Cannabis-Schizophrenia Link
The cluster debates the relationship between cannabis/marijuana use and schizophrenia or psychosis, including causation vs correlation, genetic predispositions, self-medication by those with mental health issues, and personal anecdotes of drug-induced episodes.
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Is it possible that psychotic people tend to self medicate more with it?
A user named observationist made a response to this post, but they responded to a troll, whose comment was nuked which removed their very valuable comment (I was responding to them at the time so I happened to have both in cache).observationist https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=observationist original comment:Around 1% of people have schizophrenia. This holds over a lifetime - there's a
As I understand it, things like schizophrenia are primarily hereditary, and the trauma pushes you over the edge. So, people with a family history of schizophrenia or related conditions shouldn't do these drugs.
Why do you assume the schizophrenia was "likely induced by heavy marijuana use"?
https://www.webmd.com/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-marijuana-...
It's important to know that the correlation can have some other cause. Like that people with predisposition to schizophrenia may seek out drugs.Keep in mind also the typical onset for schizophrenia is teenage years or early 20s in men, and is often later, up to early 30s in women. These are years you might experiment with drugs.
I have schizoaffective disorder, induced by a bad trip from marijuana. It was like the 3rd time I had tried weed, and I naively took too much.For me psychosis feels like pattern matching going on extreme overdrive, while at the same time memory goes to shit. It's truly an awful illness, and what's worse is that the current medical treatments are bad. I've been fortunate enough where I can get by on a low dose olanzapine, but for many people they simply don't work at all.<p
Don't many psychotic and schizophrenic people self-medicate with cannabis?
Tobacco has anti-psychotic properties which can help to alleviate the effects of schizophrenia, which is one reason almost all schizo patients smoke. Alcohol on the other hand can make the condition worse because it has psychotic properties. Marijuana is both psychotic and anti-psychotic so how that will affect the patient is more unclear.
"My brother smoked heavily during his teens and as a result developed schizophrenia / substance induced psychosis." - that is a statement of fact so.. apparently not.