By Eileen Shim  April 16, 2014

The news: Every day, the push toward national legalization of marijuana seems more and more inevitable. As more and more politicians and noted individuals come out in favor of legalizing
or at least decriminalizing different amounts of pot, the mainstream acceptance of the recreational use of the drug seems like a bygone conclusion. But before we can talk about legalization, have we fully understood the health effects of marijuana?

According to a new study published in the Journal of  Neuroscience, researchers from Harvard and Northwestern studied the brains of 18- to 25-year-olds, half of whom smoked pot recreationally and half of whom didn't. What they found was rather shocking: Even those who only smoked few
times a week had significant brain abnormalities in the areas that control emotion and motivation.

"There is this general perspective out there that using marijuana recreationally is not a problem — that it is a safe drug," said Anne Blood, co-author of the study.  "We are seeing that this is not the case."

 The science: Similar studies have found a correlation between heavy pot use and brain abnormalities, but this is the first study that has found the same link with recreational users. The 20 people in the "marijuana group" of the study smoked four times a week on average; seven only smoked once a week. Those in the control group did not smoke at all.

"We looked specifically at people who have no adverse impacts from marijuana — no problems with work, school, the law, relationships, no addiction issues," said Hans Breiter, another co-author of the study.

Using three different neuroimaging techniques, researchers then looked at the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala of the participants. These areas are responsible for gauging the benefit or loss of doing certain things, and providing feelings of reward for pleasurable activities
such as food, sex and social interactions.

"This is a part of the brain that you absolutely never ever want to touch," said Breiter. "I don't want to say that these are magical parts of the brain — they are all important. But these are fundamental
in terms of what people find pleasurable in the world and assessing that against the bad things."

Shockingly, every single person in the marijuana group, including those who only smoked once a week, had noticeable abnormalities, with the nucleus accumbens and the amygdala showing changes in density, volume and shape. Those who smoked more had more significant variations.

 What will happen next? The study's co-authors admit that their sample size was small. Their plan now is to conduct a bigger study that not only looks at the brain abnormalities, but also relates them to functional outcomes. That would be a major and important step in this science because, as of now, the research indicates that marijuana use may cause alterations to the brain, but it's unclear what that might actually mean for users and their brains. 

But for now, they are standing behind their findings. 

"People think a little marijuana shouldn't  cause a problem if someone is doing OK with work or school," said Breiter. "Our data directly says this is not so."

I came across this great article doing research on addiction and why pot is so dangerous.  We are loosing our kids to this powerful drug and the world seems to be ignoring the truth!  It's worth your time to read.  

Teen Monsters
By Jack Trimpey
www.rational.org

Potheads of all ages can be called Teen Monsters because their indulgences both reflect and generate adolescent attitudes, fixations, authority problems, and anti-family feelings. Many adolescents and young adults begin to experiment with alcohol and other drugs, often as early as age 13 to 15, when they really should be learning the importance of self-restraint, delaying gratifications, personal discipline, acceptance of authority, managing emotions, and developing more mature character traits. As suggested by the old hippie song title, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” teen dopers are transformed, almost magically, from naive kids from good families into smoke-breathing slackers.

Already straining against parental authority by virtue of healthy, adolescent growth toward independence, they experiment with marijuana and other neuro-drugs which turn them into teen-age monsters fueled by a volatile cocktail of tetrahydrocannabis plus testosterone and/or estrogen. They become animals, unfit for family membership, but wear pathetic disguises of disease provided by the school and the health and counseling professions. Even liberal churches have sold out on the family, resigning to the Beast® by opening their basements to fellowships of addiction which use the forms and parlance of religion to convey the beliefs and values of addiction to newcomers of all ages.

It’s amazing how the world looks so different through the eyes of addiction, after abandoning your right mind. The onset of addiction always feels like a blessed event, quite unexpected by the substance abuser, but nevertheless welcomed as a wonderful surprise. Many potheads and slackers still recall their first lift-off, often as teenagers, into the Ozone, that zone of deep pleasure that evokes the wonderful insight, “Ohhhhhh, ohhhhhh, this feels sooooo good! Ohhhhh…” Anything that feels this good can’t be bad!” Thus sayeth the newborn Beast of addiction, in its first utterance of the Addictive Voice.

This sudden inversion of moral truth, that there is nothing wrong with getting high, very often occurs within a single session of being “stoned.” The inversion is a pivotal life event with profound implications and effects on one’s thoughts and behavior for the rest of his life. In AVRT-based recovery, we call this inversion, the denial of the moral dimension of substance abuse, original denial. Thus, in fellowships of addiction, the act 0f self-intoxication is always an innocent act, and any attempt to abstain based upon moral judgment is ridiculed and condemned as a disease symptom.

From then on, a new, counterfeit, survival drive has been added to the normal desires of hunger, breathing, and sexual desire — desire for addictive pleasures, the desire to get high. Original denial sets up a domino-style chain reaction in which all other truths are also up-ended, so they may appear consistent with the addictive mandate, which is that there is nothing wrong with getting high, there is nothing wrong with self-intoxication, there is nothing wrong in principle, nothing wrong with anything as long as nobody gets hurt, there’s nothing wrong at all.� Original denial is the formative insight upon which life in addiction is based, and which lays the foundation for a parallel lifestyle often called liberalism.

Addiction washes away one’s moral conscience, one’s original family values, one’s family identity, and one’s desire to compete for the good in life. Through the eyes of addiction, there is no greater good than the high life, which may be summoned forth by burning a number wherever you happen to be. Pot smokers are perpetual adolescents, with the ego prototype exhibited by radically liberal talkshow host, Bill Maher — ill-tempered, narcicisstic, obsessed with bodily functions, potty humor, sexual obscenity and perversion, i.e., “wet humor,” discussed and illustrated below.

Sadly, the Teen Monsters never know what hit them. Their world is transformed from a developmental struggle for success, freedom, and independence into a childish fantasy about how neat and super life will always be because their favorite fix will always be there. At last, newbie addicts find magic to quickly bail them out from uneasy, mundane feelings, the most frightening of which is boredom, horrible boredom. Of course, in the bubble of addiction, “boredom” is little else than the name addicted people give to reality, or “not high.” They take their boredom not to the library, not to the soccer field, nor into wholesome relationships, but they are drawn like magnets to the bad company of other substance abusers who share the inverted, antisocial, anti-family attitudes common to addiction. Why go through all the hassle and struggles of trying to be happy, when in a short moment, the magic dragon can sweep you away into the wow-zone? 

Teen Monsters are very young and cannot know what they are losing to pot and other drugs — their right minds, their personal identities, their character, their families, their freedom, and their sexual future. Love is blind, but the Beast of addiction sees through hormonal fog well enough to narrow one’s sexual desires to other users, losers, batterers, bastards, dealers, lushes and crack whores and to others unfit for family life. In their right minds, they once knew about good and evil, right and wrong, but in what’s left of their minds after addiction sets in, there are no acts which are inherently immoral or evil; it just depends upon the circumstances. In that drug-liberated mind, the social scene is more important than family, psychological principles replace old-fashioned ideas of their ancestors, “spirituality” trumps religion, addictive pleasure equals happiness, and hedonic drugs are the sacraments of the only satisfactory life they can imagine — the high life.

Addiction is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.A.
Published on February 3, 2014 by Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D. in Therapy, It’s More Than Just Talk

Life is short, and tragically shorter if you lose your battle with addiction. As did Philip Seymour Hoffman—an actor whose stunning portrayals of a wide range of troubled characters vividly lingers in the minds of countless movie goers. He reportedly was found with a syringe in his arm and packets of presumably what is heroin scattered about his West Village apartment.

Addiction is a disease. Addiction is not recreational drug use. It is characterized by compulsive drug and/or alcohol use despite clear harm to relationships, work and physical health. When addiction advances we see physical dependence on the substance where the body experiences withdrawal when blood levels drop. Like other diseases, addiction makes no distinctions between gender, race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. 

Addiction is the leading cause of preventable death in the US. CASAColumbia, a renowned policy center on addiction, reports that of the approximately 2.5 million deaths (2009) in the U.S., nearly 600,000 deaths were attributable to tobacco, alcohol or other drugs. The costs of addiction to government (not to mention families, businesses, and communities) exceed $468 billion annually (casacolumbia).

Addiction in this country remarkably escapes our attention despite its huge prevalence. “Forty million Americans age 12 and over meet the clinical criteria for addiction involving nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. That is more than the number of people with heart conditions, diabetes or cancer. Meanwhile, another 80 million Americans fall into the category of risky substance users, defined as those who are not addicted, but use tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs in ways that threaten public health and safety” (CASAColumbia).

Yet, and this may be even more difficult to believe, only one in 10 people with any form of addiction report receiving any treatment—at all. Past-year illicit drug use treatment (age 12 or older) was 15 percent and past year alcohol use treatment (also age 12 or older) was 8 percent (store.samhsa.gov).

Mr. Hoffman’s loss to his family, his friends, his professional community and his admirers cannot be expressed with statistics. Instead, his loss tells us story of a life abruptly cut short by addiction during his peak of creativity.  It is a reminder to us all how lethal a substance use disorder can be.

There are many paths for recovery from addiction. Help is available {1-800-662-HELP (4357) or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)} .

No one size fits all. For some, 12-step programs are lifesaving. Some people may be suited for a program calling for abstinence while others may benefit from what is called “harm reduction,” a path that starts with reducing use (and danger) and can build from there. Recent years have seen the introduction of medications that aid people in remaining substance free (called medication assisted treatment, or MAT); these are often best coupled with 12-step or counseling programs. We all, not just addicts, need to surround ourselves with people who support our well-being while assiduously avoiding people who want to exploit and otherwise take advantage of us. A variety of non-Western activities (like yoga and meditation) as well as nutrition and exercise aid in recovery.

Addiction is America's most neglected disease. Every day we lose people to its lethal outcomes. May Mr. Hoffman’s epitaph include a reminder of how far we have yet to go to save others from so tragic a fate.