CONCLUSION:
We concluded cannabidiol probably does not improve symptoms in schizophrenia and leads to frequent side effects.
Recientemente se ha propuesto el uso de cannabidiol como antipsicótico para la esquizofrenia.
I am really surprised, that pot was even being considered as a treatment! How about the warnings that it can bring on a psychotic episode in a person with no previous episodes. If anything, they should be studying cannabis to understand why it brings on psychotic symptoms and see if it tells anything about schizophrenia. I did notice that they are talking about cannabidiol, which according to a quick internet search is an extract which doesn’t make people stoned. Still seems like a waste of research effort.
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Cannabis is full of chemicals that work on the brain’s neurotransmitters. Only some have been identified, and little is known about a lot of those.
THC is the one that gets you high - but it also can make you paranoid, psychotic, etc - it’s why I stopped smoking as a kid when all my friends were still getting high. It gave me the most uncomfortable paranoid feeling. I was sure every single person I was with was setting me up to get arrested.
CBD actually reduces the psycoactivity of THC - it’s calming and is responsible for most, but not all, of cannabis’s medicinal properties. This is what calms seizures in the children when harsher drugs don’t - or have really bad side effects. CBD has been able to kill cancer cells in a lab setting. It has been shown to help with Alzheimer’s disease and a lot of other things. It really is kind of a miracle if you read the research, but it’s only a miracle if you live in a place where you can gain access to very pure, highly concentrated forms of it, produced by people who know what they are doing.
I am doubtful that CBD will be the answer for SZ, although I wish that it could be.
It would be a mild drug with virtually no side effects as long as people stuck to the strains of marijuana that are very high in CBD and very low in THC. And, people with SZ, for the most part, might be more accepting of using it as medicine.
With all the people dying from both prescription and illegal drugs, I’m all for them doing research on anything that has any possibility of helping anyone.
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Thanks this was very helpful. In one of the descriptions of using CBD to treat epilepsy, the Dad said that his daughter can recognize the state right before an epileptic episode and apply the oil extract. I’ve often noted that there is a period before my daughter has a delusion whereby her body language changes. I wonder if she could be given some type of medicine at that time.
I don’t have an answer to that. It would be a good question to ask her doctor - maybe there’s something safe & non-addictive that would calm her? I know some people with anxiety use beta blockers so that their heart rate can’t physically start to increase.
You did remind me of something else though. My son takes gabapentin (generic Nerontin) as a mood stabilizer. The drug was originally used to control epilepsy. All this stuff is about how the neurotransmittors are working.
I take propanolol as a PRN for anxiety about twice a month and it works well for me.
There is no way I would touch anything related to cannabis for me or my family member with sz. Also ketamine, which is being researched as a treatment for depression, causes psychosis in people who have sz or similar.
There are clinics now that’ll do Ketamine infusions for a long-term anxiety treatment - it’s like chemo where they hook you up to an IV in an outpatient clinic setting. I’m sure it’s crazy expensive.
That’s interesting that Ketamine causes psychosis because other opiate type drugs can reduce psychosis. I’ll have to look that up and remember it in case my son brings it up at any point. He’s clean right now, but opiates are his drug of choice.
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Recreational marijuana is legal where I live (Oregon), and there are some cultivars with very low THC content, so more relaxing and less paranoia.