Has your get-up-and-go got up and gone? Do
you lack the ambition you used to have, the drive and zeal that once motivated
you to strive for bigger and better things? Sure, it could just be that life
has beaten you down, or it could be a symptom of depression…but it could also
be a side
effect of marijuana usage. Yes,
even if you’re only a casual, once-in-a-while toker, marijuana
can take a toll on your brain, and one of its effects is to destroy your
ambition, your drive, your motivation.
This
alarming news comes to us courtesy of the FoxNews website, whose report we
reprint in its entirety below for your information and edification:
Casual
marijuana use may come with some not-so-casual side effects.
For the first time, researchers at
Northwestern University have analyzed the relationship between casual use of
marijuana and brain changes – and found that young adults who used cannabis
just once or twice a week showed significant abnormalities in two important
brain structures.
The study’s findings, published in
the Journal of Neuroscience, are similar to those of past research
linking chronic, long-term marijuana use with mental illness and changes in
brain development.
Dr. Hans Breiter, co-senior
study author, said he was inspired to look at the effects of casual marijuana
use after previous work in his lab found that heavy cannabis use caused similar
brain abnormalities to those seen in patients with schizophrenia.
“There were abnormalities in their
working memory, which is fundamental to everything you do,” Breiter, a
professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University
Feinberg School of Medicine, told FoxNews.com. “When you make judgments
or decisions, plan things, do mathematics – anything you do always involves
working memory. It’s one of the core fundamental aspects of our brains
that we use every day. So given those findings, we decided we need to
look at casual, recreational use.”
For their most recent study, Breiter
and his team analyzed a very small sample of patients between the ages of 18
and 25: 20 marijuana users and 20 well-matched control subjects. The
marijuana users had a wide range of usage routines, with some using the drug
just once or twice a week and others using it every single day.
Utilizing magnetic resonance imaging
(MRI), the researchers analyzed the participants’ brains, focusing on the
nucleus accumbens (NAC) and the amygdala – two key brain regions responsible
for processing emotions, making decisions and motivation. They looked at
these brain structures in three different ways, measuring their density, volume
and shape.
According to Breiter, all three were
abnormal in the casual marijuana users.
“For the
NAC, all three measures were abnormal, and they were abnormal in a
dose-dependent way, meaning the changes were greater with the amount of
marijuana used,” Breiter said. “The amygdala had abnormalities for shape
and density, and only volume correlated with use. But if you looked at all
three types of measures, it showed the relationships between them were quite
abnormal in the marijuana users, compared to the normal controls.”
Because these brain regions are
central for motivation, the findings from Northwestern help support the
well-known theory that marijuana use leads to a condition called amotivation.
Also called amotivational syndrome, this psychological condition causes people
to become less oriented toward their goals and purposes in life, as well as [to]
seem less focused in general.
Given these eye-opening results,
Breiter said that more research is needed to look into marijuana’s
effects on the brain – even in those who use the drug only once or twice a
month.
“We need to see what happens
longitudinally,” Breiter said. “What happens as you follow people over time?
What happens if they stop using – do these bad effects continue? What
happens if you can intervene early?...My worry is we haven’t studied this
compound and here we are looking to change legislation on it.”
Although Breiter’s team members did
not examine the patients’ cognitive symptoms, they do believe that the brain abnormalities seen in their study could lead to substantial effects on brain
development and behavior, especially given the young ages of the participants.
Breiter also acknowledged the problems of analyzing a very small study
sample – but said that their findings should still serve as a wake-up call to
others.
“This study is just a beginning
pilot study, but at the same time, the results that came out are the same as a
canary in a coal mine,” Breiter said. “...The interaction of marijuana
with brain development could be a significant problem.”
Do you toke? Have you noticed a lessened
motivation, a lack of ambition, a decreased drive? There may be a connection.
It’s time to “get off the stuff” and take back the reins of your life again. We
have strategies to help. Let us help you—now!
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