Cannabis use disorder and subsequent risk of depression and bipolar disorder

Obviously people with mental discomfort are more likely to seek comfort in mind altering substances.<p>That said, as someone who is bipolar, has bipolar friends and has used cannabis for a significant portion of my half-century on Earth, cannabis usage is proportional to mood instability in myself and my friends. I have taken extensive breaks and noticed I am much more mentally resilient and less emotionally labile when taking breaks.

I&#x27;m terrified of seeking help for mental illness because certain diagnosis can have legal impacts. It is a sad truth, no one has a real response for it except &quot;get over it&quot;, and it is very, very difficult to get support for political reforms to protect the mentally ill.<p>I am also terrified the medications we force on some mental health patients, especially injected long-term ones, are purely for the benefit of the care taker and not the individual.<p>I think cannabis had fell into a niche of &quot;self-medication&quot;, for people who the system doesn&#x27;t seem to work for. Cannabis nor alcohol are the ideal medications, they are simply the only ones most easily available.

Every single chemical I put into my body has risk. Too much salt, caffeine &#x2F; coffee, cheese, pasta &#x2F; carbohydrates. When I drive a car I’m rolling the dice. When I let my 10 year old walk by himself to the subway, ride it to his friend’s house, and then ride it back, my mind can wander to all sorts of dangers.<p>Marijuana is absolutely a drug with downsides. There are also upsides - for example I enjoy my life more. I also enjoy alcohol, sometimes to excess. I acknowledge I have taken likely years of my life away through my actions. I have also dabbled in cocaine and ecstasy. I don’t think those drugs should be totally illegal either.<p>My point is we all make our own decisions and are forced to accept risk. Sometimes you just have to live. Otherwise why bother living?

This is potentially interesting, but it is important to bear in mind just how tricky mental disorders are to characterize robustly. Psychiatry does not have a record of strongly reproducible results. All of these primary criteria, cannabis use disorder, bipolar disorder, and depression are frequently diagnosed differently by practiced professionals.<p>One of the more academic investigations of addiction, the book High Price by Carl Hart, suggests that the real experience of addiction is substantially different from the way most people think of it and most addicts eventually quit on their own for a range of reasons. This suggests that the very concept of &quot;cannabis use disorder&quot; may not really make sense.

A few months ago, we had a support group going at my clinic, with several patients with various diagnoses which are not directly discussed. We also had a presentation on sleep hygiene by a visiting psychiatrist. One of the newer support group members was openly promoting his love of smoking a joint and a cigarette and chilling out in the morning, and the psychiatrist said &quot;cool, you do you!&quot;<p>Then the next week, the clinician leader of the support group laid down a few ground rules for the new members, one of them being &quot;if you show up while you&#x27;re high, then you&#x27;ll be gone just as quickly&quot;.<p>So I think it&#x27;s safe to say that there is a range of opinions and attitudes among clinical professionals.

&gt;These findings may inform policies regarding the legal status and control of cannabis use.<p>But not without NNTs. For depression, OR = 1.8, NNT = 12 (assuming 10% lifetime incidence, this is very hard to estimate due to the difficulty in diagnosis). For bipolar disorder, OR = 3, NNT = 25. This is before accounting for any reverse causation: roughly 80% of incidence of BPD is associated with genetic variation.

I can vouch for Cannabis being able to cause a heavy depressive episode lasting several days. In my &quot;research&quot; it starts several days after intake and also strongly hightens paranoia levels &#x2F; trust in other people. There are of course many factors to consider, like medication usage. but not going into detail with that

Does it really surprises anyone that a psychoactive drug have psychoactive effects on it&#x27;s users? This whole &quot;cannabis is an inofensive natural plant&quot; is so dumb, of course a drug that alters your mind and is used regularly will produce side effects on it&#x27;s users. The other thing that I always try to warn my pot head friends is about the pulmonary risks involved in cannabis use. I know guys that smoke all day pretty much non stop. Imagine if instead of weed, it was tobacco cigarretes, UNFILTERED, being burned up and breathed in. Smoke is smoke, and your lungs will get covered in ashes and debris over time. Pot heads are just alcoholics who destroy their lungs instead of their livers, the mental impairment part is the same. I&#x27;m not talking about drinking a beer or two on the weekend, or smoking a joint once a week. I&#x27;m talking about the wake and bake type of guys.

I can&#x27;t see the full study methodology without an account. That said…<p>The challenge with running studies ethically is that you can&#x27;t split your test groups into two groups and somehow induce cannabis use disorder and see if major depression, bipolar, etc results from it. Rather, you can see if the people who naturally develop the disorder also have those problems.<p>The flaw in this reasoning is that people who develop depression and similar issues are likely to self-medicate with cannabis. In related news, umbrellas do not cause rain.

&gt; Cannabis use disorder was associated with an increased risk of [...]<p>They didn&#x27;t prove cause and effect, only association.

I just quit weed after getting addicted for almost 2 years.<p>There is a large community of people who are trying to quit: &#x2F;r&#x2F;leaves<p>The article is nothing new to me. Read a few posts from the subreddit and you&#x27;d see a pattern.<p>Three weeks ago, I was pro-weed recreation legalization. Today, I&#x27;m strongly anti recreation use.<p>Edit: I&#x27;m not against decriminalization of weed. I&#x27;m highly against pro-recreational use. I&#x27;m against high THC %, easy access, advertisements, sponsorships, etc. I believe weed should be classified as a highly addictive drug - especially to youth. We should not have weed stores. It should be sold behind the counter. It should have a very high tax so that it&#x27;s not cheap. It should have huge, bold warning labels on packaging. It should not be legalized at the federal level.

full PDF: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static1.squarespace.com&#x2F;static&#x2F;5fa2eabb04edcf45a65121de&#x2F;t&#x2F;64b41b0b3ee306752cc86ceb&#x2F;1689525004116&#x2F;MJ+and+risk+uni+and+bipolar.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;static1.squarespace.com&#x2F;static&#x2F;5fa2eabb04edcf45a6512...</a>

Alcohol definitely gives puts me into depression and bipolar moods with heavy or regular usage. Basically have to detox every time I drink now.

The headline here does not match the study, which just says the two are associated.

Those are features, not bugs

Headline used here on HN is editorialized and misleading.

The only way I can deal with my sociopathic coworkers is through cannabis use, so I’ll roll the dice.<p>Edit: downvote me daddy

Just a reminder for anyone reading this that CBD has been shown to be an effective antipsychotic in its own right [1], and particularly in regards to THC related psychosis [2].<p>It&#x27;s probably not a great idea that the industry is moving towards high concentration THC and low to zero CBD product.<p>The &quot;naturally occurring plant&quot; is getting further and further from what&#x27;s naturally occurring with the psychosis inducing compound coexisting with the psychosis mitigating compound.<p>It&#x27;s quite disappointing to walk into a dispensary and see only a tiny shelf in one corner of the store with 1:1 or greater CBD products and 95% of the product on offer as a race to the bottom in CBD potency.<p>In the majority of people, this won&#x27;t necessarily result in a psychotic issue, but it&#x27;s going to happen commonly enough that we&#x27;re going to have continuing and expanding social issues if 1:1 products don&#x27;t become more commonplace.<p>I&#x27;d strongly encourage any future legalization legislation to consider marginally subsidizing product that has higher CBD ratios, as often I see that the consumer push towards THC only is related to cost saving against more expensive mixed products.<p>-----<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC7955839&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC7955839&#x2F;</a><p>2. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC7955839&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pmc&#x2F;articles&#x2F;PMC7955839&#x2F;</a>

The title is incorrect. It implies a causal effect, where the article suggests correlation. Also, it refers to a cannabis use disorder, not cannabis use (as mentioned by others).<p>I propose: &quot;Cannabis use disorder correlated to increased risk of both psychotic and non-psychotic unipolar depression and bipolar disorder.&quot;<p>Or even: &quot;People with major depression, bipolar disorder and psychosis are more likely to be addicted to cannabis.&quot;

&quot;Cannabis Use Disorder&quot;, not &quot;Cannabis use&quot;.<p>The appropriate title is &quot;Cannabis Use Disorder and Subsequent Risk of Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Unipolar Depression and Bipolar Disorder&quot;.

Cannabis should be legalized and regulated. Period. People that want to partake ofc should have safe access to it.<p>That doesn&#x27;t means and has never meant it is a harmless thing, like some groups portray it to be. &quot;it&#x27;s just a naturally ocurring plant!&quot;<p>Education, more information and less zealotry help on both sides of the discusstion. It&#x27;s not the devil&#x27;s lettuce they had people think with 60s propaganda, but it&#x27;s not a panacea either. Extremes are not good.

There is some discussion around cannabis bans and their causes in their thread. One aspect that isn’t discussed much but could be very relevant to differing opinions here is that different people respond incredibly differently to marijuana.<p>Some people experience various, mostly mild, forms of cognitive impairment such as sleepiness, thinking everything is funny, and memory issues. Other people seem to enter a state of heightened idea generation, like more of their brain is working on ideation than usual, and perhaps the sort of thing a priest class would find useful (thinking back to when this plant would have been domesticated). I’m sure there are many other types of reaction as well.<p>If someone experiences priest mode or is around those that do, they will be more positive towards it than others who only see impairment mode. It is much less homogenous in its effect on people than alcohol is.

&quot;Cannabis use&quot; (HN title) and &quot;Cannabis use disorder&quot; (actual title) have very different meanings. The HN title should be corrected.

Seems like every week, the health aspects around marijuana become more bleak. In the past few weeks alone:<p>(1) Cannabis is a scavenger of metals and users had higher levels of lead and cadmium <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medicalxpress.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2023-08-high-blood-urinary-metal-exclusive.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medicalxpress.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2023-08-high-blood-urinary-me...</a><p>(2) &quot;there&#x27;s a lot of overlap in terms of the toxins and carcinogens that are in [both] cannabis and tobacco smoke&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medicalxpress.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2023-08-americans-marijuana-safer-cigarette-theyre.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medicalxpress.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;2023-08-americans-marijuana-s...</a>

There&#x27;s lots of people who take this sort of thing as reason to criminalize cannabis.<p>Regardless of the problems, it is still a personal health issue. Criminalizing causes more harm than good.

prohibition of cannabis has perpetuated greater harms than those it would attempt to mitigate.

Wait until you see what alcohol does to you.

Just my personal take, wouldn’t seek to push others to adopt it.<p>Smoking weed hurts your ability to think and learn. If you have responsibilities to children or shareholders etc you shouldn’t be doing it.<p>If you don’t and it doesn’t hurt others who are relying on you have at it, but still sparingly as not to be abusing your body and mind.

I don’t know what I read, but someone said weed before all of the legalization in the last ten years was 5% THC. The stuff being sold in dispensaries now is 80-95% THC. Weed went commercial and so did the potency.<p>Corporate America got a hold of the industry for pure profits.