This ad is proof positive that BushCo is nostalglic for the 30s and trying to bring back that era. (Via Salon, which has a great article on it.) I can’t wait until they start running ads implying that marijuana will turn your beautiful daughter into a prostitute. Now, pot is not my poison of choice, but I’ll be the first to say that it’s silly to think that it will make you crazy. While it seems likely to me that pot use and depression might be correlated, it’s alarmist to think that pot really causes depression.
With regard to depression, evidence of a causal role for marijuana is even murkier. In general, depression rates in the population did rise sharply during the time period in which marijuana use also skyrocketed. But there were so many other relevant sociological factors that marked the last half of the 20th century — rising divorce rates, the changing roles of women, economic shifts, and better diagnoses of psychiatric conditions, to name a few — that scientists have rarely focused on marijuana as a potential cause for the increase in depression.
Murray maintains that scientists have simply overlooked marijuana in their search for explanations. One study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2002, by New York University psychiatry professor Judith Brook and several colleagues, found that early marijuana use increased the risk of major depression by 19 percent. But that’s not a substantial amount, according to Brook. And though the association remained after other factors were controlled for, such as living in poverty, it weakened further. “I wouldn’t say that it’s causal,” Brook says. “It’s an association. It appears to contribute.”
I’m actually surprised that pot use and depression aren’t more correlated. Depressed people use drugs to self-medicate and pot is easily available for that purpose.
More than anything, I find it maddening that BushCo is using the current understanding of depression as a chemical phenemenon as a tool–people are very open at this point in time to believing that injesting this drug or that food or whatever is a more likely cause of depression than life circumstances in general. In a small way, that’s sort of good, because it’s good that people are beginning to understand the mental illness has a physical, chemical component to it and isn’t something that people can just snap out of. But I’m concerned and have been for a long time that the understanding of mental illness is beginning to err on the side of the physical and people are neglecting to realize that depression is often a perfectly logical response to having a shitty life. Going bankrupt, getting a divorce, having a death in the family, losing your way in life–all these things cause depression in people who wouldn’t otherwise be depressed, and by letting that basic fact fall by the wayside, a lot of depressed people are not making changes in their lives that will actually help their depression.
25 Responses to “Damn those jazz cats with their marijuana cigarettes”
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Psychoactive drugs like alcohol and opioids have already been shown to cause both euphoria and dysphoria - usually there’s an initial response of euphoria but once you reach a certain degree of intoxication, signs of dysphoria appear. Marijuana seems to be a little different than some other drugs in that instead of the initial automatic feel good response followed by the potential depressive effects with increased dose in one sitting, it actually tends to enhance the mood the user is already in. As you note, those who are depressed do tend to self-medicate either to numb themselves or in order to feel good at least temporarily. Unfortunately for us, the Busheviks not only completely disregard fact, data and science that do not support their goals, they have shown they are more than willing to provide data that completely refutes their statements as a means to substantiate their claims (and their woefully uneducated base will compliantly agree like the sheeple they are).
Politicized science. Is there anything more tedious? There is an association, so it must be contibutory. Rubbish.
Good to see you blogging still!
Well there is such a thing as cannabis psychosis, which seriously afflicted someone I knew at university, but it is rare. And there have been studies which suggest heavy cannabis use can trigger latent schizophrenia. But yes, that ad does seem to confuse correlation with causation.
Show me a teenager who ISN’T depressed much of the time, with or without weed. Jeez.
I’m a veteran enthusiastic pro-legalization pot-smoker and I know from experience that if I’m feeling low that is most definitely NOT the time to get high.
“This ad is proof positive that BushCo is nostalglic for the 30s and trying to bring back that era.”
Actually the Bush cabal and other neocons want a return to the 1880’s and before the implementation of labor laws and labor unions followed by social programs and regulatory laws overseeing businesses and ensuring that their actions do not deprive americans or any living being of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When railroad tycoons and bankers ran the country.
But in regards to drug use in this country nothing can compare today to it’s use in the early-mid 70’s. Unless you compare the data in terms of the particular demographic which shows that in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s opium was the cocktail of choice followed by morphine in the post WW1 and WW2 era followed by pot use in the 60’s and 70’s, and finally cocaine in the 80’s, crack in the 90’s. Throughout the 90’s and today it is back to pot again as more african americans engage in it than decades previous thus adding to the existing white expansion of pot use.
It’s hard to say whether the problem is any greater today than in years past because the kids are smarter at hiding their use of it combined with parents not paying as much attention to it due to it’s lack of social stigma. The use of drugs as a form of social protest is over. Today it’s merely a means to hide from the woes of everyday life in an imperfect world. Denying the fact that the world will never be perfect perpetuates the problem and we have the neverending circle.
The only way that drug use is going to lessen in this country is for parents to teach their children while they’re young not to cave to peer pressure or forget the affects of drug use such as lost money, time, and the damage it can cause on relationships or even the problems associated with interraction with others such as being stoned while trying to drive, etc.
Unless our kids understand the negatives *before* they hear their friends try to sell them the alleged positives then the risk of addiction gets larger and larger with each passing year in H.S.
MYOB’
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I just had the following discussion with my doctor:
Me: I have lower-back pain. I’d like to see a chiropractor.
Dr: I can make an appointment with a physical therapist, but it’ll take awhile. In the meantime, take high doses of Advil to help with the pain and inflammation.
Me: Okay.
Dr: If the Advil doesn’t work, just tell me and I can give you stronger drugs: muscle relaxants, sometimes I prescribe Valium….
Me: Uh, I’ll keep that in mind.
“Tell me that the OTC option isn’t working, and I’ll give you Valium!” And people can’t smoke out in this country?
I wonder what kind of association there is between depression and stress and legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco.
I don’t buy that parents talking to kids young stops drug use. Parents have been doing that for the last few decades, and it hasn’t worked. Teenagers are often quite capable of rejecting their parents’ teachings.
I know quite a few people with depression who use pot to self-medicate. The marijuana certainly doesn’t cause their depression, and it doesn’t seem to make it work.
Not my drug of choice, but I don’t get the hysteria.
piny: There are about the same number of men and women who are (alcoholics+depressed), but the proportion of depression is higher in women and the proportion of alcoholism is higher in men. This indicates that men self-medicate with alcohol against depression.
Said the pharmacology lecturer three years ago, anyway.
Seems to me that decriminalization would create a lot of surplus budget…hell, make it retroactive and let all of those in jail on posession charges out, and viola! even more savings.
Going bankrupt, getting a divorce, having a death in the family, losing your way in life–all these things cause depression in people who wouldn’t otherwise be depressed
Um.
By Andrew Solomon, it’s more that those things can trigger depression (and I’d think “losing your way in life” pretty much is depression), but it seems to me that they’re particularly triggering in people who are more prone to depression in the first place. Yes, if everyone had an entirely happy life, there’d be a lot fewer depressives (but not none). But some people can bounce back from bankrupcy, or at least not have long-term problems.
It’s neurochemical, but events influence neurochemistry.
What on God’s Green (bud) Earth is wrong with “self-medication” anyway? Have we gotten so Calvinist in this country that escapism is perforce subject to denigration? How risible!! I just love these missives; it shows that liberals are little different than their conservative brethren.
Drugs are fun, folks. End of story. If people suffer from them, of course let them see a doctor, even at state expense. But escapism in all its forms, which is as old as the hills, is usually more recreation than depression and we have more worthy things to do than answer typical conservative piffle on the subject.
Just a minor quibble:
This statement really makes no sense, as pot (or more accurately THC) is not a poison. Alcohol is a poison, so people rightly call it a poison. This is why mild effects of alcohol is called intoxication, and people die of alcohol poisoning. On the other hand, no one dies of THC poisoning, as THC does not poison you
Other than that, good post.
Mmmmm, THC . . .
I don’t buy that parents talking to kids young stops drug use. Parents have been doing that for the last few decades, and it hasn’t worked. Teenagers are often quite capable of rejecting their parents’ teachings.
actually, what doesn’t work is the hystrionics and scare tactics (you know, the repubevangelicals normal way of dealing with things they don’t like). You have to be credible, kids aren’t stupid.
Alcohol is a poison, so people rightly call it a poison.
Nothing is inherently a poison, it’s only at certain doses that something become lethal or extremly nasty to ingest, THC, if introduced into a person’s system in large enough quantities will kill a person as will sufficiently purified oxygen. You can’t a high enough concentration in a spliff, but as pot smoke is more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke (by a factor of 3 was an old figure I heard, and it was a european study i think) it’s still quite poisonous to smoke.
And anything that slows down reflexes is extremely deadly if you are suddenly attacked by ferocious liberalpoofterpandas, so it’s quite poisonous in that sense also.
Ah, the latest offensive from the people who brought you “This is your brain on drugs with coffee and a side of hashbrowns scattered, smothered and covered.”
The Office of National Drug Control Policy couldn’t find a correlation between marijuana use and six-minute guitar solos.
Nothing is inherently a poison, it’s only at certain doses that something become lethal or extremly nasty.
Damn it, does this mean that I have to measure out my curare from now on?
This campaign is just payback for big Pharma. They gave buckets of cash to BushCo and it’s time to get paid.
Merck, Pfizer, et al don’t make a cent off of self-medication with the happy weed.
R. Mildred - anything if ingested in high enough quantities will kill you. If I drink 50 gallons of wheat grass, I will likely die if I don’t pump my stomach. That doesn’t mean that wheat grass itself is poisonous.
What defines poison is how much of it will kill you - for reasons that are directly occur through ingestion. So arcenic is a poison as something like 10 ccs will kill you. Alcohol is also poisonous, as after drinking enough quantity, it will seep in your blood effectively slowing your heart to a stop, thus poisoning you. Mind you this is the alcohol I’m talking about, not the alcoholic beverage, which includes elements that aren’t poisonous. THC, otoh, will not directly kill you, no matter how much is ingested. It can have other negative consequences, but ’tisn’t a poison.
(here too, I’m using a layman’s medical definition of what constitutes a poison. I am not a medical expert by any stretch of the imagination, so consider this the disclaimer that some of my specific info may be wrong due to my ignorance. But what I am certain of is alcohol is definitely categorized as a poison, and THC is not, everything else is just the details as to why)
I don’t think it’s the drug czar’s job to find a rational basis for drug policy, pansauce. It’s his job to use lame concepts like “correlation” to keep people as sober as possible, this being the society of the Protestant ethic, par excellence. For my part, I remember Baudelaire’s prose poem “Get Drunk!” whenever I hear or read of handwringing over intoxication as someone’s chosen means of escape: “On wine, poetry or virtue, as you will…”
Calling your intoxicant your “poison” is a figure of speech and not really a comment on the actual toxicity of the chemical. And DP, using the term “self-medicate” isn’t really a judgement, I’d think. I guess it is. I figure it’s better for a depressed person to smoke a joint and watch some TV rather than act out rashly. But it can’t be a permanent situation, no matter what you’re doing.
You know what I reckon happened in the second half of the 20th C that led to the massive increase in depression? It’s not drug use, rising divorce rates, the changing roles of women, or economic shifts - it’s TV! I’m convicned that you can find a strong correlation between TV penetration and mental illness. It’s designed to fuck with your head.
Decriminalizing drugs would put a lot of prisons out of business, and the Bush bunny really likes his prisons, as long as other criminals besides himself are the ones occupying those prisons.
So are we discussing Bush, self medication or just throwing about 50 cent SAT words? My two cents: the correlation (gasp, I know a forbidden word) between pot usage and mental illness, particularly schizophrenia, is overblown and not truly the point. It’s the misguided use of pot in this self medicating crew (a self selecting lab rat, if you will) that’s, well..not dangerous, just ineffective. And yes I’ve seen some fairly jumpy behaviors come from this motley crew, and frankly it’s depressing and alienating behavior. I’ll take Zoloft over THC any day. Wow, suddenly, I’m depressed!