Newish relationship and drug use

[Atlas2022]

In a new relationship after a long volatile marriage. New guy is AMAZING. Clever, funny, sexy as hell, all the good stuff.
However, he smokes. Quite a lot too.
I should point out that I will occasionally too and as of this point it hasn't caused any issues at all.
I am just curious as to what I can expect in the future, what's it like living with/being with a stoner? 😅 bad, good all of it.
I don't really have a problem with it so not looking for discussions about county lines and the drug trade etc.
I'd like to hear sensible actual accounts of what it'll be like.
I am hoping it won't cause any issues but I am curious 🤔
Thanks in advance.

This. Paranoia, psychosis in young users. Fertility problems.

I went out with someone who liked a smoke in my 20's, he'd crashed his car when he was younger and under the influence. He could be a bit paranoid. He had a lot of lovely friends that didn't smoke and then a couple that I really didn't like, one was a small time dealer who thought nothing of smoking it around his kids.

I also went out with someone whose best friend had a psychotic break or something from smoking weed and went uber religious. He was lovely but messed up.

To balance things out I also knew someone who crashed their car when they'd been drinking in their 20's and I fell and ended up in hospital when I'd had too much to drink once.

This was all when i was early 20's though, I'd want someone to have grown out of binge drinking/drinking very regularly/smoking weed by 25 if I was going to have a relationship with them. I wouldn't want a stoner or a drinker around my kids.

smarter people than me have published scientific research showing a causative effect.

Correlation is not the same thing as causation. There is no research that shows it has a causative effect https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(16)30005-0/fulltext

And there are correlations between all sorts of things and psychosis.

This is exactly my point. It’s impossible to determine for certain that these things are caused by the cannabis and not something else. What is their environment like? How were they raised? What are the stressors in their lives? What other substances,
if any are they taking? Would they have had a psychotic episode sooner had they not been smoking cannabis? And so on. What’s the baseline? You can’t take out a myriad of potential factors which could be a root cause.

Like many things, I guess it depends on the paper you read. But the effects of THC have been directly demonstrated.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4332941/#:~:text=In%20this%20largest%20study%20of,negative%20affect%20and%20anomalous%20experiences.

I do agree it’s difficult to pick apart in many people, due to them possibly already have risk factors.

That study is specifically looking at the effect of THC on people who already have paranoid ideation:

A total of 121 individuals with paranoid ideation were randomized to receive placebo, THC, or THC preceded by a cognitive awareness condition

The inclusion criteria were: aged between 21 and 50, had taken cannabis at least once before, and reported a paranoid thought in the past month as assessed by the Paranoid Thoughts Scale Part B.

I'm very surprised by their conclusion that the study 'definitively demonstrated that the drug triggers paranoid thoughts in vulnerable individuals' with a p-value of .034.

The error bars in figure 2 are massive, so I downloaded the supplementary data for the individual scores and compared the placebo group with the THC group (I'm ignoring the THC + awareness group as I couldn't find a reference to what the participants were actually made aware of, so I'm not sure what can be inferred from those results). The THC group results have a high standard deviation which suggests a huge amount of variability in the scores, i.e. some participants felt high levels of paranoia while others felt no paranoia at all. High SD would indicate the results aren't very reliable and aren't necessarily representative of the general population, especially with such a small sample size for a study of this type.

I'd also say a huge limitation is that the study was conducted in a clinical setting. Obviously it's difficult to carry out a study like this in a non-clinical setting, but anyone who's ever used cannabis will tell you how different its effects feel in an unfamiliar place vs a familiar place. The study doesn't account for this, it just says 'because the environment is neutral, any perceived hostility is known to be unfounded'.

I don't disagree that cannabis use could be a factor in the development of paranoid thoughts and psychosis in general, but I disagree that this has been directly demonstrated.

It's very difficult to say as it depends on the individual. It can trigger mental ill health such as paranoia, anxiety and psychosis.

It can make you very lazy as you're stoned and can't be bothered. You can put on weight because it makes you crave food.

Some are addicted to it, and that could point to addiction issues which is never a good thing.