Geezer is combing his memory, such as it is, for anecdotal evidence to support the claim that people who smoke pot are 40 percent more likely than those who don’t to develop some sort of psychosis. So far, the memory scan suggests that the claim is accurate.
ScienceNow reports on the study, conducted by researchers from four universities in Great Britain, which concluded that the psychosis risk for occasional users is roughly 3 percent to 4 percent, compared
with a 2 percent to 3 percent lifetime risk in the general population. Among heavier
users, the researchers found,–people who smoked pot more than 100 times–the odds of
developing psychosis increased an average of more than 200 percent compared to
the general population.
Read more in ScienceNow.
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I read this study and ask “Is this really a significant statistical difference and does it cause psychosis or are people self medicating because they are all ready psychotic and THC is helping treat their symptoms at an early stage? Other forms of chemical exscape are use by people trying to treat psych problem IE etoh and depression. As I read the original article I did not see any of this addressed
The first part of Mark’s comment is wrong … 40% is certainly significant. The second part is on the nose … WHAT is the significance? Forget the self-medicating stuff, are the sort of people who break the rules the same sort of people who develop psychosis? Add in the self-medicating bit and suddenly the statistic becomes meaningless. It is just possible that half the pot smokers who develop psychosis are not diagnosed because a) their problems are attributed to the pot or b) the pot controls their symptoms.
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