Pubdate: Wed, 09 Jan 2013
Source: Bakersfield Californian, The (CA)
Copyright: 2013 The Bakersfield Californian
Contact:  http://www.bakersfield.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/36
Author: Brik McDill
Note: Brik McDill, Ph.D., of Tehachapi has spent 40 years in private 
practice in clinical and forensic psychology.

YOUNG BRAINS MAY NOT BE READY FOR SUPER-WEED OF WORLD TODAY

Whoa there, sugarfoot, not so fast on the marijuana thing.

In the rush to legalize pot we may be overlooking some important (and 
risky) things about it: that one of its properties is that it's an 
hallucinogen capable of producing sudden and randomly occurring 
flashbacks (more on that below); and that it can have scrambling and 
stunting effects on a developing brain.

Some background. Pot now is 1,300 percent more potent than in the 
1960s and '70s. Through selective cross-fertilizing enhanced strain 
with enhanced strain, pot today is turbo-charged. Weed back in the 
Age of Aquarius was weak to the point where users had a hard time 
separating out the effect of inhalation hyperventilation from the THC 
effect of pot itself (THC is the psychoactive substance in the mix of 
combustion chemicals inhaled). Even then users got wasted and whacked 
out doing strange and dangerous things.

I was stationed at the hospital at the San Francisco Presidio, then 
later in my military hitch at the Oakland Army Base adjacent to U.C. 
Berkeley, and I saw my share of spaced-out active and residual 
pot-brain muddlement.

A cherished neuroscience professor of mine made the remark that some 
people's brains were sturdy things that could, unfazed, withstand 
many onslaughts of mind-scrambling chemicals; others' brains, 
however, were barely held together with thumbtacks and spit and 
disintegrated completely in the face of even minor chemical 
disturbance. And there was no knowing ahead of time who had which 
kind of brain until, for the unlucky, it was too late. Don't get me 
wrong, I'm not the ad-man for the 1930s movie "Reefer Madness." But a 
word of caution is in order before we swing open the doors to 
widespread recreational pot use.

Marijuana is a hallucinogen, which means it's a thought and sensation 
scrambling chemical that makes one see, hear, feel, and sense things 
that aren't real. It can produce pleasant things and things that are 
scary. It can give one the giggles or it can bring on terror.

It can make one feel wholly blissed-out or suddenly paranoid and 
delusional. Sensations are scrambled away from their typical pathways 
and sensory projection areas; sounds are seen, colors tasted, visions heard.

And there's knowing ahead of time what the coming trip will be. And 
that was back in the 1970s, smoking today's feeble precursors.

Brains are organs of high sensitivity and functional complexity which 
no one fully scientifically understands even now. Despite powerful 
brain imaging and mapping technology, and probes and other 
exploratory instrumentation measuring in the nanos, a lot of brain 
function is still veiled in mystery.

We're just now discovering that the white glial stuff of the brain we 
thought merely fed and held in place the important grey stuff 
functions very much like a complex co-existing wrap-around brain of its own.

We know that female brains continue to develop into the late teens 
and very early twenties, while the male brain doesn't complete its 
development until the mid-, even late-twenties. All the while, during 
the brain's delicate development, circuits and centers are flaring to 
life in genetically pre-determined, complex sequences -- each circuit 
and center dependent on the successful lighting-up of its precursors.

We also know that the highest level of drug use occurs during those 
same years. Do we see a problem here? While the brain is wiring and 
building itself, do we really want to throw chemicals into it that 
can knock this delicate process out of whack?

Pot is not like alcohol or other legal drugs.

Some early researchers placed pot somewhere on the psychoactive 
continuum somewhere among caffeine, nicotine, and tea. Problem is 
that scaling is wrong for today's pot-on-steroids; and pot is fat 
soluble, not water soluble like the others.

Water soluble means easily metabolized and washed out of one's 
system; fat soluble means it hangs around long after it's taken in 
and continues its effect for a long time. It also means it gets 
absorbed into and stored in fatty tissue (fat cells) to be later 
re-released to have its delayed out-of-the-blue effect.

This is only partially explored territory.

A little caution can go a long way.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom