The harm of marijuana

The ability of marijuana to cause adverse effects with prolonged use, as well as the ability to cause physical dependence, is a matter of controversy. The literature contains a full spectrum of opinions: from the denial of visible mental health disorders to the description of a pronounced feeblemindedness and schizophrenia-like defect. The explanation for this lies, of course, in the quality of the examination. Marijuana use in the European population does not show adverse effects because it passes into other forms of drug addiction, and the consequences of abuse of a new drug mask or do not allow complications of hashishism to develop. In addition, systematic marijuana use in the European population is widespread mainly in such groups in which the life of an individual is short-lived and falls outside social control (criminals, bohemians, youth subcultural groups, etc.). Therefore, a description of the exhaustive clinical picture of disorders due to marijuana use should be sought from authors working in countries where marijuana use is traditional, namely in the countries of Central Asia.

The harm of marijuana to human energy resources

Clinically complete observations leave no doubt that the result of long-term marijuana use are: a progressive decrease in energy resources, physical and mental exhaustion, increasing lethargy, dullness, loss of social connections, the appearance of protracted psychoses leading to deep disability.

The harm of marijuana to the human psyche

Individuals who frequently use marijuana often experience neurosis-like conditions with general weakness, fatigue, emotional instability, sleep disorders, hypochondria, as well as psychopathic personality development with a characteristic narrowing of interests and increased affectivity. Researchers have described a number of different types of pathological personality development in patients who have used marijuana for a long time: with increased excitability (affective-explosive), hysterical with hypochondriacal inclusions, schizoid, asthenic and apathetic-abulic.
Apathetic-abulic syndrome - in psychiatry - a syndrome of apathy and abulia, which is characterized by:
- mental emptiness;
- mental and physical adynamia, (adynamia is a sharp decline in strength, muscle weakness, accompanied by a significant decrease or complete cessation of motor activity;
- poverty of the affective sphere;
- indifference to oneself and the surrounding realities.

Some of the presented types of pathological development coincide with similar types in the clinic of alcoholism: asthenic (with hysterical inclusions), explosive and apathetic. In addition, the possibility of the dynamics of the types of pathological development of personality as a result of the development of hashishism and alcoholism from asthenic to apathetic is shown.
In marijuana smokers, a pseudo-paralytic syndrome, known from the clinic of alcoholism, has also been described. From the above it follows that with the use of marijuana, the same progressive disability is observed as with alcoholic encephalopathy.
Through the stage of psychopathization, including asthenic, hysterical, explosive (affective-explosive), apathetic-abulic (schizoid) types, both hashish addicts and alcoholics come to organic dementia. Possible: erethic form of encephalopathy (with pseudoparalytic syndrome), torpid form of encephalopathy (with schizoform syndrome) and psychotic variant of encephalopathy (with hallucinatory and hallucinatory-paranoid syndromes). In Western literature, the term "amotivational syndrome" is used to characterize hashish addicts.

The Harm of Marijuana for the Brain

The Effect of Marijuana on the Brain: The Origin of Psychoorganic Syndrome When Using Marijuana Is SignificantVascular disorders play an important role. Experiments on dogs have shown that acute hashish intoxication causes impaired blood flow in the brain vessels, perivascular edema of nerve cells. Imagine the brain! It is densely entwined with capillaries that carry oxygen and other nutrients to our brain. And as a result of smoking marijuana, toxic substances enter the blood. In the capillaries that feed the brain, these substances cause blood stasis, blood cannot flow through such capillaries and the liquid part of the blood is soaked into the brain tissue. Edema of the brain develops, as a result of the edema, the nutrition of nearby areas of the brain is further disrupted, the process is aggravated. The liquid part of the blood in the perivascular space becomes even larger, and it begins to penetrate the nerve cells, they swell and begin to die. And the more nerve cells die, the dumber the person becomes! Here you have the harm of marijuana to the brain. But it is the brain that is responsible for the processes that occur inside the body, it controls absolutely everything. A sick brain will perform this task worse, which is why those who smoke marijuana seem to be indifferent. They simply do not have the internal energy to do anything and their brain is sick.
In addition, dystrophic processes are observed in ganglion cells (acute swelling, karyocytolysis, sometimes wrinkling) and proliferation of glial elements.
With constant marijuana smoking, widespread damage to nerve cells occurs (wrinkling of nerve cells, various lesions of the nuclei of nerve cells, disruption of the nutrition of nerve cells), all this leads to disruption of the functions of the nervous system. These phenomena are especially pronounced in the cortex, subcortical nodes and cerebellum. Thus, with hashishism, the pathological process in the brain is characterized by toxic-dystrophic encephalopathy with vascular disorders. This makes clear the difference between hashishism and opiism and the similarity between hashishism and such grossly disabling drug addictions as alcoholism and abuse of sedative-hypnotic drugs.