Another Government Road Block

The Department Of Health and Human Services (it has very little to do with health and is into denying services) has denied permission for an FDA approved study of cannabis for treating PTSD.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has blocked a pilot study to examine the benefits of marijuana for veterans with treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study was sponsored by the nonprofit research organization the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and would have been conducted by Dr. Sue Sisley of the University of Arizona at Phoenix.

“Hundreds of veterans in medical marijuana states already report using marijuana to control their PTSD symptoms,” MAPS said in a statement. “The growing number of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with combat-related trauma combined with large numbers of treatment-resistant veterans highlights the pressing need for research into additional treatments for PTSD.”

It seems the Federales have an impenetrable wall to keep this reseach on cannabis from getting done.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has denied researchers requests to obtain licenses to grow marijuana, claiming that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) — overseen by the HHS — can be the only one to supply marijuana for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-regulated research.

Clever boys.

It seems like actual veterans are taking matters into their own hands. Green leafy matters.

“My life went downhill from the moment I came back from Iraq,” Begin, now a 31-year-old veteran, tells Danger Room. “Doctors at Bethesda had me on so much, and on such high doses of everything, that I didn’t even know what was a symptom and what was a side effect.”

At one point, Begin, diagnosed with PTSD shortly after coming home, was taking more than 100 pills a day. So many that he would stuff dozens of bottles into a backpack to lug everywhere he went. Now, he’s cut his dependency on prescriptions to zero. Their replacement? Five joints a day.

“Using marijuana balances me out,” he says. “It takes those peaks and valleys of PTSD and it softens them. It makes my life manageable.”

Begin’s now launched an online petition asking the feds to change their course on marijuana as a treatment for PTSD. In September, the first-ever study proposed to evaluate marijuana as a potential treatment for PTSD was blocked by officials at the National Institutes on Drug Abuse (NIDA). With an estimated 37 percent of this generation’s vets afflicted with PTSD, and a dearth of effective treatment options available, Begin thinks pot deserves, at the very least, a single study.

He is not the only veteran who thinks that cannabis ought to be an official medicine. I wrote about Jamey Raines recently.

And what do you know? Our friends the Israelis are on the case.

D., a 26-year-old woman from the north of Israel, says she began to suffer from nightmares about seven years ago, after her partner raped her. After undergoing various forms of therapy, she thought she had largely put the trauma behind her. Then, two years ago, she chanced to see the rapist not far from her home. The nightmares came swarming back.

"I fell into a depression that went on until not long ago, during which I hardly slept or ate," she says in a quiet voice. "My whole life turned upside down. I left my job. Everything came to a stop. I went back to taking antidepressants and tranquilizers - Cipralex, Lustral and Prozac; sleeping pills that made me addicted. It was a nightmare. There was no way I could get through the day without those pills. Then I discovered cannabis."

So war trauma is not the only way to get PTSD? Maybe that explains why 70% of female Heroin users report being sexually attacked. When they were children. Too bad no famous sports figures (in so far as we know) are involved. Too bad we can't figure a way to give such kids a pass. Until we figure out better ways to help them heal. Currently a long slow process that is not a sure thing.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Hemp Oil Cures Cancer

But according to our Congress marijuana has NO valid medical uses. We do have the smartest Congress money can buy.

kurogroves.com

Run From The Cure - video. For those of you with a heart condition look about 5 minutes into the video.

Also see my post The War On Cancer Patients.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

FDA To Study Cannabis For PTSD

The video is not directly applicable to the subject at hand. It does feature one of the premier researchers in the field, Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, who's work I discussed in a 2006 article PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System.

So what about the FDA?

PTSD is an extremely difficult medical condition to treat, and it currently effects around 7.8 percent of Americans. It is caused by exposure to dangerous and highly stressful situations, which can result in lasting symptoms that include disturbing flashbacks, distressful emotions, panic attacks, and nightmares.

On April 28th the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted MAPS' protocol design for their study of cannabis as a treatment for symptoms of PTSD in war veterans. This approval from the FDA represents another important step forward in PTSD research, although there is still a major hurdle to overcome before the research can actually begin. The FDA stated that MAPS’ current protocol successfully addresses all of their concerns, as long as the researchers can obtain cannabis for the study.

There is one slight problem. They have to get the marijuana from the government. And the government doesn't like to give pot to researchers who might undermine the drug war. There is a lot of money and a lot of jobs riding on the continuation of the drug war.

There is an interesting statistic in the above article excerpt. The statistic? About 7.8% of all Americans have PTSD. What is 7.8% of 310 million? About 24 million. That is right in line with government estimates that there are 30 million regular pot users in America. As I have been saying for years. The drug war is how we in America punish the traumatized. Like war veterans.

But the pot-versus-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder study is not happening yet.

According to California-based MAPS, the notoriously finicky National Institute on Drug Abuse -- apparently the only place to get legal weed for a federally approved study -- has to agree to sell some pot to researchers.

Sounds to us like MAPS isn't optimistic. It calls NIDA "a very different agency with explicitly political motivations and a monopoly on marijuana for research."

The study would ponder whether cannabis "can help reduce PTSD symptoms in fifty veterans with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."

There is anecdotal evidence from Omaha in the efficacy of pot for PTSD.

The focus, they say, is marijuana's medical abilities and why anyone who's sick should be free to use it.

"I don't need to medicate with pharmaceutical drugs that make me feel nauseous or sick. It alleviates all of my symptoms of PTSD," says Diana Wulf.

I guess I should explain how we got tens of millions of pot users when we only have a few million veterans of combat. Child abuse.

That is not the only drug used to treat PTSD according to Oprah Magazine MDMA more commonly known by its street name Ecstasy can also be useful.

On a February day in 2005, Sarah is reclining on a futon beneath a skylight, with Michael and Ann Mithoefer seated on either side of her. A half-hour earlier, Sarah swallowed a yellow capsule containing 125 milligrams of MDMA, and relaxing instrumental music plays softly as she waits, eyes closed, for the drug to take hold. The first signs are ripples of nausea—she thinks she might throw up, yet she also senses her body relaxing. The usual ringing in her ears vanishes. "That constant hyperawareness of my environment—it was receding," she says now.

At this point, she heard "the grinding of a pen." The sound of the nib bearing down on the page was magnified, "like it was hurting the paper, beating and pounding on it," Sarah recalls. In the alternate reality of MDMA, she says, "I thought Michael was drawing circles around me, making fun of me, laughing at me. I felt the anger rising in my body. I opened my eyes and—he was just sitting there, taking notes."

It was an epiphany. "That's the moment when I discovered that my perception and reality were not always the same," Sarah recalls. She'd assumed that her caretaker was jeering at her, that she was an object of scorn and derision—a painful conditioned response imprinted by an abusive childhood. Sarah always had an intellectual grasp of how her early years had shaped her, "but this was physiological," she recalls. "That's when I knew I had to repair the connections, the chemicals that had gotten all screwed up when I was a kid."

So what about all the horror stories we hear about long term MDMA use? Bunk according to a study funded by one agency of our very own government.

New research suggests that the drug Ecstasy -- used on its own -- does not have residual effects on brain performance, according to a study published this week in the journal Addiction.

The Santa Cruz-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies [MAPS -ed] contributed $15,000 for an initial 2004 study on Ecstasy use. That work led to a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse that was spearheaded by John Halpern of Harvard Medical School.

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies has been conducting research on potential use of Ecstasy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and researchers said the new study likely would prompt more research and understanding of the drug.

So will we ever treat drugs rationally? Not as long as there is so much money in it. There are tens of billions maybe hundreds of billions to be made from exploiting the traumatized. Best yet we have convinced most of them and the vast majority of Americans that it is their own fault. Drugs are bad don't you know? Well I don't know it. What i know is that some people chronically take pain relievers for chronic pain. A pain in the brain so there are rarely any wounds to validate the pain. So we don't have armies of traumatized people in America. We have dirty drug fiends who deserve what ever punishments that can be meted out to them.

Here is one doctors take on all that.

No recruit ever considered that basic training would be easy, and in a time of war, they quickly discover that combat is a far cry from Hollywood’s portrayal. Reality is what it is. Dr. Phil Leveque knows this to be true. He served in the US Army and lived through World War II- and bears the scars within to this day.

“We were psychologically and physically stretched beyond normal limits and many recruits died. A bunch more were permanently psychologically damaged and the end result was PTSD even during training.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder which can occur after witnessing or experiencing even one traumatic event, especially when it involves injury or death, or the threat thereof, so being in a war takes that trauma to new levels. It is important to note that PTSD can be, and usually is, a long term/lifetime problem.

A recent report estimated that up to 40% of the Middle East veterans would be victims of combination of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Maybe more.

As a regular general practice physician and later as a marijuana doctor, Dr. Leveque saw the devastating results of the effects on veterans for generations.

Frequently, during the post-trauma time, with no better idea at hand, Dr. Leveque says that many PTSD patients discover that alcohol “drowns ones sorrows”.

Also during this post-trauma time, some caregiver will say to himself,”let’s treat this patient’s PTSD” and here come a mélange of medications. The various and numerous treatments leave very much to be desired; in fact their treatments have far more failures than successes.

“Those same pseudo-doctors and paper-pushers decry the use of marijuana,” says Dr. Leveque. “The veterans use it preferentially, to the zombifying and/or addicting drugs prescribed wholesale by those ’caregivers’, who then blame the victim for using a medication which works: Marijuana.” Dr. Leveque was convinced that there was a better way. And in the state of Oregon, it was so.

“I was asked by a healthcare professional at the Portland VA Hospital if I would help PTSD Veteran Victims to get permits to use legalized medical marijuana. I already had some Veteran patients from WWII, Korea and Vietnam, so I obliged.

“Within two weeks I had more than 50 Nam Vets requesting my help. As part of their medical history I asked what previous medicines they had been given or prescribed.

“There were two main types: strong pain killers (like Oxycontin, Morphine and every related pain killer), and anti-depressants.

“I was flabbergasted to read the anti-depressant list of many patients; Paxil, Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, on through the whole list of about 12; but nothing shocked me like the dangers they admit to! The US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) says they can cause very bad adverse side effects including anxiety, depression, addiction, severe withdrawal, homicidal rage and suicide.”

It makes one wonder why they should be given to a psychologically fragile PTSD patient.

I wrote an article on why the pharmaceutical companies might be anti-pot back in 2002 in my article Addiction or Self Medication? In it I said:

It turns out that anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the United States. They are worth $46 billion a year to the pharmaceutical industry. You don't suppose this fact has any thing to do with the pharmaceutical industries being in the forefront of the Drug Free America campaign do you? Of course not. They are just trying to keep you from being addicted to natural products at the cost of 1/10th of a cent per dose when they are more than willing to sell you an FDA and doctor approved, pharmacy sold product that will do the job for a dollar a dose. They have only your best interests at heart. Just ask their accountants.

I have been looking around and what do you know? The above video might be relevant after all according to this article on the forthcoming MAPS study.

The study also calls for veterans to smoke weed with differing levels of active cannabinoids THC and CBD to determine if one, the other, or a balance of both proves more effective. Veterans will also either smoke or vaporize the plant to better test effects from different administrations of the drug.

Doblin said he was surprised that the FDA approved the study. He did not think the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) had the appropriate CBD-rich pot for the study, and that would force the FDA to reject it. NIDA controls the one federally legal pot farm in the nation, which is based in Mississippi and provides government-grown pot to a handful of federal patients, as well as researchers approved by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

But if history is any guide, NIDA will ultimately block the FDA-approved study from ever happening, said Doblin. NIDA must approve all research on pot, and their political goal is to ensure it never becomes legal, he said. NIDA states on its web site that it believes smoked marijuana is not a medicine, despite more than three thousand years of recorded medicinal use.

We have a government that is actively working against the American people and for the cartels - legal and illegal. So what else is new?

What can be done about all this? Gary Johnson for President. And guess what? Willie Nelson endorses Johnson. I think that speaks for itself. But how about a few words from the article?

Ron Paul has classified marijuana as a states' rights issue; Johnson, on the other hand, calls for outright legalization.

I like Ron Paul on quite a few issues but he is so last century. A man once ahead of his time who is now falling behind the times. Good. Because I'm tired of a drug war that finances criminals at home and terrorists abroad. Not to mention punishing the traumatized.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Leftist Dogma

Thad McCotter, U.S. Representative and Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee is discussing leftist dogma. Thad goes into details but I'm just going to cover the bullet points. They are:

1. You are a victim of yourself and others
2. You are a danger to yourself and others
3. Nuts Who Scream “Death to America” Need Love, Too

There are statists on the right who subscribe to at least two out of the three points. The Rs need a House cleaning as well. Case in point: the large core of support among Republicans for the Drug War. I believe support for that fits #1 and #2. And you know - it ain't working. Kids can get illegal drugs easier than they can get a legal beer. Doing nothing would work better and cost less.

But let me see if I can get this right. By 1914 Americans were no longer competent to deal with opiates and cocaine. Formerly over the counter drugs. By 1920 they couldn't handle alcohol and by 1937 they lost the ability to deal with cannabis. Oh. I forgot. In 1933 their ability to deal with alcohol in the environment suddenly returned. All it required was passing a law (an Amendment to the Constitution actually - but still - law).

Pot (heh) meet kettle.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

War On Cancer Patients

It seems our government has been holding out on us when it comes to drugs that may be helpful in fighting cancer.

“Cannabinoids possess … anticancer activity [and may] possibly represent a new class of anti-cancer drugs that retard cancer growth, inhibit angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels) and the metastatic spreading of cancer cells." So concludes a comprehensive review published in the October 2005 issue of the scientific journal Mini-Reviews in Medicinal Chemistry.

Not familiar with the emerging body of research touting cannabis' ability to stave the spread of certain types of cancers? You're not alone.

For over 30 years, US politicians and bureaucrats have systematically turned a blind eye to scientific research indicating that marijuana may play a role in cancer prevention -- a finding that was first documented in 1974. That year, a research team at the Medical College of Virginia (acting at the behest of the federal government) discovered that cannabis inhibited malignant tumor cell growth in culture and in mice. According to the study's results, reported nationally in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, administration of marijuana's primary cannabinoid THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."

Despite these favorable preclinical findings, US government officials dismissed the study (which was eventually published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1975), and refused to fund any follow-up research until conducting a similar –- though secret –- clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the US National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods experienced greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.

Rather than publicize their findings, government researchers once again shelved the results, which only came to light after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal, which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.

Nevertheless, in the decade since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to encourage or fund additional, follow up studies examining the cannabinoids' potential to protect against the spread cancerous tumors.

The Drug War is a war on cancer patients. Instead of working to extend people's lives with a medicinal plant, prohibition trumps medicine.

It wouldn't be the first time.

There were two pieces of medical evidence introduced with regard to the marijuana prohibition.

The first came from a pharmacologist at Temple University who claimed that he had injected the active ingredient in marihuana into the brains of 300 dogs, and two of those dogs had died. When asked by the Congressmen, and I quote, "Doctor, did you choose dogs for the similarity of their reactions to that of humans?" The answer of the pharmacologist was, "I wouldn't know, I am not a dog psychologist."

Well, the active ingredient in marijuana was first synthesized in a laboratory in Holland after World War II. So what it was this pharmacologist injected into these dogs we will never know, but it almost certainly was not the active ingredient in marijuana.

The other piece of medical testimony came from a man named Dr. William C. Woodward. Dr. Woodward was both a lawyer and a doctor and he was Chief Counsel to the American Medical Association. Dr. Woodward came to testify at the behest of the American Medical Association saying, and I quote, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug."

What's amazing is not whether that's true or not. What's amazing is what the Congressmen then said to him. Immediately upon his saying, and I quote again, "The American Medical Association knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.", one of the Congressmen said, "Doctor, if you can't say something good about what we are trying to do, why don't you go home?"

It has been about 72 years since that hearing and Congress has improved some. In the past they used to ignore testimony when voting on a bill, now they just ignore the bill. An advance? I'm not so sure.

Here is page of books on Cannabis Therapeutics.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Classical Values

Mothers Drugging Newborns

Yes. When I first learned of this practice I was shocked. What kind of mother would do such a thing?

Cannabinoids, whether plant-derived, synthetic or endogenous, have been shown to stimulate appetite in the adult organism. We have reported previously that cannabinoid receptors play a critical role during the early suckling period:

Then comes a description of the science followed by what we have all been waiting for. The executive conclusion:

Our data support previous evidence for a critical role of cannabinoid CB₁ receptors for the initiation of suckling. Further, the present observations support the existence of an unknown cannabinoid receptor, with partial control over milk ingestion in newboms. Our data also suggest that the CB^-/-₁ neonates possess a compensatory mechanism which helps them overcome the lack of cannabinoid CB₁ receptors.

So it is the good mothers who start their children out on drugs from the best source available. Breast milk. Ever notice how stoned babies are after drinking breast milk? Now you know why. They have been drinking their cannabinoids.

And which cannabinoids exactly?

Mother's milk has been shown to supply a type of endocannabinoid (the natural neurotransmitters which marijuana simulates), 2-Arachidonoyl glycerol.

Though now it is almost universally prescribed, in the 1950s the practice of breastfeeding went through a period where it was out of vogue and the use of infant formula was considered superior to breast milk.

However, today it is now recognized that there is no commercial formula that can equal breast milk.

It is probably just as well that there are no cannibinoids in infant formula. Wouldn't want kids to get addicted to that stuff. But breasts? They are almost universally admired by men and women alike. And what is this? We love our mothers because they supply us with drugs early on and at no charge? Nature is truly stranger than you could ever believe if we didn't have evidence of what is actually going on. Add in a touch of human sociology and you get things like The History of the Breast. The research must have been fascinating. Now if the author only knew the whole story a snappier title would have been in order: "The History of Breasts and The Drugs They Deliver". Or maybe something for the mass market: "Breasts and Drugs". Well I can dream.

Cross Posted at Classical Values

New Clinical Tests Positive For Pain Medication

What do you know. We have a new drug avaiilable for kinds of pain that were previously difficult to treat.

Ever since California and other states began passing medical marijuana laws in 1996, the federal government has claimed that -- as a 2003 White House press release put it -- "research has not demonstrated that smoked marijuana is safe and effective medicine." A new study, just published in the journal Neurology, definitively refutes that claim and underlines the urgent need for the federal government to change its prohibitionist policies.

The study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of California at San Francisco, found marijuana to be safe and effective at treating peripheral neuropathy, which causes great suffering to HIV/AIDS patients. This type of extreme pain, which is caused by damage to the nerves, can make patients feel like their feet and hands are on fire, or being stabbed with a knife. Similar pain is seen in a number of other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and cannot be treated effectively with conventional pain medications. Standard pain medicines -- even addictive, dangerous narcotics -- have little effect on this type of pain.

Marijuana doesn't cure neuropathy, but in the UCSF study marijuana was clearly shown to give relief. In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (the design that's considered the "gold standard" of medical research), a majority of patients had a greater than 30 percent reduction in pain after smoking marijuana. For many, that level of relief means having a bearable quality of life.

Well I guess the drug is not really new. It does confirm the anecdotal evidence we have from diabetes sufferers and people with multiple sclerosis.

Childhood Trauma Leads To Depression

Anxiety Insights has a post up about childhood trauma and its relation to depression.

Childhood trauma, but not adult trauma, is strongly associated with depression and coronary heart disease in adulthood, say Emory University researchers and colleagues presenting at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting, being held March 7-10 in Budapest, Hungary.

"Little is known about the long-term emotional and physical consequences of childhood trauma and whether it poses greater long-term health risks than other types of stressors," says study leader Viola Vaccarino, MD, PhD, professor of medicine (cardiology) at Emory University School of Medicine and professor of epidemiology at Emory's Rollins School of Public Health.

"Trauma occurring earlier in life is particularly harmful because it may disrupt the development of adaptive responses to stress. Future research on stress and disease should focus on early life stress," says Dr. Vaccarino.

Child abuse is one of the most pressing problems we have in the world because it leads to all kinds of maladaptive behavior and can also lead to illegal drug use as a form of self medication.

According to the study results, twins in the highest quartile of the Early Trauma Inventory were twice as likely to have major depressive disorder than other twins. Of the childhood traumas, emotional trauma was the most strongly associated with major depressive disorder.

Study participants with childhood trauma were also more likely to be exposed to trauma as adults and to develop post traumatic stress disorder. After adjusting for smoking, twins in the highest group on the inventory were two to three times more likely to have a previous diagnosis of coronary heart disease, including previous myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization and hospitalizations for coronary heart disease.

In contrast, no significant associations were found for adult general trauma and combat trauma with either major depressive disorder or coronary heart disease, notes Dr. Vaccarino.

Tobacco is an anti-depressant. So is cannabis.

We are wasting untold billions every year fighting drugs when we should be dealing with the root cause - child abuse.

Cannabinoid Lowers Blood Pressure

An article originally published in the Jerusalem Post discusses this year's Kaye Innovation Awards which are given annually to encourage Hebrew University faculty, staff and students to develop methods and inventions that have good chances for commercialization to benefit the university and society. Yehoshua Maor got one of the awards for his work under the supervision of Prof. Raphael Mechoulam on cannbinoids and blood pressure. Some might ask with so many medicines on the market why is this research necessary?

Not all patients respond well to conventional hypertension drugs.

But the cannabis plant, through its chemical compounds, has been shown to have a beneficial, hypotensive effect.

But a drawback in the therapeutic use of cannabinoids has been the undesirable psychotropic properties such as hallucinatory effects.

Attempts to separate the hypotensive action from their psychotropic properties have been only partially successful until now.

Of course for some the psychotropic effects are a feature, not a defect. In any case what was developed was

...a synthetic version of a minor cannabis constituent named cannabigerol, which is devoid of psychotropic activity. In laboratory experiments with rats, in collaboration with Prof. Michal Horowitz, it was found that this novel compound reduced blood pressure when administered in relatively low doses.

Additional testing also showed that the compound also brought about another beneficial effect - relaxation of the blood vessels.

A further beneficial property observed in work carried out with Prof. Ruth Gallily was that the compounds produced an anti-inflammatory response.

Maor says these qualities could be combined to create a valuable new clinical drug with major market potential, especially for diabetic patients suffering from hypertension, since reductions in blood pressure can decrease the risk of diabetes complications and in others with metabolic irregularities.

Which fits in quite nicely with another recent report of mine Pot Treats Diabetes.

Update: 20 June '06 1439z

Grand Rounds hosted by Dr. Deborah Serani links.

Grand Rounds readers (and others) might find the following links of interest: PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System and Cannabis is the Best Medicine

Technorati:
Cannbinoid, Hypertension, High Blood Pressure, Marijuana, Diabetes, Pot, Anti-inflammatory, Cannabigerol

Father of PTSD diagnosis dies

PTSD Combat has an article about the inventor of the PTSD diagnosis.

The man whom I would call the 'Father of Modern Combat PTSD Diagnosis' is dead at the age of 80. Dr. Leonard Neff was a WWII veteran and psychiatrist who'd begun working with Vietnam veterans in the early 1970's. He rose to prominence in dramatic fashion when, in 1974, he persuaded a returning veteran who'd taken hostages to release them following 3 hours of negotiations. The event raised public awareness of the plight of many soldiers returning from Vietnam; it also led Neff to push to include a definition of what today is known as posttraumatic stress disorder to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Go and read it all with links to more. As you know combat PTSD has been one of my interests. I have written a few piecies about it:

Aftermath

The Soldiers Disease

Cannabis is the Best Medicine

PTSD and the Endocannabinoid System


PTSD, Veterans, War, Disabled Veterans, Drug War, Cannabis, Endocannabinoid, Combat Stress, Soldiers Disease

Pot Treats Diabetes

Amy T of Diabetes Mine has a post up about treating diabetes with pot.

She lists the benefits and then concludes with:

Now I have no idea how this has been received in the medical community, but that is one heck of a long list of potential health benefits! Where do I sign up for the clinical studies? (wink ;)

As I noted in an e-mail to Amy:

If the stuff wasn't illegal it would be considered a medical super-miracle given all the problems it treats.

We have given up a whole raft of medical miracles to go after pot smokers. Fortunately as more research is done those days are coming to an end.

The Soldiers Disease

There was a time in our nation's history when alcoholism was considered an honorable disease. And why would that be? Interesting question. Reader dthardy from Of Arms and the Law sent me this interesting e-mail in reference to one of my illegal drugs as self medication articles:

I once knew a psychiatrist lady friend, and her theory was that a lot of illicit drug use involved self-medication of one type or another. It was the only possible explanation for an illicit market in anti-psychotics, for instance.

It's also interesting that in 19th century wars alcoholism was taken as pretty much normal -- the only way to counter the stress and PTSD. U.S. Grant wrote a letter of rec. for a retired soldier which said that he has only the vice expected of an old soldier, and expected his reader to understand that the fellow had a drinking problem and nothing else. When he in his memoirs damned a cowardly officer who was a drunk, he said words to the effect of he drank too much and had another vice not so often found in military officers. (One of his best friends, a brigadier who was killed at Wilderness, *always* went into battle drunk. His troops wrote with amusement of his having charged his horse thru their line, literally thru it, then shouted that we will cut them down as I cut down this tree, whereupon he swung an axe at a sapling, missed, and nearly fell from the saddle. Grant merely said that he was the bravest officer he'd even known, and apparently his going into battle under the influence was regarded merely as an eccentricity.

And then there was the confederate account to the effect of the general gave the order to charge, but he was already well charged himself.

There was a time when we understood PTSD implicitly. Oh, we didn't have the science down. We didn't have a name for it. However, on a fundamental human level we knew what to do about it. By 1900 it was also understood that cannabis was a substitute for those who were debilitated by alcohol. It served the same purpose and was easier on the body. Nowadays in the military self medication with alcohol (or cannabis for that matter) is grounds for dismissal.

We have gone backwards in our understanding and forwards in our "morality". I don't think it is an improvement.

Brain Growth

There is an interesting article in Nature news about the wonders of marijuana. The article focuses on how marijuana causes the growth of neurons. However, as interesting and useful as that may be I do not think that that is the real key. The real key in my opinion is:

They found that HU210 [ a marijuana analog, ed.] seemed to induce new brain cell growth, just as some antidepressant drugs do, they report in the Journal of Clinical Investigation1. This suggests that they could potentially be used to reduce anxiety and depression, Zhang says. He adds that the research might help to create new cannabinoid-based treatments.

I think this is further confirmation of what I have said all along.
Addiction or Self Medication?
PTSD Pot Alcohol & Substance Abuse
Police and PTSD
More Vindication
Cannabis is the Best Medicine
A well known secret
People who use pot chronically are self medicating for various mental conditions.

Or as I recently said: we must stop punishing the afflicted. Well it is true more brain growth is needed. Especially in the area of understanding people who are being punished for using Unpatented Drugs


Drug War

Cannabis is the Best Medicine

For PTSD that is.

Dr. Tod Mikuriya gives this advice to a returning Iraq War vet about PTSD:

Medically, cannabis is the treatment of choice for PTSD but definitely would spell the end of your military career. If you elect not to medicate with cannabis, the regular exercise regimen, avoidance of drugs and alcohol, and a specialized debriefing is the least worst response to this chronic psychiatric disorder.

Now I have been saying this about PTSD and pot for three years.
PTSD Pot Alcohol & Substance Abuse.
Police and PTSD
We now have some medical confirmation. There will be more coming as this information gets better known and more research is done. So far about 18% of returning vets have long term problems with PTSD. That would be about 20,000 of those currently serving in Iraq and another 20,000 among those who have already done tours.

We claim we want the best for our vets and yet in this case the best medicine is denied them because nothing can be allowed to derail in the smallest way the prohibition machine.

The first political party to take up this cause will reap huge benefits. I can't wait.

More Vindication

It has been my contention for the last three years that what we call drug abuse is self medication for pain/anxiety. It turns out that independent (of the government) research is beginning to confirm what I teased out of the limited information available to me three years ago on the subject.

The research Cannabis Use in Adolescence: Self-Medication for Anxiety was done by Dr. Tom O'Connell, a long time opponent of prohibition.

Dr. O'Connell is mostly interested in general social factors that predispose adolescents to drug use. The most important factor he found was a missing or ineffective father.

In attempting to determine the origin of the symptoms motivating this population’s aggressive adolescent drug sampling, the most obvious place to start was family background. A common element was the absence of their biological fathers from their early lives —either physically, through early death or divorce, or emotionally, through a variety of other mechanisms...

He goes on to look at school careers as another determining factor. He sees a lot of ADD and ADHD. One thing he mentions early on is that the boys outnumber the girls in his practce (where he interviewd the kids) by a
4 to 1 ratio.

His study looked at the substitution effect. The replacement of tobacco and alcohol with cannabis. (Do you suppose this is why the alcohol companies are so heavily invested in the drug war? And the tobacco companies before they became an embarassment?)

Repeat use of both alcohol and tobacco tended to be aggressive. More than half had binged in high school or as young adults; 35% had experienced alcohol black-outs; and 12.5% had received DUI citations. Yet essentially all who have continued to use cannabis on a regular basis subsequently moderated their alcohol consumption. Few are teetotalers, but nearly all who still drink do so moderately. Most have reduced alcohol consumption to 20% of their peak levels —or less.

Cannabis also has enabled patients to reduce tobacco use. Although 68.1% of cannabis applicants became daily cigarette smokers for a while, over half (53%) of the smokers have since been able to quit and almost all the rest are trying. Even inveterate tobacco smokers (those unable to remain abstinent) uniformly relate their cigarette consumption to both stress and access to cannabis: when the former is high and the latter is low, they tend to smoke a lot more tobacco.

There are three important points I think the doctor has left out of his study. Child abuse, PTSD, and genetics. I cover child abuse and PTSD in Police and PTSD. I cover genetics in Genetic Discrimination.

He has a few thing to say about the government's interest in this type of research. It explains a number of things including why big pharma is heavily invested in the drug war.

Evidence that cannabis is capable of benignly and effectively palliating the psychotropic symptom complexes so often encountered in juveniles and young adults was clearly beyond the scope of any research funded— or even permitted— by NIDA. That such symptoms tend to persist into mid-life for many who suffer from them is now endorsed in psychiatric literature and has spurred development of a host of pharmaceuticals intended to treat them. Yet most of applicants for whom these pharmaceuticals were prescribed report that cannabis provides more effective and durable relief.

This is very interesting because I said someting similar three years ago in Addiction or Self Medication?:

It turns out that anxiety disorders are the most common mental health problem in the United States. They are worth $46 billion a year to the pharmaceutical industry. You don't suppose this fact has any thing to do with the pharmaceutical industries being in the forefront of the Drug Free America campaign do you? Of course not. They are just trying to keep you from being addicted to natural products at the cost of 1/10th of a cent per dose when they are more than willing to sell you an FDA and doctor approved, pharmacy sold product that will do the job for a dollar a dose. They have only your best interests at heart. Just ask their accountants.

Dr. OConnell summarises his work this way:

Proposition 215 encouraged many individuals who had been considered “recreational” users of cannabis to apply for “medical” status. Interviews placing their cannabis use in broader context showed that it is frequently an alternative to the use of alcohol, tobacco, and “harder” drugs.

The federal government, by imposing a Prohibition based on biased, inadequate studies, is depriving the American people of a safe and effective medicine.

Beyond that concern, the increasing enthusiasm for drug testing and punishing those who test positive for cannabis wth either criminal or social sanctions is destructive to the large —but at this writing unknown —number of Americans treating emotional symptoms with what may be, for them, the best agent available.

Dr. O'Connell also thinks that even anti-prohibitionists are not acknowledging the anxiety factors and that all use may in some sense be medicinal:

Data from the author's practice show that many Californians use cannabis to treat emotional conditions. Government studies obscure this reality and some reformers seem reluctant to acknowledge it.

There are a lot of interests working together to keep pot illegal. I think as the science gets better known they will not stand.

PTSD Pot Alcohol & Substance Abuse

The Israelis (as usual) are ahead of the game. They plan to soothe trauma with marijuana. This has been a hot topic with me for several years.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers traumatised by battle with the Palestinians have a new, unconventional weapon to exorcise their nightmares -- marijuana.

Under an experimental programme, Delta-9 tetrohydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient found in the cannabis plant, will be administered to 15 soldiers over the next several months in an effort to fight post-traumatic stress disorder.

Raphael Mechoulam of Jerusalem's Hebrew University, the chief researcher behind a project he described as a world-first, said the chemical could trick the brain into suppressing unwanted memories.

Mr. Mechoulam wants you to know that you are not to confuse pills given to you by a doctor with that evil weed smoked by undesirables. Right.

Meanwhile I have come across this interesting .pdf published in 1996 about the relationship of PTSD to chronic drug and alcohol use. They can even predict from the type of PTSD whether drugs or alcohol will be preferred by the patient. I'm going to have to look into that.