Andrew Sullivan. (Photo: Trey Ratcliff/Flickr CC)
Marijuana not only doesn’t kill brain cells, as do alcohol and heroin — and depression – it grows ‘em back, Andrew Sullivan asserts.
He quotes some recent rat brain research:
The team found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis – the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. This region of the brain is associated with learning and memory, as well as anxiety and depression.
The effect is the opposite of most legal and illicit drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine. “Most ‘drugs of abuse’ suppress neurogenesis,” Zhang says. “Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis.”
For me, the key phrase in this excerpt (above), is “drugs of abuse.” No doubt, pot is one of them — experience tells us this. (There is also massive anecdotal evidence of pot’s benefits.) And the drug’s effects on the brain are more complex than Sullivan’s post suggests.
Still, as Lester Grinspoon says, that pot will eventually emerge as the gold standard among anti-anxiety medicines.
I also agree with Sullivan: Reason dictates that pot must be made legal, and fully available to scientists, if we are serious about relieving human suffering.
via The Miracle Of Marijuana – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.
