as hell, yes, because if you picked out $5000 worth of product and tried to snatch it and run, you wouldn't make it through that door-- they have to buzz you out. Mental hospitals and prisons work like this, being high-security facilities.
There's nothing in the room at my local dispensary that you could throw through that glass, assuming it's even glass at all.
For a while, they couldn't even get payment processors to take cards for them, so they'd be sitting on mountains of cash. They couldn't get insurers to cover cash losses from robberies.
My dispensary's guards used to be armed. They no longer are. They stopped carrying around the time the place started taking debit card payments. Liability for guards shooting civilians over property crime is not a risk anyone accepts willingly. (I don't even think my bank's guard carries a sidearm. Retailers are told by insurers to give robbers whatever they want to make them go away without further incident.)
The ones around here accept debit via doing a ATM widthdraw of the exact amount at the counter. Exactly the same steps as a regular payment, they just warn you about ATM fees from the bank.
I have never seen a buzzer or any way to stop people from leaving these secure rooms. They were just privacy - the swinging glass door I mentioned above I don't even think locks.
You wouldn't be doing a snatch a run before or after - guy at the door still has a gun.
How much evidence is there though? Being illegal for so long would have made it difficult for extensive research wouldn’t it?
And now I hear ads on podcasts listing its benefits. Honestly it sounds like people just wanted it legalised for recreational use and the medical uses were a good cover.
I don’t think cannabis should be illegal.
Also a Québec resident. I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to weed so I relied on a friend and a SQDC guy to get me set up with edibles. Turns out 10mg was absolutely not a good starting dose for me. Had a pretty horrible night. (That result was more on my friend than the SQDC guy, but he was more than happy to sell it to me as a balanced strain or something.)
The folks I do know that get value from it seem fine. But could they maybe benefit from a therapist rather than wallowing in stress on their own/with friends? Eh yeah also probably true.
10mg is high as fuck. I have it maybe once a year and I take 5mg and then 5mg a couple of hours later. It’s a nice steady high that lasts for hours.
Yep, I’ve since learned that haha. When friends have a tolerance, they might not remember what no tolerance feels like.
Why is that scary?
Most of the people likely just like marijuana, which is fine. But where it becomes dangerous is when you pretend you “need it” to support some kind of permanent condition. It’s a perfect recipe for addiction and choosing substance abuse over other things in life (family, career, friends, etc).
I would be equally horrified if someone told me they were drinking vodka daily but “just for their anxiety”, or having four glasses of wine a night to “treat their insomnia”.
The cultural change happened overnight. Now people who two years ago thought THC was a type of sandwich can talk for hours about micro-dosing of different types of strains. I'm getting a "Brave New World" vibe.
In my experience CBD relieves anxiety effectively (if you get the dose right) and THC, especially Sativa strains, can make you very anxious indeed.
Generally speaking as I've gotten older pot in general just makes me anxious. Most of that is likely because CBD and related components have been bred out of pot and today's strains are mainly for the hard core regular users who need the stronger stuff to get the effect they want.
Hopefully as legalisation takes hold the market will cater to casual and first time users, and offer a variety of experiences besides the fairly stupefying effect of strong pot.
I remember the first time I smoked pot, at at about age 13, well. My high school dealer who was the same age thoughtfully sold us what was mostly leaf, but it was the nicest, most interesting stone which gave the world a nice fury/fuzzy texture and made you laugh.
These days your first time is more likely to approximate being plugged into a mains socket, with no way to disconnect for a couple of hours.
I had the same thing happen twice. Casual smoker, daily smoker, highs turned into like schizophrenic paranoid and anxiety and I stopped.
But I think there's something else going on besides just strength. The first time this happened to me was when it was illegal, about 15 years ago in my 20s. I was a daily smoker and and flower vape user.
About 7 or 8 years I moved to California, started smoking again. It was fun, turned into a daily smoker and started getting anxious about life. And just drifted away from it. I was taking dabs, and used a bong pretty regularly, all fairly strong. I'd take a few hits from a bowl and not enjoy it. The change was in the last few months and pretty sudden.
Curious about your experience finding right CBD dose. I’ve dabbled and don’t have conclusive evidence that it helps. But maybe I’m taking way less than is ideal to notice an effect. Any insights to share?
Solves all anxiety and focus problems for me right away. I have to smoke a lot however(maybe up to 2g of bud a day) and I'm trying to see if i can combine it with d8 edibles as they seem to enhance the CBD effect for longer. I think it's a matter of trial and error to get what's right for you. Try another brand or method (edible?). And yeah increase the dose, anxiety should go away like completely. CBD is the best.
> And yeah increase the dose, anxiety should go away like completely.
Not to diminish your positive results, but this seems like an overstatement to me. We do not have a universal cure for anxiety, even if we have treatments that work for some.
> A survey last year found that nearly two-thirds of people said they would prefer to use cannabis rather than pharmaceuticals to treat a medical issue
Hm, maybe because cannabis is cheaper and more readily available? I am extremely wary of becoming dependent on a substance that either my doctor or my insurance can cut my access to on a whim. Hell even when cannabis was illegal, it was still usually easier to procure than certain head-meds--which themselves are of dubious long-term efficacy and carry substantial risk (looking at you, benzos and opiates).
Don’t forget the pharmaceutical supply chain itself as another threat to one’s ability to medicate with prescriptions :(
Without reading the article and just from my own anecdata, pretty much everyone I know would rather use cannabis than any kind of pain med stronger than acetaminophen. I would say from the people that I know, the side effects are much more of a concern than procurement.
Or maybe becayse cannabis gets you fuckin high? Duh.
Like this is just a totally asinine stateme to me. Would you rather chief blunts or take a lamectil.... rappers dont brag about prozac
Benzos and opiates get you plenty high. And much less safely. But at least it makes some people rich.
Everybody’s experience is different, that is not unique to THC or CBD. Most psychoactive medications are the same way with doctors cycling patients through different medications and dosages based off the patients experience.
Personally I was prescribed Celexa and had an extremely adverse reaction involving an inability to sleep properly and terribly lucid dreams. However, Lamictal worked great for a quite a while until it was priced out of my reach.
For some, 10mg of THC as needed, typically every other night, works well and is cheaper with less side effects.
In my experience anxiety can be completely eliminated by abstaining from caffeine
In my experience, productivity too.
Forced productivity maybe?
Actually when used in conjunction with wellbutrin and zoloft this trio can work much better than any of these three by themselves.
It isn't recommended to smoke weed while on a SSRI like Zoloft. You're changing your brain's serotonin uptake levels artificially.
Personal experience?
It's not for anxiety, most cannabis enjoyers would know this. It's a painkiller, and for advanced users it can be a focus magnifier. The dosage and strain are both key to achieving a good experience that is more than just getting high. I think people are starting to realize this is just another stimulant that doesn't have to be any different than a daily cup of coffee, and just like caffeine if you are not careful and drink five cups in a row, you're going to have a bad time.
It took me years to realize that weed was giving me anxiety instead of helping it. Later when it became legal in my state I bought some and my god did it go poorly. The stuff they make in the stores are so strong and because of my nonexistent tolerance after a decade of abstinence I ended up with a panic attack so bad it bordered on a psychotic episode. I will never smoke again.
A cure for anxiety will not be found in a pill, that's merely an ongoing treatment option.
A cure for anxiety will take a change in society. A Political solution that encourages community, inclusiveness, and towns/cities that aren't broken by design.
This comment in itself is likely to cause anxiety.
"Your mental health issues cannot be solved by anything short of a societal shift."
I agree that there's a lot of things we could change as a society to meaningfully improve mental health but that takes time and people need assistance now. Personally, I've temporarily relocated to Barcelona for my mental health and physical health because being able to walk anywhere without needing to fight cars is an incredible gift to me - the lower barrier helps me walk longer and more frequently. I wish more of the world was like this - but it'll take a while to accomplish that.
surely it’s healthier to be aware that anxiety largely doesn’t come from within, but from the enclosure of the zoo that most of us live in. the alternative is to think it’s your fault
anxiety does come from within tho. It is caused as a consequence of contact with the world we live in, but the external world does not cause anxiety in itself, it's a response and it can be diminished with practice
No, “I’m a victim” is largely a reinforcement to anxiety.
This is such a silly thing to say tbh. The only non anxious people I’ve seen IRL are effectively idiots so you might be right.
Anxiety is a valid emotion that’s trying to warn you that your surrounding is not good. If anxiety is happening at the scale we’re seeing in the world, then calling it an individual problem is outright wrong.
Anyway, my point is, “I’m a victim” isn’t a reinforcement to anxiety. It’s an understanding that what you’re feeling is a valid emotion and to work around it rather than try to actively combat it on an individual level.
> Anxiety is a valid emotion that’s trying to warn you that your surrounding is not good. If anxiety is happening at the scale we’re seeing in the world, then calling it an individual problem is outright wrong.
This is a byproduct of mass/social media exploiting that mechanic in individuals to keep people tuned in. Fear, obligation or guilt gets to 99% of people. Let's talk about Fear.
Everyone I know with anxiety issues is terminally-online or, before the internet, tuned in to the news every waking minute of their day. They are hyper-aware of the dangers of the world and are always in a falsely-heightened state of arousal.
It makes the world feel smaller and more dangerous than it actually is. It sucks that people are dying in Ukraine. But you don't live there, and have probably never even met a native Ukie. We aren't supposed to react to danger on the other side of the planet. But we're exposed to it and more nonetheless while powerless to do anything about it. It's reinforcing helplessness.
No animal can function this way. It would eventually become so skittish and paranoid it will start making mistakes, and run directly into the crocodile pit while trying to escape a yapping poodle.
The ignorant aren't immune to anxiety because they're retarded; they're tending to the lot in life they do have control over and reacting to dangers that directly threaten them.
The worst self-induced anxiety offenders are the ones who seek out other peoples' conflicts to involve themselves in.
> [Anxiety] is a byproduct of mass/social media
How would that explain all the social anxiety out there?
As someone with anxiety, I don’t think the interpretation/conclusion is necessarily that “I’m a victim.” For me, it’s more the realization that I’m having a reasonable reaction to my surroundings and circumstances, meaning the problem isn’t “I’m broken” but rather, “These thoughts/patterns/habits are sub-optimal and unhelpful.” It was a great weight off of my shoulders to see that the problem wasn’t me, myself, alone. That realization helped me find the right things to work on and change to improve my personal experience of reality (a work in progress) and to hopefully also improve reality for others.
But the comment is useful along with yours. I'm currently hanging out with a friend in the burbs and I don't think I could make it out here.
It's cool that your relocation helped, I totally get the city routine helping people like us, walking, real food, pretty stuff to look at, culture, all in fingers reach, consider ourselves lucky for the experience of life quality improvement.
One might also consider options that don't require sweeping societal changes, learned resilience for example.
it would be a funny joke if you were joking.
you don't resolve anxiety by adding more capacity to endure it (resilience.) Instead you need to address the root causes— most often maladaptive strategies learned in childhood that need to be relearned and corrected, and then once you are no longer creating the negative emotional material because you're living in a better way, you generally need to support healing/recovery from holding the anxiety however long you did. This often involves recreating or revising relationships with close loved ones.
adding more capacity to tolerate almost always makes things worse in the long run. you don't need a bigger tank to hold more poison, you need to stop creating or consuming the poison, and then you need to detoxify yourself to get rid of what you've already taken in.
disclaimer: I am a psychotherapist but I am not acting as anyone's therapist by sharing this, which is my opinion.
Do you have any citations that support your claim, which seems to be that “resilience,” is unhelpful or harmful?
You're asking the wrong person, you should be asking this question to the guy that claimed "learned resilience" works since he's the one that made the original claim.
I did not ask the learned resilience claimant for evidence, because I take resilience training to be orthodox for the psychological community, and I believe the person I responded to does as well. Information is surprise, and the surprise factor is presumably in the requested evidence supporting the unorthodox position.
I give my own reference below and a quotation from it.
“A meta-analysis found a moderate positive effect of resilience interventions (0.44 (95% CI 0.23 to 0.64) with subgroup analysis suggesting CBT-based, mindfulness and mixed interventions were effective.”
I don’t think it’s controversial to claim that resilience helps both to prevent and to adapt to mental challenges such as anxiety, nor is it controversial to claim that resilience can be learned.
This is not to suggest that resilience is the only option for anxiety, or that it’s the best option in general or any specific case. But I do believe that if we’re discussing the problem of widespread anxiety, learned resilience ought to be part of the discussion. In many ways, it is a more practical (and personally actionable) response to widespread anxiety than waiting for sweeping societal changes which are unlikely to materialize.
For anyone who thinks these claims might be controversial, I’ll cite some leading authorities that most readers will trust not to misrepresent the scientific consensus:
According to the American Psychological Association, “Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands…. Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.” https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience
The Mayo Clinic says that “resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-train...
Harvard Medical School faculty offer a course specifically on building resilience to manage anxiety and mental health: “If you’ve ever felt stressed, burned out, anxious or sad, you’re not alone. These moments are challenging and make it difficult to find a way forward. However, you can use science-backed tools to help manage these experiences and the emotions that come along with them.” https://www.harvardonline.harvard.edu/course/building-person...
Some people are genetically more anxious than others and that anxiety can be treated medically to optimize their wellbeing. Societal issues don’t help but more often than not it’s a misattribution made in the absence of better information, e.g. broadly available genome sequencing is pretty new and findings there take a while to percolate, plenty of genes are now strongly linked to anxiety disorders.
Yes, and chronic anxiety can be attained developmentally as well (or hybrid contributions from genetics and environment, as tends to be the case).
In my view a genetic pre-disposition is necessary but not sufficient and that even a mild trigger is required, but it’s life and no-one is so sheltered that they’re able to avoid all possible triggers.
I was thinking more along the lines of drug abuse or addiction, PTSD, invasive surgery or pregnancy with regards to solely developmental anxiety disorders. There is likely always a genetic element though but some of them are better viewed through a developmental lens.
We disagree on that, I think the focus on developmental is on the assumption that it's easier to do something about the environment than to reliably treat medically, this is only true because doctors etc. know so little about how to treat it medically. Which in my view is not a good enough reason. I hold the opinion that there are effective ways to treat anxiety medically (Low Dose Naltrexone as an example that works for some) and if those were better known then medical interventions would be more effective.
Which of you are doctors? Why do you talk like this if you are not?
In general when people speak in depth about something like this you can assume they or someone they love suffered from the relevant issues being discussed.
In my case I’m lifelong bipolar disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.
I’m definitely not a doctor. You shouldn’t trust medical/psychiatric information given in any internet comment though.
And to paraphrase the other commenter, “didn’t realize I needed to get your permission to write about something without the proper qualifications”.
I guess I forgot to check with you first
I have a lot of sympathy but the case is not helped by oversimplifying in the opposite direction.
I loosely agree, in the sense that the current common view is too focused on making the individual bear their own cross. But in a literal sense you are wrong, in that there are many who are helped by pills.
Sounds like you're talking about standard run-of-the-mill anxiety. There also exist a variety of chronic anxiety disorders for which people gain substantial benefit from a variety of treatments. This includes what you mention of course, but people benefit from medication as well (and not necessarily narcotics).
I fully agree with this, fwiw. There are a lot of causes and reasons to be anxious that we could try to fix on a broader level, but we do not. Then again, passing off your problems on a “broken world” doesn’t really bring you solace unless you’re interested in theodicy: most people aren’t.
I’d list childhood trauma, broken families, pathogens, and metabolic disorders as the most likely causes of anxiety, then the points you mentioned.
> childhood trauma, broken families, pathogens, and metabolic disorders
These are all downstream from the points mentioned.
> Personal problems are political problems. There are no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action for a collective solution. (Carol Hanisch, 1970)
That would imply a unidirectional flow of influence from society to communities to families to the individual. But those ecosystems really communicate with feedback loops, and not strictly downstream. Improve one, you‘ll likely improve the others.
If you think strictly unidirectional, you‘ll end up at the Big Bang as the root of all suffering, and what would that achieve?
Well, then you’d become a Buddhist and hopefully that’d help. To be less oblique, the act of abstracting your own personal suffering from “the way things are” can be a good step in isolating exactly what has got you down. I personally know that accepting a mantra like “life is suffering” can help to improve my resilience and get out of the delusion that everything is “happening to me” vs. “happening around me” and that it’s my choice of how to reckon with that and live life to the best I can in spite of it.
I think to accept that life means suffering might take away potential to improve perspective on whether it’s actually suffering I need to accept, or pain I can mitigate. The distinction is crucial and getting it wrong is - IMO - a big contributor to anxiety & depression (they usually coincide from a clinical perspective). It has been shown in rats that they will reproducibly get anxious and depressed when they feel trapped and isolated, and this resolves when their situation improves. So if someone is not being held prison at the moment, it would IMO be beneficial to find out whether there’s a „prison in the head“.
That’s besides the other factors I mentioned - if you look at studies of what substances pathogens in the stomach and microbiome produce, it turns out they can really cause anxiety. My take is that anxiety can be a multifactorial issue and a local minimum that one needs to climb out of actively. Accepting life as suffering might not give the impulse to get the necessary help.
Yes of course there are feedback loops involved—which is why I really disagree with the comment that we should look back to the big bang, over which we have no influence (AFAIK, but which I'm not interested in debating)—and if I thought there weren't, why would I bother problematizing the political economy?
Did you honestly just make this a comment about carless cities? That we can't fight anxiety without having carless cities? Seriously? People really are just completely stuck in echo chamber cults at this point.
So pills it is, then.
/s
For context, as WSJ gets things wrong...there are 3 feedback loops to noradrenaline and its the over increase of noradrenaline that cause anxiety disorders:
1. GABA 2. Serotonin 3. CBD
CBD is not just THC which is somewhat not effective but other amines such as one in chocolate that gives you the runner high.
My bias is that 50% of ADHD'ers have anxiety disorders due to noradrenaline running high..in my case I take GABA, L-theanine and chocolate to control it.
> My bias is that 50% of ADHD'ers have anxiety disorders due to noradrenaline running high.
I think this is partially the case. I think the glutamatergic system is messed up which causes the release of too much norephenephrine and dopamine.
After a while this causes down-regulation and the actual neuron pathways develop "bad connection" e.g. the frontal lobe develops bad habits/poor motivation.
At this point you're stimulated via norephephine but you have poor motivation/focus because of the dopamine tolerance.
---
NAC is an interesting candidate you might find interesting as it directly effects the glutamatergic system. I was recommended this by my doctor and had a good personal experience (I'm not a doctor, etc).
NAC has been a game changer for me, especially with BFRBs.
I'm curious what is it about chocolate that helps the anxiety. I only know it to be a stimulant, or its extracts to increase brain bloodflow).
I'm curious too. I know cocoa contains a lot of Theobromine which is very similar to caffeine (caffeine is Methyl-theobromine) although it does behave a little different. Cocoa also has a little caffeine as well.
I would think these two would make anxiety worse?
GABA and L-theanine make a lot of sense as these will directly impact the glutamatergic system and are well known to improve anxiety (and are also synergistic with stimulants especially caffeine).
quick question: Why is weed an option over prescription medicines? Last I heard pot has a large number of substances which have not been studied for impact on health. At least with prescriptions, you have some idea of the side effects.
At least for depression half of people fail multiple drug trials and don’t find relief in conventional treatments ever. It’s similar for anxiety unless you’re getting into benzodiazepines which do work for basically everyone but horrible for your brain long term.
Weed does wonders for my depression but unfortunately makes my anxiety worse but it does help some people. Especially high CBD strains.
Mescaline, found in cacti, is basically a cure for my anxiety. A single dose once every 6 months or so keeps it at bay. It’s illegal, and movements to legalize it are all money grabs and won’t do much to increase access (the ballot measures for psychedelics are all backed by a single PAC who are interested in $$$$$ from treatments and training). Sorry for the rant lol
There's few drugs as well studied as cannabis. Who cares if a particular drug company hasn't produced a list of side effects in the usual form? Those lists don't tend to be terribly reliable anyway.
> Last I heard pot has a large number of substances which have not been studied for impact on health.
Probably about as many as are in an average bowl of stew?
That was something I noticed and I stopped right away. Not all of them. I only notice a particular doze or mix. But yeah, I could feel the anxiety creep up next wed days.
Yes. Don't do drugs kids, some things shouldn't change.
What about prescription drugs? Opioids? Obviously it's not that simple. What more in question imo is which drugs to avoid, and that has tons of nuance
One of my clearest memories from childhood is being in the back seat and seeing a store called "Drug Store", and wanting (but feeling too afraid to) tell my parents that they should tell the police about it.
It's more healthy to abstain from alcohol or cigarettes than edibles.
Yeah this is my personal experience as well. For small anxieties, weed helps, but for large and meaningful anxiety it makes it much worse.
As much as people hate to admit it, booze and cigarettes are much better for coping with anxiety, and Cheaper Than Therapy as the kids like to say.
I guess that's only "much better" if you consider anxiety worse than alcoholism, liver failure, and lung cancer.
There's a saying I heard, which goes a little something like:
"You can't use a coping mechanism to heal from an issue/ wound/ trauma. It's basically just replacing one addiction for another."
I'm paraphrasing. But I agree with that statement (which isn't to say that healing is an easy or simple process).
So we're pretending smoking and vaping weed doesn't cause lung cancer? Still?
So far the evidence seems to show that smoking and vaping cannabis does not have nearly the potential for lung cancer that tobacco smoking does. It is associated with various respiratory ailments (under heavy use). And it may have a slight protective effect against some cancers.
As usual, more and higher-quality data would help elucidate the source of the protective effects.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8975973/
> The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) study (2018) concluded that long-term cannabis smoking is substantially associated with increased respiratory symptoms (i.e., cough, phlegm, and wheeze) and more frequent chronic bronchitis episodes than experienced by non-smokers.
[snip]
> By contrast, recent outbreaks of respiratory illnesses associated with consumption of mostly unregulated Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)-containing vaping products have so far resulted in 2807 hospitalizations and 68 deaths in the United States, with additional cases being investigated in Canada (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2020, Government of Canada, 2020).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_electronic_ciga...
> E-cigarette vapor contains many of the known harmful toxicants found in traditional cigarette smoke, such as formaldehyde, cadmium, and lead, though usually at a reduced percentage.[25]
that's e-cigarettes, which I wasn't talking about.
Not in the quantities you'd find medicinal for anxiety... and most people I know who have government weed up here in Canada take it in edible form.
So we’re still pretending smoking and vaping are anything alike?
Nicotine has been found to be oncogenic. If weed is consumed without tobacco, it might actually be safer than tobacco. I‘m not saying that’s a safe bet, but the jury’s out.
Source? Find me something that separates nicotine from smoking.
How about this one week old review: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-023-01668-1
It's been studied.
From a quick search: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.34643
If you’ve studies showing vaporisation of cannabis induces lung cancer I’d sure like to see them.
Aren't we still only really a decade out from when vaping became popular? Seems like evidence would currently be hard to come by.
10 years and tens of millions of users means insufficiently abundant evidence?
It's like the fearmongering around MDMA, which claims that there will be delayed harmful effects from meddling with your brain chemistry, but hundreds of millions of users and decades later where is the widespread harm? Arguably it proves that it's one of the safest drugs on earth.
Of course controlled studies are rigorous, but widespread use must also lead to widespread harm if it exists. There may be hidden harm because it's a small effect on a large population or only harms a small population, but that just means it's relatively safe.
Given that cancer takes decades to pop up, I think it's disingenuous to compare it to MDMA.
True, it could be safe, but how long does it take for lung cancer from smoking to appear?
It’s closer to thirty years in terms of initial cannabis vaporisation with more significant usage in the last twenty at least. Unless you are referring to the newer vape pen style which may be closer to a decade.
Not sure about lung cancer, but we know enough about the negative health impact of air pollution that a little common sense should tell us that putting random garbage in your lungs is unlikely to be good for you.
my analysis of my own experiences is that weed smoothens your emotions. the lows are higher and the highs are lower. but then again, I’ve never dealt with major anxiety beyond a few brief stints
however, I would be extremely shocked if cigarettes and alcohol are better for it than weed. cigarettes are basically buying yourself low-level intermittent anxiety, and alcohol, unless you’re a genuine alcoholic, is just a rollercoaster of ups and downs that will likely result in future memories for you to be anxious about. that’s my experience anyway
Are booze and cigarettes actually cheaper than therapy?
No, and the booze and cigarettes are also going to do damage, whereas a therapist is unlikely to do damage.
There's no research showing any benefit from cannabis consumption and plenty showing some of the same health hazards similar to smoking tobacco.
Every person I've ever known who smoked pot for some "health" thing was a rolling dumpster fire.
I agree that a lot of people are using this for questionable medical purposes, and there's a lot of snake oil around, as well as harmful self medicating.
However, though I am not super steeped in this, I do know there are some prominent exceptions. I think CBD for epilepsy is one. There is an FDA approved CBD treatment for epilepsy, brand name epidiolex (had to google that).
If everyone you know has consumed cannabis for only "health" and not health reasons you must be blessed to not have much cancer or other serious ongoing debilitating illnesses among your family and friends. Count yourself lucky.
For folks in those situations it can be a true blessing.
Its the exact same thing with morphine, opiates. On one hand they're the scourge of society and abuse of them is a real problem, but for a soldier dying on the battlefield from horrible injuries, or someone dying of the unbelievable pain of sickel cell, in those situations we call it one of the best inventions ever, so much so it'd inventor/discoverer was given a Nobel prize.
Long story short, I've known some. But they all died of cancer. Thanks for putting them down.
Very misinformed. You should talk to more people and do some more research.
I’m a medical cannabis user following a spinal cord injury and I assure you I’m not a walking dumpster fire. Quite the opposite in fact, it’s been a significant positive introduction with less side effects than most drugs I’m on following the injury.
I consume CBD and high THC options through ingestion of oils and vaporisation of flowers.
Both of you can be correct: while some people, such as yourself, can see benefits, there can still be no research showing generalized positive effects, and some research showing generalized negative effects.
(Not saying GP is correct, as I'm not interested enough in the topic to know if their take on the research status is accurate. But your anecdote -- while great for you -- is not a basis for making generalizations.)
Just like with pretty much any other substance we use medically - it's good for some people but it comes with some side effects so if it's not doing anything for you it's probably best to abstain.
My anecdote was more to suggest that cannabis usage does not always result in a user being a “walking train wreck.” I’d say it’s anecdotes all around.
Yes, but the parent commenter didn't use "generalized negative effects". He used different, far more disrespectful words and tone.
Then why is medical marijuana a thing?
Anxiety can't be cured with weed, pills, or whatever. People need to learn coping with it; it used to be called growing up.