I work in medicine (mostly emergency medicine), and I have seen a lot of people end up with their lives completely torn apart because of permanent effects of psychotropic drugs. CBD has a lot of benefits and some real clinical evidence backing it up, but there really aren’t any non-recreational uses for THC and the people who want to use marijuana for calming effects can get CBD on its own these days.

The earlier its diagnosed, the more severe it tends to be. If someone has schizophrenia triggered under the age of 25, the massive shift in the balance of neurotransmitters has a significant effect on the continuing development of the brain. The frontal cortex (the executive function, intelligence/wisdom, and common sense part of the brain) is the last part to finish developing. That’s why you can have teenagers and college-aged kids that are extremely smart academically, but absolute morons when it comes to decision making and self-restraint.

Schizophrenia is characterized by massive overloading of dopamine to the point that the brain malfunctions, and the medications used to treat it (anti-psychotics) mostly work by dulling the effects of dopamine and limiting its production. Finding the right anti-psychotic and right dose of that drug can take a lot of trial and error, and that’s all time lost for ongoing development of that person’s brain. Dopamine is a very important neurotransmitter, so if someone has severe schizophrenia requiring strong dopamine inhibition, they can end up with a lot of nasty side effects.

The medications have long term effects too and there’s kind of a maximum amount of time you can be on an anti-psychotic before you start having a form of medication-induced Parkinsonism. If someone’s schizophrenia gets triggered then diagnosed and treated earlier, it means they are going to start having those Parkinson’s symptoms that much earlier.

This is a misrepresentation. Development or maturation of the brain finishes around 25 years old. In this context, “development” refers to the completion of the adult form of the organ. The ongoing “development” that this blog post refers to is more accurately described as neuroplasticity. There is an ongoing potential for the brain to create new connections and reinforce existing ones throughout life, but the actual mature form of the frontal cortex is not complete until your mid-twenties.

Another way to explain this would be to use breasts as an example. As a biologically female girl goes through puberty, her breasts grow as her body develops mammary tissue and the surrounding/supporting structures. This is called secondary sexual development. If you used the word “development” the same way that blog post does, then the changes to the breast throughout adulthood (such as milk production, skin sagging, loss of adipose) would also be called “development”, but that doesn’t make sense when we’re talking about development of sexual characteristics. Those are ongoing changes to the breast, but it is not the same thing as the initial development stage that is equivalent to the initial development and maturation of the brain that finishes in a person’s mid-twenties.

This is not propaganda. Cite any sentence you think is propaganda and I will explain why its not ;with journals to back it up

The “but alcohol is worse and its legal” crowd really rustles my jimmies in a bad way. I propose any reader to go trough every comment and post the best arguments for this being “fearmongering propaganda” under this reply.

Someone has to be the first so your descendants can say it runs in the family.

Man it almost like there is a known correlation between alcohol and violence or something.

By definition of what a norm is, no, an outlier wouldn’t be the norm. But who’s to say Willie’s physical reaction to cannabis is an outlier?

It usually induces terror (adrenaline/cortisol) depending on how much you do

Given that, as a species, we have only just recently figured out how to diagnose any of these things, it is highly unlikely that these conditions are nowhere in your family lineage. There is always the possibility of de novo mutations that can shake things up, but people with schizophrenia used to just be called generically insane…or they were prophets or cult leaders if they rolled high on Charisma.

Every time you experience psychosis, it increases your chance of experiencing it again, independent of your previous risk. Each episode makes it more likely. Unfortunately drug induced can make it worse.

Yeah there is sociatal harm and personal harm. Both alcohol and THC can be damaging in their own ways. Your point?

Show me the studies proving that THC is even remotely close to as bad as alcohol for you, THC sure as shit isn’t going to kill your liver either!

You’d have differ between public harm and self harm. Also you miss the point, both can be bad in different ways. The links of THC use under 25 leading to psychosis and trigger/cause early onset of schizophrenia are more than established. I won’t choose between liver cirrhosis and mental health problems because both ruin your life. You don’t need organ failure rot in a clinic or become homeless with schizophrenia and off yourself. I’ve seen both substances ruin lives and my country of residence has infinitely better, and free, mental health care.

On sugar yes. Some people have even died from having too much sugar. Name one person who died from over dosing on thc.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/baby-died-of-glucose-overdose-inquest-told-1812014.html

Lots of things can terrify you. Not all of them will kill you though.

Consideribg your stated beliefs here. You sound as though you already are.

Please let me be as transparent as possible about this, I am a bud tender working in Canada, I sell legal cannabis to people right beside a liquor store. Cannabis has been legal up here for coming up on 10 years, and yet, I still haven’t seen any proof of what you are trying to say. So at the end of the day, please let the people who haven’t been allowed to research cannabis usage under prohibition research and report their findings.

What are my stated beliefs? That too much THC makes you paranoid? Is that crazy?

I’m not talking about sugar anymore. Go away.

I don’t think people with schizophrenia will still be visiting your store. I am pro legalisation of cannabis, but the possible consequences should not be dismissed as propaganda.

For example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30373388/ (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6591882/)

Now I agree that you could assert, in the case of depression and anxiety, these results could mean someone is self-medicating for said mental problems, thus clouding the objectivity. But that is not the case with psychosis. Not at all. That is entirely correlated to cannabis (and my personal research concludes this has to do with an increase trend of higher THC contents of strain in the past 30 years. A joint in 1995 is a hell of a lot different experience compared to today’s strains [yes I know there are strains focussing on CBD or other cannabinoids like CBG etc. But let’s not compare apples and oranges. Take a strain from 1995 and today, picked with the sole reason of getting high, and today’s strains will have a lot higher THC contents])

Normally I dislike editorial pieces but this one refers to solid papers: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-link-between-cannabis-and-psychosis-in-teens-is-real/

I don’t think anyone in cluster A or B (some specific diagnoses of cluster C maybe) should be near drugs. And especially THC, because of its image (its just weed, it doesn’t cause any harm). A lot of people self-medicate. I don’t want to create an illusion of there not being any precautions needed. People who use shouldn’t Russian roulette and find out if they are on cluster a or b, very likely increase early onset of symptoms or maybe even trigger something as permanent as schizophrenia. Even a single psychosis with no follow up episodes can fuck your life up good.