Because of how marijuana has been made nearly sacrosanct in some circles, they will not look at that THC or CBD as a contributing factor : (
I once slept in a hoodie with the hood under my back and woke up with horrible back pain, I could not sit still or focus on anything but the pain, 800mg of ibuprofen did nothing. I was about to go to the ER or urgent care when a doctor friend suggested trying cannabis, I took one small hit and was immediately pain free. I have never experienced such a dramatic medical effect in my life, one second I was writhing in pain and the next I was completely fine.
I’ve also seen videos of epileptics calming their seizures from cannabis. The autism community often speaks highly of it, how it makes them feel “normal” or more regulated. I’ve heard of stories of people getting off opioids by using cannabis. I think the people who get anxiety from it or no relief from insomnia are often taking far too much because there aren’t any good guidelines for self medicating and the guidelines they do get are from recreational users.
All I have are anecdotes, but given how obvious the effects were, I find it hard to believe there’s no medicinal value to cannabis.
Safety is barely discussed in this paper, probably because the available RCT evidence is favorable to cannabis. I'm not sure that means it's actually safe, since RCTs of tobacco cigarettes over the same study periods probably wouldn't show signal either. This again shows the downside of ignoring all scientific knowledge except RCT outcomes, just in the other direction.
> Conclusions: There is low-quality evidence indicating that cannabinoids may be a safe alternative for a small but significant reduction in subjective pain score when treating acute pain, with intramuscular administration resulting in a greater reduction relative to oral.
https://dx.doi.org/10.1089/can.2019.0079
For insomnia, this paper itself says:
> meta-analysis of 39 RCTs, 38 of which evaluated oral cannabinoids and 1 administered inhaled cannabis, that included 5100 adult participants with chronic pain reported that cannabis and cannabinoid use, compared with placebo, resulted in a small improvement in sleep quality [...]
It goes on to criticize those studies, but we again see low-quality evidence in favor.
In the context of evidence-based medicine, "does not support" can mean the RCTs establish with reasonable confidence that the treatment doesn't work. It can also mean the RCTs show an effect in the good direction but with insufficient statistical power, so that an identical study with more participants would probably--but not certainly--reach our significance threshold. The failure to distinguish between those two quite different situations seems willful and unfortunate here.
It has an interesting conclusion that says more research in to CBD rather than THC is needed and cites some papers looking in to that.
For example, it's pretty widely agreed that it (anecdotally) causes anxiety at higher doses - how high of a dose?
That would require a grown up conversation and what if the results aren’t the one you want? Pretty hard for Bud, Pfizer etc to put that genie back in the bottle
I also don’t know, but I seriously doubt there was cost benefit analysis.
My two bets would be:
- church/priests had power and they condemned most things, except for preying.
- it became widely known that opium is really obviously bad for you, after a bit of mental juggling that became “drugs are bad”, and then wholesale bans followed.
The Chinese 100 years of humiliation at the hands of the Brits, was down to Opium
The fall of the medieval European dynasties was all down to Luandanum
Time and again, the unhealthy, and unregulated use of drugs has toppled empires and led to social upheaval.
Makes perfect sense if you ran a country you would be scared of it.
I admit, I really like cannabis, and when I was a 20 year old occasionally smoking with friends at parties it was a "healthier" alternative to getting wasted on alcohol. Share few joins with friends, have fun, laugh a lot.
Then as I got financially independent and I started solo consumption (mostly to get rid of stress) I really started appreciating the cons: lack of energy, disruption of sleep, negative impact of my cognitive abilities, increase in anxiety. I'm glad the study confirms those to be statistically common.
I was very lucky to have a SO who really disliked me smoking and made me realize that I was just doing it to "not think", and it had really 0 positive effects on me. I'm sure I would've quitted eventually anyway, but support and criticism sped up the reality check.
Eventually this is all anecdotal experience, and I'm sure there might be occasional users who can have a mostly positive experience, but the fact that a review points out how statistically common are the negatives and how uncommon are the positives honestly reflects what I've seen on myself and friends.
Personally I use prescribed pharmacutical cannabis oils as I have much lower levels of a couple of important enzymes than most people which renders opioids mostly ineffective, even intravenous morphine as I recently found out after surgery. High CBD cannabis oil works, as does paracetamol but that’s way more dangerous.
I think that’s the key message do the paper.
larodi•4h ago
likewise, nations may have to legalize in order to regulate the contents of whatever-white-powder users may stumble upon on the street. and let us be honest - no bombs can stop the Fentanil (or rat poison for all I care) from being mixed in.
loeg•3h ago
edgineer•58m ago
lucketone•36m ago
Poisoning by methyl alcohol.
Ethyl alcohol is ok’ish (the regular stuff), while methyl alcohol can make you blind or dead even in small amounts.