Posted by JohnL on July 23, 2001, at 3:38:19
In reply to Re: Marijuana Use » JohnL, posted by MB on July 21, 2001, at 19:15:23
> > > I must add a personal point, just to voice my thoughts. pot 4 me was not a depressant, It made me a little sleepy to start, but by the end I was not anything but happy and amused.(I used to have a fairly bad habit 4 about 10 months). In fact pot may have precipitated a '?hypomanic?' phase. Possibly if pot was legal in the UK (as it will be in a few years) then I would be self medicating as its the only 'antidepressant' that has made any difference.
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> > One of the main things marijuana does is increase dopamine activity. So if you respond well to marijuana, then that could be a hint that dopamine drugs such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, or Amisulpride might work well.
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> But doesn't marijuana increase dopaminergic activity, while Zyprexa decreases it?
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> > Marijuana is tricky because if you smoke too regularly you can build tolerance to it. And then when you back off you will experience a severe, though short, depressive fall. When that dopamine level drops, look out below.
> > John
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> Or, as I've had happen before, when the tolorance builds, the depressive fall can hit even *while* you're smoking...you're smoking the marijuana, but it's not doing anything, and you fall into a depression. During the last stages of my pot smoking career, the first session of the day wold work wonders...then it would wear off, depression would return, and no matter how much more I smoked that day, it wouldn't help. I'd have to wait until the next day for that first hit of the day. It was really frustrating!!Wow, I thought I was the only one who experienced this! Man, you described it perfectly. I still think pot is good for recreation, better than alcohol, but for regular use it is full of troubles and risks. I remember I used to have some stuff that was totally sugar coated, one-hit-wonder kind of stuff. Even just a few crumbs of it would blow me away. But over a few weeks tolerance built up and it didn't seem to be powerful anymore. Then, exactly like you said, I started getting depressed. Smoking more did not help at all, and only seemed to worsen the problem. The only way to undo it was to stop completely for a week, go through about three days of pure hell, crying fits, despair, deep depression, etc. Then once I was cleaned out, I discovered that again all it took was a few crumbs to last a whole evening. I rarely smoke anymore, but when I do I always do so with utmost respect of the risks, and never ever do it more than one day in a row.
Back to Zyprexa, I have come to believe that low doses of Zyprexa, Risperdal, or Amisulpride actually increase dopamine activity, while higher doses decrease it. I have no facts on this, but all the anecdotal evidence seems to point in that direction.
John
poster:JohnL
thread:70842
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010720/msgs/71471.html