My posts are not usually this long, but I am truly outraged! I watched the most enraging piece of trash on the Documentary Channel called “Messing with Heads”. This show was tagged as a documentary and formatted like a documentary. However, by definition a documentary portrays reality and is non-fiction. The Nazi film Triumph of the Will was clearly the inspiration for this 2-hour long Australian propagandist film about marijuana.
Not only did I study psychology, but I also used to have affection for pot in my early 20s. I was acquainted with many stoners as well as hard drug users and addicts. I am not a dumb person. I am an observer and a sponge. From this and my knowledge of basic brain biology and psychology, I am intelligent enough to know that this show was attempting to convince that the exception to the rule is in fact the norm.
I was watching in utter disbelief. Even my husband, who has always been sickeningly straight edge, was getting angry watching it with me. Why? Because unless you live in complete isolation from the world and get all of your information from sources like Fox News, you know that pot does not normally have this affect on people. Anyway, let us begin the tearing apart of this ludicrous waste of air space.
Show Background
The show profiles a few Australian youths that have been hospitalized for addiction to marijuana and psychosis caused by it. The goal of the film was to show that marijuana is far from harmless and in fact is just as bad as or worse than “hard” drugs. We always heard about pot being a “gateway” drug. Well, forget that! Psychosis and heavy lifelong addiction is apparently caused directly by marijuana. We had better tell all the ex hippies that are now sober and working in the corporate world that they are in fact psychotics in the throes of heavy addiction.
They indicate that pot smoking today is much different than it was in the 60s. The point was made that because of hydroponics and other factors, there is more THC in today's weed than in the past. I’m not arguing this point because breeding pot is serious business today and this may very well be true. But there always is just a shred of truth in propaganda isn’t there? They state that in the 60s everyone shared joints and today everyone smokes from a bong, so the amount of THC ingested is also greatly increased due to this.
Is Australia that different from America? Did my friends parents that were at Woodstock lie about those hookah parties? From how often I see kids buying rolling paper and single cigars from the store, I think joint and blunt smoking is still as popular as it was back in the 60’s and the 90‘s when I was in college. Bongs cost money and must be maintained. If you do not want to buy one, more effort goes into making one than just rolling a joint or packing a pipe. Maybe Australian kids are all rich and can afford to buy “accessories”. In any event, scientific studies have shown that the best way to smoke marijuana is through a bong or hookah because harmful chemicals in both the plant and those mixed in by dealers are filtered through the water.
According to the show, one out of five Australian youths smoke weed and of those, 10% are addicted and use every day. Then they said that half of all Australians have smoked it by the age of 16. So which is it? One-fifth or one-half? Many of these kids are regular users by age 14. I’m sorry, but even in a drug-scourged country like the US, we do not have many regular drug users that are under 14 outside of poverty-stricken areas. These kids were clearly middle class based on their clothing, even skin tone, cleanliness, and mannerisms. Oh, and all of them had facial piercings. Simply not good candidates for kids that are going to have so little adult supervision that they can smoke weed all day long without anyone noticing or caring.
Marijuana Induced Psychosis
They stated that extended use is causing severe paranoia and schizophrenia, which is literally filling up their psychiatric wards. I found that research has shown that in young people that are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, heavy marijuana use can cause similar damage to the brain as schizophrenia. No similar effects have been found in people without family or personal history of similar mental illness. So, if their psych wards are filled from pot smoking kids going psychotic, they must have a lot of genetically predisposed people down under!
That was the rational part. Now let's talk about the completely crazy propagandist part. The profiles.
The first girl was a heavy user. She got clean and after 2 years started having delusions and the compulsion to jump out windows. To quote them, she “got” schizophrenia. She spent 15 months in the hospital and relapsed 7 times during her stay. Now she is better and has lived a completely normal life for four years. Besides looking androgynous, she looks perfectly normal. She talks perfectly normal. She is pretty much cured.
First of all, where were these so called doctors trained? You do not “get” schizophrenia, you develop it. People with schizophrenia do not relapse, like a person with cancer. The disease is always there, just in varying degrees. Schizophrenic episodes can be cyclical or triggered by a plethora of things.
I have known a few schizophrenics in my life as I stated in a previous post. It can take years to get medication right in a schizophrenic patient. It takes a minimum of two weeks for the drugs to even normalize in the body and start to do their job. Moreover, symptoms do not magically disappear. It takes several weeks to months for the correct medications to remove the symptoms. In addition, schizophrenia never goes away. There is no cure.
Even when the right medication cocktail has been found, the person still isn’t “right”; they are just functional. Why? Because antipsychotics have side effects that cause behaviors and ticks that are sometimes almost as bad as schizophrenia itself. In short, medicated schizophrenics appear in both manner and appearance, medicated. Neither this girl, nor ANY of the people profiled in this show appeared medicated. Nevertheless, they were all perfectly ok and living wonderful lives now that the evil demon weed was out of their lives. Interesting.
Marijuana Induced Mania
The high school boy they profiled was much more entertaining, not only for his claims but how serious and dramatic it was portrayed. He smoked pot up to 20 times per day and detailed that he smoked at 8 am, 8:30 am, and again at 9. He smoked in the shower so his parents couldn’t smell it. When using pot he had very bad “manic” episodes where he wanted to play loud music, drive fast, and yell. He came from a dysfunctional background and blocked everything out instead of talking about it. He has discovered that the key to being psychosis free is healthy eating, no stress, and exercise.
Oh, let's dig into this. First, how are these kids going about smoking pot? Smoking weed is not a quick fix drug like heroin. You do not “do pot” every half hour. Smoking something, even heroin or crack, is not done every half hour. It takes longer than shooting up or sniffing something up your nose. I've known a few people that were literally perpetually stoned. They did not smoke every half hour nor did they smoke anywhere near 20 times per day.
He smoked in the shower so his parents couldn’t smell it. His parents actually were completely unaware that he smoked marijuana at all! What kind of water do they have in Australia that masks the smell of pot? I’m sorry, but if your kid is doing pretty much anything 20 times a day, you know about it.
Let's talk about this manic episode. Pot relaxes you. The sativa strains give you an energy buzz, but nothing like a manic episode. You just get chatty and don't want to sit around. I decided to do some research on this and discovered that in those who are bipolar, marijuana can trigger a manic episode. I searched quite extensively and none of the information I found stated that marijuana will cause a manic episode in anyone that is not bipolar. Marijuana does not cause bipolar disorder; the disease must already exist for THC to have this effect. On that note, his story seems to go right along with that information. I particularly loved how his key to being psychosis free is exactly what psychiatrists tell their bipolar patients. Now that he doesn’t smoke anymore, he just has “tiny manic episodes”. I’m sorry, there is no such thing.
Marijuana Addiction
This kid also talked about the horrible withdrawal symptoms he had when he stopped using. What were they? He got angry and depressed. Sorry. Look up the definition of withdrawal. It involves physical symptoms, not just being a little cranky. So let’s talk about the addictiveness of marijuana.
There are two ways that a drug can be “addictive”. The first is by causing physical dependence. When the amount of certain foreign chemicals introduced to the human body ceases or lessens, the body deals with this abstinence by producing various physical and emotional withdrawal symptoms. This happens with alcohol, heroin, caffeine, innumerable prescription medications, and even aspirin. It does NOT occur with THC, the drug in marijuana. No matter if you inject THC in your veins or smoke a blunt in the Walmart parking lot every night, your body will NEVER have withdrawal symptoms from THC if you stop smoking. However, you may withdraw from the drugs the pot is laced with, such as meth or heroin.
The second and more powerful way to be “addicted” is related to the pleasure and reward neurotransmitters of the brain. If we experience a reward, this reinforces to us that what we are doing is good and should do it again. When addictive drugs are taken, the brain is flooded with one or more of the neurotransmitters that are part of the brain’s reward system, primarily dopamine. Depending on the drug, the brain either says, “Oh, I don’t need to make my own anymore”, or “Oh I don’t need this much, I’m shutting down the receptors.” The more of a drug that is taken and the longer the period of time, the more of this effect is seen. This causes the person to need to use drugs in order to get that reward. Guess what? THC does not activate any of the neurotransmitters associated with addiction.
THC is a cannabinoid chemical that activates the neurotransmitter anandamide, a natural cannabinoid. These affect short-term memory, coordination, learning, and problem solving. Since THC mimics anandamide, irregular signals are sent to the brain, making someone act stoned. If you know any frequent pot smokers, you should be able to see the correlation to these four areas that cannabinoids regulate. I hope we can all agree that while we can be addicted to pleasure, we cannot be addicted to remembering, walking in a straight line, or figuring out a complicated issue.
You might be thinking, “But marijuana causes euphoria.” No, it doesn’t. Euphoria is caused by dopamine and similar chemicals, which are not activated by marijuana. Pot alters your perception of the world. Some people like this, some don’t. Of those who like it, the feeling is not always euphoria. For those that do feel euphoria, the release of dopamine is caused by the thrill of altered perception, not by the drug itself. With a drug like cocaine, whether or not you “like” how it made you feel, chemical euphoria occurred in the brain.
With that being said, literally anything can be addictive. People release the neurotransmitters of addiction every time they do something that makes them feel a rush (either good or bad), like winning a board game, shopping, sex, or getting hurt. If any of these actions are done enough, it can become an addiction. Gambling and self-mutilation are very good example of this and are both actually more likely to cause addiction because winning and pain always trigger these chemicals into action.
Yes, smoking pot regularly is bad. However, so are a myriad of other substances that are legal and not demonized. You can die of liver failure if you take too much Tylenol! You can't even overdose on marijuana. I think that parents need to pay attention to their kids. Watch their behavior. Pay attention to signs of emotional problems and mental illness. Don’t blame all of your country’s problems on pot.
Note: After writing this, I noticed another blogger wrote on this over a year ago and shared my same opinion. I'm happy to know I'm not the only one out there...... I also have to thank my niece Courtney for making double sure my psychology info was still as I remembered it from over a decade ago. :-) Thanks!
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