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Hold the phote of fellow conspiracy Realism. Yeah, we have we have some breaking news, funny story. Right as or directly after we recorded this episode, we got some astonishing reports from the DEA and Matt you hit up the group chat instantly.
I did the DEA. Well, can I do you mind if I just say what it is?
Please?
Yeah, that's what we're doing this part.
At the beginning, guys, we have talked about uh, well, people keep calling it marijuana in the news, but as we're going to talk about this episode, please call it canna. That's what it is.
Shout out the higher side chat.
There you go.
Is it because marijuana is kind of still like has like sort of stigma, Yeah, because of sort of racist overton.
Ok, we're literally about to have this conversation.
I remember.
You know them, the DEA Drug Enforcement Administration.
Yes, they are planning to or at least proposing to reschedule marijuana from a Schedule one to a Schedule three drug.
Substance, has it happened yet? Schedule one for anybody outside of the US or for anybody who hasn't lived an interesting life, Schedule one is the is considered like they're the most vilified and or dangerous drugs that are off They deserved to have little to know medical efficacy.
Things like heroin and cocaine.
You know, yes, and they are drugs. They also have a high potential for abuse right and addiction. But Schedule three, this is the quote from the actual DEA scheduling here. The new scheduling for cannabis would be quote moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence, which is okay.
And this is important because this is a federal level move. If the White House budget boffins approve of it, it's a real game changer. Right now, thirty seven states do have some form of legalized cannabis for medicinal uses, but state by state legislation is a world away from federal legislation.
Well, and even in states where it's legal, there's still weirdness with the banking system where you'll go to a dispensary and you know, basically their point of sale is almost like treated like an ATM where you're paying ATM fees and then they're giving you back your change in cash to the rounding up kind of to the nearest dollar. It's very unusual. As legitimate as these operations are, there still are like all of these your kind of things
that don't jive with like the overall federal law. And this would change all of that.
Well, let's marijuana companies or cannabis companies be taxed like any other business, which is so.
Would this immediately like legalize it because it's not.
No, because other other substances that are Schedule three or just a couple of ketamine like steroids, antabolic steroids, stuff with cody controlled.
Yeah.
Yeah, but none of this could happen because this still has to go to the White House and there's some people up there that have to gomm Okay.
It just feels like brain doesn't guys like it's going to I think something like it's going to happen because the majority of the states is turning around. The money, the money started speaking, you know what I mean, people listened. And also the Biden administration really wants to win, you know what I mean.
True, they want to appeal to the young people.
Gotta be cool.
Cool Grandpa is like, you can't get your dad's house, but you can come over here.
I'll get rid of your student loans and student loans.
And with that, with that important update we do we talked off air, we do believe that our examination this evening holds up because everything we said still is true and as we will find, there are some moral, indeed philosophical quandaries that we encounter with the idea of drugs as weapons.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is Nol.
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes this the stuff they don't want.
You to know.
This is a continuing series. Fellow conspiracy realist. We earlier delved into the idea of drugs as weapon. It's things like Tora, things like hallucinogens or opioids being being deployed in a purposely damaging manner. It's a real thing. We thought this was very interesting and as we were recording, you remember, there was other stuff that we had not yet gotten to. So this became a series and I guess you know, we gotta start out first. One thing.
I feel like it's very important to say cannabis is sometimes vilified, right historically, sometimes often in modern day, but in the larger picture, as we'll find maybe, uh, this is somewhat of a recent development, this vilification at.
The opposite and yeah, in some ways, I feel like it's gotten a lot lighter rap and is no longer really even referred to as a gateway drug the way it used to be. But what you're talking about, I think, man, is this specific situation involving cannabis that is very specific and involves a very specific type of extreme reaction. But overall, I would say the attitude is softened towards cannabis.
Yet what I'm saying is we'll see this in just a second, throughout the larger picture, like all of you know, human society and history, cannabis was not vilified, and so what we're seeing now as a loosening is arguably a return to the baseline normal of the majority of the past.
Totally fair.
I mean, it's a plant that grows out of the ground. There was certainly a time where anything of that nature was Why would we dare try to you know, regulate what God hath wrought upon us.
Yeah, but it's still a weird thing because poppies are just a plant that grow out of the ground.
Too.
Yeah, well, I think there are some people that would argue that all drugs should be legal, that it would cause they would they would cause a lot less problems.
But it's an interesting debate, right, which is kind of cool because it is, it is and probably always will be a debate, and we'll go through, I would say, where drugs get completely legalized, then everything's illegal again, and then we're just we're going to have an interesting relationship with these things like we've always had.
And in the United States in particular, the way that state legislation works, the laws become wildly different, right, And that too, I think lends interesting flavor to a lot of these debates. So we're never going to tell people what to do. Be safe, don't harm others. In tonight's follow up to this series, we're looking at a different kind of conspiracy and weaponization, the concept of something called cannabis induced psychosis. Here are the facts. Okay, this is
a fun way to get into it. What are I was I was talking with our friends on a on a show called The Higher Side. It's a it's a podcast, or it's a cannabis based podcast hosted by people who are professional cannabis farmers. And they're the ones who were always adamant with me about the nomenclature that marijuana itself is a prejudicial term. Because of Harry Aslinger wanting to sort of do the Hogan DAWs thing.
I had a real person's name, yeah.
Or and Slingers sorry, they.
Yeah, that's good, It's good, you know.
I mean, the terms are relevant, I think, and there are cannabis activists who you could call that that have done interesting things to affect change, and I think we're seeing, uh, the fruits of a lot of I wanted to add one thing to peggyback on one I said before about some people thinking all drugs should be legal. I had one of those people. But that does not mean that I think that everyone should do all the drugs.
That doesn't mean that you do all the drugs. You know, most activists said, most activists are not are not in that way, and a lot of them come to that conclusion or that platform that ideology through any number of roots. You know, you might have people who are just very libertarian, right, so they may never touch a substance or illegal substance themselves, but they want to square with their other beliefs. I mean. Also, cannabis,
I think has so many cool nicknames. It took me forever to figure out what left hand cigarettes are or jazz cigarettes.
Jazz cabbage is another good one, jazz cabbage lettuce.
As morning routine.
Yeah, gotta get right in the morning.
The kids call it zaza now, which is delightful. I guess. I don't know where it comes from.
I'm not even sure what the etymology is, but that is what the gen zers call it.
And then of course weed pot. I also love the specific strain names like sour diesel, and they just get more and more ridiculous, especially.
That time stick as the supermoji.
Yeah, yeah, that's my favorite one. Yeah, it's really mellow.
This thing is. It's a group term for a group genus of flowering plants, and it has been so popular with humanity for so long. The first generic and archaeological evidence shows us that people were domesticating some form of cannabis around twelve thousand years ago in East Asia during Neolithic times. It was also funny because East Asia has some of the harshest anti cannabis laws around. Well, but they used to dig it.
I'm just saying, yeah, but the plant itself can be used for its fibers and not smoked, right right, Oh yeah, so who knows if twelve thousand years.
Ago, Yeah, that's a good point. They were likely doing both. There were religious ceremonies where it appeared people would burn it in some kind of incense container and inhale the fumes. They would also, yeah, they'd make fabric out of it or rope. People figured out it had mind altering effects. There were certain things you could ingest. They didn't have the science to understand, you know, this is THC or this is CBD or sativa or whatever, but they realized
the effects. And ancient Greeks wrote about this. Herodotus, famous for me mentioned in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, as well as a couple of other things. He had a book called Histories where he tells a funny story about how people just love getting high in like hemp saunas hemp seed saunas in Scythia. And I'm not sure even now it works, but we do have the.
Quote, Yeah, the Scythians.
As I said, take some sort of hemp se presumably flowers and creeping under the felt coverings.
Throw it upon the red hot stones.
Immediately it smokes and gives out such a vapor as no grid vapor bath can exceed the Scyths. Oh they're siths. That's like they're the bad guys. Delighted, shout for joy. Oh, say it's fun.
It does sound like a good time, silly, goofy good time.
Is that a thing? Are there? Are there like weed bath houses?
Never have I ever? It's just called hot boxing. Your mom's car is what that is?
Yeah, but like go and get a spa day in a cannabis cloud.
Wow.
Yeah, Well, I mean if it was gonna be a thing, it would be a thing now. And probably in like California. You know there's some spots which is so legal. It has been for so long that they've had like there's like they finally have the actual consumption lounges.
I don't know if you guys know.
I didn't that while cannabis has been legal for purchase and personal use, it has never been legal in the United States to consume in a place with others.
And only just now.
There are a couple of spots, I believe, one on by Woody Harrelson in California and one in Vegas that are legally licensed for on site consumption.
I do have to point out it's just looking at this because it surprised me too when I first read histories. I think they're throwing the flowers of some kind of cannabis plant on there, maybe not necessarily the seeds That might be a translation thing.
Those seeds will pop and get you in the eye, like I don't know, like popcorn or something.
Yeah, yeah, we've all been there. But I'm sure there are a lot of people who ingest some kind of cannabis and then go relax in asana. Those things seem like they go together. But I know people have tried. Yeah, yeah, their Yeah, it's like faheta is sizzling at a restaurant. But also, did we know that. I do want to bust the myth here so that nobody risked their job or their career. If you're trying to beat a drug test, going into a sauna for a long time will be fun,
but it is not going to detox you. It is not going to work. And people have tried that and had disappointing results.
Dude. Thank yes, that's absolutely correct.
Yeah, you said it will give you the same result, because I think someone said it to you as a tweet, or someone from the industry or some who had experienced this, because they're not stupid, right. I did just want to point out in terms of this sort of spiritualized version of this sort of thing, or maybe a sauna is not necessarily spiritual, but what they're talking about it almost
feels ritualistic. There is, in of course, Oakland, a church called the Zide Door, Oakland's Church of Ethnogenic Plants, where their sacraments involve cannabis and psilocybin mushrooms that allow individuals to come closer to their God, their soul, and their truest understand ending of faith. And it is a Christian church.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Again, as long as they're not forcing people to do stuff they don't want to do. I do get it. I do have to get to this one Herodotus thing though, because if you continue reading this quote, which is circulated and a lot of cannabis discussion forums and so on and scholarship even after he says, you know, they shout for joy, they're delighted. He goes on to say this vapor serves them instead of a water bath, for they never, by any chance
wash their bodies with water. So he like walks down the street to also call them smell Athians. Yeah, call them like dirty kids. Still, cannabis grew into a global crop. It was used in spiritual rituals in Japan and China, in step with just like in Scythia, in step with practical uses for fabric garments, ropes, And I guess we have associations with cannabis here in the Americas. I didn't know. It wasn't until fifteen forty five that the Spanish imported
cannabis to South America, to Chile in particular. Mind I it's just a crop. I think it's just a crop. They already understood, so it made sense to them they could create.
Course, at that point it is treated like any other import export, just like as a cash crop.
And everyone's fine with it.
And as any college stoner can tell you, America's own founding fathers were super duper into hemp. We don't know if there was super we know a couple guys were super into smoking it, for sure, but we also know a lot of them just considered it a profitable, commercially viable crop, including you know, including like the Jeffersons, the Washingtons,
and so on. But to our earlier point, this stuff wasn't vilified the way it has been in modern era, and I would define modern eras in like the last one hundred and fifty years, right, last one hundred and fifty two centuries here in the West are.
Yeah, but what there was pushback against it or much earlier, right.
Yes, Yeah. The first and the precedent of what we would call the modern cannabis bands and laws came about in the thirteen hundreds in Islamic regions, and then in the eighteen hundreds some colonial countries began to restrict this as well. But when they were restricting it, it was kind of a culture war thing for them because it was the laws were based on class and social and
racial tensions. It was a method of punishing and controlling people, just like just to be clear, it was not a medical concern when they did this, you know what I mean. And we said, you know, there was this charge to vilify canna abyss in the US and the guy who did it was such a pill. We talked about him in a prohibition episode. I believe his objections were entirely
based on racism. He's like, Mexican people are bad. If white women get high, they're gonna listen to jazz and then sleep with black men, and we can't have that.
Well, even some of those terms you talked about left handed cigarettes or jazz cigarettes, what is the left hand associated with? Like the devil, the left hand path and jazz cigarettes. It's like intense amounts of being a junkie or something. And it was much easier to demonize this crop that was readily flowing over the border, you know, from Mexico, and then associate that like a lot honestly,
let's not lie. A lot of politicians still do today as sort of a dog whistle of that we got to crack down an immigration because they're bringing drugs.
You know, and crime over the border.
It was just a much more kind of i don't know, feeding an absolute falsehood as opposed to something that maybe has a tinge of truth to it in terms of like car drugs and perhaps cartel violence being very much a real thing. It's still used in a similar way. But the idea that cannabis was causing the decline of Western civilization, you know, at the Mexican American border, pretty absurd when you look at it now.
It was empowering criminal organizations. That's one of the big takeaways of prohibition. You want to give organized crime a new revenue stream. Try to prohibit a substance. Yeah, it doesn't really matter what it is, sadly, but we saw we also saw the dawn of global coordination. So with the arrival of like a world wherein everybody can interact in some way with another person or another country, we saw this huge crackdown on this plant and lake you
pointed out earlier. There has been a somewhat of a reversal of draconian drug policy in the twenty first century. The bands are still highly uneven in the US because it sounds ridiculous to explain it to someone from outside of this country. But there's stuff you can totally do in you know, Washington or California that can land you in jail in Alabama, you know what I mean.
Absolutely, the attitudes strange.
And in that way, it's somewhat similar to the ongoing debate and the uneven laws around abortion. Whether your pro choice or pro life, you know, a state will treat you differently depends on.
That's odd, you know that those two things that seem it couldn't be more different. I mean, but there is a similarity too, because they've both been involved governing what people do with and to their bodies. So I guess there is a similarity. But it just feels like the tide is turning with marijuana, where it's just a matter of time before even what once were the most draconian places are like, you know what, this is a revenue stream and we should probably just stop, you know, stop
this lying. It's no longer politically useful to us anymore, you know.
Yeah. It was the first really big use case that brought previously divided people together on this subject was Colorado. Right when Colorado enabled people to buy and sell cannabis legally, they made money hand over fist, you know, so other people wanted in on the game. The money moves, and that's I think that's part of why right now, if you look at drug policy in the US, it's a messy, messy bowl of spaghetti, just like something you might cook when you're really high.
Is it moms spaghetti and does it have her morning routine in it?
It's on her sweater already, you know what I mean?
Ha, No, man, you got ripped off.
Tikops. Yeah. And so this we do have to say before we get into this, because this is something we have to explore together. A lot of that recent vilification and a lot of the public attitude from marijuana and throughout decade recent previous decades, it had a bad look because the propaganda was successful, things like Reefer Madness all those other scary films, you know, the that was.
Almost one hundred years ago. Isn't that crazy? Right? Yeah?
Right, because that was a nineteen thirty six film, I want to say, nineteen thirties and the.
Highly racist You already pointed that out then, but that particular film is shockingly racist.
But is there some genuine sand to this? We're all, is this bad reputation? Are these all just cynical attempts to wage a war on drugs? It turns out the truth may not be as simple as we would like it. We'll tell you what we're talking about afterward from our sponsors.
And we're back everyone. Before we jump in to the
next section here. I just didn't realize that the DARE program was established in the year I was born, and that just it's crazy to me that that program has been alive as long as I have, and it's you know, it maybe has children or offspring, let's say, in different ways, like different other programs, Because that was an LAPD Los Angeles Police Department team up with the Los Angeles School districtor Unified School District that we've talked about before in
the show where they like went in to teach the kids all about the drugs and everything again whole episode on that. It's just crazy to me that that even thing grew We grew up with that.
It precisely absolutely and I have very just sin memories of having those folks come to my school with their suitcase full of drugs that made so many of the kids just be like, I want to trial these drugs. But I also had to say, memories of them bringing reformed addicts to our school who are talking to us about that was like what life on hard drugs was like,
and that definitely stuck with me as well. But the truth, I think lies somewhere between the two, between the fear mongering and the like over you know, the overly trying to terrify kids and to being straight. And it turns out, to Ben's point before the break, that there is some sand to the kinds of extreme reactions some people can have with something as what we've come to believe as innocuous as cannabis.
Here's where it gets crazy. True story. John Morales, the actor played Big Gruffly crime Dog, said sixteen years in prison due to a twenty eleven arrest where he was growing one thousand cannabis plants. He also had twenty seven weapons and nine thousand rounds of ammunition. I'm kidding, that's not the crazy part. But that's the truth.
So you're not kidding, that's real kind, it's it's wild. Yeah.
So let's go with a specific example. This is something I think we talked about briefly off air that gets us into the conflict that we're kind of wrestling with. It's a story that starts in twenty eighteen with a young California resident.
That's right.
And then I have to tell you when I first when you hipped me into this story, hip us the story, I couldn't believe what I.
Was hearing, just going to preface it with that.
In twenty eighteen, California resident Brent Specker, I think that's right, described as a novice marijuana user, was smoking a bong with her new boyfriend, a man by the name of Chad Omelia. She had a coughing fit. As anyone who's used a bomb can tell you, coughing fits are not entirely uncommon, and they don't necessarily mean something bad is happening. It's going to have to power through it, you know.
Ah. Yeah.
Some people say if you don't cough, you don't get off, which sounds kind of gross, but it's the thing people say because they usually imply I said, Okay, you got a real serious hit and you're about to be mega mega high. In this case, it was very, very different. According to Specker and a group of experts testifying in court. Yes court, she immediately began to hallucinate and allegedly lost
touch with reality. Was experiencing various intense psychotic I think you could argued delusions, one being that she was dead, that she was hearing voices of who she believed were paramedics that were trying to revive her.
I found that a little confusing.
Because it's like, you know, sometimes you will have a situation where someone will black out and they'll be in some sort of let's say, fugue states, right, and then they're hearing the voices of reality that then get filtered through whatever that kind of hallucinatory state might have been. But that is not the case here. This is very much imagined paramedics.
Yes, and remember this is testimony given in a court case. Right, These are I hesitate to say carefully constructed events or a carefully constructed story, but as much is it's a narrative being told to by a defense to keep someone out of prison and or to prevent them from being charged with something.
That is what this is.
A jury is hearing this, yes and so And at the time Byrne feels like her Brind feels like she's being kind of bullied by her new boyfriend. They had been dating for a few months. His name is Chad Amelia. And as she is experiencing, you know the result of this of taking this bond hit, these voices that were once paramedics to her, they become more sinister and they tell her, according to this testimony, that she has to
kill her boyfriend to bring herself back to life. She acts on these hallucinations, fatally stabbing him one hundred and eight times with two large knives. The police arrived shortly after midnight. O'melia is in sensate, lying in a pool of blood, probably already dead or bleeding out and unresponsive, can't feel things. They at this point they don't know if he's doing basically yeah, but they know he's not.
He's not in a good way. And when he when they when they come in, Brennan starts stabbing herself in the net and with a serrated knife and it takes they have to use a taser. She's still stabbing herself while they're tasing her. It takes nine blows from a baton to bring her down and disarmor. They call the paramedics, and the paramedics are eventually able to save her life, but not the life of Omelia.
Well, guys, I mean what I hate to even bring it up, but what comes to mine in the situation for me, and I think many people hearing you surf of the first time will be some kind of demonic possession that we see depicted in this way where someone's harming themselves, you know, and acting outside of their character to the extreme, while hearing voices and all of these
kinds of things. And well, you know, whatever your position might be on whether or not exorcisms are real or are real because of demonic possessions are real, Rather, I can't help it feel this is something that would you know, would happen in a case like that.
So there's a lot to unpack about this case. We'll get into some of it, but for our purpose is tonight the most important aspect is this. She is not going to see any prison time. She's originally charged with murder, it was dropped down too involuntary manslaughter, a crime for what she was found guilty. The jury found her guilty was a jury trial, and at that point the Superior Court Judge David Worley sentenced her to two years of probation and one hundred hours of community service. She had
also been out on bail since twenty eighteen. That seems pretty light for a murder, even an accidental one.
Right, Well, and at all hint is on this argument that she was involuntarily intoxicated. And I don't know, man, this really feels like a stretch to me. I mean, peer pressure is real don't be subject to peer pressure kids out there. People that apply peer pressure are usually.
Kind of.
I mean, it's not a nice thing to do. Nobody wants to feel to be made to feel that way. But is it the same as holding someone down and putting a wed gas mask on their face and against their will, forcing them to get high.
I don't think it's the same thing.
That's the argument. A lot of people were irritated about this and thinking it was a case of affluenza or something, affluenza being the portmanteau for the way that people of certain class and privilege can get much lighter sentences in court, you know, up to an including just getting things dismissed or getting a sweetheart a sweetheart deal with the prosecution.
Under the criminal law of California, you are responsible for your actions if you are intoxicated, whether that's a legal substance like alcohol, whether it's something illegal like bath salts or whatever, fentanyl, whatever, unless you were intoxicated involuntarily against your will. So, for our earlier DA Tour example, if somebody blew detur in your face right and or you know, the gymsen weed stuff, and then ordered you to commit a crime. You would not necessarily be on the hook
for that because you were involuntarily dosed. So that's the argument she makes, or her team makes.
Well, the argument is that she was. It wasn't forced, but she was. She was already not what a novice user she was. She didn't smoke weed very often. She had already been smoking the bong and we talked about the coughing fit she had that was after another like and basically and another bong hit. That was the argument in court.
Well, the lawyers did use the phrase involuntarily intoxicated, and it's because of that California law.
Yes, aren't they arguing that it was like the final hit that did it then all of a sudden was the one that she was sort of that's where the true peer pressure came in or the you know, the boyfriend bullying her into doing it, and then that's the one that caused this you know, apparent psychotic break or what we're going to get into shortly.
That was the argument.
Yeah, yep, involuntarily intoxicated. It's a dangerous argument to make too, because is that not kind of victim blameing a dead person? You know, we do know there was bodycam footage from law enforcement where you can see you can see documented footage of Britain's behavior. And obviously this is a terrible
thing to happen. Someone's lost a people have lost a friend, a son, a loved one, you know, and she's lost her partner as well, and she is There are experts who come for both the prosecution and the defense side, and they both argue that this person was suffering from psychosis, from a mental break and they also say, prior to these events, she had no history of mental illness, no
history of general violence, suicidal ideation. Instead, they seem to agree she showed signs of something called cannabis induced psychosis or CIP, A bit of a controversial diagnosis, even now it's listed in the DSM.
What we didn't we mainly hinted around the racist aspects of early kind of you know, marijuana propaganda or whatever.
And maybe I don't mean to use that term, like it's definitively none of the stuff is real, but like there were a lot of things en Rey for madness that were about it'll cause you to go insane, It'll cause you to go insane, lose your mind and perhaps hurt the ones you love, while of course drinking is totally fine and no one ever hurts somebody they loved, you know, while consuming too much alcohol.
I don't know.
When I hear this, it just feels really dangerous, you know, the idea of bringing back this notion that we cannabis alone could cause someone to do this, It just feels like, I mean, you certainly hear about studies where regular use of cannabis can cause exacerbated forms of dementia over time, it can cause changes in the prefrontal cortex and things like that, but the one to one.
Is really odd to me and a little bit of a reach. It feels well.
It should be noted that this was an argument that the defense attorneys put forward. Yeah, and then the medical experts that the prosecution came forward with agreed that this was in fact a case of cannabis induced psychosis, like I get it, yeah, which is which is weird again, Like we don't think about it as even being a thing.
Yeah, And the judge said this right, had concluded that yes, this was a death, this was involuntary manslaughter, and that as a result of the circumstances leading to this tragic horrific event. It was clear the defendant had quote lost touch with reality, basically supporting what the experts had also concluded. This is one of the most prominent cases in I guess outside of scholarship, this is one of the most prominent public cases, but because it was so extreme. But
it's not the only one. We have seen multiple reports of multiple reports of people who encounter or believe they have encountered CIP, whether secondhand or first hand, like in their own mind. There's another example we want to talk about from twenty twenty two.
Yeah, and I think we should very much so.
One man's message about cannabis induced psychosis from PBS Rocky Mountain's name of the article Ethan Andrew. They say started smoking cannabis when he was sixteen, and the symptoms of cannabis and new psychosis started when Andrew was eighteen, after several months of smoking what he called high potency.
Marijuana every day.
A quote from Andrew, I was having schizophrenia like symptoms, like seeing things and hearing things that weren't there. I was super paranoid that people were following me. And by the way, the article goes on to point out maybe a little ironically that Andrew was using cannabis in order to deal with anxiety and depression and obsessive compulsive disorder, and it would appear it had the opposite effect, which is.
A common US use of common when we talk about you know, medical marijuana, that that term right where it comes from, is treating things like this, right, using this substance as an alternative to being prescribed other types of Western medication. And you know, for I don't even know how many countless human beings, the cannabis has functioned really well for those things, at least with you know, in case studies and in larger studies with you know, both
individuals and large swaths of people. Guys. I thought it was interesting to hear this particular story from someone that was that young, sixteen to eighteen years old. It's really interesting because some of the data we're going to get into later in this episode talks about the age you are when you begin using cannabis as a.
Substance state of brain formation.
Yeah.
Well, and also this concept here in this version of cannabis induced psychosis, it took years and or you know, months for these symptoms to really progress to the point where Andrew was noticing them, and then people around him were noticing them.
You know what, Without further ado, let's get to that part. So psychosis in general refers to It's kind of vague, but it's a collectionist symptoms that affect the mind where there has been some measure of loss of contact with reality, meaning most directly that a person experiencing psychosis will have a difficult time to some degree, clocking the difference between reality and fantasy. Right, So you might just have intrusive thoughts.
Those can happen to everybody, but for most people you recognize that that's just that's you having an intrusive thought. This is not the case with psychosis, and it's still really difficult to understand because, just like the phrase cannabis,
psychosis is a group term. People get to psychosis through any number of different roads or paths, right, just like differing political ideologies lead people to support cannabis deregulation or cannabis you know laws, even if they don't agree on anything else.
And you can induce someone to give birth, but you didn't put the baby in them.
You know what I mean.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to be crass, but like induced I think is an important term here.
It triggers something that's already there. And maybe I'm not.
An expert here, but that's what it seems to be to me in this case. And I'm not trying to be a cannabis apologist here either, but the word induced implies to me that it is something that is triggering a condition that maybe needed a catalyst to like kind of rear it's ugly head.
Potentially, it's just it's how it hits me.
And again, not an expert here, anxious to hear more of what the experts have to say.
We had the so we pulled that general psychosis definition from the National Institute of Mental Health, and we're not even sure how many people develop some type of psychosis each year in the US. We know a little bit about age range late teens through mid twenties, which is why the Andrew example I think is pretty relevant here. We know that in general, with general psychosis, there will be warning signs that emerge in advance of the development
or the break. You know, suspiciousness, paranoid ideology, which I find a little bit subjective, trouble with thinking clearly and logically. You call it brain fog. Social withdrawing decline and self care disruptionist sleep, things like that. But CIP differs from general psychosis because it is defined as psychosis triggered within minutes, hours, or days of smoking or consuming marijuana. So we're not even sure. Science is not even sure about what the
time window means. Right do you take to are you playing sublime? You spoke two joints in the morning, and then you are fine for two days and then you lose it? You know what I mean? When this is why critics might say this is a misleading defense, you know what I mean. We're not casting any aspersion on the people who have been diagnosed with that or have been found to commit actions under that. We're telling you what the critics would say. They're saying it's convenient.
We Yale School of Medicine. It comes with very similar things, saying that short term psychosis is a possibility in anyone that consumes THHC, like it is a possible thing until that THC is fully metabolized in the body. But again, that's like a sliding scale, right most everything now we're discussing mental health, there is a sliding scale when you're describing whatever that thing is. And they're also showing again, as you said, all that age range stuff. But they're
also discussing, I guess, the timing between doses. So if you're some if you're an individual that ingests THHC on a regular basis, at least the l School of Medicine, and it's one other the Connecticut Department of Mental Health, they're saying the time in between doses matters when it comes to at least their findings on the potential to develop psychosis in this way.
They also say fifteen percent of all new cases of psychosis are attributable to cannabis.
Use, which which is high.
It does feel high, yeah, and it also you know, we have to remember, we have to remember that there is the shadow of propaganda, right that is intergenerational. It's around today. Nineteen thirty six is not that different from twenty twenty four, especially when you look at bad things that happen. We know there might be a way to get our heads around it. But here's part of why
some of these recent rulings were so controversial. The father of the man who was killed in California later stated something I really stayed with all of us and said, look, this judge quote just gave everyone in the state of California who smokes marijuana a license to kill someone, which you know, there is a man suffering tremendous loss passed words. You know his spouse had also passed away fairly recently.
But if you look at the science, if you look at the experts, they're arguing that CIP does seem to be not just real, but on the rise escalating. So what gives? Maybe we take a break for a word from our sponsors before we delve into the somewhat disturbing facts, and we have returned. Long story short the headline. It's something that old hippies have been telling us for years. Cannabis is both more accessible and a lot more powerful
or potent than it used to be. Have you guys ever had that conversation with an older head.
I suppose so yeah.
I mean, certainly a lot of people that grew up smoking weed back in the day they find the current stuff to be too strong because it can have more of a psychedelic effect, more of a experience akin to being on hallucinogens at properly high doses, and especially when you start dealing with things like edibles where you can.
You know, it's measured in milligrams, and people can accidentally take a heroic dose of THHC edibles and all of a sudden they truly do feel like they're you know, tripping on you know, LSD or something.
Yeah, unexpectedly deep water. Right, the days of shagweed are over.
Shack weed, Oh, shag weed, I really, I really just got this picture of shack.
I'm sure many a weed plan has been grown in a shack or two in its day, but especially the swag I think might be the word you're looking for, Ben, But shag is good to shack weed.
That's called I've heard called dirt weed, ditch weed, skunk weed.
Yes, swag was always what we called it growing up. I think you're absolutely right. All of these are standings.
It's probably just because it wasn't legal.
We were growing up a million percent and then your little little dealer could just make up whatever name you would have to pretend it was good. And that was also the type of stuff where you would get those massive seeds that if you caught one accidentally and you know, while you were smoking, it would pop knock your blocks.
With I always say shwag s c h w ag is sure.
I think I have heard that. I always think about what Joey Diaz called it, which was Susquehanna weed, which was referring to some locality near him that I did I never understood, but I enjoyed that reference. But guys, I just had I would have to say, from my personal experience, I have felt that thing you were describing Noll, that like out of body crazy experience, from the slightest amount of THHC in my body when I was younger.
And you know, if you look at what at least what the experts are saying, if you have the genetic markers for something like schizophrenia or some other disorders like this, ingesting THHD at all can heavily increase your risks of developing those or even speeding up your development of those. Or it's almost like if it would be a dormant
trait in you. When you take in THHD, you're increasing the probability that something like that arises, which is really interesting because it's not just THHC, it's everything emphetamines, hallucinogens, opioids, any kind of sedatives. Basically, you take any substance that's going to be mind altering, and you've already got that stuff going on, as you said, kind of latent, it increases the probability that that could happen.
Well, you know, my father kind of late in life, he was an alcoholic. He stopped drinking and stopped smoking and didn't even take to drink coffee with caffeine in it, you know, from his late thirties up until his mid fifties when he kind of had a psychiatric break situation and all of a sudden, So he was obviously predisposed to that, like you're saying, Matt, but he was all of a sudden went from not touching a drug to being prescribed by professional physicians a combination of amphetamines and
diabnzo diazepins, you know, which is like a weird kind of medical speedball in a way. And I'm pretty convinced that that led to his exacerbated mental decline that ultimately resulted in him taking his own life.
Jeez, I mean, I'm just sorry.
I don't mean to talk about personal stuff too much, but I think it's a teachable moment because I really am convinced that that is what happened. It pushed him what was supposed to help him actually made it far, far worse.
And this leads us to unfortunately, that is a that is a story that many people in the audience today can personally relate to and it may have had their own similar experiences. We do know that there are studies that appear to quantify and back this up. There's a great interview you can read with doctor David Schreiber speaking
with CBS News a few years back. He's a psychiatrist as well as the CEO and co founder of placed called the Compass Health Center, and he said that in the US since twenty nineteen, studies have shown an increase of emergency room visits that are the result of cannabis. In one way or another, someone has taken cannabis, they felt so high or they felt so out in such a bad way that they bit the bullet of maybe getting in legal trouble and went to the emergency room.
A fifty percent increase of adverse events as a result of cannabis use, and then it's supplying in other parts of the world to and Ontario er visits for cannabis related psychosis rose two hundred and twenty percent from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty one.
It's because it's a damn strong.
I think it's because it's strong. It's also available, more available. Yeah, it's Shreiver says there were eleven states in twenty nineteen that legalized recreational use of cannabis. By the end of twenty twenty four that numbers should go up to twenty nine. And in addition, in step with this rise of availability,
we see a rise in potency. In ten nineties, which was a distressingly long time ago THC and cannabis like, the potency was around four percent, and now the number is closer to twenty percent on average, so five times more than usual. It's deeper water than people are used to swimming in. As a result, you could compare it in some ways to the experience of a person who used certain opioids right for a time and then quit
after they had acquired a tolerance. Their tolerance disappeared, they returned to it one day, and it has effects that they had not reckoned on experiencing.
Well, yeah, even compare it to I would say beer. When my dad was growing up, beer that existed was you know, either like near beer or non alcoholic right that he experienced when he was younger. We just talked about this, or when you get up to it, you got like your larger brands, like your Budweiser's and your Miller's and all these things that were available to him as he's going through his you know, exploring what beer
is and drinking beer. Imagine like when I don't know about you guys, but when I turned twenty one and had my first beer, it was a Sweetwater, right, And that's around the time when we were that's an Atlanta brewing company. That's around the time that we were starting to see large variations in the alcohol content of a beer that you could go and buy from a store.
And I do like, you can go down you can get a thirteen percent beer in a can, you know exactly, which which is like twice, if not three times as strong as something that you probably would have had access to in I don't know, the nineteen seventies nineteen eighties.
It's probably it's also still easier for underage people to obtain cannabis than it is to obtain alcohol.
Oh yeah, it was easier for underage people to obtain oxy content that was alcohol.
But I guess just what I mean is that that potential shock of oh I didn't know how strong this was, right. I just see it in a lot of things nowadays, as companies try and I think, concentrate stuff to have that almost like a product that stands out or something.
Bro it's it's what they're doing with peppers, spicy stuff, you know, roller.
Coasters, and it's the story of American culture really the biggest, the best, where the country that tried cocaine and said needs a little more kick.
Yeah.
Oh, they have these cannabis cups in the same way they have for anything where they you know, you the job is of of these companies is to have the most purest, most potent products. And now it's all regulated and it's a lot you know. They don't have to do it behind in the shadows, you know.
And while a large swath of America tends to regard cannabis in a less antagonistic light, there might be people who say, you know, well, I don't want my kids smoking, and I don't want to hang out with people who smoke, leaeder take edibles. But I don't think it's terrible. I don't think it's going to end civilization right or launch renewed interest in jazz. God forbid rights. Yeah, it's it's apocalyptic,
isn't it. And these two big changes and availability and potency have pushed folks to reassess the situation in a way that's less bound to the cynical propaganda of old. We also know during COVID there may have been something There may have been yet another comorbid factor here because people weren't getting the care and treatment they needed for psychiatric issues, which meant they would end up self medicating.
And as many of us listening unfortunately no firsthand, cannabis is one of the top go to substances people used to self meta. There's also alcohol and any number of other substances.
And again we're not being a proponent of one or the other or any of those things, but there are a lot of people that might try to self medicay not knowing that there are very different strains of cannabis, that there are kinds that do focus more on the headier aspects of the drug the substance, and they can make it called I believe that's sativa, which can make people more on the I don't know, they lean more
towards that psychedelic experience that I was describing. And then there's Indico, which some people call sleepy time weed, and it helps you get sleep if you have insomnia. Then there's also hybrids that are a combination of the two, but the really heavy sativas that is pure borderline hallucination material if you're not careful, especially if you eat it in edible form at a really high you know, milligram.
Which again is difficult to it's difficult to understand if there's consistency in the dosage for the milligrams and a lot of edibles. And shout out to Indica, the street name into couch that.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think there's a there's an analog joke for sativa, but Sativa is the one that tends to be the heavier, kind of more like, oh my gosh, what's going on in my head kind of vibe.
And so we have arguably an insidious perfect storm with some people trying to get through COVID or trying to get through that lockdown. They may have a pre existing condition of some sort. They're self medicating by ingesting cannabis, and the logic is that this may have accelerated. Again, this may have had this interaction that might not affect other people, but if they had certain genetic predispositions or behavioral dispositions towards some mental issues, then cannabis could put
some high octane gas on the fire. And you know that's not even counting of course, younger people ingesting cannabis. Science is still trying to figure out how the human brain develops, and we know that's happening because every few years a study comes out and just says, well, actually, we don't think the brain is fully developed at this point in time. Another compounding issue is the science on conditions like schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations and so on. That stuff
is still in progress as well. There's still much more that needs to be learned about that. The relationship between cannabis and mental health is therefore complicated. Individual cases vary so widely. There's not a silver bullet answer. You know, there's not a one size fits all approach to this.
We know that heavy.
Cannabis use can have certain adverse effects, you know, physical health. It's not great to smoke all the time. If you're smoking, you can also have memory issues and stuff. But I don't know, do we have We're almost sewing this up. Do we have any last words? I'd love to end with mental health resources?
Absolutely, And I dig just want to point out that, like, there are studies out there that show there there are real correlations here between you know, folks developing early onset dementia and and and regular cannabis use. And you know that nothing happens in a vacuum. You all choices that you make. There may be ramifications down the line, like hopefully it doesn't result in you, in one moment of being peer pressured, you know, having a psychotic break that
causes you to murder somebody. But these things that we that are so now available and maybe seemingly destigmatized, they it's not like you can just do whatever you want and expect there not to potentially be some bill that comes due at some point. That's true for alcohol, that's true for eating. You know, that's true for any vice. I suppose, right.
Yeah, I don't really, I don't know. But just one thing I wanted to say is I think we kind of forget that cannabis is like a drug, a little bit like alcohol, where sometimes again it's not debilitating the way I've found alcohol to be when I'm like super super intoxicated to where I'm definitely not making good decisions.
I would just say we kind of forget sometimes because of the way maybe popular culture thinks about cannabis that you can make a bad decision on that stuff in the same in a less controlled way than you would have if you weren't under you know, any substance, right, Which doesn't mean it's going to do that every time.
Just a whole pound cake for example.
Well, or I mean not joking doing something socially with someone, or you know that y're around at the time that you are high that you wouldn't do with that person if you weren't.
I disagree with you a tiny bit there. I mean, I just feel like the inhibition lowering quality of alcohol are just so much more all encompassing than the inhibition lowering qualities of cannabis. To me, it's like the negatives
are like, you know, the munchies or some kind. And I'm not saying the things you're describing aren't real, and they certainly can happen, I imagine for others, but in general my experience with folks, it just kind of makes people a little goofy and maybe talk too much or something, or like say something they wouldn't have normally said. I can't imagine someone who wasn't already going to do something nefarious being coerced by marijuana use into like date raping somebody.
I don't That's certainly not what I was saying. Like what, I guess what.
I'm saying that as an extreme example, that's all I think.
You know, I definitely am not thinking those extremes. But I guess we forget that it is a substance that changes your brain a little bit. Thc is, it's psychoactive, So just you know, just be aware of that when you're using.
And I'm an ardent fan or enthusiast of decriminalization. Simply simply put, without getting into any of my personal experiences or feelings, it's one of the best ways to cripple organized crime, right, including factions of the government that, in my opinion, engage in something very close to organized crime to pay out. Hey, you look at it. I walk down the street from that one.
But it's true capitalism. Well I don't know.
At least organized crime knows what it is and calls it like it is. I feel like what you're describing bit is almost worse because it's like masquerading as something else that's here to.
Like help people.
But they know, right, they know, and we also know that. Look, not everything is for everyone. There are plenty of people who swear by their cannabis routines and they say, Hey, I'm more at peace, I'm happier, I'm motivating, and I'm stable, et cetera. I found something some sort of redom that works with me. And that means the answers are never as simple as we prefer. We have to be very careful. We cannot dismiss one person's experience because it doesn't jibe
with somebody else's. People are different and all equally important. So what we can do, I would say, what we must do is practice empathy and kindness and maybe we end it here. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, please know there are tons of helpful, free resources out there in the US, out there in your neck of the global woods. You can reach out directly, confidentially, anonymously at eight sixty six nine zero three three seven eighty seven. That is the That
is the National Mental Health hotline. They're always open. There's someone there for you. Be safe, folks. We want to hear your thoughts about this because we touched on a lot of things here. We try to be easy to find online.
Correct.
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