For decades, weed’s deleterious health effects were exaggerated, experts said, leading to excessive criminalization
This line fron the article is exactly why I’m skeptical. I had to sit through tons of middle school and high school programs that lied to me about the physiological effects of marijuana. This article itself opens with an anecdote about one individual, but fails to identify any academic study suggesting physiological addiction because… There is none.
Psychological addiction is real. There’s a reason that in most places any gambling advertisements have to include a warning and a hotline. The problem is that these sensationalist articles never make the distinction between psychological and physiological addiction. This article mentions when the case study first tried marijuana, but fails to detail the circumstances of her life, her personality, and other factors that can contribute to psychological addiction.
Add in that the medical marijuana industry is trying to replace the very physiological addictive (and profitable) pain medications… Add that to the years of lies in schools and media… Forgive me for not trusting this BS at all.
I’m not the biggest smoker, but still a few grams a day and withdrawal is real. There is a physical side to it, it’s pretty mild like with coffee but it’s certainly unenjoyable.
I vape daily, but I don’t really get withdrawal. If I go away on holiday or whatever having several weeks off is a breeze. However if it’s there at home and I have nothing else on, I will get high, so I accept I’m probably psychologically addicted, but I’ve made peace with that since I still work full time and pay my way so who’s it hurting.
Addiction is addiction. Whether you’re addicted because you took a drug that your brain now depends on, or you’ve gotten used to doing something that makes you happy and your brain depends on the stimulus to make the happy juice, addiction is a physiological response. The effects on your brain are chemical. Your addiction is marked by the changes in thinking to seek and obtain your particular “high” in whatever form your brain needs, and you will experience withdrawal if you stop.
Some substances and activities are highly addictive, because they are designed to be. Marijuana is more potent than ever, and the experience of shopping for different strains and trying all the “flavors” is itself a little reward system.
People want to make distinctions between chemical addiction and psychological addiction, and there are differences, but addiction is addiction.
So addiction is a word so broad as to be practically meaningless, is what you’re saying.
Maybe start by not assuming everyone has normal brain chemistry. As someone whose brain couldn’t make “happy juice” on its own for years (I have a problem processing folate, which is an ingredient in a bunch of brain chemicals), if I hadn’t smoked weed before I found out what was wrong, I wouldn’t have lived long enough to do so.
I think you may be trivializing a pretty complex subject a bit too much
There is a major difference between our coloqual addictions (sugar, caffeine, our phones) and a substance use disorder. It’s worth talking about where on that spectrum marijuana lies
For my part, I suspect that marijuana is much closer to the former than the latter.
I’ve worked with a lot of people in recovery over the years, and while some ex-stoners will tell you how hard it was for them to quit, anyone with a real habit will tell you quitting weed isn’t anywhere near the same level as opiates, benzos, amphetamines, alcohol, or even nicotine
The other thing that's kind of questionable was that she was able to stop during her pregnancy. Like, when she knew she really had to stop, she did. This is basically in the same level as video game addiction. It's not the drug. It's the situation. Sure, she should be able to get help, but it's not really marijuana specific help she needs
You’re right not to trust this BS at all. It’s straight up reefer madness propaganda. It’s widely acknowledged that anything pleasurable can be addictive, that doesn’t mean we need to ban gambling or alcohol or weed.
Very anecdotal, but I know multiple people who are addicted. Could very well be psychological, but if they go more than a day or two without smoking they are terrible to be around. Which sucks because I’m stuck with
A) don’t be around them
B) be around them while they are baked and smell
C) be around them while they are terrible
I’ve been sticking with A for the time being, but it sucks because I feel like I’ve already lost a few friends when I stopped smoking and it seems like that is their whole life.
If the only way you can live your life is to be stoned 24/7, and you are a grouch going off the handle at every little thing without it, it would probably be best.
I’ve got nothing against smoking weed, but just like I don’t want to be around someone piss drunk all the time I don’t want to be around someone who is blitzed all the time. There is a time and a place.
I think this is your bias showing. Coffee addictions is way way way way WAY more comment than cannabis addiction. And yes, people on a caffeine high do act stupid and yes coffee fucking stinks. I’m guessing you drink coffee yourself?
That’s not me, but I don’t really feel like it’s particularly helpful to be in someone’s life if that’s the way you look at it. Especially if it’s a situation where your own standards have changed while theirs haven’t.
Honestly, I don’t really want to be spending my time around people who look down on me at all, full stop. Whatever the reason they may have, why have people in your life socially whose company you don’t enjoy? I used to put up with a lot of that, largely when I was broke and directionless, but it’s not really worth it. There are so many people out there, why not find some who are on the same page?
That doesn’t have to attempt to be a position of moral superiority or putting your nose up about lack of responsibility. It can just not be a good fit. Lots of people aren’t a good fit for one another.
Yeah keep away from people who look down on you or others, they’re doing it because they’re angry at you/the world and they will take it out on you every chance they get - doesn’t matter if their excuse is that you smoke, don’t dress how they like, listen to the wrong music for them, aren’t green enough or are too green… If they look down on you they will work to make their emotions reality by pushing you down.
It’s just a support network… peers that believe in you to do better things.
If you can’t take criticism then you have every right to shut out people who are concerned about you and toke instead.
I personally felt bad about myself when I was using weed to medicate. What was freedom became something I couldn’t escape from. Many people might not want to be where they are and want help to function. You never know if that person needs support.
On the other hand if you are functioning and know that you’ve earned what you enjoy, you can probably handle someone voicing concern.
I used weed to medicate when every drug my doctors gave me failed for years. Because of smoking weed every day for years, I lived long enough to take things that actually treat my problem, and was immediately able to drop my weed consumption as much as I liked. I do it maybe 2-3 times a week now. How do you tell someone who’s addicted from someone using it to medicate something else when nothing’s available, from the outside?
I also think the word “addiction” is so broadly used as to be practically useless at this point. I could stop weed, no problem. If I try to get off lithium, withdrawal city. But you don’t hear people talking about lithium addiction. Plus, if we’re using the same word for responses to heroin, weed, and porn, we need better vocabulary.
Crazy that you’re getting downvoted for this. I smoke occasionally, but used to smoke daily and had to quit cold turkey for over a year. I now (almost 3 years since I first stopped cold turkey) refuse to have any marijuana on me and only smoke on the occasion that I’m out with friends and it’s offered to me. That ends up being about one toke a month. Irritability and bad mood for chronic smokers when they haven’t smoked enough to get withdrawals is common enough (anecdotally from my own experience quitting and seeing others around me struggling with it as well).
Especially if someone has quit and finds the smell off-putting or doesn’t like to be around people who are either constantly baked or very irritable, this point of view is perfectly valid and adds to the conversation. Don’t downvote just because you personally disagree.
I’ve got nothing against smoking. I I have friends who still smoke, and the ones who aren’t addicted it isn’t a problem. A toke here and there to catch a buzz is no issue. It’s when it’s all the time, they can’t go without it, and they always smell like you just hotboxed something. I just don’t wanna be around that.
Yeah man. We have people like Cheech & Chong, Willie Nelson or Snoop Dogg who for decades consume Marihuana. Did it destroy their life? Did it destroy their careers? Did it destroy their bodies? Nope! Nothing.
But artists who excessively drink alcohol or consume other drugs? They are wasted within years, broken bodies and souls who need years to get healthy again - if they don’t die before.
A lot of people don’t realise this but he lives in a mansion and mostly does art every day, he’s not living a party lifestyle anymore and hasn’t for quite a while - it’s just the same equation we’ve seen time and time again; rich = great healthcare + relaxation = longevity and health. Like how Elon looks younger and healthier than he did 25 years ago, it’s just money.
After about 8 years of daily smoking (and slowly smoking more and more because of tolerance building up) I decided to quit for various reasons.
I’m at about 10 days off cold turkey and I’m still struggling a lot. At the beginning was a big loss of appetite, trouble going to sleep and obviously the psychological desire to smoke. The worst part for me though is the intense anxiety, irritability and the lack of motivation to do anything. It feels like falling back into depression and slowly try crawling out of it.
Really disappointing to see so many people in here denying what I’m going through. Yes there’s always been propaganda against using, but there’s still some truth to it. I’m still glad that it’s legal here in Canada because it did help me at one point, but like every drug, you have to be careful.
All of these things you describe are very real but they’re not physical withdrawal symptoms, but indeed psychological. The mind is a very powerful thing, so these effects can be very powerful, I’m not trying to dismiss your experience. However they are not the same as for example withdrawal from heroin or heavy alcoholism, both of which create actual physical pain and potentially death.
Every individual is different too, so people sharing how they can be heavy smokers and stop while on vacation for a few weeks without issues aren’t trying to dismiss your experience, just like how you shouldn’t dismiss theirs.
I’ve known physical withdrawal in the past and am a daily smoker now, I’m also one of those that can just stop on vacation no big deal, but I seldom skip a day at home.
They’re downplaying them possibly because you can’t die from marijuana withdrawal. It’s physically impossible, you can experience nasty side effects but you will live. Compare that to a heroin addict, pain pill, or alcoholic who has a high chance of literally dying if they stop cold turkey.
Talk to those with withdrawal symptoms from “real” problem drugs and it won’t even sound like the same experience. The other side is too, you’re approaching this pretty unscientifically. It’s possible you actually ARE depressed and aren’t use to feeling it full force because you were self medicating for years.
Marijuana is considered physiologically addictive.
From UpToDate:
In a national survey of 1527 cannabis users who reported at least three times per week use, the most common symptoms of withdrawal were sleep difficulty (14 percent), irritability or anger (14 percent), anxiety (13 percent), headache (12 percent), and depressed mood (11 percent). Other symptoms such as restlessness, decreased appetite or weight loss, abdominal pain, shaking or tremors, sweating, and fever or chills have been described.
I agree. From my personal experience, I smoke daily and each time I’ve travelled internationally, where I can’t bring my legal weed, I always suffer from poor sleep for a good week or so. It’s nothing serious but it’s noticeable.
I know for sure one of the flights was 1hr 15min and just 1 time zone away so I don’t think jet lag was an issue that time but it could have made it worse. When I went to Cuba which was 6+ hours and 2 time zones away, yeah, I can jet lag being more an issue but I’m certain it’s a lack of weed.
Also, rat studies indicate that environment plays a large role in the symptoms we see as addiction - the inability to stop, constantly seeking more of the drug, etc. These symptoms tend to stop when the rats had adequate engagement, weren't overcrowded, etc. Even when they continued to have access to the drug, they tended to stop.
We saw something similar in humans after Vietnam. The soldiers over there were doing any and everything to avoid the horrors of war. Even when they came back with PTSD, we didn't see a huge uptick in drug addiction. This requires a lot more study, but there are some pretty good indications that people get addicted when their lives suck and they don't see any workable options available to change their situation. Addiction may be a disease based in despair more than an innate status in the brain.
i started smoking because i have mucle pain every day (muscular disbalance) basecally my mucels are to short and i because i liked the affect. it’s been around a year and a half in that time i noticed beleave it or not (i don’t care) my memory got better and i’m much happier mostly because i don’t have to take pain killer that often. if i don’t have any other than not being able to be very active(because of pain) i don’t notice it to much of curse i sometimes then think it would be nice to smoke one but that dosen’t happen to often. at least for me being a stoner and being lazy dosen’t apply at all i’m a mechanikalengeneer (i did an apprenticeship) and now i’m doing a second one as a programmer.
To save some people a click, growth hormone apparently used to be extracted from the brains of human cadavers in the UK and some children treated with this later developed Alzheimer’s, some of them as early as their 30’s.
Worth reading the whole article, very interesting!
Funded and authored by the company wanting to sell you their disinfectant.
Conflicts of interest: Drs. Julie McKinney and M. Khalid Ijaz are engaged in R&D at Reckitt Benckiser LLC. The other authors declare no competing interests.
Funding/support: This study was funded by a grant to the University of Arizona from Reckitt Benckiser.
Mythbusters proved that there are fecal bacteria everywhere and as such you can never reasonably completely avoid it. However, they didn’t prove whether there are other bacteria or viruses that are kept contained with a closed lid compared to with an open lid, or if the viral/bacterial load is lower with a closed lid.
The only way to stop this would be to change toilet lids to be an air tight seal (with some kind of 1 way valve to allow air in for flushing) or control the air flow, in a way that’s strong enough to capture ejected particles, and suck it through a filter.
The second option would have the added benefit of capturing particulates when people are actually farting and shitting, as well as removing the smell.
Alright, maybe I’m just cynical and jaded, but this was put on by Proctor & Gamble, and I get the feeling this was just made for the purposes of having a study they could link to for claims that their new scent plug in can improve memory retention in certain groups of people. The fact that the total sample size was less than 50 and split between control and variable means that about 20 people of different age groups participated. That’s not much for a study. Also, the control group actually did worse during the experiment than normal, which leads me to believe that the control wasn’t handled very well, or that natural deviance in data is greater than the “improvement” they claim. Either way, I’m dubious. It feels like it’s destined for a fine print in a commercial that shows between reruns of Law and Order.
I agree and some of those scents are super strong and can give migraines. They’re not wrong about the diseases where you lose your smell though.
I also think people need more real scents in their lives, but not from a corporation or an mlm. Go outside and smell the flowers, the forests and the herbs. Use real herbs in your cooking and buy a real scent from a no name from the farmers market. Put the oil from the farmers market in a water bottle and spray. Citrus is great for that and kills dust in the air.
It’s destined for a another study by independent researchers. As simple as that. Also more than one and substantially larger ones would be good given the simplicity, more or less innocuous study design, and the potential benefits. Maybe people assume that if a study says something, you’re supposed to immediately take that as the truth. That is never the case. This study is just a very clear case for more good studies on this.
Edit: Article was disappointing, unfortunately. A roundup of preliminary analyses, including a supercomputer simulation, a Russian amateur claiming to have synthesized it, and a Chinese lab confirming the study. Given the fact that others are having difficulty replicating this, and the other drama surrounding the discovery I’m going to need better proof than this before getting really excited.
Yep. This is one of those world changing tech advances.
Replication is a huge step.
But I temper the excitement with the memory that I read my first The Coming Room Temp Superconductor revolution 30 or so years ago. IIRC it was a cover story in Scientific American in the early 90s.
That said, fuck I hope they have cracked a scalable RTS.
Agreed, I want to believe so bad, but the Meisner effect is so easy to fake with cameras that even video proof doesn’t cut it for me. I guess at this point it’ll take a preprint from a National Lab . Thankfully that won’t take long apparently given how easy this is to synthesize.
actually agree, I copied the summary but it’s more sensational than it should be… I’m excited but I’ve just gone from 1% believing it to 5%, it’s far from confirmed.
considering what it would mean I’m still super excited however… but I’ll edit the summary
the Lawrence Livermore researcher seeming to post a simulation that supports it pushes me toward the "it's real" camp, but yeah someone needs to recreate this thing, if it can't be replicated from the paper then it's worthless, even if the original sample really is a rtsc
Admittedly this isn’t anywhere near my field of expertise, but I do have some background in computer-aided drug design. Supercomputers are incredible tools, but they’re no slam dunk. Lots of candidates they propose don’t pan out in testing.
There’s moderate consensus that there’s a theoretical basis that this material should be an interesting candidate for a high temperature superconductor but is not a favourable output of the recipe used to make it.
Additionally there are now 4 independent reports (including the original and a highly prestigious chinese university) of it exhibiting diamagnetic properties (with no theoretical basis for non-superconducting diamagnetism).
This is more than enough evidence to say that the most reasonable interpretation is a room temperature superconducting material that sucks and is hard to make.
Upgrading that to a high confidence claim that the original research is reproduced will take a few weeks at least, so no super excitent yet, but the claim is fairly solid.
To be fair, I actually find it more difficult to visualise 1500kg than a rhino (I just don't normally interact with things on that scale), so it does help me in terms of knowing how big the satellite roughly is.
But I know what one looks like, and I go to the zoo fairly regularly. I don't know what a 1500kg weight looks like, because even for the things which are 1500kg, it's not normally its defining characteristic.
Yeah, agreed, but to be fair all of this is no longer criticism about why they didn't use the metric system and actually acknowledges that people need visualisation sometimes.
While true, it may be time to realize that we will never have all the answers. And the amount of questions that need answering will trend towards infinity.
Imagine how many people can be fed with €20,000,000,000. Or homeless housed. Or children educated.
Instead, a few elite scientists (likely from a well connected family) will be conducting research that is basically unsolvable and is incomprehensible to human minds.
There is also a high likelihood that the technological discoveries will be used for military purposes. Such as displacing and/or killing those homeless, starving, uneducated children.
The cherry on top is the impact on the environment. The amount of precious metals required for such a project requires heavy mineral extraction. A particle collider uses massive amounts of power as well.
But yes, we will create groundbreaking (literally) new schools of mathematics that will disprove earlier theories. Until of course it is disproven itself by yet another future theory. Unless we all kill ourselves before then, that is…
Instead, a few elite scientists (likely from a well connected family) will be conducting research
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how research at CERN works. Tens of thousands of physicists from all over the world work either on the information gathered by CERN or to design experiments to get further data from the colliders under CERN’s purview. Many of the people contributing to the research are students from different stages of academia. They are not rich or connected people but just smart people motivated to contribute and better our understanding of the universe
So, I use the Newsbreak app because it has articles from some local news sources, and I haven’t bothered to set up an RSS feed with those sources.
That said, the “Newsbreak Originals” are flaming hot garbage with AI-generated content, outdated news, insane religious or pseudoscience bunk, and other nonsense.
If possible, the mods of this community should consider automatically filtering out posts from this domain.
They can be in the right context but not when they’re comparing interventions which cannot be blinded. And where one of the interventions changes something else (in this case, the amount of other foods you eat if you have to eat two kiwi fruit instead of just popping a pill).
Instead, I try to practice what’s known as radical empathy. This is empathy given to another person without any expectation of receiving it back in return. I try to see the world through someone else’s eyes and use that to find common ground.
That's just empathy. How is basic empathy radical?
I have no idea where the author got that idea. No common definition involves anything like reciprocity and I can't think of a single example where that would be a requirement for someone to be empathic.
I don’t know the origins of that term, but maybe ‘unconditional empathy’ would be a better way of thinking about it? Like, I will empathise with you even if you aren’t prepared to do the same, - and won’t be withdrawn if you don’t treat me with empathy.
Men need more mental health help, to avoid getting to the point of identifying as an incel, a point before which are many milestones from "casual" misogyny, to toxic and fragile masculinity, to full on gendered violence (from stalking to rape to murder, most of which perpetrated by "normal" men, not self identifying incels), that our society would rather frame as "boys being boys" or whatever, than address.
Looking at the end result and saying "oh, well, now we need to intervene" is one of the most pathetic and useless ways I can imagine to tackle this problem - because they're looking at incels being demonised as the problem, rather than the system that created them and the impact it, and they, have on those who aren't cis men (needless to say, an impact much worse than well earned demonisation).
Misogyny isn't a mental illness, it's a systemic part of our society, and while those who have gone through the pipeline and come out idealistically violent and toxic undoubtedly need help, ignoring the environment that creates them is the opposite of helping.
When this was posted before someone who followed it fairly closely and others like it, updated the thread with info because the article was behind current info. They had already stopped the trials for MS because it wasn’t working. So they began to just focus on one other, the Crohn’s, I believe. Figuring if they got one to work, they could go back to the others and get them on the right track.
I have MS, and while this is a new approach, there have been so many articles about treatments that end up going nowhere after the first excitement. So it is still very early to get hopes up.
Hope can be a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane, as Red said.
Is it possible that other person was just full of shit?
Here was an update posted on Sept 12th, 2023 from the company behind the trials regarding the MS trials:
Anokion has completed patient enrollment early in the second and final MAD cohort of its MoveS-it (Multiple Sclerosis Study of ANK-700 to Assess Safety and Immune Tolerance) clinical trial to evaluate ANK-700 for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis. MoveS-it is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 1 study evaluating ANK-700 for the treatment of patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). MS is a demyelinating disease of the CNS, in which the immune system attacks the myelin sheath in the brain and spinal cord. RRMS is the most common type of MS, characterized by recurring episodes of new or worsening symptoms. Anokion has designed ANK-700 to re-educate the immune system by inducing antigen-specific tolerance to myelin-based autoantigens to reduce neuroinflammation in the brain and spinal cord.
Safety data from both the SAD and MAD cohorts supports that ANK-700 is safe and well-tolerated at all dose levels tested through the dose escalation period. Further, preliminary biomarker data from the MAD cohorts displays trends in antigen-specific immune tolerance and evidence of bystander suppression to related myelin antigens, which is critical to treating complex autoimmune diseases like MS.
The study will continue with a 12-month safety follow-up expected to complete in the first half of 2024. Anokion anticipates reporting full results from its MoveS-it clinical trial in the second half of 2024.
This says that the single dose (SAD) phase 1 trial which began in 2020 was completed and they moved on to the second multiple ascending dose trial (MAD) for MS which completed enrollment and expect results in 2024. And that the preliminary data from the first MAD trial indicates therapeutic response.
And the press release talks about how they’ve moved on to a phase 2 trial for its use for celiacs (the initial trial use case). And then on Oct 12th they announced they will be presenting data from their phase 1 for celiacs at a conference.
A week after the announcement quoted above they released the news about their peer reviewed paper mentioning the early success in both (what likely inspired OP’s article), saying:
We have now observed our approach play out in the clinic with early data from our lead programs in celiac disease and multiple sclerosis, KAN-101 and ANK-700, that demonstrated antigen-specific tolerance, bystander suppression, and an impact on disease-specific biomarkers.
None of this looks like a company that has a failing drug on their hands. And there’s no indication of the MS trial being ended early - the only thing that happened early was completing enrollment early.
Being too ready to give up on hope is its own kind of insanity.
We can genetically engineer bacteria to mimic the missing pancreatic cells, and it’s not too different to the way most insulin is produced as all that’s new is the system to stop producing insulin when blood sugars are already low enough. However, if you put them in a person, the immune system attacks the bacteria, so they need isolating. To do that, we need a membrane that lets sugar in and insulin out, but doesn’t let antigens or live bacteria out, and doesn’t let immune cells in. Even if the bacteria are held in place, if immune cells can get in, it’s no better than a pancreatic transplant as you’ll still need immunosuppressants, and they’re generally worse than dealing with type one manually. Development of the membrane keeps hitting unexpected hurdles, so artifical pancreases are still unable to start trials, and then they might take a decade.
There are other approaches, e.g. using electronics to control photosensitive insulin producing bacteria, but they don’t have any advantages (the membrane still has to let sugar in so the bacteria can eat) and have more things that can go wrong.
Ultimately what they need to do is decipher stem cell development and fetal development and use the patient’s own cells to replace the lost islet cells.
If you don’t have a solution to the autoimmune aspect, then a stem-cell-based treatment is no better than one with engineered bacteria or someone else’s cells. The originals are gone because the body mistakenly thought they were foreign. A treatment like the article discusses might make stem cells more viable than the alternatives, though, as they’d be less foreign, so need less immune system alteration.
In theory, and this is another couple of major advancements of this tech away, if you can teach the body to stop attacking specific cells you can do a transplant without rejection. Teach the body to not attack the new pancreas, then stick it in there.
This should be possible with this tech, though it would require a mature and advanced process compared to what we have now. Genetic chimeras can exist without the immune system going crazy, presumably because it recognizes all those parts as “part of the body”. If it can be taught to recognize other implanted material as acceptable that opens up a huge range of options. Even a lifetime of immune system training therapy is better than a lifetime of immunosuppressants.
So, if I understand this right, a more accurate title would be “Research into vaccines against autoimmune diseases continues, new data indicate that a change of focus might be needed”
LMAO I came here to say something similar. My thinking was maybe someone needs to start blessing you know. Maybe they haven’t been blessed since the release of that song.
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