CANNABIS LINK TO BLUES

[Guest Urbanhog]

CANNABIS LINK TO BLUES

 

Research Shows Drug Use Brings Increased Risk Of Depression

 

POWERFUL new evidence that regular cannabis smoking by teenagers causes depression in young adulthood has prompted a call for it to be taken as seriously as heroin and amphetamines in government drug-control efforts.

 

George Patton, leader of a seven-year Australian study of 1600 teenagers, said doctors already accepted that cannabis use and depression often went together, but "we haven't known what is the chicken and what is the egg".

 

"( Now ) we're able to say cannabis use predisposes towards later depression," said the Professor of Adolescent Health at Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute.

 

Young women users were twice as likely as non-users to suffer depression or anxiety if they had smoked cannabis weekly, and eight times as likely if they had used it every day.  For young men the trend was similar, though less pronounced.

 

Professor Patton said the research also showed that people who were depressed or anxious when 14 or 15 were not more likely than others to be heavy cannabis users by their early 20s meaning the link could not be explained in terms of "self-medication" of unhappiness.

 

The study was published yesterday in the British Medical Journal.

 

WA youth worker George Davies said he hoped the study would not strengthen the debate on prohibiton of the drug.

 

He said young people needed to feel as though they could talk openly about their use of cannabis without being afraid of the consequences.

 

"Young people are not stupid and if there was an honest, non-judgmental discussion they are likely to think about what is said.

 

"But at the moment education on these kinds of matters comes from police officers and headmasters and from where the young person is sitting those kind of lectures lack credibility."

 

Youth counsellor Duane Smith said he had worked with young people with mental health issues for a decade.

 

He said the research confirmed what most youth workers had suspected for a long time and said the best way to tackle the problem was with good education.

 

A separate New Zealand study also reported in the journal confirms cannabis can trigger other mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

 

It says policymakers should concentrate on delaying young people's first experiments with the drug.

 

Figures from the Australian institute of Health and Welfare show that 42 per cent of boys and 38 per cent of girls have tried cannabis by the age of 15.

 

Source: West Australian (Australia)

Copyright: 2002 West Australian Newspapers Limited

Contact: letters@wanews.com.au

Website: http://www.thewest.com.au

[Ferre]

This is something what worries me too, as (one of two)webmasterz of the Dutch WEEDCLUB I'm amazed of the average age of the members there.....YOUNG,...very young and I am going to translate this for them kids to read, I have allways had my doubts about staying emotionally stable in combination of starting to influence your emotional state of being at an age where this is all just developing.

 

************for those who wonder, the average age there is around 18/20, meaning that there's sometimes, like yesterday, 14 year old kids becoming a member and, at the same time, add their homepage called "wiet wiet wiet, alles over wiet"(**"weed, weed, weed, everything about weed").

 

makes ya wonder..........doesn't it.

 

********another detail, I was asked to become an operator at the Dutch weedclub by "weedgirl", the original founder, of who I found out later she's a 16 year old girl with some other site's on the net.....but than again,...this is Holland.

Edited December 5, 2002 by tboat

[BlackBeauty]

Young women users were twice as likely as non-users to suffer depression or anxiety if they had smoked cannabis weekly, and eight times as likely if they had used it every day.  For young men the trend was similar, though less pronounced.

 

A friend of mine smokes way too much mj and she's absolutely schizo....she suffers from paranoia and has these psychotic episodes. Of course, she thinks everyone else is at fault 'cos they're setting it all up to make her look bad...but that's all a long story...

 

Here's my thoughts as I recorded them earlier:

http://ausmb.netfirms.com/cgi-bin/ikonboar...act=ST;f=11;t=2

[Tom]

The only way mj seems to give me the blues is to make me want to listen to some blues music.

 

[Brainstorm]

Tom when I saw the topic I thought the same thing.

 

But on to serious stuff. There was a few good posts on there BB - everyone, well worth reading!

 

I would guess (didn't go to doctor or anything to get diagnosed) that I suffered from some bouts of depression some years ago. I wasn't doing much mj back then and I would brood over things for days, never really resolving anything properly.

 

I'm way over events that caused those bouts now but I know I still get depressed every now and then over the usual run of the mill stuff - love, life, and all that stuff but the difference now is that I don't brood over it anymore - I have some mj, put some good thinking music one and I usually end up resolving stuff!

 

I can't say that I've ever been depressed because of mj though - perhaps the reason these researchers come to the conclusion that mh can cause depression is because it can cause you think about stuff more intensely?