Victoria Derbyshire programme<\/a>.<\/p>\n“Within 24 hours there was a GP out, and I was in hospital the next day. It plagued my life for about ten years after that. I couldn’t function, and I was in and out of hospital ten times. I wasn’t doing anything meaningful with my life.<\/p>\n
“When I stopped, the psychosis stopped. I was on medications and things but that was to rectify what happened before, so my brain chemistry could get some sort of equilibrium. When I stopped smoking, the symptoms disappeared.<\/p>\n
“If I had known the risks I doubt I would have taken it.”<\/p>\nThe study<\/h2>\n The researchers, from King’s College London, looked at cannabis use by people in 11 EU towns and cities, including London, as well as one region of Brazil.<\/p>\n
They compared a sample of 901 people who had experienced psychosis with 1,237 (from the general population) who had not.<\/p>\n
They categorised the type of cannabis used by the participants according to strength, although they did not do any lab tests to measure the strength directly.<\/p>\n
Low potency cannabis was any illicit product thought to contain less than 10% concentration of the ingredient THC. High potency was anything containing more than 10% THC.<\/p>\n
The findings<\/h2>\n The researchers found:<\/p>\n
\nSelf-reported daily cannabis use was more common among patients with first episode psychosis, compared to controls – 29.5% (or 266 out of 901) of patients versus 6.8% (84\/1,237) of controls<\/li>\n High-potency cannabis use was also more common among patients with first episode psychosis, compared to controls – 37.1% (334\/901) versus 19.4% (240\/1,237)<\/li>\n Across the 11 sites, people who used cannabis on a daily basis were three times more likely to have a diagnosis of first episode psychosis, compared with people who had never used cannabis<\/li>\n This increased to five times more likely for daily use of high potency cannabis<\/li>\n There was no evidence of an association between less than-weekly cannabis use and psychosis, regardless of potency<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nThe authors estimate that one in five new cases (20.4%) of psychosis across the 11 sites may be linked to daily cannabis use, and one in ten (12.2%) linked to use of high potency cannabis.<\/p>\n
In London, a fifth (21%) of new cases of psychosis might be linked to daily cannabis use, and nearly a third (30%) to high potency cannabis.<\/p>\n
Removing strong cannabis from the market would lower London’s psychosis incidence rate from 45.7 to 31.9 cases per 100,000 people per year, the scientists estimate.<\/p>\n
For the South London region they looked at, that would mean 60 fewer cases of psychosis each year.<\/p>\n
Is mild pot and occasional use OK?<\/h2>\n Nick Hickmott from the drug and alcohol charity Addaction said: “We’ve got a problem with potency. People who regularly take lots of high strength cannabis are at risk of potentially serious harm. It can be particularly harmful for younger, developing brains.<\/p>\n
“My advice is avoid using high-strength cannabis every day and pay attention to how it makes you feel. If you end up feeling anxious or just unsettled then it might be best to give it a miss. It’s also not a good idea to mix it with alcohol or other drugs.<\/p>\n
“It’s also important not to over-react. Lots of people experiment with cannabis and then move on without any problems. For people who do need advice or help I’d recommend reaching out to a GP or a local drug service.”<\/p>\n
Cannabis can vary in strength and type. Skunk tends to contain higher levels of THC than weed.<\/p>\n
___https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/health-47609849<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Potent cannabis increases risk of serious mental illness, says study<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicconvergence.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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