Frequent use of high-potency weed may be linked to an increased risk of having a psychotic episode. But milder strains of marijuana, even when used heavily, don’t appear to carry any increased risk of psychosis.
Those are the headline findings of published Feb. 16 in the journal Lancet Psychiatry. Researchers obtained data from 410 South London patients sent to the hospital for a first-episode psychotic incident (meaning they hadn’t been previously diagnosed with disorder), and compared it to data from 370 control individuals living in the same area.
Compared with someone who had never smoked, a weekly user of high-potency weed (defined here as having greater than 15 percent THC content) was about three times as likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. For daily users, the risk increased to five times.
On the other hand, the researchers found no link between frequent use of low-potency weed (
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In studies like this one, itap important to remember that correlation doesn’t indicate causation. “The authors clearly point out that they cannot be sure the association seen in their study is causal,” , a University of Bristol researcher who studies the link between marijuana use and psychosis, in The Guardian newspaper. “The people who choose to smoke cannabis might be different in a variety of other ways, which could be the cause of the increase in psychosis risk. Although you can control for these in analyses, you can never be sure you’ve adequately adjusted for them.”
Still, the different findings for smokers of low- and high-potency weed are significant, and worth digging into — especially considering that most of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. today is of the high-octane variety.
Today’s illicit weed has a lot in common with prohibition-era moonshine. To maximize profits while avoiding detection, many of today’s pot growers maintain a singular focus on to the exclusion of all other considerations. The weed they produce is generally good for getting you very high, but little else. The absence of a regulatory framework — particularly labeling requirements that let you know what you’re smoking – means that buying weed on the black market today is akin to buying a bottle of booze without knowing whether it contains beer or vodka.
And chemically speaking, marijuana is a more complicated substance than alcohol. The high of a given strain of bud is determined not just by THC, but by the interaction of dozens of chemical compounds in the plant that researchers are only just now beginning to understand. One of those compounds, , is actually known to have effects, and it that sometimes comes with getting really, really high. CBD and THC are present in roughly equal quantities in low-potency weed, but in the high-octane stuff CBD is essentially non-existent. This is likely one reason why the Lancet study found higher odds of psychosis among users who liked their weed strong.
As prohibition eases and legal markets open up, growers now have the breathing room to select for traits . Demand from new users looking to experience a social high, rather than , will likely drive this. The end result may be a resurgence of milder strains of weed that are more akin to fine wines than to bathtub gin. From a mental health standpoint, they’ll be safer too.
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