Marijuana Causes Mental Illness?

spideygirl
Sat, 10 May 2008 17:18:09 +0000

Pot is bad for you. It causes things to happen to your body that are not positive. No, it isn’t as bad as a lot of other things, but it still should not be used. I’ve posted links to what I’ve read elsewhere on CC, and discussed things I have been told by professionals, which can be found by looking at my previous posts.

Basically, though, if a person is adamant to not only smoke pot, but also BELIEVE no matter what is put out there that it is also not harmful, then nothing anyone can say will change that. To disregard 99% of good information and jump all over the 1% that agrees with what you want to do does not seem like good reasoning to me.

If I were going to smoke pot, I would just say, “Yep, I know it isn’t good for me, but I am going to do it anyway”. Because that would be reality.

On another point, it is true that too much money is going toward law enforcement and incarceration and not enough toward research which is desperately needed to help those who suffer from the disease of addiction. There is so much stigma associated with chemical dependency. If the same percentage of the population suffered from something like MS, you can bet that there would be a lot more effort to find a cure. Yet a dopamine deficiency in an addictive brain is not unlike problems with insulin regulation in diabetes. Also, many people still don’t completely buy the “disease theory” of addiction. Addiction and partying are very different things.

The best reason for finding an alternative to jailing drug addicts (and instead treating them like the sick people that they are) is that it is the moral and humane thing to do. There is a big disconnect between what professionals know about addiction and how the government responds to it. I think mandatory treatment would have a better outcome than incarceration for a surprising number of people and situations.