Autism & Marijuana: Yes, It Actually Does Help

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I agree that it can be of very positive medical use and many people have found that marijuana is the only drug that works when it comes to relieving the stresses of pain physical and mental. It has been proven to help joint pain, Alzheimer's, Bi-polar, autism and even people who are suffering from cancer since cannabis contains cannaboids that can be helpful in killing cancer cells. It has even been known to boost IQ is very small quantities although anything to do with IQ can be difficult to quantify. Saying this however, I do not think anyone can generalize with any drug and while some people with autism may find it helpful there will some with aspergers for whom the drug does the opposite and makes them paranoid, anxious and so forth. It is completely dependent on the individual. Anyone who has a history of mental illness I would advise to stay clear of marijuana since regular use can bring out repressed forms of mental illness. I personally wish I could smoke it but it makes me lazy and gives me serious panic attacks where my pulse starts beating, my head starts rushing and I cannot socialize at all. Of course, these are due to deep rooted psychological issues but regardless cannabis can do the opposite. On the plus side, Carl Sagan smoked it and was an absolutely awesome man. Thinking about it now, Cosmos does seem like a rather stoner series.

What strain do you use? It is satvia or indica?

Not a diagnosed Aspie, but I can say that smoking marijuana gives me a sense of mental order; everything slows down and rearranges itself. Basically, a reset button.

Doesn't work at all for me. Makes things much worse. I have no problem with people taking whatever they want though.

Yes!

I also agree that all drugs should be legalized, all of them, for many different reasons, we can tangent off into an entirely new thread about that discussion because there are a lot of different aspects and facets to the failure that is the "war on drugs", it's become a complex issue....but I'll not let my self go into a ramble about that...Prohibition and the laws do far more harm to society than the drugs themselves, there is a better approach to this than what we've been doing over the many decades. If anyone thinks otherwise and would like to have a discussion/debate, feel free to message me or or start a new thread in regards to that.




I too use cannabis, and have been doing so pretty much every single day for the past 6 years, with one or two days a year where I don't smoke for one reason or another. I didn't use cannabis while in high school, I actually didn't until I was 20, then more regularly a couple years later. When I was first introduced to the plant by a friend I was using way too much. I definitely had some experiences of induced anxiety and paranoia, but I learned to use the plant in a manner than benefits me, rather than just to get stoned.

Like others in this thread that use daily, I don't smoke all that much, only about 2 tenths of a gram a day (which is a piece of cannabis flower about the size of a marble, give or take). Occasionally I'll smoke more in a day. When I hang out with friends or in a social setting I'll sometimes smoke a bit more than I would at home...Generally, while at home, I only take a few puffs through the day, the cannabis I get is high quality and high potency, so it doesn't take much at all.

It generally smooths out my mind and smooths out my days, takes the edge/anxiety off, helps me sleep. It brings me tranquility without overly sedating or slowing down my cognition (with the amounts I use from day to day). It helps me focus, my mind doesn't go off in tangents or loops as easily. It just simply "grounds" me. Depending on the strain, and how much I smoke, there's a wide range of uses & applications for which I can utilize this plant beneficially.

I absolutely love the plant, not in the aspect of "stoner culture" (which I despise), I'm just really into psychoactive/medicinal plants in general. It's a beautiful plant, and the broad spectrum of aromas and flavors it offers is delightful to my senses. Even outside of the affects it has on my mind, it's some terrific stuff for the body as well, it's a great expectorant and keeps the lungs clean and healthy, and it has been shown to have anti-carcinogenic properties against many different types of cancer, among many other benefits.

I agree that more studies should be done (but that's not easy with the way the laws are at the moment)...even as it is, studies or no studies, humans have been using this plant for thousands of years and already know it's uses and what it has to offer, only in recent time have we been cut off from this plant, among many other medicinal plants that humans have used.






I'll keep it short with these, most of these finding are in medical journals...even with the restrictions on research and with relatively poor quality cannabis that's used in the studies, it's shown to be beneficial in many ways .

Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic and anti-depressant-like effects

Cannabinoids inhibit tumor growth

Pathways mediating the effects of cannabidiol on the reduction of breast cancer cell proliferation, invasion, and metastasis.

Cannabidiol inhibits lung cancer cell invasion and metastasis via intercellular adhesion molecule-1

Cannabis can kill cancer cells and curb MS




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I've never *directly* smoked marijuana, but I've been contact high from being in a small relatively enclosed room with someone who was smoking it, and I will definitely say, it makes me feel calm and chill. Even if it were legal though, I wouldn't smoke it every day, as I find that it would interfere with my productivity and impede my ability to think straight. In many ways, I view having Aspergers as being a blessing as well as a curse; my obsessiveness and attention to detail interfere with "normal" functioning, but they also enable me to accomplish great things.

I've tried it often enough in my youth to know that there are strains that merely make me feel sleepy, strains that give me the giggles and make everything seem interesting and profound (which was kinda nice, but didn't help me function any better), and strains that make me incredibly anxious and paranoid. In one case, this paranoia lasted for several days after the high wore off, and afterwards I was too terrified to give it another try.

I only smoked one more bowl several years ago when the opportunity presented itself, and I realized that modern day cannabis strains are a LOT more potent than anything I tried back in the late 1980s. While I didn't have another paranoid episode, it was nevertheless a very scary experience. My entire left side went numb, my heart was racing to the point where I feared having a heart attack, the floor seemed way too far away when I looked down, I felt seasick and had to throw up at some point, and I was extremely relieved when I came down after what felt like an eternity. I can't think of any reason why I'd want to repeat this experience.

That being said, I'm all for the legalization of pot. Being drunk and waking up in your own vomit isn't a very nice experience either, and prolonged alcohol use does a lot more damage to the human body than even Snoop Dog levels of marijuana use. Plus I think it's an utterly ridiculous idea to try and outlaw a plant, a biological species. People should be free to cultivate and consume any plant or fungus. I have potted plants on my windowsill that could kill me if I were crazy enough to ingest them, and yet these plants are freely sold in florist shops.

Last but not least, drug prohibition simply doesn't work. If anything, prohibition makes the problem worse by creating a criminal underground market that is impossible to regulate. So by all means, legalize recreational drugs (the lot of them), get the drug market out in the open where it can be properly regulated, and end the needless criminalization of drug users, self-medicators and hobby gardeners.

That's really the only way to get a grip on the problem. As long as many drugs are illegal, kids can buy them on the schoolyard without anyone asking for a proof of age, and addicts are thrown behind bars instead of getting medical treatment.

Regarding cannabis-induced paranoia, I should probably add that my biggest fear during paranoid highs was to be caught with pot in my possession. All it took was hearing an ambulance siren in the distance and I went into "oh no, they're coming for me" mode So this is yet another drug-related problem that is greatly exacerbated by drug criminalization.

If weed were legal the situation would be vastly improved. Weed is however neurotoxic... it does in fact kill hippocampal neurons. Not only that but there may be a parallel between it and schizophrenic spectrum disorders - it may exacerbate such conditions.

Smoking once a week is likely to produce positive effects however

Really?...

Admittedly, I don't have a deep technical understanding, but the research/studies I've come across seems to be pointing towards the absolute contrary of that, that cannabinoids actually have rather pronounced neuro protective properties.


And if cannabinoids were neurotoxic...wouldn't our endogenous cannabinoid neurotransmitter anandamide be neurotoxic as well?...





Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic and anti-depressant-like effects

"Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon found that the administration of synthetic cannabinoids in rats stimulated the proliferation of newborn neurons (nerve cells) in the hippocampus region of the brain and significantly reduced measures of anxiety and depression-like behavior. The results shocked researchers -- who noted that almost all other so-called "drugs of abuse," including alcohol and tobacco, decrease neurogenesis in adults -- and left the "pot kills brain cells" crowd with a platter of long-overdue egg on their faces.

While it would be premature to extrapolate the study's findings to humans, at a minimum, the data reinforce the notion that cannabinoids are unusually non-toxic to the brain and that even long-term use of marijuana likely represents little risk to brain function. The findings also offer further evidence that cannabinoids can play a role in the alleviation of depression and anxiety, and that cannabis-based medicines may one day offer a safer alternative to conventional anti-depressant pharmaceuticals such as Paxil and Prozac.

Not only has modern science refuted the notion that marijuana is neurotoxic, recent scientific discoveries have indicated that cannabinoids are, in fact, neuroprotective, particularly against alcohol-induced brain damage. In a recent preclinical study -- the irony of which is obvious to anyone who reads it -- researchers at the US National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) reported that the administration of the non-psychoactive cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) reduced ethanol-induced cell death in the brain by up to 60 percent. "This study provides the first demonstration of CBD as an in vivo neuroprotectant ... in preventing binge ethanol-induced brain injury," the study's authors wrote in the May 2005 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. "






Neuroprotective agents: cannabinoids.


Cannabidiol and (−)Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol are neuroprotective antioxidants


Endocannabinoids and Neuroprotection


Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease Pathology by Cannabinoids Neuroprotection


Cannabinoid receptors and their role in neuroprotection

".....exogenous and endogenous cannabinoids were shown to exert neuroprotection in a variety of in vitro and in vivo models of neuronal injury........The release of endocannabinoids during neuronal injury may constitute a protective response. If this neuroprotective function of cannabinoid receptor activation can be transferred to the clinic, it might represent an interesting target to develop neuroprotective agents. "




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I'm an Aspie who has had a lot of experience with marijuana as I have used it in various forms hash and weed in spliffs/joints and later spacecakes for epilepsy and PTSD which are co morbid with Asperger syndrome and the PTSD due to having an abusive father from 1974-79 and other abuse as well and I used to hang around a group of allistic people who only had one thing in common with me and that was the use of cannabis.

Any psychological dependence that may come from cannabis is what you do when you have used it and often it is listening to certain kinds of music which can potentially release anandamide when you listen to them for example a bit of Reggae dub and listening to this on marijuana increases the enjoyment of your marijuana motivating you to get another draw and play similar music especially with certain 'friends' and also marijuana is also a mild serenic in the fact you can get some insatiable cravings for a hug or some other form of human affection.

No I don't think that using cannabis causes autistic behaviour but it can cause some kind of autistic like thinking even in the allistic person and is the Dampkring effect which causes a person to think outside the box and using learning styles usually inaccessible to the person without cannabis unless he or she is on the autistic spectrum. I've heard stories of the weed that is smoked now is different to the weed your nan was using for her bad leg back in the 1920s and this is the second WP forum on cannabis I contributed to this evening. I have also heard that weed is now being used for children with Dravet syndrome developed by the Stanley Brothers called Charlotte's Web after a little girl somewhere who had Dravet syndrome and was givent this strain of weed in an oil injected under the tongue. The weed had 30% CBD and 0% THC. It may have been trialled for that in the late 1960s in some hospitals just a few years before the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 kicked in.

I do think that marijuana is beneficial if used responsibly and of people of sufficient neuroregulation because the potential of anandamide logically cannot be rules out and yes I do think that cannabis should be legalised. For most people whether autistic or allistic who love their spliff It is just a hrmless bit of fun and consider cannabis to just essenitally be a human attractant and like not all cats use catnip not all humans are interested in using cannabis or are incompatible for cannabis use. An AS person who smokes spliff is still an aspie it is just that he or she is stoned but still on the autistic spectrum and may be using the change in neurological state for his or her own benefit such as rehearsing social skills. This may be for a few be like some kind of synaesthesia allowing a stoned Asperger syndrome person see a colour of a person's aura ad even suspect a person is or not on the autistic spectrum by the amount of colour in their aura usually with almost irresponsible doses and may cause one to have a wh***y.

Not all Asperger syndrome people can see auras even when stoned because that is a paradoxical reaction to a drug and paradoxical reactions to psychoactives are linked to the autistic spectrum but the autistic like thinking the AS person naturally has this but what degree that the Dampkring effect takes place unless it links in with developing some kind of hippie like values of peace, green and civil rights issues are all pondered by cannabis users. It (the Dampkring effect) can also be a strict disciplinarian and enouraging one to be a nicer person.

This is an article I wrote
http://cannabisnowmagazine.com/cannabis ... s-syndrome