CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta left the wrong impression on many Americans when discussing marijuana, which is why the media needs to stop saying medical marijuana when they mean cannabidiol or CBD. Marijuana is very different from cannabidiol, the marijuana derivative which Dr. Gupta advocates for treating some types of epilepsy in children.
The marijuana plant has more than 400 compounds, and at least 60 different cannabinoids which bind to receptors in our body. Cannabidiol is one of those 60 cannabinoids. Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC is a different cannabinoid, the main psychoactive component and the one responsible for the “high” of marijuana.
The medical marijuana advocates have intentionally confused the public about medical marijuana research at this time. Cannabidiol has been isolated by a company in Great Britain and is being fast-tracked for approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Continue reading Explaining Cannabidiol or CBD→
We’re facing a national tragedy of mental health misdiagnoses because American psychiatry is failing to treat root causes. Too often young people with mental health symptoms are lumped into categories and given potent anti-depressants, benzodiazapines and/or neuroleptics, while the doctors or mental health treatment centers ignore symptoms of marijuana addiction and fail to treat the addiction. In some cases, a psychotic episode is treated as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia rather than drug-induced psychosis.*
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: 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
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.
It was a good publicity stunt, but a cruel trick. The marijuana industry recently staged an event in Denver to attract veterans. They gave out free marijuana for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is very real, and it’s a condition to be taken seriously.
The medical community should find solutions that would bring veterans back to their previous state of functioning before combat. Louis Zamperini, the hero of a book by Laura Hillenbrand and movie directed by Angelina Jolie, Unbroken, had severe PTSD from World War II. He had been beaten in a Japanese prison camp and lost at sea 46 days on a raft. It’s unlikely he would have healed and charged forward so well if marijuana had been offered as the solution. The movie will be in theaters on December 25.
Marijuana numbs certain emotions. It also effects memory. PTSD symptoms are different for different people, but it can include numbness, too. If fear, numbness and depression are present with PTSD, there should be a means that re-build connection to everyday life, rather than avoid the reality of life. Dogs and Yoga are amongst the best treatments for rebuilding connection. Time is a great healer, too.
Handing out free so-called “marijuana medicine” makes a mockery of recovery. It’s hoped our veterans could get back to work and not face long-term disability. Keeping “patients” addicted and under the thumb of medical marijuana industry may do the opposite. The best book on the subject, Judith Lewis Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, doesn’t suggest masking memory. Our first choice should always be therapies that go to the root of the problem, rather than masking the symptoms. Medical marijuana has the potential for masking symptoms. It also risks making a person apathetic and numb. It could give the illusion of getting better without deep healing.
There’s strong evidence that mental illness is increasing in America. According to Robert Whitaker, author of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic, an increase in bi-polar disorder is driven in part by the expansion of diagnostic boundaries, but it is also being fueled by the widespread use of illicit drugs.
Whitaker explains that studies of first episode bipolar patients, roughly 1/3 suffered their first bout of mania or mood instability after they had abused illicit drugs — amphetamines, cocaine, marijuana and hallucinogens. Marijuana, as the most widespread of the illicit drugs, poses the most risk. (See 10 Marijuana Myths Advocates want you to Believe)
A culture of medication teaches our children to look for easy solutions; it may be influencing the widespread desire to self-medicate with marijuana and other drugs. Psychiatric medications are over-prescribed — anti-depressants, as well as anti-psychotics and ADHD medications. Whitaker also believes that the use of psychiatric stimulants and anti-depressants increases the risk of getting the bipolar diagnosis.
The cannabinoid neurotransmitter, anandamide, may be displaced with marijuana use over time, giving users withdrawal symptoms when they quit, including anxiety, depression.
Leafly, a cannabis company in Seattle run Privateer Holdings, solicits users by advertising 88 strains of marijuana to cure bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and ADHD. This type of advertising should be censored due to the lack of evidence and high risk for psychosis that comes with marijuana. Any psychiatric treatment demands strict oversight by a qualified medical practitioner, and is often done on a test basis. Medical marijuana “providers” often don’t have to meet standards or qualifications, other than being at least 21 years old.
Prevention over Substituting Addictions
Those who disagree with medical marijuana do not necessarily advocate for the alcohol or pharmaceutical industry.
Some of us notice that people who become addicted to any drug usually began their drug usage with marijuana, which is another reason we wish to prevent youth from using it at all costs. In fact, when it comes to teens and young adults, addicts almost always begin their drug usage as a marijuana user. The marijuana industry gives lip service to wanting to keep it from those under age 21, while using the social media and other tactics try to get young people to support them.
States with the highest marijuana usage, including use by ages 12-17, tend to also have the highest opiate pill, cocaine and heroin usage. Oregon, Colorado and Vermont will need to limit youth marijuana usage, if they truly want to bring down other problems. To a certain extent the current heroin problem has arisen because people addicted to the opiate pills have been unable to get the pills.
The logical way to avoid death by opiate overdose is to keep it in the hands of only those who need it, teach responsible use, and avoid over-prescribing. Not everyone who uses opiate pills needs to get addicted. Many people use vicodin, percocet and oxycontin only for the limited duration until the pain is gone. Twisted, illogical thinking is suggesting that we must substitute one addiction with a drug that can also work on the mind and cause psychosis.
If we are to solve the problem of addiction in a lasting way, we need to help children and teens not begin to use. We emphasize proper usage, not substituting one addiction for another, or “lilypadding” from drug to drug. Prevention before abuse starts has the BEST chance of success.
