[dreamcatcher]

earlier today on the news[on the radio] it said that there had been research into smoking cannabis......the results founded that people that smoke 1 or 2 joints a week have double the chance of getting phycotic symptoms later in life......

.......do they mean dp.....cause i know we are not phycotic but the symptoms are similar......

just wondered what anyone else thinks.....

...i mean i have never smoked so obviously thats not my course but its been proved that it can do this then why are they on about legalizing it????

 

[Guest]

I was really worried about that since my DP/DR/anxiety is cannabis-induced however I read many studies that said even in chronic smokers, it is still not proven that cannabis can cause psychosis. There is a doctor in Australia who claims that a lot of patients with first episode of psychosis were those who smoked cannabis but his research has not been backed up by anyone else. Also, it was said that his study did not consider the environment of the smokers, their genetic predispositions etc.

I asked a psychologist about it and he said that if that were the case, about 70% of the population would be psychotic right now since most of the people in the US try cannabis in their high school/college days.

Once again, I'm sure that chronic cannabis use is not healthy but I don't think we can become psychotic from smoking it a few times. In either case, I will never ever try it again since it freaked me out the first time and never went away! =)

 

[Magneto]

When reading anything of this sort, you must always keep in mind one of the "golden rules" of psychology (or any science for that matter), that correlation is not causation.

The fact that many people who developed psychotic symptoms had smoked marijuana regularily could mean that their psychosis was marjiuana induced. However, it could also mean that you are extremely likely to involve yourself with weed (or other drugs) if you prone to mental disorders (addictive personalities? low self-esteem? lack of self-control?).

 

[Beth]

yes, but causation is causation, and a lot of people here know that they are like this because of cannabis. i don't just happen to have smoked and to be screwed up, smoking caused the screwing in a very tangible way. and i think lots of people use cannabis who do not have low self-esteem and all the rest.

i'm not sure about the whole legalization thing. i wish i'd never had access to it, but whether it's legal or not doesn't make much of a difference to that, only to the purity of what you get (and where your money goes to). and it's far far less damaging than alcohol with regards to livers society addictive people, etc. so alcohol should be illegal too. it's obviously got nothing to do with the government protecting you from yourself or cigarettes would have been banned a long time ago.

i reckon legal would be better. that way people always know what they're taking, can talk to people about problems they have, it'd actually be easier to regulate teenagers using it...etc

 

[Guest]

Here's the distinction I make on this topic:

While it can be totally true that smoking dope or using xstacy, etc...MADE the dp state come into being, it is not necessarily the drug that CAUSED a brain change/damage that invoked the dp.

Chances are much greater that the sequence of events went like this:

1. The drug caused a dramatic perceptual and emotional and cognitive Experience for the user.

2. That Experience was in some way so disturbing/threatening to the central core of the person (to their Ego, i.e., their "stabilizer" of the mind) that the result was to feel so unsettled at one's core, so challenged regarding Reality and Identity that the Experience itself acted as a Trauma.

3. In response to that Identity/Ego Trauma, the mind invoked a dp state (or whatever responding symptom) as a way of trying to re-stablize the mind by giving it Distance from the thoughts/feelings that were threatening the Ego.

4. Person was not able to restablize, and mounting anxiety or obsessions soon followed, making the symtpom state ENTRENCHED deeper and deeper into the person's self. In a short amount of time, the person "becomes" their symptoms, and can't "get back" to "who" they were before the drug experience/trauma.

That is not the same thing as a drug causing brain damage. Not at all.

In fact, this is precisely what happens to OTHER dp folks who never used a drug. They just had the "experience" of their breakdown without a drug.

Peace,
Janine

 

[kenc127]

As well educated as doctors are, I really think they are highly misinformed when it comes to this illness. I think the best candidates to listen to are the ones who have been through this and have found the way out. Doctors can merely speculate as to what is going on or how it got there.

 

[Guest]

Thanks Janine, that was helpfull.

 

[Guest]

Trauma is trauma. Whether it is drug induced, physical or emotional violence of some kind, relentless fear, prolonged lack of sleep..........the effects can be the same. I would imagine that, yes - cannabis could be a trigger for somebody who already has the proclivity to dissociate. Then again so could any other mind altering substance, including good 'ol alcohol, many prescription drugs, etc. Or like I said, anything else that gets us to "that place". That place in our mind where our ego feels threatened. Scared. For me it was dying in a car accident. Lots of people are mangled in car accidents though, yet most don't get DP. Lots of people smoke dope, but most don't get DP.
The common thread amongst us is not that we smoked pot, got beat up or emotionally abused by our parents, or were unlucky enough to be in a wartime situation, etc. What we share is the fact that somehow, some way, each of our egos, our SELVES, became terrified. Faced with something we could not reconcile, faced with death of the ego itself - we had no choice but to shut down.

As far as legalizing marijuana, I am for it. If nothing else there could be some quality control, another way to collect taxes, it would greatly cut down on the crime associated with it now, etc. And I certainly don't see pot as being any more dangerous to society or the individual than is alcohol.

 

[g-funk]

Janine, if the people who have drug or physical trauma induced dp never had those incidences, would they have 'broken' anyway at some point? What I mean is, was their ego fragile to start with, or was the drug/accident etc the first damage?

I had dissociative feelings well before I ever smoked a joint, it would sometimes affect me and sometimes not. Haven't touched anything for over 4 years though because it just isn't worth it. A lot of my friends have got panic attacks from smoking and eventually are all stopping because of that. But looking at the effect of the drug as a whole compared to alcohol and other harder substances, I'm not at all anti and definitely for legalisation, so we can look into ways it can be used to help MS sufferers and even some schizophrenics have reported it to alleviate symtpoms.

There is a 'place' near where I live where it has effectively been legalised. The police know about it but as it is so controlled and supplies a huge catchment area (therefore eliminating other petty crime and dealers in the area) they let it be. When I say controlled, you practically park up, stand in a queue, ask for what you want at the counter, pay and go. Drive-thru drugs. Eliminating all that crap that goes with it. The guys even ask how old you are and have been known to ask for i.d. And these are gangster dudes!