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associating a bad mental health with taking drugs
BillieTheBot
Posts: 8,721 Bot
Does anyone else feel that drugs maybe trigger a mental unstability in most people that is already there and sometimes its not down to the actual drug they are taking
For example the people that never take any drugs in their lives and still become mentally unstable and have much the same problems that drug users come across
I know this may not be strictly true but research is bound to prove something close to this?
For example the people that never take any drugs in their lives and still become mentally unstable and have much the same problems that drug users come across
I know this may not be strictly true but research is bound to prove something close to this?
Beep boop. I'm a bot.
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There is an amount of evidence linking drugs to poor mental health, most notably cannabis in recent years. the current thinking is that if you use cannabis at an early age, you have a greater chance of developing scizophrenia, so if you use heavily at 13 or 14 the are twice as likely to develop it. (1% rises to 2%!!). however this research is flawed and most professionals agree that it is more likely that cannabis causes psychotic disturbance in people who have a likelihood of getting the disease anyway.
stimulants can cause depression and anxiety during the period that the individual uses the drug and this can carry on for some time while the person recovers. amphetamine and cocaine can also cause a psychotic reaction if used heavily, but again, this passes over time.
The profession is unsure whether the drugs themselves do this or it is because users tend to suffer from more mental health problems than non users anyway.
there are many instances of detrimental effects that drugs and alcohol have on the functioning of the brain, this is merely a snapshot of the more common ones. i can point you in the direction of further reading if you would like.
but many people can use drugs and maintaine sane.....but then who is too say what sane is....what if pot heads are the most sane of all???
The dark side of that is that given the proliferation of patterns of drug use that we tend to get nowadays - people taking more, of more different things, more often (poly-drug use) we really only know a small amount about substances administered in laboratory conditions. There is a great unknown about the manner in which alot of people use in this country, and anecdotal evidence from mental health services is not usually positive about potential outcomes.
I think that a lot of people blame drugs more as well, as they don't want to feel 'weak' or like they have less control over their life and emotions and blame drugs for their loss of 'control'... if that makes sense. We like to attribute the blame to other things to try and justify our own actions.
I think personally, that drugs affecting mental health isn't the epidemic we make out (obviously if you use most drugs too much or don't know what you're doing it can have mental and physical affect). I also think that the research publicised just suits the government's agenda at the time.
An old army buddy of mine suffering from schizophrenia apparently made things worse with his drug intake.
Here's a site that I have that touches on this -- http://www.symptomsofschizophrenia.net
Sheldon