High Times…

There’s a lot of good sense in this piece here from the Guardian a while back where a former marijuana user and now neuroscientist outlines some sensible thoughts on the drug. Effectively she sums it up as a situation where regulation and attitudes previously were unscientific and too constrained but that there are significant problems in relation to some who use it developing psychosis.

Or as she puts it:

We are swept up in a backlash against overly restrictive and unscientific regulation of cannabis. While it is well past time to loosen restrictions, promote research and consider the data that emerges, the Lancet study provides evidentiary warning about the inherent dangers – to some – of our quest to mitigate reality.

It’s widely accepted that the strength of variants now available is much greater than thirty and forty years ago and that’s interesting and concerning.

Grisel writes;

Addiction and psychosis are similar in that they are the result of biological vulnerability combined with a stressful environment. Some are more predisposed than others, and this should provoke ethical and moral obligation – particularly from those of us who are not at risk – to protect the unlucky ones for whom the use of cannabis may be permanently detrimental.

How though to do that? And how to measure risk? And there’s this anecdote which she starts her piece with which in a way puts those questions in more concrete form:

Occasionally during my love affair with marijuana I would experience perceptual disruptions profound enough to freak me out. One time I was driving along a crowded road when my car seemed a little wobbly and then listed towards the centre, an alarming thud-thud emanating from the back end. In the middle of a densely populated spot without a hard shoulder, I crept slowly across a few lanes of traffic and pulled to a stop. Concentrating very hard, I got out of the car to assess and hopefully change the flat tyre. I rarely got paranoid from smoking weed; neither did it typically make me sleepy. Instead, I was among the lucky ones, as the drug made everyday activities such as gardening, waiting on tables and talking to my family bearable if not interesting. So I was shocked and embarrassed to find, after a few minutes of close inspection amid the honking horns, that there was nothing wrong with the car. At the time I took hallucinations as evidence of a good score. Now, as an ex-smoker and neuroscientist whose focus is addictive drugs, I know that my resilient response to this stressful experience was contingent on having a neurotypical brain.

But hallucinations while at the wheel of a car? That sounds like more than potential trouble.