Comments on: How cannabis makes thoughts tumble

By: Anxy Chetr

Anxy Chetr — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 00:53:43 +0000

sometimes after having a pot it seems i am going heaven teasing everything without a thought but the next to me always find the negative intension
]and that seems little distarius to me and after that i go on thinking to the same matter forgoting my wood and that is what i am still going with pot until i find why is this…so it could be the good decision..m confused but inner feeling always ask me to do..

By: Lisa

Lisa — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:55:31 +0000

Will I need to talk to you plz email me

By: Valerie Lambert

Valerie Lambert — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:45:33 +0000

Thanks! This is a great abstract.

By: will

will — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:08:26 +0000

I’m copying and pasting the same response I gave at Jonah Lehrers blog. Dirkh, this a story you might think upon a bit, its only anecdotal and is also first person (so it wont pass too many objectivity tests) but it might be useful to entertain.
At age 18, I was diagnosed with schiotypal personality. It was more than a personality disorder, it seems now, as hallucinations and frank psychotic episodes were there, though the episodes were short lived. Delusions were also a constant. There was also a serious emotional disturbance, the depressive sort, something I’m told and I’ve read is usually not evident in schizophrenia. My diagnoses was changed to schizoaffective disorder.
Around age 20, I began smoking pot. This did two things. One is, perhaps the semantic hyper-priming. I would be talking to friends I world free associate for hours at a time. I thought I was a virtuoso of improvisational thought, a young Zizek in the lonely midwest. I thought and spoke improvisationally when sober, in part because I was a serious reader and at that age (and still at 26) I was trying out idea after idea. However, this improvisation in thought and speech grew extremely exaggerated when I smoked marijuana.
Here’s the great mystery. Marijuana had, in some sense, an antipsychotic function. I was in a relationship until age 20. I’d been in that relationship since age 16. A tragic problem in the relationship was my inability to have sex. When we would have sex I would have auditory hallucinations that were incredibly threatening. Since I enjoyed getting high, as did she, we began having sex high, as many people do. There were no voices when during intercourse if I was high. I became thoroughly involved with the sex and not only did the threats cease, but the past threats during sober intercourse didn’t bother me.
I’m not recommending marijuana for the mentally ill
In fact, because marijuana had the strange effect of partially resolving auditory hallucinations, I decided it would be wise to smoke it several days a week. This was a poor decision, though it did not make me more psychotic, it did reinforce my delusions and expand their scope. Probably through this semantic hyper-priming effect.
Sometimes I think how terribly sad it is that researchers can’t (or wont) open up my head and watch what happens on their screens. It might be interesting. It might even be valuable. It might even entertain me for a while.

By: Axton

Axton — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:28:26 +0000

I’ve been conducting similar “hyper-priming” experiments myself.

By: Dirkh

Dirkh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:24:38 +0000

Thanks for the primer on hyper-priming. Fascinating.
Although I am still not convinced about cannabis raising the risk for psychosis, especially schizophrenia. I think we’ve got the cart before the horse on this one: people who are genetically susceptible to schizophrenia often have their first significant psychotic break while on a psychoactive drug like LSD or cannabis. I don’t think we have good evidence that cannabis itself causes the psychoses. What we have is evidence that if you are genetically predisposed to schizophrenia, cannabis is one of many triggers, some social, some biological, that can contribute to the initial expression of a pre-existing condition.