Marijuana vs. Alcohol...the debate

David · Nov 22, 2012

Hammer said:
If I talk out of my @ss, it's just to make things fair.

Marinol's only active ingredient is THC.

Looked it up, it's brain altering as I described before. It has no use in blood pressure control, pain killing, etc. that weed has because it lacks the other chemicals. Nobody is saying THC has no value, we're simply pointing out it's not the end all and be all of weed's medicinal value. There's a reason actual weed is used as a medicine, if a simple pill could be made to get around the legal issues, it would of been done already.

Hammer · Nov 22, 2012

David said:
Looked it up, it's brain altering as I described before. It has no use in blood pressure control, pain killing, etc. that weed has because it lacks the other chemicals. Nobody is saying THC has no value, we're simply pointing out it's not the end all and be all of weed's medicinal value. There's a reason actual weed is used as a medicine, if a simple pill could be made to get around the legal issues, it would of been done already.

Yes, marijuana has a number of chemicals with medicinal value, but the chemical with the most medical value is THC.

clax · Nov 22, 2012

Dirk said:
I have never known anyone to get addicted to marijuana. And for good reason, it's incredibly rare. Unlike tobacco, it does not have any substances in it that are addictive. Getting addicted to marijuana is about as likely as getting addicted to Bissli.

In Northern Israel, genetically engineered marijuana is being grown. It lacks THC and retains all of its medically beneficial properties. Marijuana is legal for medical purposes.

Addiction is mental, not chemical. Ever know a person who smokes weed constantly? Stoners are addicts, they do it all the time. You can get addicted to anything, if you don't know people who are addicted to weed, you just don't know them.

stoners say they can quit any time but so do all addicts, the nature of addiction is that the addict doesn't realize they are addicted.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

clax said:
Addiction is mental, not chemical. Ever know a person who smokes weed constantly? Stoners are addicts, they do it all the time. You can get addicted to anything, if you don't know people who are addicted to weed, you just don't know them.

stoners say they can quit any time but so do all addicts, the nature of addiction is that the addict doesn't realize they are addicted.

If what you say is true, "Addiction is mental, not chemical", which does have a "shred" of truth to it in my opinion, then why do heroin addicts sometimes die during withdrawal. I've never heard of anyone dying while withdrawing from weed....

Why is "alcohol addiction" considered a disease, while being addicted to just about anything else is not? And why is it statistically accurate to state that tobacco addiction is one of the most difficult addictions to shake?

myp · Nov 23, 2012

clax said:
Addiction is mental, not chemical. Ever know a person who smokes weed constantly? Stoners are addicts, they do it all the time. You can get addicted to anything, if you don't know people who are addicted to weed, you just don't know them.

stoners say they can quit any time but so do all addicts, the nature of addiction is that the addict doesn't realize they are addicted.

What do you think mental is? "Mental" is chemical. Through neuroplastic changes, the chemical state of your neurons and how they respond to and release stimuli changes, leading to addiction. There is a growing body of work with various drugs (especially cocaine) and how they create addiction.

David · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
What do you think mental is? "Mental" is chemical. Through neuroplastic changes, the chemical state of your neurons and how they respond to and release stimuli changes, leading to addiction. There is a growing body of work with various drugs (especially cocaine) and how they create addiction.

Clax and science have never mixed.

Hammer · Nov 23, 2012

David said:
Looked it up, it's brain altering as I described before. It has no use in blood pressure control, pain killing, etc.

You need to look it up in another source. THC is well known to be an effective painkiller than compliments other painkillers. THC is well known to be effective against glaucoma. Etc.

If you had looked up THC and CBD, you'd find that it's CBD that causes "couch lock" which, IMO, is far less desirable for society than THC's euphoria. It's the couch lock that makes potheads unproductive at work and unresponsive behind a steering wheel.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
What do you think mental is? "Mental" is chemical. Through neuroplastic changes, the chemical state of your neurons and how they respond to and release stimuli changes, leading to addiction. There is a growing body of work with various drugs (especially cocaine) and how they create addiction.

Don't mean to jump in on your conversation w/Clax myp, but while it's true that all mental activity results in neuroplastic changes, it is not true that the change is the "cause". All chemical changes that occur are controlled by either conscious or sub-conscious thought (the foundation of "cognitive therapy").

So the "cause" of the addiction (and the strength of that addiction) is a combination of thought and chemical reaction. I think Clax's point has merit, but doesn't adequately assign validity.

myp · Nov 23, 2012

=Zoomer= said:
Don't mean to jump in on your conversation w/Clax myp, but while it's true that all mental activity results in neuroplastic changes, it is not true that the change is the "cause". All chemical changes that occur are controlled by either conscious or sub-conscious thought (the foundation of "cognitive therapy").

So the "cause" of the addiction (and the strength of that addiction) is a combination of thought and chemical reaction. I think Clax's point has merit, but doesn't adequately assign validity.

"Thought" has its basis in chemical reactions and neuronal activity too. It isn't a magical thing that just happens. It is quite literally the neurons in our brain (and body) firing at different rates.

Hammer · Nov 23, 2012

clax said:
Addiction is mental, not chemical.

Addiction is chemical dependency. Habit is mental.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
"Thought" has its basis in chemical reactions and neuronal activity too. It isn't a magical thing that just happens. It is quite literally the neurons in our brain (and body) firing at different rates.

I knew it the moment I clicked submit, lol. I used the term "controlled by" incorrectly in my previous post. I should have used "preceded by". Every chemical reaction in the brain is "preceded by" a conscious or sub-conscious thought. A thought resulted in a chemical reaction.

myp · Nov 23, 2012

=Zoomer= said:
I knew it the moment I clicked submit, lol. I used the term "controlled by" incorrectly in my previous post. I should have used "preceded by". Every chemical reaction in the brain is "preceded by" a conscious or sub-conscious thought. A thought resulted in a chemical reaction.

I think you have it backwards. After all, you can have neuronal activity without thought, but you cannot have thought without neuronal activity.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
I think you have it backwards. After all, you can have neuronal activity without thought, but you cannot have thought without neuronal activity.

If you mean "autonomic" chemical reactions (like breathing or heartbeat), then yes, that's correct. But every emotional feeling is preceded by a thought. Not sure which camp addiction falls into, but if alcoholism is a reaction to "feeling down or sad, or generally not happy when I'm not drinking", then prior to feeling that way, one or more thoughts were involved.

ref: "Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy", by David Burns.

myp · Nov 23, 2012

=Zoomer= said:
But every emotional feeling is preceded by a thought. Not sure which camp addiction falls into, but if alcoholism is a reaction to "feeling down or sad, or generally not happy when I'm not drinking", then prior to feeling that way, one or more thoughts were involved.

ref: "Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy", by David Burns.

Addiction, thoughts, feelings are all the result of various chemical reactions. In your alcoholism example, you are talking about another event that drives a move towards chemical addiction. But even that event that does the driving (the sadness or whatever) was produced because of chemical/electrical reactions.

We are kind of getting to a broader topic with that though. Addiction itself has been linked to abnormal accumulation or activity (or disactivity) or certain neuronal entities.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
Addiction, thoughts, feelings are all the result of various chemical reactions. In your alcoholism example, you are talking about another event that drives a move towards chemical addiction. But even that event that does the driving (the sadness or whatever) was produced because of chemical/electrical reactions.

We are kind of getting to a broader topic with that though. Addiction itself has been linked to abnormal accumulation or activity (or disactivity) or certain neuronal entities.

Well, I respectfully disagree with you. And while thoughts and feelings are good examples of "cause and effect", the fact that they both produce chemical reactions in the brain seems somewhat irrelevant.

Your view flies in the face of recognized psychiatry/psychology (look up cognitive therapy). Have to agree with you on the "broader topic" though, and I honestly don't know enough about alcoholism to comment much further!

myp · Nov 23, 2012

=Zoomer= said:
Well, I respectfully disagree with you. And while thoughts and feelings are good examples of "cause and effect", the fact that they both produce chemical reactions in the brain seems somewhat irrelevant.

Your view flies in the face of recognized psychiatry/psychology (look up cognitive therapy). Have to agree with you on the "broader topic" though, and I honestly don't know enough about alcoholism to comment much further!

You disagree on what? And what goes against recognized psych? I am mostly speaking from what I learned in my undergraduate years, particularly in my neurophysiology classes.

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
You disagree on what? And what goes against recognized psych? I am mostly speaking from what I learned in my undergraduate years, particularly in my neurophysiology classes.

This sums it up fairly well without going into great detail, and the ref it's taken from is below:

Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy...
is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes the important role of thinking in how we feel and what we do.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy does not exist as a distinct therapeutic technique. The term "cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT)" is a very general term for a classification of therapies with similarities. There are several approaches to cognitive-behavioral therapy, including Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, Rational Behavior Therapy, Rational Living Therapy, Cognitive Therapy, and Dialectic Behavior Therapy.

However, most cognitive-behavioral therapies have the following characteristics:

1. CBT is based on the Cognitive Model of Emotional Response.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy is based on the idea that our thoughts cause our feelings and behaviors, not external things, like people, situations, and events. The benefit of this fact is that we can change the way we think to feel / act better even if the situation does not change.

http://www.nacbt.org/whatiscbt.htm

myp · Nov 23, 2012

That isn't contradictory to what I said though. Our thoughts are still the result of chemical reactions. Looking at it through psychology is just a broader way to do so because it is too hard to account for all the neuronal activity changes associated with any given thought. In other words, using a CBT approach, you might aim at changing thoughts, but at the root by changing thoughts you are changing the neuronal makeup and chemistry.

This is similar to how physics can explain chemical phenomena, but there are just too many things to account for when looking at bigger molecules, etc. so from a logistical standpoint it makes sense to look at such matters through the broader laws of chemistry although the physics at the end might be what is still governing everything.

tecoyah · Nov 23, 2012

"Within seconds of entering the body, drugs cause dramatic changes to synapses in the brain. By bypassing the five senses and directly activating the brain's reward circuitry fast and hard, drugs can cause a jolt of intense pleasure.
Drugs of abuse affect the brain in such a dramatic way that the brain must try to adapt. One way the brain compensates is to reduce the number of dopamine receptors at the synapse. As a result, after the user has "come down", they will need more of the drug next time they want to get high. This response is commonly referred to as "tolerance."
As the brain continues to adapt to the presence of the drug, regions outside of the reward pathway are also affected. Brain regions responsible for judgment, learning and memory begin to physically change or become "hard-wired."

Once this happens, drug-seeking behavior becomes driven by habit, almost reflex. This is how a drug user becomes transformed into a drug addict. "

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/

Makes sense to me.......

=Zoomer= · Nov 23, 2012

myp said:
That isn't contradictory to what I said though. Our thoughts are still the result of chemical reactions. Looking at it through psychology is just a broader way to do so because it is too hard to account for all the neuronal activity changes associated with any given thought. In other words, using a CBT approach, you might aim at changing thoughts, but at the root by changing thoughts you are changing the neuronal makeup and chemistry.

This is similar to how physics can explain chemical phenomena, but there are just too many things to account for when looking at bigger molecules, etc. so from a logistical standpoint it makes sense to look at such matters through the broader laws of chemistry although the physics at the end might be what is still governing everything.

This is beginning to sound a bit like the "chicken or the egg". I personally don't subscribe to the idea that a "chemical reaction" causes me to think in a certain way. I think it's the other way around. A thought produces a feeling (via chemical reaction), and not vice versa.

This sequence of events (or chemical reactions) that facilitated that thought are irrelevant to the discussion of addiction (in my opinion).

Marijuana vs. Alcohol...the debate

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