Marijuana | Addiction Treatment Strategies

A new study has provided the first conclusive evidence that cannabis use
significantly hastens the onset of psychotic illnesses during the critical years
of brain development – with possible life-long consequences.
The first ever meta-analysis of more than 20,000 patients shows that smoking cannabis is
associated with an earlier onset of psychotic illness by up to 2.7 years.
The analysis, by an international team including Dr Matthew Large, from
the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Psychiatry and Sydney’s
Prince of Wales Hospital, is published in the prestigious journal Archives of
General Psychiatry.
In…

Researchers have found clear associations between marijuana use in young males and cyclic vomiting syndrome (CVS), where patients experience episodes of vomiting separated by symptom free intervals.
 
The study, published in the January issue of Neurogastroenterology and Motility, looked at 226 patients seen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, New York, USA, over a 13-year period.
 
These were broken into three groups. Eighty-two patients with CVS were randomly matched with 82 patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) based on age, gender and geographic referral region. Researchers also examined the records of 62 patients with…

those using marijuana scored approximately one third lower than non-users

New research shows that people who start using marijuana at a young age and those who use the greatest amount of marijuana may be the most cognitively impaired.
 The research was presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego.
Marijuana users show deficits in the ability to switch behavioral responses according to the context of a situation, also known as cognitive flexibility. The new study, directed by Staci Gruber, PhD, at McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School, compared people’s performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, a test of cognitive flexibility. During the…

Facts and Stats
1) Marijuana in the 70?s had from 1-3% THC concentration. Today’s concentration is 18-25%. This represents an increase of at least 600% and as much as 2,500%;
2) THC is a hallucinogenic drug;
3) Commonly experienced side effects of THC include memory loss, distorted perception including the inability to gauge and accurately process emotional information , difficulty with cognition and problem solving, loss of motor skills, decreased muscle strength, increased heart rate and increased anxiety;
4) Marijuana contains approximately 400 known chemicals including those found in cigarettes. It also deposits…

Cannabis use during adolescence and young adulthood increases the risk of psychotic symptoms, while continued cannabis use may increase the risk for psychotic disorder in later life, concludes a new study published online in the British Medical Journal.
Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world, particularly among adolescents, and is consistently linked with an increased risk for mental illness. However, it is not clear whether the link between cannabis and psychosis is causal, or whether it is because people with psychosis use cannabis to self medicate their symptoms.
So a team of researchers, led by Professor Jim van…