The double-edged sword of marijuana self-medication
Counselors often see the people who don't seem to benefit from marijuana. Can legalization put a different light on the drug?
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Increasingly, neuroscience is offering models for understanding why some people suffer more than others do from emotional and psychological pain. The idea of the unconscious is being reinterpreted in terms of the limbic system and the autonomous nervous system, powerful shapers of our emotional lives that operate outside our conscious control. An overactive amygdala, an underdeveloped orbitofrontal cortex — these are the kinds of models researchers are identifying as likely causes of chronic emotional dysregulation.
It is a humbling shift from an earlier generation’s belief that if a problem was “all in your head,” that meant it could be dealt with by a dose of vigorous commonsense thinking.
Today, we often treat pain in the mind with medications that appear to alter levels of key neurotransmitters, including dopamine and serotonin. These medications often come with side-effects, and individuals’ experience with their effectiveness varies. Clearly, we do not yet know enough about the extremely complex neural activity involved in any mental illness, let alone how best to treat it.
According to Washington state law, marijuana is authorized as a medication for a limited number of medical conditions, including “Intractable pain, limited for the purpose of this chapter to mean pain unrelieved by standard medical treatments and medications.” The law does not specifically exclude emotional pain, so it is understandable that people suffering from mental illness have asked the state to grant them the legal right to use marijuana to self-medicate, if they find that it works better for them than other available treatments.
So far, such petitions to the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission have been denied. Most recently, a 2012 petition to authorize medical marijuana for obsessive-compulsive disorder and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder was turned down. While the commission reported that they found the testimony in support of the petition “courageous and moving,” they concluded that there was a lack of data to support the use of marijuana for these conditions, adding a call for such studies to be done.
Research may indeed become more feasible in the future, if marijuana becomes legalized under federal as well as state law. Currently, federal law defines marijuana as a Class I controlled substance, which means that it has a high abuse potential and no accepted medical use — a designation which impedes research into its possible medical uses.
In the meantime, it may not matter much to Washingtonians, who now have a choice whether to seek medical marijuana by prescription — which is easy to obtain — or simply to exercise their new right to use it for their own reasons, without needing a doctor’s permission.
But those of us who work in the field of mental health will still be wondering. Should the way we think about marijuana abuse be revisited, now that using it is less legally risky? When is pain relief therapeutic, and when might it bring more suffering — for our clients themselves, or for the people around them — than it relieves? Are there good reasons for viewing marijuana more skeptically than prescribed psychiatric medications?
Mosshart remarked, “A lot of people who get medical marijuana don’t have conditions that rise to the level of needing marijuana to medicate it. I think it’s misused, quite a bit, actually.”
Perhaps the most hopeful view of current trends is that as marijuana becomes legalized, we may be able to gain a clearer, more objective and nuanced picture of its actual impacts and potentials, so that the line between use and misuse becomes a bit clearer for people trying to decide whether to use it.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Dec 27, 8:47 a.m. Inappropriate
I'm all for legalized marijuana and could care less about any medical benefits. Legalization will accomplish two things. First we'll not fill jails and prisons will people whose only crime is smoking a joint. Secondly the world won't end. Those who oppose legalization remind me of the believers in the Mayan calendar and we see how that worked out.
Posted Thu, Dec 27, 12:03 p.m. Inappropriate
The questions raised here are superb, including the observation that current Federal Law is obstructing research into a drug, in the right quantities, is beneficial to many, patients and non-patients.
I believe the target result for these studies is the political and scientific determination of metabolite blood levels - certainly someone smoking enough to raise that level to an as yet undetermined threshold is likely suffering side effects.
That said, for the chronic addictive multi-substance abuser alcoholic I'd bet marijuana usage, even unlimited, is a positive factor for reducing drug inspired violence.
Posted Thu, Dec 27, 3:37 p.m. Inappropriate
If you mean we might not see the level of crime and violence associated with getting money to obtain drugs, then I think you could very well be correct. However, being high doesn't rule out being violent. Cannabis was one of the main ingredients in the snuff that Zulu warriors used before going into battle. Thousands of GIs in Viet Nam used it, so there's a history associated with it and only time will tell.
Posted Fri, Dec 28, 5:13 p.m. Inappropriate
the 'Nam vets I knew at the time always said that they didn't get stoned when on patrol, for the obvious reasons. But once they were off . . .
Posted Thu, Dec 27, 11:15 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm struggling to wend my way through the verbiage to find the writer's real message in this piece. I think it is basically a statement of concern that broader availability of marijuana may prove to further complicate the lives of some current (ab)users.
That makes sense. The repeal of alcohol prohibition certainly led to more overuse, abuse, and dependence. And there are certainly DSM-IV diagnostic codes for alcohol-related problems as well as for overuse of marijuana and other drugs.
Just as prohibition didn't prevent alcohol use, the prohibition of marijuana (probably the world's longest-used consciousness-expanding plant material) hasn't prevented humans from seeking it out. In both cases, there are people who can use with enjoyment and restraint, and some who just can't. In both cases, some people whose mental lives are disordered in some fashion (whether they are 'diagnosable' or not) may find that using complicates, rather than furthers, their attempts to find stability.
The sporadic, small-scale efforts to legalize formerly prohibited substances is probably the beginning of a turnaround in a century-long political, legal, and cultural war. In my "partial libertarian" view, that's a good thing--and other consciousness-expanding drugs should also be legally available.
But there's a cost and a down-side, and I think that's what the writer is musing about, with specific remembrance of those troubled people for whom weed means more trouble. I muse about it, too. The near certainty is that with marijuana more freely available, we'll see more of the dysfunctional effects mentioned in this article--and we'll see more auto accidents caused by misuse, and we'll see injuries and deaths. "And so on," as the late Mr. Vonnegut would say.
This doesn't lead me to review my meager knowledge of neuroanatomy and neuroreceptors, but to rummage around in my meager knowledge of philosophy. In particular, I recall the thinkers who looked most intently at the joys, sorrows and potential of human existence--and concluded that life has no element of fairness and is best confronted fully and with such courage as each person can muster. That seems to be a good strategy for embarking on a world of greater freedom, risk, and possibility.
Posted Fri, Dec 28, 5:18 p.m. Inappropriate
“I’ve seen it again and again,” one of them told me. “Really bright people, but they just never get around to doing the things they want to do.”
And as we well know, this doesn't happen to people who don't smoke or drink. LOL. How many memoirs are there from upstanding citizens, titans of industry, etc., who lament not climbing the mountain, trying to play music professionally, running the marathon, spending more time with the kids, etc.
Posted Wed, Jan 23, 6 p.m. Inappropriate
i am bipolar and smoked marijuana for my symptoms for 20+yrs. it wasnt until i decided to try prescribed medications that i begun to have more serious problems. these drugs have almost killed me. they have caused me to try and almost succeed in killing myself twice in a yrs time. i did not have these issues before i started taking them. i want so badly to get off my prescribed medications and go back to smoking marijuana. i want to be ok again. but im considered a criminal if i do. marijuana makes me happy. it gives me energy to get up and do the things that need to be done. it helps me eat and sleep. the medications that i am on makes me unfunctionable and miserable. it also has an effect on my heart. they are not at all good, where as i believe that marijuana is good and the answer. it may be that it is not for everyone. nothing is. and as far as short term and long term memory, well, depression has a huge effect on memory. try drinking , which is very dangerous and legal. it can cause you to not be able to remember anything. anything can be abused. but i dont sit around on my rump getting stoned all day. i have a life, or i had a life before all these messed up prescriptions. my life is more meaningful when i smoke, whereas all i want to do most days now is die. but the government doesnt seem to care about the welfare of the people because i am not alone in my beliefs. the proof is out there. i just dont understand why it is a problem. i dont understand why the government depries innocent people of this GOD MADE MEDICATION.
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