Every Wednesday on NORML SHOW LIVE, Dr. Mitch Earleywine joins us to discuss the latest research in cannabis and to take live calls and chat questions from listeners on marijuana culture, history, medicine, and science. He is a member of the NORML Advisory Board and his research has been published in over fifty scientific journals on drugs and addiction. He is the author of Understanding Marijuana, Pot Politics, and Parents’ Guide to Marijuana, and a professor of psychology at SUNY Albany. We asked Dr. Mitch his opinions of the latest meta-analysis on cannabis and schizophrenia.
Download full interview at http://audio.norml.org/events/Dr. Mitch Earleywine – Latest Cannabis Psychoses Bunk.mp3
NORML SHOW LIVE: The headlines are out there – CNN, WebMD, NPR, every little bit of alphabet soup out there on the cable channels and the news – is trumpeting this headline, this study – Matthew Large, I believe, is the lead researcher on this – from Prince of Wales Hospital in New South Wales Australia says quote:
“It is increasingly clear that marijuana is a cause of schizophrenia and that schizophrenia caused by cannabis starts earlier than schizophrenia with other causes.”
DR. MITCH EARLEYWINE: Alas, no. There are no new data – I want to emphasize that – this is a meta-analysis, which means it takes the studies that were already out there and tries to combine them mathematically to make sense of it all. What you’re not hearing in the media is that in fact, this is probably early-onset folks self-medicating.
You can imagine somebody who is experiencing some symptoms of psychosis, particularly folks with less access to medical care, or folks who are already a little bit paranoid because of the disorder and they’re unwilling to go to a physician. They hear their friends are using cannabis and enjoying it. They do it, too, they notice some mild improvements in their symptoms, they turn to it later when they have a psychotic break. What a surprise, [the researchers] say, “they smoked cannabis first, that’s the big issue.”
What burns my ass is that this same journal a month before had another article failing to replicate this data where we find folks with a special genetic risk and if they’re heavily involved with cannabis early in life they’re more likely to develop schizophrenia. So all this malarkey about, “oh, if you’re a genetic risk then you’re really gonna get it” isn’t showing up in other data sets. The media isn’t covering that in the least.
The other finding in this big meta-analysis is that early onset of psychosis showed up for folks who were using drugs more generally – not just cannabis – and this makes much more sense pharmacologically. When you think about cocaine, amphetamine, and other drugs that work directly in the dopamine system, that’s the system that schizophrenia is all about. And what a surprise, these folks are more likely to have an early onset.
I’m concerned that the cannabis-related studies are really spurious and they’re compounded by use of amphetamines, Ritalin, Adderall, all these other stimulant drugs that people were – particularly in Australia – unwilling to fess up to, but more than willing to say they used cannabis. We’ve got a big problem here.
As we’ve seen time and again none of us want children to have access to cannabis. And the way to get that access limited is, of course, not an underground market that never cards anybody, but a taxed and regulated one, where folks that are too young to be experimenting with this and folks who have psychosis in the family can be markedly more advised and essentially educated before they even purchase the plant.
NSL: Matthew Large, this researcher here, even addressed what we just discussed about the self-medication; he said, quote:
“There is not so much evidence for the widely-held view those patients self-medicate with marijuana. Marijuana smoking almost always comes before psychosis and few patients with psychosis start smoking marijuana for the first time.”
Is this a case then where they’re just defining psychosis as their starting point of looking at these people rather than the onset of symptoms that would pre-date or pre-sage the psychosis that’s about to come?
DR. MITCH: That’s it exactly, Russ, and as we’ve mentioned in the past what often happens is they find a big record of people who’ve had psychotic breaks and then go back and see if they’ve reported cannabis earlier. But we have very poor assessments of these potential psychotic symptoms before these people used cannabis and the few studies that do do that, the measures are slightly biased against cannabis users.
I’ve pointed out in the past one of the big questionnaires for this – a schizotypal personality questionnaire – has an item that says “I use words in strange and unusual ways.” Well, sure, schizophrenics certainly do that. They make words up; that’s part of the way that you manifest the diagnosis. But we also have a whole subculture here where people are “kickin’ back with the chronic at 420.” Well, what a surprise, people who do that may say “I use words in a strange and unusual ways.” In my dataset when you drop that item out, suddenly the link between schizotypy and cannabis use disappears. I’m concerned there are comparable problems in these other datasets.
NSL: One of the things we’ve always said in these pieces with you and I talking about this is how worldwide the rates of schizophrenia and psychosis seemed to stay stable at about 1% of the population, even if that population starts smoking a whole lot of weed – if a lot of them start smoking or if they start smoking a lot of it – doesn’t matter is still stays the same.
But one of the hypotheses they have here is that, “Yeah, sure, there’s a certain 1% that are gonna get psychosis but these 1% are gonna get it earlier and then they’d have these extra two or three years of psychosis-free functioning that they would be losing out of because of their use of marijuana.”
My first thought on that is if this were the case, wouldn’t we see a lowering of the median age of psychosis onset when we have higher use of cannabis in a society?
DR. MITCH: In fact, Wayne Hall in Australia has made this same suggestion and they have yet to detect this change in the median age of first onset. But he’s suggesting that some new data are going to reveal that in the current younger cohort, this is the case. I haven’t seen those data yet and I’m a little concerned. In part we go to so much effort now to try to identify psychosis earlier that it seems like if that is the case, it may be simply that we are better at identifying psychotic disorders than we were 20 years ago, so we have this other potential confound. And as Paul [Armentano] has emphasized time and again, we do have a subset of folks who really respond well to cannabis-based medicines in controlling psychotic episodes, and I think it may be a cannabidiol issue where Project CBD may be able to help us isolate who might be helped and who might not from this.
And then, of course, that fits that self-medication hypothesis better. I feel like the critique of that self-medication that they offer in this meta-analysis is premature, in part because of how poorly we assess psychotic symptoms prior to anyone’s cannabis use.
NSL: What is the actual risk to people who have a history of mental illness or who feel they may have a certain mental illness and how they should entertain the notion of using cannabis to treat themselves?
DR. MITCH: In fact, cannabis is rarely my first choice for any of the more common mental illnesses. So we’ve talked before about depression, anxiety, and PTSD. With depression, cannabis may help a subset of folks. A number of my friends who’re in clinical practice say that the people who are using it are having more troubles in their practice. But that may be a different subset.
But my first line of defense – it really sounds corny – but kind of a bibliotherapy. Educate yourself about depression. If you have a mental health center that you appreciate, 12 weeks of good hard work, of taking a look at your own faults, how you behave during the day, the way you frame the events in your life; that can last a lifetime in the treatment of depression. And then cannabis is just to enjoy, not something you have to lean on in order to make sure you have a happy day.
With anxiety, I’ve done this both on Facebook to some of our friends and repeatedly in emails and my published work. Anxiety is one of the psychological disorders that psychology really has mastered. If folks again are willing to go see a therapist for a good couple of months and really put some effort in, you can literally tame this kind of thing and make it so anxiety is no longer debilitating, and then suddenly your cannabis again is just for fun. The idea that cannabis is actually going to help anxiety is very dose-dependent, very strain-dependent, and not the most efficient way to get at this.
PTSD, I just got those new data on that. A ton of people think that cannabis helps some of the symptoms of PTSD. I completely believe them. But compared to these exposure-based treatments – which I know are a drag – [cannabis] is not going to last a lifetime the way that that kind of treatment can, and then again cannabis is just for fun. It doesn’t have to be for medication and you’re less likely to have these lingering symptoms of the emotional numbing, the distancing from your family, or these kind of freaking-out experiences when you’re in a big crowd. And then, what a surprise, you basically worked hard for three months and kicked this disorder rather than felt like “I have to lean on cannabis for the rest of my life.”
I strongly think Dr. Earleywine is right. My mom developed schizophrenia without ever smoking cannabis or doing any other drug except alcohol in moderation. The things that caused her to go into such a decline WASN’T DRUGS, it was the painful ignorance of my government who REPEATEDLY chose to ignore her condition and deny her family the right to get her help. Things like stress from being a single parent, a divorce, losing her children legally, and harassment seemed to have the most impact on her condition besides any genetic reasons, which are EXTREMELY sensitive to environment. Thanks government, for FUCKING UP EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE.
…a very good article, thankyou.
This is absolutely ridiculous…he was smoking K-2…wayyyyyy worse for the human body then good Cannabis…anything “synthetic” is crap…goes for Marinol and Sstivex, Heroin or Cocaine too….vapo the real deal….growning a few poppy’s and scaping the pods is MUCH safer than heroin….which the GOVERNMENT synthesized for treatment, is wayyyyyyyyyyyy better than being hooked on Smack(heroin)
Pot does not make one crazy, but some crazy people do smoke pot. I’ve heard something like this said before… 😉
Cannabis is much better for the human body than al the other crap…..get it from the ground!
I would like to call upon Dr. Mitch Earleywine for a second opinion regarding a patient I have had under observation for quite some time. This patient is the Federal government itself, and my diagnosis is that the Fed is suffering from extreme bipolar disorder, with a profound tendency toward a Napoleon complex.
Disinformation, outright lies, and a nearly continuous stream of propaganda, barely tempered with the increasingly repressive power of a fascistic police state has been the modus operandi of the Federal government in regard to cannabis & hemp prohibition.
In the 1930’s cannabis was attributed to a “Reefer Madness” threat of violence from it’s users. In the 1940’s during WW2, all was forgiven the hemp plant in our “Hemp For Victory” campaign. In the 1950’s cannabis was attributed to turning the country’s youth into apathetic “communists” unwilling to fight the Red Menace. In the 1960’s cannabis was attributed to the anti-war and counter-culture revolts of the youth, who could not be counted upon to be the worker bees of Corporate America. Then the real backlash against cannabis began, with Nixon’s War on Drugs. Since that time, every President & Congress, Democratic or Republican, has adopted sterner more repressive measures against cannabis. Today’s War on Drugs has thoroughly merged with the War on Terror to create the most repressive & violent police state apparatus, purportedly for “our safety”, that has shredded the Constitution & Bill of Rights, made a mockery of the Rule of Law, and turned the Federal government into a much despised arch-nemesis of democracy.
I have smoked cannabis for the last 50 years in varying amounts per calendar month depending on availablity. I was worried that the use of cannabis might impede my reality as it seems to have intellectually impeded certain anti-cannabis researchers and commentators. I have never had a psychotic episode and would be very surprised if I did. I’m too chilled out.
I’m not sure what’s going on in Australia, at the moment. We seem to have come down with a virulent strain of Reefer Madness in the last couple of years.
I think all the press coming out of the US in the last two years regarding legalisation has stirred up the prohibitionists.
All the comments sections of the local online news here regarding this story certainly seems to be against the prohibs’, which is good to see.
We seem to be having increasing problems with alcohol and it’s associated violence, yet they step up the fight against cannabis. Lunacy.
The biggest and most expensive police operation in the nations history was conducted late last year, and all they were after was a couple of dozen weed growers and dealers. There goes a couple of hundred million dollars we will never see again, not to mention the ongoing costs of putting these people in prison for a decade.
Very interesting. In my own experience with cannabis, I have noticed that on occasion I have gotten somewhat “loopy” and I can see how it can aggravate any mental imbalances (which everyone is prone to possibly experiencing for periods of time in their lives). HOWEVER, I have heard that the high THC:CBD ratio of certain hybridized strains has been responsible for this effect. So in spite of my general agreement with what has been shared, I think it probably makes sense not to mess too much, too far, with nature and leave the door open for certain strains to have a greater risk. I’d love for more info on this.
The US Government should overcome its own “denial” with respect to Medicinal Cannabis, which can serve as a safe alternative to many pharmaceutical chemicals on the market. I believe it is very positive that the President acknowledges the “validity” of this debate. Whenever the validity of the debate is recognized, such a “recognition” invariably implies that our side has a “valid argument”; this being so, it follows that our side (in favor of Cannabis/Medicinal Cannabis Legalization) has a very real possibility of winning this “perfectly legitimate debate”, for otherwise it would not be a “debate”. For example, to even suggest that Cannabis Plant has no medicinal properties is not even a “rational” thing to do; as a “recreational” substance, Cannabis is incomparably safer than alcohol! Few people even know that one out of five people in Britain are expected to live to 100 years old, while Cannabis consumption in Britain is the highest in Europe. Look at Canada where the Cannabis “laws” are much more “liberal” than in the United States, yet the criminality, and especially violent crime, are much lower than in this country. And if all this were not enough, it is scientifically proven that Cannabis use (as opposed to alcohol use) suppresses violent urges and behaviors. All this is true even if the President is “personally opposed” to legalization (at least for now). But we cannot sit on our butts and passively expect positive developments to occur. We must participate actively, write comments at the news articles, write to politicians, sign petitions, register to vote, etc. Let’s ask our politicians why, in this time of rising deficits, they would rather talk about taxing mother’s milk than about slashing the so-called “marijuana enforcement” budget! I specifically urge all the young people to talk to their parents and grandparents and educate them about Cannabis vs. alcohol and hard drugs. As the logical evidence in our favor inexorably accumulates, the “qualitative shift” will occur in our common consciousness, and we will win this “perfectly legitimate” debate!
Does it surprise anyone that the mainstream news jumped all over something that makes marijuana seem bad, and that they ignore anything that is positive about marijuana? Does anyone outside our choir wonder why so many people who have little or no experience with marijuana has a negative opinion about it? This pisses me off but at least for me – no surprise!
I’d love for Dr. Earlywine’s work on the subject get into the mainstream but it is totally clear that the mainstream news networks are biased and possibly even controlled to some extent by the big Fed Govt. (who is in turn controlled by big money)
good article, thanks.
it demonstrates well the damage prohibition has done in preventing research. we need comprehensive information on all of the components of cannabis and their effects in isolation and in combination. unfortunately the limiting factor is cash. people aren’t going to invest r&d money into a drug they can’t make a fortune from.
it will be interesting to see how they change their attack once the psychosis curative nature of cbd is recognised and publicised.
btw, i blame the murdoch controlled press in Oz for the anti cannabis stance, they have a track record a mile long.
Oh here they come. I think we all expected the “Evil Weed” people would come up with some kind of BS to stop the progress thats been made on the marijuana legalization effort. Thank you Norml for having Dr. Earleywine speak out on the new scare tactics the news media is having a field day with. I would imagine there is going to be a lot more of it.
So let me get this straight…. A person who is likely to suffer psychosis is going to suffer even faster if they use marijuana.. Is that what I just read? Yes. I think it is. Wow. Ok….. Well, first of all, Id like to shed some light on the part that suggests the individual would of suffered psychosis WITH or WITHOUT injesting THC. If that is what I read and I believe it is, then absence from THC wouldn’t have made a difference at all, except for the fact that a few years of sanity might have been added to that individuals life. So absence from THC is only delaying the inevitable. The individual will suffer from psychosis no matter what. So my question is, what is the purpose of this propaganda? No one under the age of 45 is stupid enough to believe it anymore. You know what else is inevitable? THE FUTURE. Prohibitionists are a dying breed. Y’all best get used to it. Welcome to the New World Order.
I keep thinking this, maybe true in some cases.
I would think that having cannabis legal and readily available.. like that other drug(tobacco) would prevent many crimes from ever taking place.
You could be all wound up ready-to-go-off, and smoke a nice J, sooth u right out, and the wound-up is now un-wound,, nice
That settles it, cannabis is a crime deterrent.
Now why would we want a crime deterrent to be legal?
Instead of marijuana, let’s ask if those with psychosis/schizophrenia read a lot of books in the past year (younger people read more books as homework). Then let’s ask them how old they were when they developed the illness. Lo and behold, on average, the book readers becacme psychotic/schizophrenic at a younger age (just like in the study under discussion). Because we’ve sorted the ill group into two groups (book-readers/younger and not-so-many-books/adults, including the elderly), we will ALWAYS get a “younger age at diagnosis” among the mostly-younger-group compared to the group that includes older people. So a question: Would grouping the ill people by “have you ever used marijuana” also produce a younger/older grouping system? Of course. And even the researchr acknowldges this in the study (the media, including NPR, have failed to report this. See my other posts below)
An early age at onset for ANY medical condition diagnosable in both young and older people will correlate with ANY behavior more common in young people when compared to age at onset for people who don’t engage in that behavior; engaging in the behavior serves as a statistical grouping filter, such that the behavior-prone group of diagnosed people is, by definition, younger than the non-behavior-prone group (the population at large, including older people). The researchers acknowledge this in the study (see below), but the news media have uniformly overlooked this part of the study (please hire a science person to help you sort through this kind of information.)
The journal:
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/
The actual study:
http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archgenpsychiatry.2011.5
“The methods used in this study allowed us to examine whether the observed association between substance use and earlier age at onset might be a result of substance use being more common among younger people…We found that…the presence of a greater number of older non–cannabis users in a sample might spuriously contribute to the difference in mean age between the substance-using and non–substance-using groups…This suggests that some of the observed difference in the age at onset of psychosis in substance-using and non–substance-using groups might well be because of the association between young age and substance abuse …”
The researcher could have easily calculated how much of the difference in age-at-onset was due to differences in the ages of the two groups (mj and not-mj); most studies that look at age DO make such calculations and report the results. This researcher does NOT report the result, leaving open the possibility that once the effect of age-of-group is taken into account, there may in fact be little or no difference in age-at-onset, i.e., this may actually be a report of “no effect found.”
You know, i just don’t agree, but I can see why physciatrist would like to blame something on marijuana , because they would recieve any kickbacks on the meds they prescribe.
Psychotic cops, psychotic parents, psychotic members of the local P.T.A. all with their heads spining around, and around. Get a pirest, it’s time for an exorcism!
#8
Best post on NORML boards I have read.
It is common knowledge amongst those who study psychology that young people self-medicate themselves with cannabis. When those people no longer are able to smoke cannabis, the symptoms of their mental/physical illnesses are able to manifest.
Sarcasm alert: Clearly the ******-up lives that kids lead today has NOTHING to do with increased mental illness… can’t even trust people with PhD’s to research correctly…
is it safe ?
I enjoyed this article and was very glad to see Dr. Earleywine correct this myth that the MSM is passing as conclusive research. However, I do wish to make a point to the good Doctor.
You mention that: “If you have a mental health center that you appreciate, 12 weeks of good hard work, of taking a look at your own faults, how you behave during the day, the way you frame the events in your life; that can last a lifetime in the treatment of depression.” . Well, when you look at the fact that ONE freaking visit to a shrink can cost hundreds of dollars, versus one oz. of decent cannibis, which will last me anywhere from two to four weeks and costs me anywhere from $120 to $160 depending on the strain and… well… the strain (hehe). With the economy tanked and the fact that I am middle-aged, (which means that I am not making alot of money and that is only going to get worse with advancing age), which one sounds smarter to you? (I hope the use of the word ‘shrink’ is not offensive, I am just trying to save space).
You also say that, “Anxiety is one of the psychological disorders that psychology really has mastered. If folks again are willing to go see a therapist for a good couple of months and really put some effort in, you can literally tame this kind of thing and make it so anxiety is no longer debilitating, and then suddenly your cannabis again is just for fun.“. First of all, my cannibis is always fun. Secondly, I suffer from Anxiety Adjustment Disorder, manic depression, collapsed arches, ruined knees, arthiritis, bursitis, tennonitis, a ruined left shoulder and collarbone, and mystery pains that come and go all the time… sometimes it can be bad enough to be described as ‘debilitating’. Any ONE of these would costs me many times over what I pay per month in cannibis purchases just to get to the point where I MIGHT find some relief. And the fact that, for me, cannibis helps with EVERY ONE of those problems… again, which one seems smarter to you?
Despite my aforementioned point, I enjoyed the article very much and wish it could be shown everywhere in the MSM. But, as was mentioned before, they don’t want to hear the truth. That doesn’t sell papers/internet space.
Cynical Baldguy
i think i would have been psycho if i hadn’t smoked pot..!!
Going on forty years of tokin my mind should be in a PARALLEL UNIVERSE or i am just a 21ST CENTURY SCHIZOID MAN. A persons thinking has some type of label on it whether it is reality or fantasy. Just like MARIJUANA PROHIBITION, it has a reality side and a fantasy side. The realists are the users and the fantasy side are the FEDS. ALL THEY THINK ABOUT ARE UNICORNS. Well, it’s time to go to the DARK SIDE OF THE MOON.
why don’t they EVER tell the WHOLE truth??? what is going on in there heads…that’s why educating others is soo very IMPORTANT.
thanks for all you do
8 David762
My diagnosis is that they have an external disorder of an internal manifestation. Who are they you ask? The Illuminati. They don’t want it, because it will spoil there plans. What’s their plans? It won’t matter if they succeed.
I’m completely lost, so what they’re saying is they did a test that found cannabis makes people who are going to be diagnosed with a mental disorder get there faster? How does anyone perform such a test? Did they have vulnerable subjects smoke marijuana and record when they aqquired the disease? If so wouldn’t it take many years and many different people to collect this information? I’m not seeing any numbers here and the pieces just don’t fit.
32 Brandon
“Nothing they say fits – ever.” There! – you’ve found yourself.
USA researchers, if they expect to get further Federal grants to study the effects of cannabis or anything else for that matter, are compelled to confuse causality with coincidence. A far larger population of young people, not yet conditioned by artificial social norms, are more likely to experiment with cannabis.
Chemical imbalances in the brain which are conducive to the onset of psychoses generally manifest in adolescence, not in mature adulthood.
Any scientific study which conflates adolescent use of cannabis with an increased population of patients afflicted with psychoses is akin to linking masturbation with psychoses — coincidence without causality.
OTOH, there is strong evidence that links the prohibition of cannabis, the war on drugs, and the war on terror with the desire of portions of the USA Federal government to seek ever increasing Police State powers, to the detriment of citizens’ rights, liberties, and freedoms. There is also strong evidence that crony corporations whose fiscal well-being is enhanced by the suppression of cannabis & hemp, and the rise of the Police State are linked. This is causal, not coincidence.
So it seems like good news to me. The man said the total whack job loonies prefer to be cannabis free.
“…few patients with psychosis start smoking marijuana for the first time.”
Another way to say that is to say that the full blown mentally ill prefer total sobriety, no? It sounds like an endorsement of enjoying cannabis if you axe me. I for one concur with the assertion that one would have to be crazy to not enjoy cannabis.
36 Duncan20903
Use it – don’t use it – that’s a personal choice of a free individual – but – someone is crazier than hell to think that they [prohibs with a psychosis] are going to relieve us of our Constitutional rights. It’s a fight to the finish. So! our comment is – “Fill your hand you son of a bitch.” By the way – to call a mentally ill person a total whack job loonie just shows how much their kettle is black. Call me crazy – but – if the pot phobic prohibs don’t think we’re in a full blown revolution over cannabis – they’re the ones that need to see a therapist – immediately!
I have been a Substance abuse counselor for 25+ years. Worked with thousands of pot smokers of all ages. Weed does not cause psychosis one needs to have the psychosis first, works no other way!
I am an expert on the effects of marijuana and I will say this marijuana affects segments of the population very differently. However in the mentally ill segment and for people with alzheimer’s and dementia its a miracle drug that is being over looked. Psychiatrists are number one on my most vile list of human beings and I don’t care to tell them so, Their practice of doing experiments on people have gone unpunished for generations. I wonder do people actually know where the drugs come from that they prescribe and the process they practice in doing so. They blindly prescribe these so called medications because they are told they work, Human experimental studies are carried out on mostly the poor and mentally ill by huge drug manufacturers. A drug representative who gets paid six figures a year walks into their offices and supplies them with a fat check and hundreds of samples of highly addictive drugs that have terrible side effects and they distribute these samples free to their patients to get them addicted, these people are the true criminals of society not the guy selling herb down on the corner because he has no job and chooses not to work at Wal-mart I have personally seen psychiatrists ruin many lives and cause more deadly addictions than any street level drug dealer and that’s a fact. They are in fact the legal drug dealers of our society and the drugs they are pushing are more dangerous and addictive than any street level drug could ever be. Most of the drugs they are pushing take weeks to get built up in your system in most cases these drugs cause kidney damage, liver damage and death, all of these drugs have more side effects than any positive effect and they spend billions of dollars advertising these substances everyday to the public they are the ones who need to be in jail.
My husband of 27 years started smoking cannabis in the late 70s.When on r&r from the military.He used to drink alcohol and smoke cannabis, this resulted in a very aggressive , agro individual who I was afraid of. After an assault charge (he tried to strangle me) he quit drinking and tried for years to cope with his aggression and what i considered to be PTSD (post traumatic stress syndrome). We ended up getting divorced (after 20 years together ) and after a year of being apart ,we remarried.
He now smokes cannabis daily, only in the evenings and weekends and its like his “medication”. He was put on anti depressants and these made him so down… that he stopped eating and sort of gave up on life.He quit the anti deprassants and is now the most even and happy hes been in years.!!! So heres something for the medical PHDS …. with control, cannabis has made my husband a nice man!! Perhaps soldiers who struggle to maintain everday life after returning ,could be helped with PTSD and not left to be zombies on anti depressants.Interested in any other opinions on this topic.!!!! Happy wife !!
Dr. Mitch Earlywine I was very shocked to see your name…My Biological Fathers name is Mitch Earlywine No Dr. But I am not responding to your artical just wanted to let you know that it is nice to see that there is someone in our family history that has made it in life and wanted to thank you Hope to hear from you.
It is INDEED a Cannabidiol (CBD) issue at heart…
The sad thing is that it’s been getting worse and the clear culprit is turning out to be…. Prohibition for the win, Bob!
Yes, the pressures of prohibition on cannabis breeding has produced cannabis that’s dangerous for people with psyche issues or a LOT of stress.
http://thecleangame.net/2013/10/prohibition-causes-psychosis/
I’m growing “Harlequin” an 8% CBD and only 6% THC strain of cannabis… that doesn’t get me ‘high’ or ‘stoned’… it just gets me ‘medicated.’
You want to ‘create’ psychosis in someone? Give them straight THC or Dronabinol (Marinol) and when they’ve had enough… they’ll experience “Manic Psychosis”… it’s well documented.
Give them equal or greater amounts of CBD with it and they’ll be right as rain… no visible changes.
Keep it Clean! 😀
I too have noticed many that are suffering from a psychotic illness already turn to pot to help their anxiety but because they are already on other pills when things go wrong they blame the cannabis only meanwhile they are taking way more harmful drugs in their systems daily.