Tag Archives: Medical Marijuana

The Unraveling of Ryan, Part 5: Seeing Similar Patterns

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of The Unraveling of Ryan. Permission is required to reproduce the story.  Names are changed, but details are accurate.  

As I was writing this story, Leah texted me from her husband’s bedside at Cedars-Sinai Hospital: “LA Times, front page article, ‘Cannabis Hedge Funds Rush to Join Green Rush.’” We both wanted to vomit. Our two sons are casualties of this “green rush” movement, a movement to profit from making today’s highly potent strains of marijuana  — at the expense of our youth….and their families.  We will never address America’s mental health crisis until we accept that marijuana is the trigger that starts too many young lives unraveling.

Leah’s husband, Lee, suffered a major medical crisis, as if losing their 20-year-old son 32 months ago to suicide wasn’t enough for the family. Ed and I met Lee and Leah in the grief series; the four of us share a special bond.  We do 5K walks annually in memory of our sons. On Mother’s Day, we took our families to Ojai together.

The Tragedy of Brandon

Leah said to our group back in 2012,  “My son died of mental illness.” I didn’t say much, initially, but as the story unfolded and there was no history of psychosis in either family line, I thought marijuana had somehow played a role.  I followed a hunch and began asking more questions. She looked at Brandon’s journals and saw his entries.  “Am I having drug withdrawals?” he asked, trying to explain his racing thoughts.  When he had to be hospitalized, he was convinced his lungs weren’t working.

Brandon died of suicide after being released from a three-day psych hold while experiencing psychotic symptoms tinged with mania (Guess what drug he had stopped using two weeks before entering the hospital…that’s right– cannabis).  Despite telling numerous people in the hospital that he had just stopped marijuana use, none of the hospital staff raised a red flag that he was experiencing drug withdrawal symptoms.   After Brandon left the hospital, he was convinced he needed a lung transplant despite doctors telling him there was nothing wrong with his lungs.  He felt his breathing wasn’t right and was convinced he had caused it because he hadn’t stopped smoking cigarettes.

Brandon had become manic about four months earlier while smoking pot.  When his mom expressed concern that he was becoming addicted, he just laughed because pot was a natural herb, not part of big drug companies making big $.   Unfortunately Leah wasn’t aware that it’s best to come off pot gradually, under supervision.  Unless psychiatrists are also certified for addiction treatment, they often don’t recognize marijuana withdrawal. Brandon had taken it upon himself to get a “medical marijuana” card, because he was having “anxiety.”  Leah didn’t mind at the time, despite Brandon’s youth and undeveloped brain.  As long as a doctor authorized it, she reasoned that it must be safe and legitimate. Before that time, he was using synthetic marijuana, which had alarmed her.

A diagram showing the various parts of brain affect by drug usage.  Source: NIDA (National Institute for Drug Addiction)
A diagram showing the various parts of brain affect by drug usage. Source: mNIDA (National Institute for Drug Addiction)

How Marijuana Becomes the Problem

Sorry, but I want to share what I truly believe is happening in every town across America, not just to my son, to Lee/ Leah’s son.  If Leah and I hadn’t met, she would have accepted “Brandon died of a mental illness.”  Rather than telling our children they should avoid having children and blaming it all on faulty genes, as some medical practitioners would advise, consider the environmental effects like marijuana.  I think you should advise any child, teen or young adult to practice optimal brain health and avoid all substances that strongly alter the brain.  The medical evidence is the marijuana manipulates the brain more than any other drug.

Before my son had his first psychotic episode in 2009, he suffered a terrible knee injury in a boating accident that same year.  It required knee surgery and 9 months of physical rehab. It’s likely that Ryan started using a lot more marijuana to treat “pain” just as the medical marijuana advocates suggest — without giving any regards to proper dosing, strength and time intervals that a pharmacy is required to give.  He was living with his fiancée at the time, so we were not aware of this choice, or that he had already been using marijuana for about three years. The accident, surgery and pain were the perfect excuse for him to use a lot more marijuana–plus he wouldn’t take the pain meds because they gave him nausea.  Pot was apparently the treatment he chose, but we didn’t know it.

So the pattern  emerges–using marijuana for a few years, increase the usage for “medical” reasons (in this case an accident followed by surgery and pain), and, then at some point — psychosis.

Close to Home: Amanda Bynes

Amanda Bynes,the Nickelodeon star of All That and the Amanda Show
Amanda Bynes,the Nickelodeon star of All That and the Amanda Show

Another example of the marijuana – psychosis pattern is former child star Amanda Bynes.  She went to the same high school as my son; they were born in the same year, but one year apart in school.

Last year she was in treatment at the same psychiatric hospital in Pasadena where Ryan had been at one time. I don’t know her or her parents, but I heard she had some excellent treatment there (wish my son had been treated as well).  Afterwards, her parents had a one-year conservatorship for her.  Her mother asserted that the effects of marijuana were her main psychiatric problem, not bipolar or schizophrenia, as had been a rumored.

Amanda Bynes did well and looked amazing during most of 2014, until her parents’ conservatorship ended.   Then in late summer, when the hold had ended, Amanda had some episodes and accused her father of terrible things.  How could that young woman, who had heard that THC alters brain chemistry while in rehabilitation, return to using pot again?  The  relapse speaks volumes as to how addictive marijuana really is, and how marijuana use alters brain chemistry.

Like Amanda Bynes, Ryan seemed completely healthy to us after his “first episode” of psychosis.  Both Amanda Bynes and Ryan went back to the same drug that damaged their young minds.  No one knows which brains will unravel with marijuana. Is the risk worth it for anyone?  In this country, I’ve found a few psychiatrists, Dr. Stuart Gitlow of Rhode Island, Dr. Christian Thurstone in Denver, Dr. Thomas Carter in Seattle, and some psychologists, who understand the link between marijuana use and mental health problems.  Mental health treatment and addiction treatment need to be aligned more closely.  A Postscript describes when and how to stop these problems.

The Medical Marijuana Hoax, Part 3: The Strategy

“We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically.  If we do that, we’ll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.”  Keith Stroup, Emory University,  February 6, 1979

Stroup is founder of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Law).  Thirty – five years later,  Stroup and his followers think his plan is  working.   Social media has helped the marijuana movement, which markets itself to teens and young adults, for votes and for new marijuana users.

TODAY, promoters claims marijuana holds the cure for nearly everything, including ebola.  Despite its intensive genetic alteration of the marijuana plant over the last 20 years — to make it more potent — advocates call it an herb. They don’t take responsibility for the damage pot does to the environment, or for the psychosis and mental health problems it causes in some people.   See The Medical Marijuana Hoax, Part 2: Mental Illness.

Parents Opposed to Pot believes the decision of January, 2013, by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, to keep marijuana a Schedule I drug (high potential for abuse), is correct.  Marijuana is a dangerous drug because of its perceived harmlessness,  and its cult-like following.   Americans would be wise to look into what happened when marijuana was rescheduled in Great Britain.

Marijuana can cause psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction and psychosis.   In January, 2014, Dan Linn of NORML Illinois said that there has always been the cannabis and schizophrenia connection.  If NORML has known this link, how in good conscience can they push for legalization?   A typical reader may compare it to the tobacco industry, fast-food restaurants, etc.  However, marijuana-induced mental disorders can appear within a shorter period time, as opposed to other unhealthy choices that take years off the end of life.   Not everyone is susceptible to problems with marijuana and not everyone will use in excess, but the industry preaches that marijuana is harmless and non-addictive .

How They’re Pushing the Medical Marijuana Hoax

Reading the “weed blogs” gives insight into the mind of the “Pot Lobby.”   First comes decriminalization, followed by medical marijuana, followed by full legalization.  Californians voted on Proposition 215 and approved medical marijuana in 1996, because huge campaign donations funded that ballot.  The roll of money to legalize has been nonstop ever since, with billionaires such as George Soros funding the movement. Oregon and Washington had ballot initiatives for medical marijuana in 1998.  Alaska, Maine and Colorado came shortly afterwards.    Pot policy makers are going for a checkerboard pattern of states, so  that states without it will be forced to join their neighbors.

Medical marijuana businesses depend on catchy names while guaranteeing no consistency in their product.  One strain had no buyers until it changed it name to Chocolope.  This lack of consistency is a huge red flag.  As the Los Angeles Times article further explains, “Chemist Jeff Raber examined 1,500 samples of marijuana in California and found little genetic cohesion between varieties of the same name.”

Medical marijuana has always been the cover for a plan to bring full-scale legalization. The marijuana industry plays the “compassion” game to gain sympathy supporters and gradually get public acceptance, slandering members of Congress who disagree. (See The Medical Marijuana Hoax, Part 1: Do Patients Go to Jail?)  Once the industry markets itself to potential patients, many of these so-called patients get “hooked.”   The industry’s tactic of getting more people addicted has succeeded by introducing the potent strains of marijuana, and by targeting the young.

If they succeed in getting enough people high, it is easier to control their minds.   For a year or two, the pot industry has been telling us that legalization is “inevitable.” — another manipulative tactic.  The plan is that states without medical marijuana will face extreme political pressure to join their neighbors.

Medical marijuana advocates now count 23 states as having some form of medical marijuana.   However, Florida, the 4th most populous state in the country, recently rejected a medical marijuana ballot which needed 60% of the votes to pass.   Marijuana lobbyists are active in every state, and they believe full legalization is right around the corner.Weedmaster2_0003

A Cure for Everything

In early 2011, the .  At first, marijuana was promoted as an aid for cancer and AIDs treatment, because the THC in marijuana can help nausea and stimulate appetite of cancer victims.  At this time, not more than 5% medical marijuana patients actually have cancer or AIDS, as a political site fact – checker  published.   Today, the common condition those who seek medical marijuana is “pain,”  a sign the industry is trying to nurture dependence, and not cure people.  (A shot of whiskey also cures “pain.”) If those who use marijuana for “pain” treatment, sought a chiropractor instead, their treatments could be for a limited time.

Marijuana has been promoted from its status, as the cure for nausea in cancer patients, to being the cure for cancer, as marijuana advocates claim today.  The biggest argument against marijuana as a cancer cure is that pharmaceutical companies from around the world would be marketing it, if it were truly a viable cure.  The claim that marijuana cures cancer is reminiscent of the laetrile controversy  30 years ago, explained in a recent article by Robert Weiner in AlcoholismDrugAbuseWeekly.

Treating Epilepsy, Seizures, Etc.

Regardless of safety or efficacy, it is understandable how parents may want to try an alternative to the  strong cancer-fighting and epilepsy drugs.   However, we do not support any treatment for children that has THC which can alter brain chemistry.   We ask that marijuana providers provide warnings, (See our article of the Medical Marijuana Risks for children), as pharmaceutical companies are required to do.

No qualifications are needed to be a “ganjapreneur,” in today’s “green rush.”  How can we continue to allow self-proclaimed wizards of pot to hold all the cards, without warning about the side effects?  Regulation of medical marijuana has been very difficult in the West, due to the objection of the industry.  Oregon finally implemented regulations for medical marijuana dispensaries this year, but faced industry opposition.  When Washingtonians voted for pot legalization in 2012, there was a consensus that medical marijuana was not being regulated and perhaps the limits of I-502 could  bring commercial marijuana under some regulation.

Since we published our story on Medical Marijuana and PTSD,  a new story has come out about how marijuana makes PTSD symptoms worse.   A ploy of the medical marijuana industry has been using is to convince people that marijuana is the only medicine for their ailments.  They try to find people who are “chronically ill.”

The road to HELL is paved with good intentions” explains the path of medical marijuana.  One former medical marijuana patient wrote to PopPot, explaining that after two years of using medical marijuana for an auto-immune disease, it brought on psychosis.  How can the Marijuana Policy Project, Drug Policy Alliance, NORML, Americans for Safe Access and United for Care not see that it is ethically wrong to promote something which such strong and horrific side effects—particularly in the mental health arena?   We already have a mental health crisis in the US.  Why add to it?

The vast majority of ordinary citizens who don’t use marijuana also don’t take the time to figure out the deception.

10 Myths Marijuana Advocates want you to Believe

by Dr. Christine Miller, Ph.D.
Myth #1. It is rare for marijuana users to experience psychotic symptoms like paranoia.
In fact, about 15% of all users and a much higher percentage of heavy users will experience psychotic symptoms.1 Half of those individuals will become chronically schizophrenic if they don’t stop using.2 Fortunately, some do stop using because psychosis is not pleasant and they wisely recognize that pot caused their problems.
Myth #2. Marijuana-induced psychosis must be due to other contaminating drugs.
Clinical studies under controlled laboratory conditions have shown that administering the pure, active ingredient of pot, ∆9-THC, elicits psychotic symptoms in normal volunteers.3  In addition, epidemiological research of nearly 19,000 drug abusing Finnish subjects showed that it was not LSD, amphetamine, cocaine, methamphetamine, PCP or opiates that most consistently led to a diagnosis of long term schizophrenia, it was marijuana.4 Thus, if you lace your LSD with marijuana, you are more likely to go psychotic.
Myth #3. If marijuana is associated with the development of chronic psychosis (schizophrenia), it is only because the patients are self-medicating. Correlation does not equal causation.
Actually, four studies have been carried out in Europe to ask the question which comes first, the marijuana use or the schizophrenia. The research was designed to follow thousands of young teen subjects through a course of several years of their lives, and to ask if those who were showing symptoms of psychosis at study onset were more likely to begin smoking pot, or were those who were normal but began smoking pot during the course of the study more likely to become psychotic. Three of the studies5 convincingly showed that the evidence for marijuana triggering schizophrenia was strong, whereas the evidence for self-medication was weak. The fourth concluded that both were happening — marijuana was triggering psychosis and psychotic individuals were self-medicating.6
Myth #4. Those who become schizophrenic from marijuana use were destined to become so anyway because of their genes.
The truth of the matter is that no one is destined to become schizophrenic. Even in the case where one member of an identical pair of twins has schizophrenia, only about half the time does the other twin become schizophrenic as well.7  Thus, there is ample room for environmental factors like marijuana to make a difference between leading a normal life and not.
Myth #5. Studies showing links between marijuana and psychotic disorders like schizophrenia are “cherry picked” to exclude negative studies.
A very large review of all relevant published papers was conducted by a group of researchers from around the world and published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet. No attempt was made to exclude results that were negative. The results they obtained by merging all the studies was that marijuana use approximately doubles the risk for schizophrenia.8 Later research has shown that the risk goes up to 6-fold if the use is heavy or if the pot is strong 9 (similar to the strength of marijuana that is coming out of Colorado now).
Myth #6. Marijuana makes you mellow and less aggressive.
This is certainly not the case for the 15% who experience psychotic symptoms and the subgroup who then go on to develop a chronic psychosis. These individuals are up to 9-times more likely to commit serious acts of violence than people whose schizophrenia has nothing to do with drug use.10 Just a few of the very recent high profile cases here on the East Coast include January’s Columbia Mall shooter Darion Aguilar and “multiverse”-ranting Vladimir Baptiste, who drove a truck through a Towson, MD TV station in May. Somewhat less violent cases include White House episodes: Oscar Ortega, charged with shooting at the White House, ex-Navy Seal employee David Gil Wilkerson charged with threatening the life of the President and most recently, fence jumper Dominic Adesanya who is charged with attacking the White House guard dogs this October. In the Rocky Mountain region, soccer dad Richard Kirk became psychotic after his first use of marijuana edibles for his back pain, and while hallucinating that the world was going to end, shot his wife to death as his children listened through a closed door.On the West Coast, the mentally ill marijuana user Aaron Ybarra shot one student dead and wounded two others on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. In Ottawa this past week, rifleman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was originally thought to have terrorist ties after he killed a young guard at the Capitol, but instead his friends paint a picture of psychosis and law enforcement records reveal more than one arrest for marijuana possession. All of these individuals exhibited psychotic symptoms prior to their acts and their mental illness could be traced to their marijuana habit in my opinion.
Myth #7. Marijuana is good for the symptoms of PTSD and by keeping this drug from our veterans, we are depriving them of an important alternative treatment.
Veterans Affairs Administration studies have shown that those with PTSD who smoke marijuana make significantly less progress in overcoming their condition.11  PTSD victims are already more vulnerable to psychosis and it comes as no surprise that clinicians have witnessed psychotic breaks in PTSD patients who begin marijuana12 because of the abundant literature showing an association between marijuana use and the subsequent development of psychosis. While the symptoms that afflict PTSD patients (anxiety, depression, panic) may be temporarily relieved while the subjects are “high”, these very same symptoms are exacerbated in the long run.13  Even in the context of polydrug use, it is the degree of marijuana use that correlates most significantly with anxiety and depression.14
Myth #8. Marijuana is less dangerous than alcohol and will reduce alcohol consumption, so we’ll end up with safer roadways.
In terms of mental health, marijuana is more dangerous on all counts (depression, anxiety, panic, psychosis, mania). As far as our roadways go, marijuana all by itself impairs driving. Whether it is better or the same as alcohol in that regard is still a matter of debate. What is known is that users all too frequently do both, and this combination is particularly hazardous. The interaction between the two drugs is synergistic,15 not additive.  So you end up with someone who is wildly impaired.
Myth #9. Laws don’t make a difference to rates of marijuana use
Some of the best data available on youth use in regards to laws comes from Europe, where they have a wide range of marijuana laws between the countries. The European organization ESPAD has studied youth use (15 to 16 year olds) across different countries every four years. The two most recent ESPAD reports (2007 and 2011) show that countries with legalization or defacto legalization (The Netherlands, Czech Republic, Italy, Spain) have on average a 3-fold higher rate of youth use than countries in which it has remained illegal. In our country, differences in decriminalization laws have existed between states for several years. If you break out the states with lenient decriminalization laws that also submit data to the CDC to track youth use (CO, AK, MA, ME), their rate of youth use (9-12th grade) is significantly higher (~25% higher) than states that have strict decriminalization codes and report to the CDC. Lenient codes include a low civil fine with no increase in penalties for repeat offenders, no requirement for drug education, no requirement for drug treatment, and no community service. Outright legalization and dedicated recreational pot shops in this country has not been around long enough for the effect on youth use to be determined.
Myth #10. The Drug War on marijuana is too expensive.
It is hard to put a price on the damage done to someone’s life if they develop a chronic psychosis like schizophrenia or psychotic bipolar disorder. But if economics must be considered, the cost of just schizophrenia alone to our country is approximately $64 billion per year, accounting for treatment, housing and lost productivity.16 If all adults were exchange their glass of wine or two over the weekend for a joint or two, our rate of schizophrenia would be expected to double. That $64 billion per year would pay for the drug war on marijuana and much more.
Brief Bio for the author:   Dr. Christine L. Miller obtained her B.S. degree in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. For over twenty years she has researched the molecular neuroscience of schizophrenia, ten of those years at Johns Hopkins University.  She is semi-retired, conducting occasional biomedical consulting on medical cases and an active volunteer for SAM-Maryland (Smart Approaches to Marijuana).
Citations:

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Medical Marijuana Hoax: Do Patients Go to Jail?

“I know of no patient-only person sent to federal prison for use of marijuana,”  said Law Professor Douglas Berman, a specialist in marijuana law at Ohio State University.

Even before states started legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use, the federal government didn’t throw defendants in prison simply for using marijuana Vanderbilt University Law Professor Robert Mikos explained.  He added, that’s because prosecutors are focused on suppliers and distributors. This information is from an in-depth analysis of Politifact Florida, reports of the Tampa Bay Times and the  Miami Herald.

The Compassion Card and the Hoax

Why do marijuana advocates constantly play the compassion card?  Or pretend we don’t care about children with epilepsy or cancer?

How is it medicine if they give it names like Purple Poison, White Widow, Body Buzz, Lemon Skunk?  Why is it that only 2-5% of the medical marijuana patients are terminally ill with cancer or AIDs, the conditions that may benefit from the nausea and appetite stimulation of medical marijuana with its THC?

Why is it that so many patients have chronic conditions and “need their medicine” continuously.  Is the industry trying to make them  hypochondriacs, or are the marijuana providers (“caregivers”) nurturing dependence?  Most medicine is supposed to cure a person and get them to the place where the medicine is not needed.  Our view is that more precautions are needed for medical marijuana.

Fraudulent Practices

Once medical marijuana passes in a state, fraud is encouraged.  For example in Michigan a doctor wrote medical marijuana prescriptions for more than 60 so-called people he never saw as patients.  He made $16000 in cash, but the medical marijuana providers reaped more than $1.3 million in profits over 2 years.

Also, in Michigan (not one of the hotbeds of marijuana), 20-year old so-called patient recently started an explosion at his parents’ house, from trying to extract hash oil from marijuana.    We need to ask ourselves why so many people who are so young are so disabled?

Recently, the Deputy Attorney General James Cole said that California needs to start regulating it’s medical marijuana or the federal government will do it.  Legalizing marijuana doesn’t solve unregulated medical marijuana, as Washington proves.

More than two years ago signs like this one in Pompano Beach were put up in Florida, in anticipation of Amendment 2, to be voted on today, November 4
More than two years ago signs like this one in Pompano Beach were put up in Florida, in anticipation of Amendment 2, to be voted on today, November 4

Americans for Safe Access

A few months ago Americans for Safe Access sponsored some television ads suggesting that cancer patients go to prison.  They specifically targeted members of Congress who did not vote in their favor.  Representative Andrew Harris, one of the Representatives attacked in an add, explained in front of Congress that medicine was  more precise than prescribing “two joints a day,” or “a brownie here, a biscuit there.”   “This is not medicine,” Harris said.

“This would be like me as a physician saying, ‘you know, I think you need some penicillin. Go chew on some mold.’   Of course I wouldn’t do that. I write for 250 mg of penicillin, [every] 6 hours, times 10 days. I don’t write, ‘chew on a mold a couple of times a day.'”

Rep. John Fleming, another doctor who formerly worked in a chemical dependency program and has published a book about addiction, spoke, warning of what marijuana does to the brain development of young people.  Recent medical studies and reports only clarify this message, making the warning stronger.

In Colorado all that its necessary to be a caregiver is that they are over age 21.  Compare that to the training of a pharmacist, nurse practitioner and physicians.

We condemn the way Americans for Safe Access, United for Care and other lobbyists have been essentially dishonest about medical marijuana.  They imply that having a different opinion shows a lack of compassion.  We also blame them and other groups for not explaining that cannabidial oil which helps for seizure is a component of marijuana and not marijuana.   We ask them to stop posturing for one thing when they really want something else.   (Read Part 2 of the Medical Marijuana Hoax: Mental Health)