^Of course it's in your head. We don't get scared for nothing. However, the truth is that people more experience anxiety on cannabis than when sober, so anxiety and cannabis use has a positive correlation. Maybe it lowers the threshold for when people get scared or it leads to a consciousness where scary thoughts have a much higher emotional response. Maybe someone who are at higher risk than normal of suffering from anxiety have good reason stay away from the drug.
You have experiences yourself and a friend who suffered a panic attack on the drug that seems to be related with taking it. I don't see why it's so hard to connect the two. Saying it's in your head doesn't exclude the effect THC
also has on your head.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayfarer
heave together an assemblage of all the truly heartbreaking, pot-related memoirs you can get your mitts on, if you so wish; the fact of the matter is that not one of them provides any empirical evidence that marijuana, in and of itself, is a cause of anxiety.
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I posted those "stories" on purpose because I thought some people would relate to it more than a scientific abstract. However, I figured you might criticize the sources - and rightfully so, so I did a search for scientific studies. Here's a quote from an article published in
BMJ, one of the most influential and widely read peer-reviewed general academic journals in the field of medicine in the world.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by George C Patton, professor of adolescent health a, Carolyn Coffey, epidemiologist a, John B Carlin, director of unit b, Louisa Degenhardt, research fellow c, Michael Lynskey, visiting research fellow d, Wayne Hall, professor of bioethics e., "Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study", BMJ 2002
Results: Some 60% of participants had used cannabis by the age of 20; 7% were daily users at that point. Daily use in young women was associated with an over fivefold increase in the odds of reporting a state of depression and anxiety after adjustment for intercurrent use of other substances (odds ratio 5.6, 95% confidence interval 2.6 to 12). Weekly or more frequent cannabis use in teenagers predicted an approximately twofold increase in risk for later depression and anxiety (1.9, 1.1 to 3.3) after adjustment for potential baseline confounders.
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What is already known on this topic
Frequent recreational use of cannabis has been linked to high rates of depression and anxiety in cross sectional surveys and studies of long term users
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You can read the paper at this address. The abstract part is a summary for those who don't wish to read all the methods, discussion and so on. ->
Cannabis use and mental health in young people: cohort study -- Patton et al. 325 (7374): 1195 -- BMJ