There was a brief period of time before the opioid prescribing backlash when some fringe psychiatrists were proposing weaker opioids as adjunctive treatments for treatment resistant depression. It's hard to fathom now, but opioids were more casually prescribed a few decades ago. I recall some discussion where one of them said they were seeing good initial results but the effects faded, and then it was hard to get the patients off of the opioids when they were no longer helping. Not surprising to anyone now, but remember there was a period of time where many seemingly forgot about their addictive properties.

I feel like I've seen a weaker version of this in some friends who turned to THC to "treat" their depression: Initial mood boost, followed by dependency, then eventually into a protracted period where they know it's not helping but they don't want to stop because they feel worse when they discontinue. This wasn't helped by the decades of claims that claimed THC was basically free of dependency problems.

Plenty of people use cannabis to alleviate symptoms. I don't think they expect to be cured entirely. Getting a good night's sleep or being without chronic pain for a few hours is often enough.

Wonder what is behind it, from my perspective it's quite remarkable.

DISCLOSURE: I use large amounts of high potency cannabis flower with CBD/CBG edibles for intractable neuropathic pain. I also smoked a hell of a lot of weed in my 20s and 30s. I've more experience of Pot than most. MMJ lowers my pain a bit, and reduces suffering a lot. Its the suffering that makes life difficult.

For randomized controlled trials, even in "legal" states, university scientists can't just walk into a dispensary and buy cannabis to then administer to test subjects.

That's Post-Prohibition for you.

As far as I can tell, most (EDITED FROM ALL) of the studies utilize isolates - and not necessarily in conjunction.

For instance, none of the 6 anxiety studies included in this metastudy used THC and CBD together.

The headline could read instead: No evidence cannabinoid isolates help anxiety, depression, or PTSD.

Cannabis advocates are the first to mention the entourage effect. Cannabis prohibitionists on the other hand, love nothing more than to cite incomplete science.

Old man joint pains. Not headaches, broken bones, etc. But it nearly erases achy joint pain for me.

Being angry. I am much less angry in general when I'm smoking a bit every couple of days. That said, when I take a break I feel like my testosterone goes through the roof. I get more irritable and, TMI, I get a lot more spontaneous boners.

It's like comparing a casual light beer with the 90% moonshine or 45% bathtub gin sold during prohibition.

- Not adjusted for strain, dose or delivery method across all studies.

- Not adjusted for receptor downregulation, for which rotation and/or drug holidays would be appropriate strategies.

- Not adjusted across all studies for time effect, e.g. 6 hours of relief, 1 hour, etc.

I can tell you from personal experience with a related disorder that disciplined rotation of 10mg edible cannabis provides 90% relief, 90% of the time, with far fewer side effects than alternative medications for the same disorder.

Cannabis, like alcohol and tobacco, is a vice. It definitely helps with some physical ailments (like helping stimulate hunger in cancer patients), just like alcohol and tobacco can with other ailments, but it’s not a panacea for mental health disorders.

We need to stop marketing these things as curatives when they’re mostly just coping mechanisms or social lubricants. We’re doing more harm than good by leaning into the “legitimate pharmaceutical” angle.

Okay, I've read the meta-study now and I think the summary article isn't representing the picture very well. In particular they found for anxiety there actually seems to be evidence in this exact data set that does help.

What they are doing is saying "there isn't 95% evidence it reduces anxiety" therefore "no evidence" even though they mean "some evidence, just not at the statistical significance level" -- it's one of the biggest confusions (and sometimes it feels deliberate) you'll see people do.

Also when you have a confidence interval that big it's a red flag. They themselves admit the data is all over the place.

In summary, don't assume much from the title of the summary article.

I like how confident the author is to just say stuff that’s not covered by his study while promoting his study.

“I didn’t look into this but I bet pot is bad!” doesn’t solicit a lot of confidence in the neutrality of the guy who previously brought us hits like “Does smoking weed lead to doing heroin?” and “Is ChatGPT good for doing medical research?”

Might be different for THC/CBD in different ways.

there's lived reality vs what you wish reality was (lab conditions)

some people do find relief in marijuana etc to treat pain, some people find relief in treating ptsd with LSD

while at the same time - we find more cases of psychosis from marijuana

telling someone their lived experience is a lie is very foolish and looking down on people.

Tangentially, The etymology nerd in me has been taunted by the current article thats been on the front page for the as of now last 19 hours[1] which conveniently has the origin of the term linked to in the first sentence! [2]… which @suprisetalk also links to in the article description!…

So now I’m wondering why mdma has got the street name molly… and if they're not perhaps related?

As in molly (aka mdma) has got the name as its used as a guard against these ailments specifically…

[1] https://unsung.aresluna.org/molly-guard-in-reverse/

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/molly-guard

In fact, it's quite the contrary.

The only times when it's really enjoyable is when you're with someone and you chill out and lightens the mood.

But overall it's a drug which I haven't seen bringing any good effect on people's mental health.

This review seems dubious considering the huge gap in motivations and scientific rigor between 1980 and 2025.

I am calling it quits for now it's been making m a little crazy and I want to see what life is like without it for a while.

So, why do people use cannabis then?

As someone who's used cannabis regularly for over a decade, I tried to start to explain in this body my experience but every sentence written ends with me deciding, "that's too circumstantial to my lifestyle-physiology to include."

I think at the end of the day, empirical research's purpose is to get us closer to being able to just make our own decisions surrounding mind-altering drugs. Beyond that, cannabis affects a great deal of systems in our body concurrent to the rest of our environment's effects. Use your autonomy to determine if it's a positive or a negative for you. Don't drive fucked up, please.

These gaslighting studies are unhelpful. For me cannabis has been life changing, no more pain killers and I live very much pain free. But I read studies claiming cannabis doesn't help with pain.

Then you'll have anti-drug crusaders taking these headlines and abuse people for whom cannabis made massive positive difference.

To those scientists: Go fuck yourself.

I mean if I told you I wanted to have fun you’d lose your mind. But if I told you I needed to heal you’re fine with it. So I make it so I’m always ill and needing pharmacological therapy.

(Yah this probably sounded woo-woo, but I am speaking from a different, non-western context/lens that views this as a spiritual malady. So take that as you will)

It’s a nervous adaptogen.

Not the fix.

It's a shame that first experiences with stress also coincide with that phase of life, so the debate never ends.