Grass and depression

well actuly marijuana is a Intoxicant; Stimulant; Psychedelic; Depressant, and the fact that it is a depressant has nothing to do with making people depressed

 

its alright, my job is to tell people what they know and teach them new things. if i didnt like educating people id have left this forum a long time ago.

do some research? who cares what its 'classified' as be scientists. look at what is does to your body.

first lets see what the classification 'depressant' means. it does not mean it gives you a depressed emotion (though this can of course be an effect of depressants.. along with happiness - emotions are not to do with the classification of this sort). it means that it depresses or supresses the function or stimulation of brain function. the term 'depression' for emotion comes from the fact that sadness is like a depression of happiness. for example: alchohol is a depressant because it degrades the membranes around neurons and causes instabilities of the charges of signals passing through the affected neuron. these instabilities mean that thoughts cannot always be sent through neurons effectively, and therefor the brain function is depressed, it is not functioning at the speed and accuracy that it would normally be.

its classed as a deppresant via behavioral psychology, which is a very bad way of studying a drugs affects. it is classed as a depressant because people behave slower, often act as though theyre using less of their brain power, behave with less concentration, and tend to show many signs of uncoordination. often drugs will be called 'CNS depressant' due to the fact that it slows down or disrupts the signalling of the central nervous system.

but we all know that weed speeds up your heart rate for one thing (clearly not a CNS depressant), and when we look at the effects of cannabis through cognitive psychology, we see it creates racing thoughts that can someteims be unbearable, or lead to teh descovery of things that would never have been realised while sober. we know that concentration is usually lacking because it is simply not at the task at hand, because it is so incredibly focussed on something else. as well as this, teh incoordination is often due to the forgetfulness of people, because some tasks can be achieved with a great deal more coordination while stoned.

if we look through neuroscience, we see that the effects of weed are due to the overstimulation of certain types of neurons, namely, pyramidal neurons, which affects the inhibition of signals, the places we concentrate on, and the allocation of thoughts to memory. no im not going to show a study, because any one study would not give you the information you need. however you may want to look at the scientific american's most recent front cover story on 'cannabis in the brain'.


if psychologists of today were doing things right, then we would know a hell of a lot more about life.

and if scientist's words were taken without people looking at reality and saying 'hang on a moment, is it true or is it not?' then the world would be very far behind where it is now.

in fact, there would be no science at all if people didnt question what theyre told about reality, we would all be in some ancient religion, following stories of alleged experiences and observations.

light was classified as a wave for longer than cannabis has been classified a 'depressant', due to the fact that the obvious outward signs of its nature suggested so. but then people looked at what what actually going on and realised it was also acting like a particle and now scientists understand that light is neither a wave or a particle but something beyond such simple classifications.

 

*clears throat*

 

bill wins

 

Thank you, StonerBill, you said everything I was going to. Just because a drug is classified as a "depressant", it doesn't mean it makes you depressed. You rock!

 

Damn StonerBill, I thought I held a lot of knowledge about drugs... but I always learn shit from your posts.

And to answer the original question, in my personal experience, cannabis is a real treatment for anxiety and depression. I had both of those conditions so bad it was literally paralyzing. I started smoking dope, and my life began to change for the better. I was able to learn how to control anxiety and depression through conscious thought. I really don't care how many people discredit cannabis, because I know what it did for my life. And yes, I have tried just about everything drug in the world of FDA pharmcopeia. It's not a cure all though. I have also changed my lifestyle to exercising more, eating healthy, sleeping well, and all that. Which also fights off depression. I give cannabis a lot of credit in influencing me to make those lifestyle changes. It just opened up my mind, and put me more in touch with myself and the world around me. Everyone in my life, pro-pot or not, sees this. And it is actually changed the views of a few people about the plant.

That's my story though. I don't think it is safe to generalize any treatment of a disorder. That's why they have 15 different prescription medications to treat the same disorder... people have different brain chemistry.

Pot worked for me.

 

Stoner Bill, you seem to be confused. First off, you said that marijuana isn't a depressant, then, after I proved you wrong, you proceeded to spout speculative psuedoscientific diatribe about how although marijuana is depressant, it doesn't make you clinically depressed. Secondly, I never once claimed or implied that a depressant will cause clinical depression.

I merely stated for the record that marijuana is a depressant, which, like I said, many people don't realize. Which then you called me "inexperienced" and I don't know what a depressant is. Bill, I think you should learn (as your custom title states) that you don't know everything and how not to be a condescending jackass in order to boost your already-inflated ego.

And you don't think drugs shouldn't be studied from a behaviorist perspective? Please, try telling that to a well-respected psychologist without getting laughed at hysterically. Drugs are, by definition, substances that alter your behavior.

 

Weed activates the cannabinoid receptors, how is that a depressant?

 

actually im flat out saying that it is falsifiably classed as a depressent. im allowed to talk like this because i truelly do know more about it than you. ok? you dont have to come and defend yourself in a way that doesnt get you anywhere.

i dont care what respected psychologists would say, because most conventional psychologists are idiots. otherwise we would know a hell of a lot more about stuff. except did you know that not until stuff thats under progress now, the three disciplines of psychology have never been seen as the same thing?

i didnt say it was a depressant, i said it wasnt, so i dont know where you got that idea from. behaviorally it makes one seem to have been 'depressed' (in teh neurological sense) however the fact that it is only observed in behavioral analasys shows that clearly, it is due to a rather complex mechanism that is unclassifyable by the silly things that psychologists talk about.

if anythings pseudo, its the conventional method used today.

but dont worry, theres always room for innovation in science.

plus, you can forget i even mentioned anything about actually making people depressed. i only brought that in because on top of referring to cannabis as a depressant class drug, you also inferred that this linked to depressive emotion, but if you didnt mean that then you can ignore what i said about it and my arguement would hold the same.

cant you handle being corrected by a 17 year old? if you can, then refer to specific things that i said if your gonna tell me i contradicted myself. clearly it is yourself who has an ego problem if you cant handle being corrected by someone 4 years younger than yourself.

yes, and old respected.. behavioral psychologist?

perhaps a neuroscientist would view drugs as:


drug:
[size=-1]Any molecule that affects a biological process. More strictly, a molecule whose pharmacological activity can be correlated with its chemical structure.

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but it doesnt matter what they define it as, did you read the content of my last post? unelss you are trying to tell me that the stuff i was telling you was non factual?


drugs should of course be studied via behavior. but they shouldnt be classed by the way they make someone portray their thoughts to another person. thats just one element of a drug.

now if your going to argue with me, argue your arguement against mine, dont argue about me. i only called you inexperienced because your name is 'are you experienced' and i was merely turning your own terminology around. if i had known you were going to get bitter then i would have refrained from using such a clearly insulting word.






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