Is the following statement FACT or CRAP?
8. Depression can increase when you use marijuana.
Answer: FACT
Marijuana increases your risk of developing depression and suicidal behavior later in life. Association of Cannabis Use in Adolescence and Risk of Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidality in Young Adulthood https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2723657
Many of us have felt the dark hand of depression at some point in our lives. For many, it rises when we’ve been battered by troubles or the human condition. For others, it’s an ominous imbalance of brain chemicals that won’t away without medicinal intervention. And yet others, it happens when drugs like marijuana are abused. People who don’t experience depression don’t understand it. But when allowed to continue, it can literally ruin your life.
Few would deliberately invite depression into their lives, yet that’s exactly what adolescent marijuana users do. Sometimes, they are attempting to make existing depression better (referred to as self-medicating), and others become depressed only after they started using marijuana. The brains of adolescent users are still developing, and it’s been well-established that marijuana use stunts brain development in youth.
Based on a 2019 meta-study of more than 23,000 individuals, those who start using marijuana as teens are 1.37 times (37%) more likely than non-users to develop depression as young adults. Suicidal ideation rises by 1.5 times (50%), and the likelihood of suicide attempts more than triples to 3.46 times normal.
I know too well how marijuana use can tear lives apart. Johnny’s Ambassador’s is named after my son, who fell for the lies and misinformation about marijuana. After only a few years of adolescent use, marijuana led to my beautiful, sensitive, intelligent son killing himself. He had developed psychosis and wasn’t depressed, per his own writing, but many users die by suicide from despair.
Don’t let this happen to your child or to your family. Stay alert. If you discover your child is using marijuana, get help immediately, and do not allow it to continue under any circumstances. Despite what they tell you, it IS a big deal. Stop your children from letting marijuana take over and take their lives, while you still can.