This Could Explain a Lot of Things

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Dr. Samuel T. Wilkinson, a physician in residence at the Yale University department of Psychiatry, writes in the Wall Street Journal: “There is a significant and consistent relationship between marijuana use and the development of schizophrenia and related disorders.”

You can read the whole thing — that is, you could read the whole thing, if you weren’t a raving psycho who’s smoked enough weed to fry your brain. Of course, correlation is not causation, and there is the chicken-and-egg problem: Which came first, the crazy or the weed?

We could hypothesize that mentally unstable people are more likely to do a lot of potentially dangerous things — smoke marijuana, vote Democrat, date tattooed women — without any one of these factors being the cause of their insanity. Advocates of the legalization of marijuana could therefore say, “Yeah, crazy people smoke a lot of weed, but . . . Hey, man, stop being such a buzzkill, OK?”

Speaking from personal experience, I know for several years in the 1970s, I suffered from the psychotic delusion that Robert Plant was singing in key on all those Led Zep albums I listened to. And there are long-term effects, too. Even after I stopped smoking weed, I continued voting Democrat for more than a decade.

Thanks to this latest research, however, there are some hitherto unexplained phenomena that now make perfect sense.

 

59 comments

  1. Don’t we have an excellent pair of test subjects with Stacy on one side of what the excesses of youth can do and Smitty on the other as a control of clean and sober living?

    I am glad there is hope and possible recovery!

  2. Its significant that almost every single mass murderer and high profile shooter for a decade now has been also a pot smoker. How significant? Its hard to say, but it is certain that smoking weed makes schizophrenia worse.

  3. From the Doctor’s article [emphasis mine]:

    As research accumulates, the emerging picture is that marijuana precipitates schizophrenia or related psychotic disorders in people whose brains are inherently vulnerable to psychosis. All of us who do not regularly experience hallucinations or delusions reside on what may be called a “cliff of sanity.” Some of us, for reasons still unclear (thought possibly to be genetic), are closer to the edge of the cliff than others.

    Marijuana may push everyone a few feet closer to that cliff. For those who were already close to the cliff, the drug pushes them over the edge into the chasm of insanity, hence precipitating the development of schizophrenia.

  4. So there is hope: If you’re kind of a borderline type, stay off the weed, and maybe you won’t turn into a full-blown Gary Busey.

  6. It’s safe to say that all three of our most recent Presidents have some experience with marijuana or some other drug.

    How’s that workin’ out for us?

  9. Enh, I’ve smoked my share of pot and my girlfriend has a tattoo, but I’ve never voted for a Democrat in my life.

    There are some things that are just too extreme, y’know?

  11. Excessive time in the choom wagon would seem to explain many of the marxist delusions floating around these days.

  14. Plant didn’t sing in key? Though I never was high while listening to The Zep, guess I didn’t notice because I was so blown away by the powerful emotion of his voice. Still am. “Communication breakdown it’s always the same. Having a nervous breakdown, drive me insane.” Yeah, sing along with me. Don’t dis Bob.

  15. There are those who say that I stopped just a few puffs shy of becoming a full-blown Busey myself.

  16. Forget pot smokers.

    It’s more important that Florida seniors take their medication so they don’t mistakenly vote for someone like Pat Buchanan again. 🙂

  17. And does anyone accept the theory that whatever smoking material Gerald Ford was putting in that pipe of his (up to 12 bowls per day) had an affect on his decision to pardon Nixon?

  18. I will admit to voting for Buchanan once, but that was in the 1992 presidential primaries, before Buchanan went to whack-job territory, and he was the only serious candidate trying to unseat Bush Sr, whose “read my lips” had doomed him.

  19. Our last President who (most likely) didn’t smoke pot was Bush Sr., who torpedoed his own Presidency with “read my lips, no new taxes” then raised taxes. I would rather that he had smoked pot than raised taxes, personally.

  20. I remember once making the statement that smoking pot would still be worth it if its only effect was to make Pink Floyd sound better.

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