On Feb 25, 2009, at 5:49 AM, TurquoiseB wrote:
Pot has been used for thousands of years and has never been
anything but a boon to any culture -- until Hearst et al.
Actually, research being done at Columbia University for the
last 10 years shows that cannabis use (yes plain old marijuana)
increases the likelihood of developing psychosis by
ten fold.
You are joking right? Another satire?
quote ----
Down at the bottom of the CNN report ("Marijuana may increase
psychosis risk, analysis says ") on the Lancet published study that
claims that frequent marijuana use may cause psychosis we find:
Bingo:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/556097_6
I will allow Ruth and others who like delving
into research to do so on this one, but it looks
to me as if they started backwards and worked
towards a foregone conclusion.
In his books on meditation, Zen master and neurologist Jim Austin not
only goes into the bodies endogenous "drug" producing systems, he
also goes over the research on all the major recreational drugs as well.
On marijuana he shares an interesting study of 311 grown twins, where
one twin had used marijuana before 17, the other had not. The twin
who HAD used marijuana before 17 was 2.1 to 5.2 times more likely to
engage in other drug use, to develop alcohol dependence and to
develop some drug dependence. It true, it would back the idea of
marijuana being a gateway drug. (But clearly Austin is also of a
previous generation, he was born in 1925, and he seems to abhor all
drug use, even of botanicals.)
Marijuana also decrease theta waves globally in the brain and
"disrupts both the transient attentional and the more sustained
functions that the subjects require to solve working memory tasks."
It's interesting that in Ayurveda, a botanical that causes excitation
of the cerebral cortex is used as the antidote for marijuana.
When pure THC is given to subjects it "produces schizophrenia-like
positive and negative symptoms,
alters perception, leads to both anxiety and to euphoria, and
disrupts both immediate and delayed word recall.27 Large doses of
cannabis can also provoke an acute psychosis that resembles
schizophrenia. Heavy users among young recruits in the Swedish army
had a sixfold greater incidence of schizophrenia on follow-up."
It would be interesting to see some studies on the botanical
antidotes to some of these side-effects and also a cross-comparison
of smoking/vaporization of marijuana vs. traditional preparations
like bhang--marijuana drinks, usually in almond milk with some herbs
and jaggery. These traditional drinks are said to curb a number of
the traditional side effects.
You can still purchase of number of Ayurvedic rasayanas and powders,
which contain marijuana as key ingredients, in this country.
