Does Marijuana Cause Schizophrenia?

Repost from the old site. One of the longstanding arguments against the use of marijuana is that is causes mental illness, in particular psychosis. For a long time, cannabis was said to be associated with a particular entity called “cannabis psychosis”. This entity has not been proven to exist. Cannabis has also been said to be associated with depression and anxiety. Some people do experience anxiety when they use cannabis. In many cases, they used it for some time before an anxiety reaction started. A cannabis panic or “paranoid” reaction is quite common amongst all types of cannabis users. Generally, users who start to regularly get panic reactions tend to stop using the drug. Anecdotally, many persons report relief from anxiety, depression, tenseness and anger from the use of marijuana. A friend of mine who was in jail for marijuana said he met many angry prisoners who used marijuana to reduce their anger. I known young males who are chronically “hyper” – tense, restless and on the verge of anger. Regular marijuana use works well to completely alleviate this condition. In recent years, some frightening studies have come out connecting cannabis to psychosis, in particular to schizophrenia. On the surface, there would not appear to be much grounds for alarm. As you can see in my previous review on the subject of cannabis and brain damage, heavy use of cannabis, of all the intoxicating drugs, seems to be easiest on the brain. This does not mean that it has no effects on the brain at all, but instead that heavy use of all of the other intoxicants is harder on or riskier to your brain than heavy use of cannabis. Since heavy cannabis use is so much easier on your brain than heavy use of anything else, how is it then that cannabis should be associated with schizophrenia, while the other more harmful drugs are generally not? This is a bit of a mystery. Promoters of the pot-schizophrenia link have suggested cannabis’ effect on the dopamine system – that is, it releases dopamine. Yet almost all drugs release dopamine, including alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, etc. In fact, coke and speed are far more dopaminergic than cannabis. Truth is that anything pleasurable releases dopamine – sex, chocolate, a good movie. Animal models have not been particularly helpful in determining the relationship of cannabis to mental illness. One recent animal model showed that not only did cannabis cause mice to actually evidence that cannabis is protective against the neurotoxic effects of stroke and head injury. Further evidence shows that cannabis is effective in slowing the progression of various elegant analysis of Swedish military recruits in 1987. The increased risk was on the order of 4.5 times for those using by age 15, but down to 1.6 times for those using by age 18. The increased risk was decreasing rapidly. Let’s extrapolate to ages 16 and 17: Age 15: 4.5 X. Age 16: 3.7 X Age 17: 2.65 X. Age 18: 1.6 X. At that rate, all increased risk would have evaporated for users who wait until they are age 19 until they start using. Since the Swedish study, the evidence has piled up. Still, despite the scary and numbing evidence, there is not yet any evidence that cannabis causes schizophrenia de novo. Instead, it appears to be interacting with some already existing risk factor. This page is a good repository for the numbing evidence on this score. However, that site has some serious problems. They are finding increased risk of schizophrenia from everything from “being too introverted and being alone too much”, emigrating to a new country – up to you just have to live your life and these kind of “risks” be damned. Personally, I am dubious that any of these things actually contribute to schizophrenia. A person slowly developing schizophrenia over years tends to spend a lot of time alone, become introverted, move to a major city (often the rundown inner city part), wander around the country or parts of the globe, experience a lot of social adversity and handle stress quite poorly as the disease slowly unfolds. Their relatives often show various degrees of the illness themselves and this probably accounts for the problems in childhood experienced by mildly effected parents. Either that, or the person at risk of schizophrenia is already odd, hostile or combative, and this causes a poor parental relationship. Even if cannabis did increase the risk of schizophrenia, there seems may be an age effect. Robin Murray found that first use at age 15 increased the risk of schizophrenia by 4 times, while by age 18, the risk had dropped to 1.65. By this trend, one assumes that at some point after age 18, the risk would drop to zero. Assuming the risk is real, it could be substantially ameliorated by avoiding cannabis until one is 18. In general, most studies found about a doubled risk of schizophrenia from cannabis use. It is interesting to note that chronic heavy drinking was even more of a risk to psychosis than heavy cannabis use, increasing the risk by four times. It has become clear in recent years that schizophrenia, when occurring over a period of years, is correlated with serious damage and disruption to the brain in a wide variety of areas and manners. The notion that a meager drug like cannabis could actually cause such dramatic dysfunction and damage is ludicrous. The only thing that could possibly be happening here is cannabis triggering, or setting off, a cascade that begins the neurodegenerative process known as schizophrenia. The pot-schizophrenia theory was recently blown up again by a truly absurd study. An MRI study showed that subjects given THC showed reduced activity in the inferior frontal cortex. This area controls inappropriate emotional and behavioral responses to situations. The more the activity was reduced here, the more paranoia the subjects experienced. Somewhat bizarrely, the study claimed that pot-induced “paranoia,” which most users are familiar with, is synonymous with “psychosis.” They said that 5 The major problem with all of the studies showing a link between pot and schizophrenia is that we should have seen an explosion of schizophrenia in the West during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Instead, the rate was flat or even declined. Advocates of the pot-schiz link such as Murray have all sorts of reasons why either rate has actually gone up when we found it didn’t, or it’s going to go up in the future, or finally, that even heavy pot use by millions of citizens will only increase the rate of schizophrenia by 1 This study from Australia concluded that since the incidence of schizophrenia has not risen with the explosion in cannabis use, cannabis cannot be said to cause schizophrenia. Instead, the study said cannabis appears to be triggering it in people who would have ended up schizophrenic anyway. However, cannabis use may worsen the course of schizophrenia in those who already have it. The study was unable to conclude that cannabis use brings on schizophrenia quicker in those who would develop it anyway, since they found no trend in decreasing age of diagnosis, even with the explosion in cannabis use in recent years. However, this study did find that cannabis-using schizophrenics developed symptoms sooner than those who did not use it. On the other hand, this may be explained by the very common phenomenon of heavy use of cannabis during the prodromal phase of schizophrenia. Another study suggested that cannabis use may be causing schizophrenia in people who would not otherwise develop it, but the lack of increased diagnosis would seem to argue against that. Yet another Australian study “definitive” study that “ends the debate” about whether or not marijuana causes schizophrenia. It reviews a number of studies and shows that every study does find increased psychosis with increased marijuana use. It then predicts that 1 First of all, there is indeed an association between pot use and schizophrenia (in my opinion, especially under age 18 and particularly under age 16). However, as you can see below, the rate of schizophrenia in general has been either flat or declining all through the cannabis epidemics of the past 40 years in the West. Therefore, it is premature of the UK researchers to claim as yet that pot is causing 1 A paper out of Micronesia dated 1993 noted that schizophrenia had increased dramatically in the previous 20 years. There had been an attendant increase in the use of marijuana and other drug use. The Australian study above, one of the best studies done to date, completely rejected the notion that cannabis causes schizophrenia in persons who would otherwise not develop it, but did suggest that cannabis use may bring on schizophrenia sooner in those who were going to develop it anyway. Heavy cannabis use does seem to be particularly problematic in early adolescence. Kids that age should not be using cannabis anyway. The Australian study also suggested that cannabis worsened the prognosis of schizophrenia, but that the effect was not a large one. Studying this variable is difficult since the younger one is when schizophrenia comes on, the more likely the person is to relapse, and young people are the most likely to be cannabis users. So cannabis use and relapse to schizophrenia are going to be co-occurring due to age alone. Nevertheless, there seems to be good evidence that schizophrenics need to stay away from this drug. The one hypothesis that shines through most clearly in all of these studies is that schizophrenics tend to be more likely to use cannabis, and more likely to use it heavily, than non-schizophrenics. In other words, simply being schizophrenic increases the likelihood of cannabis use and dependence. We can surely agree with this theory – it’s not controversial at all. Along the lines of the Australian study, we can look at tobacco use and lung cancer. As cigarette smoking skyrocketed, lung cancer went through the roof. As smoking declined, lung cancer rates also declined. No such picture is being seen with cannabis and schizophrenia. Another recent study is getting a lot of media play with a totally unwarranted pot-schiz link. It found an altered development of the arcuate fasciculus, a bundle of fibers connecting the Wernicke’s and Broca’s Areas of the brain, one involved in the production of language and the other involved in the reception of language. Photo of the arcuate fasciculus is here, and a abnormally activated, along with some other areas, during auditory hallucinations. Excessive activation of the arcuate fasiculus associated with auditory hallucinations would not likely be caused by a reduced volume to the structure. With reduced volume, there would probably be less activation. Damage to the brain in schizophrenia, as noted above, is quite vast and covers widely disparate areas of the brain, involving multiple structures. Some areas are abnormally activated, while others are abnormally dormant. There are problems with various neurochemicals in the brain and receptor alterations in the cells themselves. In short, schizophrenia is a disease caused by massive damage to the brain. One recent study likened it to a forest fire in the brain. The problems in the arcuate fasiculus are but a tiny subset of the massive organic damage of schizophrenia. The fact that the arcuate fasiculus may be damaged by heavy cannabis use in adolescence is disturbing, but it hardly proves that such use causes schizophrenia, because schizophrenia requires much more damage than that. Further studies using DTI found no abnormalities whatsoever in any part of the brain. In fact, if anything, adolescent cannabis users tended to have larger brains, with more cells (white matter) than the controls. That doesn’t mean that using cannabis in adolescence makes you smart, but it surely rules out significant organic structural brain damage, and it does add interesting weight to the neuroprotective and neurostimulatory papers above. Furthermore, many reports of “cannabis psychoses” do not appear to be psychoses at all. This preposterous report of two cannabis psychoses, published in a respected peer-reviewed journal of all things, is illustrative. Looking over the paper, Case 1 appears to have just gotten really stoned. If that’s “cannabis psychosis”, then I’ve been “psychotic” on cannabis hundreds of times, and I must have witnessed thousands of other “cannabis psychoses”. Case 2 is a bit more difficult, as he became suspicious of the testers at one point. It’s well known that cannabis users can feel frightened and even “paranoid.” Lord knows, I experienced it many times myself. However, the man merely felt that the testers were “concealing problems” from him. That really does not qualify as a paranoid delusion. The world is full of suspicious people. At times, I’m pretty suspicious and wary myself, for good reason, I would say. The vast majority of people even with pathological suspicion or paranoid ideation are not suffering from paranoid delusions. Furthermore, the questions that are asked on questionnaires of cannabis psychosis are dubious. “Most people cannot be trusted.” Well, if you live in the ghetto or the barrio, that’s a damn good attitude! “Sometimes it seems like people are looking at me and talking about me.” Look, as you go about your business day to day, it’s quite possible people may take notice of you in one way or another. At times people may indeed talk about you, sometimes within hearing distance. It’s hard to say whether they are talking about you in a friendly way or not. Sometimes they may seem friendly; other times not, but mostly of the time, they will probably just seem neutral. A typical psychological questionnaire will ask you questions about many of these things. If I answer yes to any of them, it gets chalked up to “paranoia.” I know because I have taken these tests. If you act strange in any way, people are much more likely to stare at you and even talk about you behind your back. So if everyone who acts odd enough to get stared at is hip enough to recognize the obvious, that means they have a paranoid psychosis? There are indeed folks out there who seem to others to behave strangely. In our society, they may be called nerds, nervous, weird, or shy. Perhaps in Japan they fit right in. There are folks who live alone, never marry and even folks who never date. I’ve run across quite a few “odd” folks in my life who were not psychotic in any way. Most were not even mentally ill. Now, I can assure you that these folks are going to get stared at from time to time, and people will even talk and whisper about them behind their back. If they happen to be self-aware enough to notice this, does this mean that they are paranoid? In conclusion, there is some frightening stuff out there about pot and schizophrenia. At the moment, it should be read with caution. A judicious approach would be for adolescents to wait until they are at least 18 and possibly even older until they start using cannabis. The available evidence indicates a rapidly declining risk towards the end of adolescence that presumably declines to zero increased risk at some point probably soon after age 18. Even there, though, the Swedish study found that heavy users by age 18 were six times more likely to develop schizophrenia than non-users. So if you are going to use cannabis heavily, you should wait until you are at least 19, and possibly even older. Prudent cannabis users will wait until they are at least 19 and then not use the drug every day. Those using or beginning to use the drug later in life, for instance me at age 50, surely must have zero increased risk of psychosis. Further research will presumably elucidate some onset age at which use of cannabis is not associated with any increased risk of schizophrenia. I would also like to recommend a similar area of research: medical cannabis. There are many medical cannabis users now in various countries. Many of them are older people, as these are the ones who tend to be more injured or ill in life. An interesting study would determine precisely how many of these medical cannabis users are developing schizophrenia. I have not heard of a single case so far. The number of cases must be quite small. To add a personal link: I used cannabis for about 22 years off and on since 1973. All these psychiatric reports anger me because at my age and with my mental state, cannabis use dramatically improves my mental health. Many others report similar benefits. The notion that cannabis always or almost always causes deterioration of mental health is utter nonsense, and I am getting sick and tired of hearing of it. Sure, it’s bad for some people, but look around the Net and see how many people are using it to treat anxiety disorders, eating disorders, mood disorders, etc. Does it not stretch credulity to think that all of these people are just making stuff up? All my friends were pot smokers, and many were potheads. I also sold drugs, mostly pot, for 14 years, never got caught (neither did the vast majority of my friends) and don’t regret a thing. Actually, being a dealer was kind of fun. Not only did I never experience any psychotic symptoms while using cannabis, I have never experienced any while off of it either. Further, I have never seen one single case of psychosis attributed to cannabis, much less schizophrenia, and that includes probably thousands of pot smokers over decades, including hundreds of heavy users, many of whom used for many years. Based on my own experiences, any risk of schizophrenia due to cannabis is not likely to be large. I have known a few people with schizophrenia, but not many. I was good friends for about a year with a paranoid schizophrenic who heard voices much of the time until people told me to get away from him. He had only smoked pot a couple of times and did not like the drug. I know of one schizophrenic, ill from an early age, who loved to smoke pot. But it made him a lot worse, so everyone tried to keep him away from it. Interestingly, his brother, surely at risk of schizophrenia, was a dealer and very heavy cannabis user for many years, never developed schizophrenia and was reasonably well-adjusted. 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Does Marijuana Cause Brain Damage?

Repost from the old site. Fortunately for users, many of the most worst accusations against marijuana have not yet panned out. One of the most frightening is the specter of permanent brain damage. For instance, according to this site, marijuana:

affects, alters, and damages brain cells controlling thinking, emotion, pleasure, coordination, mood and memory. The pituitary gland is also damaged, which regulates hunger, thirst, blood pressure, sexual behavior, and release of sex hormones.Marijuana accumulates in the microscopic spaces between nerve cells in the brain called “synapses.” This clogging interferes by slowing and impairing transfer critical information. Long term use causes the brain to stop production of brain chemicals necessary to “feel good” – a negative feedback condition. And, the user becomes chemically addicted to marijuana.

These studies may be related to the famous Heath monkey studies done in the 1970’s. A recent attempt by William Slikker in Arkansas and Charles Rebert and Gordon Pryor of Stanford Research Institute to replicate Heath was not able to replicate any of his frightening findings. There was no brain damage whatsoever in Slikker’s and the SRI Group’s monkeys. In the early 1990’s, I conducted interviews with both Rebert and Pryor about these studies. At one point in the interview, an exasperated Rebert said, “Forget it. Cannabis is not neurotoxic.” Pryor had no explanation for the discrepancy between his findings Heath’s. There is no evidence that THC “accumulates in synaptic gaps and clogs them up.” There is also no evidence that marijuana causes the brain to “stop producing feel good chemicals.” I am not sure where they are getting that one from. Recent studies show no long-term changes in brain chemicals from marijuana use. Neither is there any evidence that, in a broad sense, cannabis causes “…damages brain cells controlling thinking, emotion, pleasure, coordination, mood and memory.” There is a possibility that cannabis use may impair the brain’s ability to winnow out extraneous stimuli to focus on one thing, but this is not yet proven. Nor is there any evidence of damage to the pituitary gland. This post in its original form was far too long. I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Structural Evidence

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I broke it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users to determine brain damage, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. A major charge against cannabis is that it causes actual structural damage to the brain, that is, damage to the brain cells, axons and dendrites themselves. In this post, we will look at this charge. In other posts, we will look at other charges relating to cannabis and brain damage. A frequent charge is that marijuana causes “changes to the hippocampus,” which may or may not be permanent. A new study released in early June 2008 suggested that use of more than 5 joints/day for more than 10 years (average of 20 years) caused shrinkage of the hippocampus and the amygdala in the brain. The hippocampus of the cannabis users was 1 Nadia Solowij of Australia was involved in this study, and her studies, for whatever reason, almost always find serious harm from cannabis, even at low doses (see below). However, four other studies found no hippocampal damage from cannabis. An MRI study from 2005 of very heavy cannabis users who had used cannabis on average of 20,100 times found no damage to the hippocampus at all. A study of cannabis-using young adults from 2006 found no damage to the hippocampus, or to any other structure. And a third study also found no hippocampal damage . The study of users from 2006 also found no damage to the amygdala. This study actually found that the hippocampus-amygdala was For what it is worth, 15-18 year olds with alcohol abuse (extremely common at that age) and alcohol dependence also showed hippocampal shrinkage. Even chronic stress such as is seen in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder causes shrinkage of the hippocampus. Such shrinkage is also a completely normal part of aging for all humans, and probably becomes apparent first around age 40. Another study released in March 2008 found that heavy cannabis use beginning in early adolescence caused loss of white matter in the corpus callosum, the part of the brain that separates the left from the right hemispheres. White matter is composed of the connections between neurons, or axons. This alarming study implies loss of axons in the corpus callosum separating the prefrontal cortex in early adolescent heavy cannabis users. This adds to a body of damage suggesting the heavy cannabis use in adolescence, especially in early adolescence, may be particularly risky. Yet another study found a marker for what they felt was a loss of axonal and neuronal integrity (this implies damage to brain cells and their connections) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (perhaps the most highly evolved region of our brains) in recreational cannabis users. Finally, a study found elevated nerve growth factor (NGF) blood concentrations in cannabis-using schizophrenics. This can be a marker for neuronal damage. The suggestion was that cannabis caused brain damage in schizophrenics who used it. How this relates to non-schizophrenics is uncertain. However, another study showed a this case they found fewer axons (white matter) in the left parietal lobe and increased axons around the left parahippocampal gyrus and left fusiform gyrus. Increased years of cannabis use was associated with increased axons in the left precentral gyrus. So, while one area appeared to be damaged, three other areas appeared to be improved by cannabis. As might be expected, postmortem examination of the brains of cannabis users found down-regulation of cannabinoid receptors in various parts of the brain, including the caudate nucleus, the putamen, the accumbens nucleus, the globus pallidus, the ventral tegmental area and the substantia nigra pars reticulata. The effects of such down-regulation were not known. One of the most frightening studies so far used DTI, a new method of looking at the brain that is better than MRI. This study found an altered development of the arcuate fasciculus in adolescent heavy cannabis users. This structure is a bundle of fibers connecting the Wernicke’s and Broca’s Areas of the brain, one involved in the production of language and the other involved in the reception of language. Damage to the arcuate fasciculus is associated with a particular type of aphasia, Conduction Aphasia, where language can be produced and comprehended well, but if you say something to the sufferer, they cannot repeat what you just said. They also have a hard time reading aloud, transpose sounds and morphemes in words, and substitute phonemes with similar-sounding phonemes when they talk. The arcuate fasiculus is still developing in early adolescence, but it is not known if it continues growing through late adolescence. In this study, lower volume was seen on the left side of the arcuate fasiculus in adolescent marijuana users. The revelation of this damage is quite disturbing, but the significance of this altered development is not yet known. Surely cannabis users do not have conduction aphasia, the typical result of damage to this structure. But this study adds weight to evidence that people should at least wait until they are 18 to start using cannabis. Cannabis use by minors is not a good idea and needs to be discouraged. Further studies using DTI have not found any abnormalities whatsoever in any part of the brains of adolescent heavy cannabis users. In fact, if anything, adolescent cannabis users tended to have larger brains, with more brain cells (white matter) than the controls. However, this study did not look specifically at the arcuate fasiculus. That doesn’t mean that using cannabis in adolescence makes you smart, but it surely rules out significant global brain damage. The damage to the arcuate fasciculus in this study is absurdly being played up as being evidence for cannabis causing schizophrenia, since this structure is also damaged, though more extensively, in schizophrenia. There are serious problems with the notion that problems with this structure could cause schizophrenia, not to mention with the whole idea of cannabis causing schizophrenia. I deal with the question of whether or not cannabis causes schizophrenia here. So at the moment, the issue of whether or not heavy cannabis use causes damage to either the hippocampus, the amygdala, the corpus callosum or the prefrontal cortex is up in the air. There is one study suggesting damage to the amygdala, but another study found no amygdala damage. There is one study suggesting that cannabis damages the hippocampus, but three other studies found no damage. There is one study suggesting damage to the corpus callosum in early adolescent cannabis users and another suggesting damage to brain cells and connections in the prefrontal cortex. Neither has been confirmed.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Neuropsychological Testing

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. One of the ways of determining brain damage from the use of drugs is to subject users to neuropsychological batteries. A neuropsychological battery is a test that is specifically designed to pick up brain damage. This post will deal with the results of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users. Recent studies looking at various neuropsychological batteries have in general not shown any permanent brain damage from the long-term use of marijuana. According to Harrison Pope, a meta-analysis of such studies on long-term marijuana users found no brain damage in seven of the eight areas and only a small effect on the remaining area, learning. Another meta-analysis of fifteen such studies of long-term users done by Igor Grant, who has been working in this area for a long time, concluded that marijuana did not cause brain damage. They did, however, find a “very small” impairment in learning and memory, but apparently did not feel it was significant enough to warrant being called brain damage. A typical study, here, found deficits in current users, but none in former users, half of whom had been smoking 5 or more joints a week. The abstinence period was three months. A study of male identical twins from the Vietnam Era, one of whom had formerly used marijuana and another of whom did not, found an absence of marked effects on cognition. A Canadian study found no permanent lowering of IQ scores in former heavy cannabis users. Nevertheless, it also found that smoking more than 5 joints a week lowered one’s IQ by about 4.1 points. But smoking 3 joints a week or less raised IQ by 2-6 points, the same as abstaining from marijuana. The test measured IQ taken between ages 10-19, and the IQ rise was a consequence of going through adolescence. Yet another study found that varying degrees of marijuana use from light to heavy did not accelerate cognitive decline in a group of 1200 persons of all ages. The only thing that did accelerate cognitive decline in this group was increasing age. Cognitive decline began as early as the 30’s and accelerated markedly in the 60’s. Although permanent effects are dubious, there are residual effects for heavy users on memory, learning and recall. These effects are quite clear even 24 hours after use and in daily users, last, subtly, for up to a week after use and may be related more to a mild withdrawal syndrome, since they peak at about 3-5 days post-use. By one month post-use, though, these deficits are gone. Therefore, chronic heavy users will always be somewhat impaired in these areas as long as they are using marijuana. A 1995 study by Harrison Pope tested chronic heavy cannabis users against controls after one, seven and 28 days abstinence. Effects were seen at one and seven days, but after 28 days, there were virtually no differences between the groups. This study shows that heavy long-term users will still be impaired even a week after their last joint. Yet it also shows that impairments are related more to recent use than to permanent damage.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: EEG Evidence

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. Struve et al conducted a study of the EEG’s of chronic heavy users and concluded that very long-term use was associated with changes in the EEG which he classified as “hyperfrontality of alpha waves”. Users who had used pot for 15-30 years had increases in the absolute power, relative power and coherence of their theta waves. A new study by Struve shows that this effect lasts for 28 days after last use. One suggestion is that this change may be due to organic damage, since they also found slower reaction time. They also found neuropsychiatric deficits that persisted after one month abstinence. Another study found decreases in alpha-2 and beta-2 waves on EEG, heart rate and even thyroid function. This study found these persisting after a month of abstinence. This indicates under-arousal of these bodily functions. The reduced heart rate, even though persistent, would seem to be a good thing. A more typical finding is increased alpha-2 waves in cannabis users. Alpha waves are associated with relaxation. Solowij found abnormal event-related potentials in the area of the ability to focus on a task and screen out extraneous information. This effect began after five years of marijuana use, regardless of frequency, oddly enough, and increased with years of use. Alternatively, it also began after 50 uses over more than five years. The problem appeared to be related to a de-coupling of a G-protein from the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, resulting in difficulty in screening out external stimuli. Solowij suggested that cannabis damages the cannabinoid receptors in the brain, causing those receptors to work less well. Some call this the “cocktail party effect” – the ability, say, at a party, to talk to one person and screen out the conversations of twenty or so others around you. Rick Doblin’s MAPS criticized Solowij’s finding as useful only for

states of consciousness that are efficient for hive-insects who want or need to function within a Newtonian-Cartesian consumer capitalist society. Obviously, people deliberately smoke marijuana to achieve states of consciousness that fall outside of this paradigm.

Nevertheless, Solowij is finding a clear deficit in users, and Solowij’s study is one of the the most damning so far for marijuana users. Solowij also found some deficits in evoked potentials in the area of information processing, but these seemed to be temporary. As noted above, Solowij always finds serious problems with cannabis users in her studies. However, a study by Patrick, et al found no differences in ERP’s after age and other factors were controlled for. Patrick was looking at visual, auditory and somato-sensory ERP’s. The Missoula Chronic Clinical Cannabis Use Study said that Solowij’s results were on the P300 latency test, and that Patrick tested the P300 latency and found no problems, but Patrick had only four patients, although they had used for 11-27 years. The Missoula study also said that the values for P300 in their subjects were normal. These two studies suggest that others have been unable to replicate Solowij’s work, but I do not know if either Patrick or the Missoula Group were trying to specifically replicate Solowij. So at the moment the EEG studies somewhat contradict the neuropsychiatric battery studies in that they may be finding some damage, whereas the batteries did not. Another study found that cannabis users who had smoked an average of 1½ joints/day for an average of 7 years had altered auditory evoked-related potentials on EEG had lower EEG power and lower signal-to-noise ratios at 20Hz. This was interpreted as a deficit in neural synchronization and sensory processing. Cannabis users also had elevated scores on a schizotypal personality disorder questionnaire that increased with years of cannabis use. The study attempted to link cannabis use to schizophrenia because schizophrenics show similar response on this ERP test. However, in schizophrenia the effect shows up at 40hZ (gamma range), not at 20hZ (beta range). We cover the relationship between cannabis and schizophrenia here on this blog.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Cerebral Blood Flow Findings

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. With the use of SPECT and MRI, we can now measure changes in blood flow in various parts of the brain. Permanent changes in blood flow, especially low blood flow, are said to be indicative of brain damage. Recently, some new SPECT studies have come out of Britain, and were published in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, appearing to show reduced CBF activity in certain areas of the brain with long-term heavy use of “skunk weed”, which is extremely potent marijuana. However, the part in the article where they talk about a user’s brain being “pitted and scarred” is nonsense. These are just areas of reduced activity. One user was a 16-year-old who had smoked every day for two years, another an 18-year-old who had smoked several times a week for two years and the third was a 28-year-old who had smoked for 10 years. Whether or not areas of reduced activity can be said to be “damaged” is an extremely difficult proposition to make. If the reduced activity is permanent, we can say that, but if it is temporary, it’s simply not “damage.” A report also indicated that a similar study showed an effect even after one month post-use in teenagers. Another study, this time using MRI to look at cerebral blood flow, actually found increased blood flow in the right frontal lobe, left temporal lobe and the cerebellum in chronic, long-term daily cannabis users. This means increased activity in these areas. If the British study is being used to say that cannabis damages the brain on basis of low cerebral blood flow, then this study can be used to say that cannabis improves the brain based on cerebral blood flow. Furthermore, this study would seem to contradict the British study. Yet another study concluded that very heavy cannabis use may be harmful, while more moderate or light use may be less deleterious. This study found that perfusion deficits in cerebrovascular flow attenuated in light to moderate users after one month’s absence, while persisting in heavy users. Moderate use was defined as 2.5-10 joints/day, while heavy use was defined as 11-50 joints/day. This study completely contradicts the British study that got so much media attention. The CBF findings may be related to dose. One study found an effect at 7.5 joints+/day, but found no effect at 5 joints/day or less. According to this study, it would be prudent to limit oneself to 5 joints a day or less. The finding of this study, of reduced activity in the frontal cortex combined with increased activity in the cerebellum, is a fairly common one in recent studies. Rather than damage, this appears to be a neuroadaptation to the effects of cannabis use on the brain. Yet another CBF study found changes in CBF in abstinent cannabis users on a stroop test. They found low CBF in the left perigenual anterior cingulate cortex and the left lateral prefrontal cortex and excessive flow in the hippocampus. The two regions with low blood flow are said to be involved in something called executive function, which I do not completely understand. The cannabis users scored the same as controls on the stroop test, but they used a different brain style than the one people typically use to  complete the test. Since the scores were the same, the significance of this study is called into question. There is an increasing body of literature showing that cannabis users utilize alternate brain networks than those normally employed, possibly to compensate for the effects of cannabis.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Psychological Damage

Repost from the old site. The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. A common accusation of those who oppose the use of cannabis is that it causes schizophrenia. We deal with that notion in this post. Along the same lines, cannabis is said to cause schizotypal symptoms in users. Schizotypal symptoms are best seen as a subset of schizophrenic symptoms, or like subsyndromal schizophrenia. I would argue against this notion just on impressionistic grounds: I have known hundreds or thousands of cannabis users over the years, and only a few of them were schizotypal in any way. Of the cannabis users I know now, none of them seem to be schizotypal in any way. I had a former girlfriend who I was convinced was schizotypal. Other than that, I’m not sure if I’ve met any. But anyway, enough of my impressionistic stuff, on to the studies. Cannabis users have shown elevated scores on schizotypy scales in six different studies. These scales have some serious problems, in my opinion (here is an studies continue with rats. Giving rats cannabis in utero, in adolescence and in early adulthood led to long-lasting memory problems, increased social anxiety and steady-state anxiety and decreased social interaction. Once again, this is interesting, but over a lifetime, I have not noticed a tendency for regular cannabis users to become increasingly socially avoidant or nervous. It is a common sequence that after years of good effects, people start reporting that pot makes them anxious. They usually phrase this as, “It makes me paranoid.” In general, these people tend to stop using the drug.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Cannabis Compared to Other Drugs

The original post in its native form was far too long, so I broke it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary of the findings of cannabis and brain damage, see here. LSD and psilocybin, while not causing permanent brain damage (that we know of so far), can cause HPPD (Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder), a long-term perceptual disturbance of unknown etiology. I have HPPD myself from using hallucinogens about 40 times, but “suffering” from HPPD once again is an interesting concept, at least in my case. All I get are brighter colors, mostly in neon signs and store displays, and only at certain times. Maybe lots of people would love to have this effect, as the world looks so much better this way. I called up an ophthalmologist about it and he laughed me off the phone, saying he doesn’t treat people whose colors improve. It is only my continuing neurosis that causes me to view these changes as frightening instead of integrating them. LSD does have a deleterious effect on the visual system of the brain – it is hypotoxic to that area in lab animals, for instance, birds – but it doesn’t cause any generalized brain damage at all that we know of, and we have been studying LSD’s effects on the brain for about 50 years or so now. LSD does cause reductions in 5-HT2 receptors on serotonin neurons. But this is a case of these receptors retreating back into the cell due to LSD’s assault on those receptors. After about a week, the receptors to poke back out of the cell again. The most recent evidence also indicates that psilocybin (mushrooms) and mescaline (peyote) also do not cause any generalized brain damage, although psilocybin can cause HPPD. Due to the risks of HPPD, this blog unfortunately does not recommend that anyone use LSD or psilocybin even one time, unless maybe if you are dying. Ecstasy (MDMA) produces comparatively dramatic harm to the brain after only a handful of doses (2-10 doses), with the effects increasing with continued use. The drug causes degeneration of serotonergic axonal terminals, which afterwards do not grow back correctly, if at all. There are suggestions that there may be hippocampal damage. On intelligence tests there are deficits in working memory, declining vocabulary, impairments in verbal learning, associative learning and attention and increased distraction. There also seem to be some mood changes. Perfusion deficits and increased delta waves on EEG have also been found, but the same study did not find these in cannabis users. Impairments were also found in the ability to drive a car in Ecstasy users, even after they were abstinent. However, a recent study found no persistent effects from one dose of Ecstasy. Therefore, it appears that using Ecstasy one time is possibly safe. However, taking Ecstasy as few as an average of 3.2 times causes noticeable damage in verbal memory. Ecstasy should be taken no more than once in a lifetime, if at all. Evidence strongly suggests that the heavy use of PCP, ketamine and DXM may cause permanent brain damage and can often cause schizophrenia-like symptoms which may be related to that damage. The theorized damage involves the vacuolization of neurons (basically a hollowing out and death of the neuron) in various parts of the brain. The evidence comes from rat studies and the dosages have been criticized, but humans are far more sensitive to the effects of dissociatives than rats are, so the differential doses are probably about right. The rat evidence has now been challenged by monkey studies, so the matter is far from settled. But until it is, extreme caution, if not outright avoidance, seems to be the best policy for these drugs. PCP can probably be used up to a dozen or so times in life with no permanent damage. Beyond that, things get a lot touchier. Heavy users show an extremely high rate of schizophrenic and psychotic symptoms, along with symptoms of brain damage. There seems to be some recovery with abstinence, but full recovery is by no means assured. Evidence indicates that ketamine can be used at least once with no permanent consequences at all to the brain. Beyond that, it is up in the air. Ketamine can surely be used at least a dozen times with no risks to the brain. Beyond that, things get hazier. Heavy DXM users have reported a very high rate of psychosis and schizophrenia-like symptoms, along with symptoms of organic brain damage. Users should approach DXM use with caution, and heavy use should be ruled out. Heavy methamphetamine use has been proven to cause permanent damage to dopaminergic systems, especially in the striatum, caudate and putamen (at ½ gram a day, 5 days a week, and 2 years of use). Studies have also shown degeneration of axons on serotonergic neurons and loss (cell death) of up to 1 In the study above, there was some recovery of the dopaminergic system with abstinence, but it was only partial. Meth can probably be used a dozen or so times without any permanent damage. Beyond that, no guarantees. There is some suggestive evidence of chronic psychosis, depression and anxiety directly related to heavy methamphetamine use (over 10 years of heavy use). Impairments in learning, processing speed, and working memory, along with delayed recall, are found in meth users. Brain dysfunction is often readily apparent in heavy meth users. This is one category of drug user, in contrast to most other drug users, that does sometimes appear “fried.” Much of this “fried” appearance seems to clear up with abstinence. Methamphetamine can probably be used up to a dozen times or so in moderation without any permanent consequences to the brain. Nevertheless, some users have reported permanent effects from only 2-3 weeks of very heavy use. Meth is nasty stuff, and it’s best to keep away from it. Heavy drinking can depress neurons for up to two years. With continued heavy drinking, at some point, there is organic damage, which in many cases is permanent, although there is often significant recovery with abstinence. The case of the “wethead” and “dry drunk,” the former alcoholic who is still damaged, psychologically or cognitively, is well known. Heavy use of barbiturates over many years causes a damage syndrome that looks like chronic alcoholism and that does not completely recover with abstinence. Even chronic Valium use causes long-term EEG changes of unknown significance. Sniffing glue has been proven to be possibly the worst thing you can do to your brain short of putting a bullet in it, and the effects do not recover completely with abstinence. Cocaine, unfortunately, seems to be capable of causing brain damage with as few as 11 doses (constriction of vessels in the brain). At three years of using several times a week, there is slowing on the P300 event related potentials test, that may not recover fully with abstinence. Recent studies have also shown that chronic heavy cocaine use causes reductions in gray matter in various parts of the brain. This means that heavy cocaine use causes an actual loss of brain cells in parts of the brain. It may also cause white matter reductions, which means a loss of connections in the brain. There are also impairments in attention, learning, memory, reaction time and cognitive flexibility in cocaine users. It is not known whether these clear up with abstinence. This blog recommends that lifetime use of cocaine be limited to 10 times or less. Even there, there is a slight risk of sudden death due to perturbations in the heart’s electrical rhythms. These perturbations can cause a sudden heart attack or even possibly a stroke. Vasoconstriction is probably involved. In many of the above cases, there is some recovery with abstinence, but often not to the previous level. Experimental use of PCP, ketamine, cocaine and methamphetamine (use up to a dozen or so times for each one) probably does not cause significant permanent damage. Beyond that, you play with matches. Compared to other drugs of abuse, such as Ecstasy, PCP, Ketamine, DXM, cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol, the effects of cannabis on the brain are dramatically less deleterious. In terms of its effects on the brain for heavy users, cannabis is surely by far least damaging intoxicant of them all, for what that is worth.

Cannabis and Brain Damage: Summary

The original post in its native form was far too long, so I have decided to break it up into seven different posts, in addition to this post. The separate sections are listed below. The original post, what is left of it, is here. For an examination of the evidence of whether or not cannabis causes actual structural damage to brain cells, axons or dendrites, see here. For an analysis of neuropsychological batteries of cannabis users to determine whether or not they suffer brain damage, see here. For an analysis of EEG testing of cannabis users to discover evidence of brain damage, see here. For an analysis of studies looking at cerebral blood flow in cannabis users, see here. For an admittedly impressionistic analysis of whether or not cannabis causes schizotypal symptoms in users, see here. For a summary comparing the effects of cannabis on the brain compared to other drugs, see here. Original monkey and later rat studies indicating structural brain damage have generally not panned out when conducted in humans, but a recent study from 2008 found damage to the hippocampus and amygdala. The hippocampus findings are contradicted by three earlier studies finding no damage, and the finding on the amygdala was contradicted by an earlier study. Another study found damage to the corpus callosum in early adolescent users. And another found damaged axons and brain cells in the prefrontal cortex. These findings have not yet been replicated. Yet another study found damage to two areas but improvements in four other areas of the brain. The consequences of this are not known. At the moment, whether or not cannabis causes structural damage or even improvements to the limbic system, corpus callosum, prefrontal cortex or other areas of the brain is somewhat up in the air. Neuropsychological studies of long-term users have been somewhat contradictory, but in general have not found significant brain damage, although they did find a “very small effect” on learning and memory. Apparently they did not think it was significant enough to be called brain damage. New studies show that chronic long-term users perform worse than controls in memory, learning and recall, and the effect worsens as use progresses. These effects last up to one week after the last use. Therefore, daily marijuana users are always going to be somewhat impaired in these areas. Some EEG studies found some interesting changes in theta waves in users who had used heavily and daily for 15-30 years. The significance of these findings is not yet known; one suggestion that is that the increased theta may be indicative of organic damage. But here again we do not have any clinical correlates of the organic theta change either. Even this study did not find permanent effects from sporadic or occasional use of marijuana. Another found problems with screening out external stimuli after five years of use, but it is possible that two attempts to replicate that study may have failed. A SPECT studies out of Britain showed low CBF in three heavy cannabis users. Another found that low CBF did not clear up in adolescent users even after one month. However, they have been contradicted by two other studies, one showing that the CBF deficits clear up after three months, and another showing increases in CBF as opposed to decreases. A new study using DTI found damage to the left side of the arcuate fasiculus in adolescent heavy cannabis users. This is one of the most disturbing findings to date, and adds weight to evidence that cannabis should not be used by adolescents, since the arcuate fasiculus is still developing in early adolescence. Nevertheless, no clinical significance has yet been attached to this finding. But another DTI study looking at the entire brain found no evidence of generalized damage, and if anything, found that teenage cannabis users have less brain atrophy and more brain cells than non-users. We would expect a clinical correlate of this to be more intelligent teenage potheads, but no one is suggesting that. Unless clinical correlates can be discovered, all findings of damage or enhancement of the brain via marijuana should be viewed with a critical eye. So the evidence on permanent brain damage from long-term heavy marijuana use is rather contradictory and is still somewhat up in the air. It looks like cannabis can be used for up to five years, or possibly up to 15 years, even on a daily basis, without any permanent harm to the brain. Beyond that, there may effects, but they appear to be more subtle than profound.

One Boy One Needle

[wpvideo t4THa9Vd] This video actually came out a few years ago, but it is still going viral in a pretty big way, or maybe it is just starting to go viral, I am not sure. It goes by all sorts of names. Most of them, other than Heroin Boy, are not memorable . The story behind the video is very strange, and no one knows if the video is fake or real. The story behind the video is that a Russian guy wanting to showcase the dangers of drugs arranged the shooting of the video, which involves some young boys shooting heroin in Russia. The boy who gets shot up is 8 years old. The guy shooting the video was actually a drug dealer. The video supposedly depicts the 8 year old boy shooting heroin and then dying from the heroin. After he shot the video, the dealer pitched it around to Western agencies to fund his drug rehabilitation clinic. He stole all the money and never set up any clinic. He was arrested by police later. The cops decided that he was guilty in part for the supposed death of this boy. He was imprisoned, and he died in a Russian prison. Cause of death described by officials: “He repeatedly banged his head up against the wall until he died.” Yeah right. Looks like he was beaten to death by guards, other inmates, or both. How do we know all of this? Because another version of this video has Russian dialogue running in the background (I got the less annoying “no dialogue” version). A translation of that dialogue reveals the story I just repeated above. Anyway, no one knows if the story is true. We don’t know the name of the 8 year old boy who supposedly died. Some are saying that he didn’t even die, that his supposed death in the video is “just the normal, expected effects you would get from mainlining heroin.” We don’t have a name of the supposed dealer, nor any proof he got arrested or that he died in prison. In short, nothing behind the background story about this video has yet been verified. Some say that this video is probably from the 1990’s, when Russia was seriously flooded with heroin, and even little kids were taking it. Since then, things have calmed down a lot. Anyway, fake or not, this video is really freaking out a lot of people who think they are watching an 8 year old boy die from shooting heroin (And maybe they are, who knows?). It’s in competition as one of the worst videos on the Net. This video doesn’t really bother me because it’s not violent. I just tell myself that the kid is going to sleep and not dying, and then everything’s OK. Of course it’s troubling to watch little boys shooting up. Unfortunately, the only copy I could find has this stupid semi-literate written dialogue crap at the beginning, written by the moron who runs the King of Cordia’s Den website. He’s the one who made this video, and my video-editing skills are not sufficient to get rid of his ads and lame illiterate copy in the video.

Middle Age: Get Healthy or Die

Repost from the old site. Mentally healthy, physically healthy and happy. Once you get around my age, God doesn’t give you many more breaks about this stuff. If you can’t be all three by middle age (mentally healthy – relatively speaking, physically healthy – no excuses, and happy – who needs misery?) at least give it a good shot! When you’re young you can blow off one or more of these things things and get away with it for a while, but as you get older, omissions like that really start to bite! Mentally healthy? Seems you can get away with being kind of nuts when you’re young, but I wouldn’t want to try it at my age. In males anyway, suicide becomes much more of a risk as we age. If I’m going to get depressed, I need to think about that. As a young man, I regularly felt horribly sad, but now I’ll hardly touch it. Depression in middle-aged males is often deadly. How odd. You would think it would be the young guy to buy it with his own hand, but it’s not. It’s the older, wiser, more mature guy. Anxiety? Young men are expected to be anxious. In an older guy, you just seem like an idiot. You’re already an old fart anyway who practically needs to buy friends, and you just gave people one less reason to talk to you. Psychosis? Never tried that one, but some of my friends did. Once again, that’s probably easier as a young man. Most people think young guys are insane anyway, so young psychotic males are generally not behaving dramatically different. With an older guy, it’s like, “Whoa!! Nam vet! He’s gooot a guuuun!” They just know you’re going to go postal. They have a point. It’s usually a middle aged guy going postal, and he’s usually not even nuts. He’s just depressed, plus he just got fired from his job, plus it was a shitty job in the first place, plus he needs Viagra now and he can’t afford it, plus his woman left him, plus he looks around at the women his age, half of whom looked like they swallowed Right Whales, and he thinks, “I’m getting tired of being a mammal.” Add it all up and the guy wants to just write “I’M A LOSER” in block letters on his shirt and walk around town for a few weeks. Pride prevents this of course, so the only logical alternative is to shoot up the former workplace or mall or wherever. Honestly! After every one of these shootings, we get all these people on TV and the press running around saying, “Why? Why? Why?” Oprah holds one her “Oprah Asks Why Shows”. Why, why, why, everyone is running around saying. They’re nearly at the end of the alphabet, they’re running out of letters, and they’re genuinely puzzled. They’re not asking the right question! The right question is not why do people go postal in the US and go shoot up random humans, the question is, Why the Hell does this shit not happen every day, or more than once a day? That’s the damn miracle. Like when teenagers get shot up at a school. People act like that’s the most horrible thing of them all. It’s totally incomprehensible. Huh? Why is that? Teenagers are the most uniformly unpleasant members of our bedeviled species. We shouldn’t be shocked if their perfectly reasonable fellow humans reacted to teenagers’ general assholitude by blowing away multiple numbers of them at once on a regular basis. What’s incomprehensible is how controlled and repressed we are, but that’s the reason for all the postal dudes anyway, right? You’re supposed to nod your head. If you can’t be mentally healthy, at least be as mentally healthy as you can possibly be. It’s important, dammit! Physically healthy? I blew off brushing my teeth for a while recently (I still flossed daily or more than daily) and at the last check-up, I had eight cavities. I’ve got two metal crowns in my mouth now from root canals, and if I don’t watch it, I’ll have a mouth full of metal or even worse, teeth I can pull out and show folks for a gag. In middle age, your sex drive goes from a continuous annoyance that gives you a great big embarrassing hardon (Often with no where to put it either!) every time the wind blows, to a closely guarded treasure capable of being snatched away forever at any time. Use it or lose it! You crave the beautiful young women you couldn’t stop screwing as a young man, and now they look at you like you’re a creepy old pervert. You look in the mirror and you seem to be actually aging, physically and observably, with about every new day. You want sex, but then you look at your wife or girlfriend or the women you’re dating. If she weigh 300 pounds or so like so many, she’ll probably almost kill you every time you do it with her. If she’s not 300 pounds and she’s around your age, you look at her and think, “Well, at least it’s female.” What are your alternatives? You could be in prison, getting fucked in the ass by other guys against your will. Ok, that’s a kind of sex. You could be having sex with your hand, but that gets old. I swear to God for every year men age, women age two. Correct me if I’m wrong! Like to eat lousy food? No problem, but by middle age, you’re going to start paying. If you’re not a fat pig yet, you soon will be. Fat tastes good, sugar tastes good, salt tastes good, so we Americans eat crap and commit suicide by fork. Hey, it’s the red, white and blue, man. Life, liberty and the pursuit of fattiness. Comes with a price. I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol by age 35 and was on health food the next year. I’m still on it, and I’m still on the statins and BP pills too. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, you’ve got diabetes. That’s one shitty disease. You can smoke cigarettes until about mid to late 40’s. Then they are going to start fucking you hard. You’ll only get a really crappy sounding hoarse voice that sounds like you got shot in the vocal cords if you’re lucky. If not, lung cancer or throat cancer and a weirdo voice box. All by 50. I’m not kidding; I’ve seen this. Like to drink? Have fun! Sure you can drink as a young man. That’s what being a young man is all about! Think you can keep it up til 45 or 50? Think again. Assuming you can even stay alive and do this, you will start to look like serious shit. Your face will look like it got run over by a tractor. Your teeth will all fall out. You will look 20 years older than you are, and you’re already old to start with. Your eyes will contain bottomless wells of sadness. And you will become bitter, angry and nasty. You’re old anyway, you look like crap, and now you have the personality of a wolverine. And why should anyone so much as give you the time of day now? By 45 or 50, you and your cohorts will start dropping dead. No one will be surprised, and saddest of all, hardly anyone will give a fuck. The autopsy will be unremarkable. “Natural causes” is not uncommon for this sort of thing. You want to take drugs for 30 years? Who are you fooling? You can’t do it. If you’re male, you will look like Keith Richards. Keith looks like a cadaver with a motor inside that gets injected with motor oil every day to keep the rusty parts moving. I honestly think Keith is a zombie. I think he died a while back, climbed out of the grave and back to life, and here he is with us again for a bit somehow. Ron Woods has that same “I got shot and lived” look about him. Many of the Stones do. You think that’s attractive? To look like human petrified wood? Get real. If you’re female, you end up like Marianne Faithful. People will look at you and think, “Wow, why doesn’t someone just shoot her and get it over with?” So, drugs for 30-35 years? Forget it. You can maybe smoke some pot, but that’s not really drugs. Hate exercising? Great. I hope you like canes, walkers or wheelchairs, because you will be using them soon enough. Seriously, get moving or get dead. In middle age, it’s not just a saying. Like your cock and how it works? Better get off that couch. The longer you sit on that couch, the sooner that thing goes into permanent suspended animation. Happy? Goes along with the mentally healthy part, but also the physically healthy part. Why do people engage in this unhealthy stuff above? In part because they are miserable. Why do emo morons cut themselves, burn themselves and sit around talking gleefully of suicide? Simple reason. Because these shitheads are not happy. How do we know this? Because happy people simply do not do these stupid things. You think happiness is something you can just blow off and be a callous cynic, a stoic hardhead or a cold fish, but look what happens when you do. Happiness is not something to be trifled with – lack of it has some hardcore consequences. If you can’t be really happy, then at least be kind of happy. If you can’t be happy at all, then lie and fake it and pretend to be happy. Laugh and tell jokes and act like you don’t care. I’m convinced even pretending is better than misery. Middle age. It’s no time to fuck around!

WTF Is the Matter With You? Part 2

Repost from the old site. That question is directed to Thistle Harlequin. I won’t upload the movie, and I think it’s copyrighted anyway. It’s pornographic, and we don’t host porn on the site. Rarely, we link to it, if there is some artistic or political reason. In this case, it’s more art or performance art than porn per se. It’s called Putrid Sex Object, a movie performed by Thistle Harlequin (adults only, and don’t watch unless you want to be horribly grossed out). This is part of what my artist brother calls the new art – “that gross, sick, fag shit.” He says this is the new thing in art, because everything else has been done already. Examples include Aliza Shvarts’ abortion jelly exhibit where she gave herself repeated miscarriages via morning-after pills after inseminating herself and then filmed the miscarriages, bottled them and exhibited them in an exhibit. Except the whole exhibit never came off, but that was part of the performance. Our very own Who Dares Wings is an artist in Seattle who makes Disasterware and something called Spone Funerary Ware – granulated calcified human cremains (cremated bones of dead people) over a porcelain slip in a riff on the time-honored tradition of bone china, which was made in part with ground human bone. He also makes things like porcelain vases and teapots with Hitler’s face on them with things like “Forgiveness” inscribed below. There was a guy in New York who was doing some of this art using dead embalmed bodies. He would take the bodies and then pose them in all these weird positions and then take pictures of himself intermingled with the dead bodies. The cops finally had enough of the publicity and raided the guy – I guess what he was doing was illegal. He was getting the bodies from Mexico. Along the same lines are Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, a crucifix photographed in a jar of urine. There is another fellow, Hermann Nitsch, who takes cow carcasses, slits them open, then makes himself look like a crucifix with the cow carcass as a “cross” background. He ends up covered in blood. His friends stand around him and they all get covered with blood too. There’s blood all over the ground and they shoot a photo of the whole thing and voila, instant art! Women are bottling their own menstrual fluid and using the blood to make blood paintings. It’s called menstrual art. Along the same lines, in Putrid Sex Object, Thistle Harlequin, a gay man, plays a woman who is wandering through a haunted house at night getting more and more frightened. Finally, she comes into a room where they are some severed cow’s heads on the floor. She falls to her knees, starts licking the cow’s head and then starts playing with it, getting blood all over her body. Then he pulls out a penis and it turns out it’s just some fag drag queen. He then puts his penis in the cow’s head and fucks it for a while, pulls out, and jacks off while covered with cow entrails. That’s it. That’s called art I guess. Wow, we really are reaching the end of civilization, are we not? My opinion on all this sick art is much the same as my brother’s. I’m not impressed. This is just gross, sick, fucked up stuff. Art is supposed to make you react, and in a way, it is supposed to be “beautiful.” It’s not supposed to be ugly, sick, repulsive and nauseating. Yes, we are all familiar with shit, puke, wet farts, mucus, snot, piss, blood, dead stuff and dead people, menstrual fluid, on and on. Why frame it up and call it art? Color me confused. Plus it’s not even funny; it’s just gross. Truth is, modern art has just clean run out of ideas. There’s nothing left to do. This is all that’s left, pushing the final boundaries. After this? I have no idea. Kill people? Kill yourself? Who knows. Seriously, there’s nothing left. Buy a famous sculpture, call the cameras in, gather around you and your artist friends, and smash it to bits? Done. The Surrealists were doing this stuff back in the 1930’s. Duchamp made a sculpture of a toilet and then he shipped it to a museum. He called it “Toilet” or something dumb like that. Along the way, it got partially destroyed via shipping. The museum called him up all apologetic and said, “Oh, we are so sorry that your sculpture got so messed up.” He rushed over to the museum, looked at his ruined sculpture and said, “NO! This is perfect! Better than the original!” It went on to become a famous sculpture. Surrealism was always a bit of a joke. The destroyed sculpture is better than the real one – OK, that’s funny. The Surrealists would run out in the streets of Paris in the 1930’s and assault priests walking by in their habits. Assault them, with fists and kicks. No one got seriously hurt, but the Surrealists called that Performance Art – assaulting a priest in habit. OK, that’s funny too. There are artist – musician types out there now who hold “concerts” where they show up on stage and then lower these sound speakers from the ceiling. The speakers dangle about ten feet above people’s heads, just out of reach. Then they turn up the speakers really loud with this extremely annoying noise playing right out of reach of the audience. The audience gets more and more angry while the performer stands up on stage, laughs at them and insults them. OK, I have to admit, that’s pretty funny. I believe there are similar artists out there who will schedule a show and advertise all the cool stuff they are going to do during the show. They cover the stage with all these props and it looks like a good show is going to happen. The theater fills up with suckers who shelled out $20/ticket. The performer’s not there. After a bit, someone comes out and says that the performer was delayed but will be there shortly. This goes on for a bit, and the big gag is that the performer never shows up. On purpose. The audience slows drifts away angrily over about an hour demanding a refund, but there will be none. That was the show. No artist. You got burned. Performance art! I have to admit that’s pretty humorous. Man Ray would have looked at that and said, “Two thumbs up.” I saw the Germs at the Hong Kong Cafe on December 31, 1979. It was Darby Crash on vocals, Pat Smear on guitar, Lorna Doom on bass and Don Bolles on drums. Joanna Went, performance artist, opened for them. She came out looking totally nuts, all made up like a clown, wearing some stupid outfit. Shrieking, “Catatooooonic! Schizophreeeeeeenic!” (that’s all I remember), etc. etc.” with these really wild eyes. She had on what looked like a football jersey on top with what looked like shoulder pads. She tore open the shoulder pads while screeching incoherently. Inside, the shoulder pads were packed with vast quantities of shredded cheddar cheese. Then she started to throw it at us, the audience. We threw it back at the bitch. I went to the bathroom. Darby Crash came in, saw me, and asked in this totally gay faggot voice, “Heeeey, you got any Tuuuinols?” Tuinols are a depressant pill. I thought for a second, looked up and said, “No, but I have some Tuinol cigarettes. Want to buy any?” He got this sneering smile on his face, and snorted, “Tuinol cigarettes!?” and walked away. That was my only encounter with the famous Darby Crash. Pretty soon, the Hong Kong Cafe was full of flying shredded cheese and you could hardly even see anything. Through it all, Joanna was screeching away. OK, that was pretty funny. The Germs played next. They all wore black leather jackets with a blue circle on the sleeve – that was their emblem. They were out of this world, of course. Darby Crash was crouching at the back of the stage with a sneer on his face. Everybody was throwing stuff at him – that was the idea – throw stuff at Darby. We took the ice out of our drinks and threw ice at Darby Crash. He crouched down at the rear of the stage like a tiger, loving the abuse and singing like a maniac. Re-formed band, The Germs Return. Don Bolles turned into an alcoholic and goes to AA meetings with his alcoholic girlfriend. He has a long history of drug abuse and run-in’s with the law. Darby killed himself (see below). Pat Smear went on to form the Foo Fighters. Lorna, Don and Pat re-formed the band, with actor Shane West as the new Darby Crash, and they go on tour. Here’s the new band, and Lorna is as beautiful as ever. Myspace page. They must be pushing 50 now. Punks til death. Heck, why not? Later, Darby Crash deliberately OD’d on heroin as part of a suicide pact with some idiot punk chick. I never hung around with these nuts, but some people I know did. They would do stuff like get drunk and hit people over the head with beer bottles – supposedly Pat Smear did that once. Great article on the Germs from the Orange County Weekly. We were leaving the Hong Kong Cafe at 2 AM on January 1, 1980. The LA punkers, drunk and menacing, were outside the cafe throwing beer bottles against the wall and watching them smash. We moved away quickly. We were walking through an alley back to the car, drunk and stoned. Someone came reeling behind us, walking very fast. We turned around. There was a young man about 25 years old. He had glasses on, but he had been hurt somehow. One of the glasses lenses was smashed over his eye. He was holding his eye with the smashed glasses lens, and there was blood pouring out of the area around his eye as he reeled drunkenly down the alley. We didn’t know if he had gotten beat up while drunk, or if he was really drunk and had fallen down, but he was in bad shape. We got out of his way before he would have crashed into us. He moved past us, careening back and forth down the alley, dripping blood all the way. “Let’s help him,” I said. “No way!” We looked at each other and both said, “Wow! Let’s get out of here!” We hurried to the car and drove home on the empty LA freeway, dodging the drunken vehicles along the way. It was the end of the Seventies, but it may as well have been the end of the century.

Philip Garrido's Blog

Here is the very strange blog of Philip Garrido, titled Voices Revealed. Philip Garrido is the California pedophile, rapist, kidnapper and sex offender who abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard off the street in 1991 when she was 11 years old and kept her in a tent in his backyard in Antioch, California until she was finally discovered this year at age 29. She had had two children by him, both girls, named Angel and Starlite, one 11, the other 15.

Angel (left), 11 and Starlite (right), 15, at a neighborhood party several days before Garrido's arrest. After his arrest, they were set free.
Angel (left), 11 and Starlite (right), 15, at a neighborhood birthday party thrown by Cheyvonne Molino for her 16 yr old daughter several days before Garrido's arrest. After his arrest, they were set free. This is the only known photo of the girls on the Web that I could find.
Garrido was apprehended when he appeared at UC Berkeley to try to make some bizarre public demonstration. He was passing out strange flyers and had two young girls with him. The girls appeared “robotic” and the officer become suspicious. The cop ran Garrido’s name and found out he was a registered sex offender. She contacted his parole officer and it turned out he was violating parole. An investigation of his home revealed Dugard, whom everyone had assumed was dead, and the two girls she had had, now 11 and 15, both by Garrido. Garrido’s wife was in on the whole mess as an accomplice (she was in the car when he abducted Jaycee 18 years ago. Curiously, cops had been called to the house several times in the past by suspicious neighbors, but they had never bothered to look in the backyard. Over the years, Dugard came to see Garrido as her husband and fell in love with him. Garrido got a record when he was 25 years old when he abducted a casino worker, Catharine Calloway Hall, in the parking lot of the casino where she worked in South Lake Tahoe. He took four hits of acid and her to a warehouse which he had set up as specifically for his sexual fantasies . There was wine, porn, sex aids and stage lights. He kept her in their for some time, raping her, until a cop making a routine check noticed lights on in a warehouse. The cop drove up, knocked on the door and Garrido appeared. A naked woman then ran out screaming. Garrido was arrested and sentenced to 50 years in prison but he was released early. He married his second wife, Nancy, in Phil Garrido and Nancy Bocanegra at the wedding in 1981. Nancy was born in the Bexar, Texas, to a Mexican-American family in 1955.
Phil Garrido and Nancy Bocanegra at the wedding in 1981. Nancy was born in the Bexar, Texas, to a Mexican-American family in 1955..
Three years after his release, he abducted Dugard. After his release in 1988, he stalked his former victim at her casino job, freaking her out . Rapists come in all varieties, but Garrido was particularly creepy. Abducting a victim and transporting her somewhere in your car, especially to weird warehouse set up for sex crimes, is a particularly dangerous escalation beyond the usual rapist stuff. Keep in mind that lots of guys rape women, in this country and all over the world. We can’t kill all convicted rapists (We’d be executing 1000’s or over 10,000 guys every year) and we can’t even keep them up all locked up forever. I’m no expert on rape, but I assume that most rapists don’t re-offend, since if they did, the statistics would be much higher. For instance, I’m familiar with the guys on the local sex offender list (and I know a few of them). In all the time I’ve lived here, I’m not aware that any of them re-offended. However, serial rapists and certain rapist subtypes are particularly dangerous. The type that abducts women and takes them off to strange places is particularly dangerous – these guys can turn killer. Setting up a place especially for your weird sex games in a serious escalation – once again, these guys can go killer too. Phil Garrido was Christine Marie Perreira, had a Portuguese last name. She describes him now as a monster. There are also quite a few Spaniards in this part of California.
Garrido's mugshot from his 1976 arrest in Lake Tahoe. He's definitely a White man, not an Hispanic like commenters are saying. I think he's Portuguese.
Garrido's mugshot from his 1976 arrest in Lake Tahoe. He's definitely a White man, not an Hispanic like commenters are saying. I think he's Portuguese.
At age 7, Garrido was exposing himself to neighbor girls, so he got an early start in the sex offending game. By high school, he had already been accused of raping a teenage girl.
Phil Garrido in high school. He was already a rapist at this time.
Phil Garrido in high school. He was already a rapist at this time.
This is a pretty typical childhood for these guys. They start young – kids or certainly adolescents. By his teenage years, he had a bad motorcycle accident and suffered a serious head injury.
Philip Garrido as a handsome young man.
Philip Garrido as a handsome young man.
He had to have brain surgery, and afterward, he was completely changed . After that, he began using LSD very heavily, every day for a long time. At some point, he become psychotic and said he was hearing voices. He continued to hear voices for the rest of his life. Although articles and his family are blaming the acid, I’m dubious. It appears that the acid just triggered schizophrenia in Garrido. It’s dubious that LSD causes long term or permanent mental illness in anyone due to damage to the brain for the simple reason that 60 years of testing have yet to find any damage to the brain from LSD, either in humans or any other animals. It does appear hypotoxic to the visual system, and HPPD seems to be the only proven long-term effect from LSD (I have it myself, and I only took LSD 9 times, which isn’t very much). If LSD doesn’t damage the brain, how can it give you permanent schizophrenia or any other mental illness? It can’t. On the other hand, some individuals who have taken LSD many, many times seem to be mentally ill. In some cases, the mental illness was permanent. If Garrido took acid every day for 5 years as he says, that’s a lot of acid – 1,825 trips. For the next couple of years, he took lots of acid, but not every day. It looks like Garrido took acid maybe 2,200 time or more. Further, he often took multiple hits when he fried – up to 4-10 hits at once. Timothy Leary probably took LSD over 2,000 times in addition to using many other drugs. In interviews with him in the 1980’s, I felt that he appeared damaged. A woman who took LSD over 4,000 times is still chronically mentally ill 30 years later. A man who took acid every day or nearly every day for a couple of years became mentally ill and had to be hospitalized. He recovered, but soon began very heavy LSD use again and had to be rehospitalized. We still lack a proper theory or explanation for these bad reactions, as the drug does not appear to damage the brain, as noted above. Until we know more, very heavy LSD use seems like a very bad idea. Looking at Garrido’s blog, there is only one possible diagnosis based on an examination of his writing: chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Garrido functioned very well, running a printing business, marrying, owning a home, but he’s clearly ill. From 1969-1975, Garrido was often dropping acid every day. It’s said you can’t do this since the effect wears off, but actually you can. The high is different, but it’s still there, just much more subtle. By 1976, he had been drinking, smoking dope, sniffing coke and dropping acid every day for several years. He was also jerking off compulsively (often in public – in restaurants, bars, drive-in movies and outside windows of homes) and spending lots of time hanging out in front of schools watching the schoolgirls. He specialized in girls aged 7-10. Once again, this is pretty much classic behavior for a quite dangerous type of sex offender. It looks like he’s a pedophile, and 7-11 or so is AoA (age of attraction) but it also looks like he’s non-preferential in that he also loves sex with older girls and grown women. The guy’s just a first-class weirdo. His neighbors in Antioch called him “Creepy Phil” because he was also ranting about what a drag it was to be a registered sex offender and talking about the voices that he heard. Police now suspect that Garrido threw wild orgy parties in which he offered up Dugard to his drunken buddies. At one time he tried to gouge out his first wife’s eyeball with a safety pin.

Damn Right We Are

And screw you if you don’t like it. Baby Boomers Still Getting High, Agency Says. I’m not sure when I last smoked pot. I think it was less than a year ago though for sure. I started smoking it again, and it was one of the best things I’ve done lately. I have an anxiety disorder called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). I don’t talk about it much on here because no one wants to hear about it, and this isn’t a “Crazy Blog.” Stigma is still an insanely (Joke!) huge issue, and I have enough problems as it is. Crazy Blogs are the ballooning number of sites where folks with mental dx’s (usually way worse than mine, like Manic-Depression, Major Depression, Borderline Personality Disorder, Asperger’s, Schizophrenia, etc.) mostly write about their mental stuff. I take meds for OCD – an SSRI called Lexapro. I’ve gone off many times, but I relapse slowly but surely every time. Thing is, I started smoking pot again a few years back on a whim, and it worked great for OCD! Unfortunately, folks like us have to deal with fools called “psychiatrists” and “psychologists” sometimes. Psychiatrists sometimes to get the meds. Psychologists for therapy, which I’ve had years of anyway and don’t really need anymore, as it doesn’t do that much for OCD, and I’ve already learned enough about myself and my life as I need to know. This whole field, including all of the psychiatrists and psychologists, is insanely (Joke!) dead set against this thing called “drugs,” despite the fact that they shovel them out all the time as a way of getting their fat paychecks. Plus the dope that the psychs dish out is way worse in terms of side effects than any kind of cannabis. One particularly annoying thing that these idiots do is the minute you meet some new psych-fool, and they learn you have both a dx and a drug history (even if deep in the past), they immediately make the extremely helpful suggestion that your dx was caused by getting high! Wow, thanks a lot! A dx that developed like 27 years ago, and I’m supposed to feel guilty for the rest of my life about causing it! I feel so much better now! I see why they call it the “helping professions!” Even though in my case there seems to be zero evidence that this is the case. As an obsessive, I’ve thought this issue to death 50,000 times in multi-hour mental vicious circle sessions. And drugs never really made it worse or better anyway in the past. Though sometimes coke would make OCD better, usually with plenty of booze too (I also did great creative writing on coke and lots of booze – great combo!) and one time when I was on LSD, I had 1-2 hours free of a particularly horrific obsessive thought that had locked into my brain 24-7, 365 for about a year or so. That was the only couple hours of peace I had had in that whole year. That’s why acid is evil, you know. Because it helps mental illnesses sometimes. Anyway, if you admit to drinking at all (I drink two glasses of red wine a night) or taking any drugs other than the evil junk the p-docs write scripts for, you get shoveled out of all the programs immediately towards some bull called “Drug Treatment.” Yeah, that’s right, if you admit you take one hit off a jay once a year, you go to local equivalent of Betty Ford. Lame or what? This is because recently the mental health idiots (not the people with the illnesses, they’re the smart ones), meaning the morons who “treat” us, decided to split “mental health” and “drug treatment.” Nowadays most of the former are dopers too, so this doesn’t make sense, but the whole motto nowadays is never the twain shall meet! So if you have any dx at all, even fulminant schizophrenia I guess, you get shunted to the Synanon clowns, and the mental guys won’t even talk to you until you get “drug treatmented.” Only then you go into mental health, but only if you get “clean.” What if you never go clean and keep using? I guess mental health says go away until you come clean. This is based on the somewhat lame idea that you can’t treat anyone with a psych dx as long as they are “using.” There’s no evidence that this is true as a general statement, and in a lot of cases, it’s just stupid. The local medical treatment folks are much the same. I use a public facility, so this may be the problem, but I bet privates are just as insane (Joke!). If you tell them you are smoking weed, even for good reason (like it’s medicine, duh) they freak out and remand you to “therapy.” Then you go to the Therapist Lady who knows little about dope and less about medicine, and she tries to force you to quit smoking dope. Mind you, this is in California, where cannabis is legal to use medically as long as you have a card! I can imagine what things are like in South Carolina. Unfortunately, this anti-drug societal meme, which is profound even here in the middle of a California barrio, has taken a hold of me lately, and I even haven’t been stoned in a while. I take exception to the standard crap line about drugs. I’m extremely happy that we Boomers are continuing to get high. The typical line is that drugs are evil life destroyers, and everyone who takes them is an evil scum to be avoided and shunned. In terms of my life experience, my position is that drugs are fun. Drugs are a blast. Drugs are oodles and oodles of kicks and endless good times. That’s been my experience. I never got addicted or totally messed up on dope like it seems every other user did. I’ve been using off and on for 35 years now, and I’m not any the worse for it. That’s because I was always just a recreational user. Everyone I tell this to is like, “No way! What’s that? No such thing as a recreational user!” This is because, you see, all users are either very casual experimenters or addicts and screwups with a life-wrecking problem. But really. The only drug I ever used regularly was pot, and even if you use it daily, it usually doesn’t screw you up that much. I used coke for 13 years and never got addicted. I did probably less than an ounce of coke in 13 years, maybe a gram or so a year. I’d just tickle my nose now and then. I only did speed 3 times, and I never got into heroin, although I admit to very much a liking for codeine these days, which is killer good for OCD too for some weird reason. I did hallucinogens for 14 years (40 times overall). These drugs actually act against addiction in that they are so overwhelming that it’s almost impossible to take them regularly. I took psychedelics maybe 3-4 times a year, never had a serious bad trip, and I don’t think I have any serious consequences from it other than really bright lit up colors sometimes, which I think is HPPD. I’ve known many folks who took LSD anywhere from 1-700 times, and I can’t say I’ve ever met one person who was messed up from taking the stuff. I’ve known folks who have been using pot daily for 20-30 years, and they are psychologically normal in every way, shape and form. Those that were not, I saw them quit pot, and in general, they didn’t get any healthier psychologically. Sometimes they even started back up again, and still not much changed. I concluded that pot in general doesn’t seem to have much to do with psychological issues one way or the other. The notion of the permafried pothead or former acid user is largely a myth as far as I can tell, or at least it’s uncommon. Most of the really psychologically messed up folks I’ve met weren’t using anything. I always thought maybe they could have used some weed to mellow them out a bit. Oh yeah, one more really evil thing pot does to me. Sometimes it makes me laugh. For hours and hours, off and on. And, even after the high wears off, it still makes me laugh, even for days afterwards, even out in public (where I do try to suppress my giggles). I don’t care if people think I’m nuts for laughing in public. The sane people will just figure I’m thinking of something funny, which is exactly why I’m laughing. So you see, that’s one more reason cannabis is so evil. It makes people laugh, sometimes on and off for hours and days on end. We can’t have any of that now, can we?

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