I've skimmed a few of the signifcant papers and read a couple of the recent reviews. While there's a lack of good research there's an association with cannabis and psychosis with schizophrenia in children in New Zealand but barely an effect in adults. Therezls claims of other inducement of mental illness based on psychopathological measures. For example the two studies I've read where people were injected with delta-9-THC a psychosis-like state was induced.
That's crazy right? Well yes and no. People use skunk because they enjoy it. It's just like beer. Or any other thing which makes a person either satisfied or subjectively happier (which may be the same thing).
That's not crazy. Finding the thing which makes you happy is the drive in many people's lives. The assumption is that drug use is hedonic but it doesn't have to be. Caffeine is a drug. There are even (poor quality) studies which show it causes psychosis. People who drink coffee aren't drinking it to cause psychosis. The reason they drink it is because, simply, they enjoy it or it fulfills their routine.
Smokers too.
Then medicine comes along to try and effect norms based on the power of the most signficant lobby which uses their science. The power of psychiatric and real health research to make social change based on its use not by doctors but people who don't treat real illnesses is significant. A piece of evidence used to support a claim is a signifcant tool in persuasion.
Let me give a salient example in my own work to stop my choices, lifestyle and pursuit of happiness inhibited by a society which uses the paradigm of science to effect behavioural modfication based on non-scientific evaluations of norms. Cannabis is good for mental health because Dr Joanna Moncrieff, a critical psychiatry lecturer at one of the UKs top universities and founder of the Critical Psychiatry Network, in her recent work The Myth of the Chemical Cure said so.
It is one piece of evidence I use to justify what I know to be true and, based on the dual continua model of mental health, it is true that drug addicts who self medicate their misery are no different from psychiatrist who deal with people who've not yet learned to self-medicate their inner pain or find ways to enjoy their life more.
Oh shit. Did I forget to mention that herbal cannabis, the stuff that's common known as commercial weed or 'mersh, is high in cannabidol instead of cannabinols. CBDs in prelimnary data from a randomised control trial are as effective as atypical antipsychotics. Cannabis has two components, one which chills a person out like an antpsychotic and one which gets a person properly high in a state which, according to measures of pathology used in research in a laboratory setting (thereby for the experiencing of using an enthogen as useful as a chocolate teapot).
Skunk has lots of THC if it's proper bumb grade and weed and hashish are generally antipsychotic.
Clearly if the evidence from studies of cannabis and psychosis assume that because more people who use the drug have severe mental illness caused by the drug then the scientists are idiots. What if drug users are smarter than doctors so use cannabis to self-medicate.
They used what's the top of most people's hierachy of evidence. Not a high quality systematic review published in a signifcant peer reviewed journal. Personal experience.
And so that's just part of the reason why I'd like to offer the NHS a chance to suck on my chocolate salty balls. They refused to offer me help because I self medicate with cannabis. I've been on higher levels of psychiatric medication than should be legally allowed thanks to psychiatry. Now I have my own drugs and therapy but there are times it gets so bad I need a little extra help.
I can't get that help. I've been discriminated against because I chose my treatment like a psychiatrist would but without any evidence from studies then found them later. Oh. No. Wait. Silly me. That's exactly what a psychiatrist does.
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