Marijuana and Schizophrenia - Friends or Foes? (Episode 11)

 Marijuana - it’s being legalized for medical and recreational use more and more, on a state-by-state basis. But for people diagnosed with schizophrenia, there are concerns. 

• Does it “cause” or trigger schizophrenia ? Or is it’s use just a result/symptom of the illness as it helps some with the brain confusion?

Well, the jury is still out on that question...but, we have a spirited discussion and more with  our Guest: Dr. George Realmuto, Child Psychiatrist (University of Minnesota, emeritus).

We also ask:

• Some who use after diagnosis say it helps with symptoms, and they need fewer meds. Others say it makes things worse. Any studies?
• .legalization.... good or bad? For potential addicts, for those of us with SZ in our families? Decriminalization issues. Should prevention be included in bills?

1. From a scientific perspective, what happens to the developing brain when marijuana is used? 

 2. If a young person did not have the genetics that could later cause schizophrenia, could marijuana use still cause psychosis and later schizophrenia? 

3 How are the stronger new strains of pot different from the old stuff? 

4. What is the chemistry of THC that is so bad for people with schizophrenia.

 5. For those who use marijuana and then develop schizophrenia, is their schizophrenia worse than if they had not used marijuana? Examples? 

6. Since you are a child psychiatrist, what things can families and schools do to prevent young people from using drugs and later developing mental illness? What are early indicators that such prevention is needed? 

7. Once a person is using drugs and has schizophrenia, what can best help them? Is there any progress in MICD (Mental Illness with Chemical Dependency)  treatments? 

8. What do you have to say about parents who are told they are "enabling?" 

9. Does the media (movies, TV, etc) glamourize marijuana use and what should we teach our kids?

 10. Where have we made the most progress so we can have some hope for the future?

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to our podcast, Schizophrenia. Three moms in the trenches. From the place where schizophrenia and real life collide East Coast, West Coast, Middle America. With Miriam Feldman, Mindy Gryling, and Randy Kay. Welcome back. This is episode 11 of our podcast. And our subject tonight is in the news a lot, and it's about marijuana, specifically marijuana and schizophrenia. Friends or foes. Our guest tonight is the wonderful Dr. George Realmuto, a child psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota. You're retired, George, correct?

SPEAKER_03 0:40

Correct, yes. So you're in 20 months.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

So you're emeritus, but you have vast experience. And I'm so delighted you're going to join us. We have a lot to cover tonight, especially because marijuana in many, many states is in the news for will it be legalized or won't it be legalized? And that's been an ongoing issue all the time. But since my son became ill 20 years ago, I have heard study after study, which is all about did marijuana cause his schizophrenia? Is marijuana making his psychosis worse? Or did he go turn to marijuana because he was coming down with schizophrenia? And you hear all kinds of studies. So we're here to set the record straight about those issues and more. So welcome. How about we just start with a brief summary from each of us about our sons, who they are? And George, I think you have a story to tell too. And briefly, our son's experience with marijuana. My son's 38. I call him Ben. That's not his real name, but in my book, Ben Behind His Voices, that's how we've agreed I will refer to him. And he has it had a typical gradual onset bout with schizophrenia, which goes on. And in his mid to late teens, there was a great deal of marijuana usage, which he always said made him feel better. Currently, now he's just come off of his ninth hospitalization, which was five and a half months. And I did discover while he was in the hospital a great deal of marijuana evidence in the basement because he was living with us at that time. And now he's in a group home. So that's my brief. Um, Mindy?

SPEAKER_01 2:33

As I document in my book, Fix What You Can, uh, Jim started using drugs in junior high school. Marijuana was his first. And he's had problems with them with drugs all along. So he's definitely a case of MICD, as we call it, mental illness, chemical dependency. He's been done well at various points in his life. Always when he has a crisis, it involves drugs. If he's using drugs, there's going to be a crisis. I'm afraid of legalization because of my son, maybe then thinking it's all right or then it's readily accessible. I've warned my granddaughter after listening to people like George give the facts, you have schizophrenia in your in your genes, so be very wary.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Thank you. Mimi.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Hi, um, my son Nick is 35, and marijuana was definitely involved in the early years. And you know, I come from a time and a culture where, you know, we all smoked marijuana, and it, you know, I always regarded it as kind of a benign thing. And I learned so much about it. And the thing, um, for me, the big turning point is I remember sitting with a doctor and him telling me, you know, you have to realize that these drugs, marijuana, first of all, is much different than it was, but also it um affects brain chemistry. And if there's any predisposition to illness, it's going to mess with it. And it did in a big way with Nick. I I think that the marijuana had, you know, a large part to do with his first psychotic break.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Okay. And George, I think you have a bit of a story to to start us off well, a personal story in your family.

SPEAKER_03 4:40

Sure. Um, it's difficult to share this uh because it uh triggers lots of lots of ideas about can I do a do-over? Um and that's not gonna happen. And uh I I try and think, not I try and think. My thoughts go to this place where I relive a lot of bad experiences that my daughter had in her life. So um she died at age 37, um June 13th, uh, 2019. Oh my uh she was living in Indiana. Uh Indiana has treatment programs for opioids, but not for methamphetamine. Um and uh her she had two trials of treatment uh that were very brief and ineffective. Um by the time she got to the point where she was in malignant addiction, um her sense of uh what problems she had, that kind of insight and self-consciousness was gone. And uh previously she had called me to bail her out of some difficult situations, very difficult situations uh that had to do with relationships and and um and uh uh domestic abuse. Uh but in the last three years of her life, she did not she did not contact me. And uh the person that I was able to uh connect with that that advised me about how she was doing uh wasn't honest. So the call came um and uh it was it was one of those um my mouth went dry, I was sweating, and I didn't comprehend what I had just heard. So there wasn't schizophrenia, but there was chronic marijuana use. And the thing that marijuana does in the brain, we will talk about, and it'll it'll amp, it'll show how it amplifies that kind of um lack of insight that people with schizophrenia and and other mental serious mental illnesses have, but um, but marijuana specifically targets that part of the brain.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

Why don't you give us uh please a thumbnail sketch of what from your perspective as a child psychiatrist, what scientific um evidence tells us about what happens to the brain when a young person uses marijuana?

SPEAKER_03 7:50

So um your concern about uh legalizing marijuana is is uh well founded. Um, but we have to separate medical marijuana from recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana, there is some oversight by a physician and some control by the dispensaries. Recreational marijuana, that's not true. And since it's addictive, um uh vulnerable people, people with anxiety, people with with who are isolated, there are lots of reasons that people get into addiction. Um and and uh and in places in states that have uh legalized marijuana, recreational marijuana, uh the percentage of adolescents and young adults who have uh cannabis substance use disorder is twice as high as it is for alcohol. It's it's either cannabis is more addictive than alcohol, or that's a preference for that age group, but it's 20%. It's 20% if you started cannabis before age 18.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

And is the rate higher in the states where it's legalized recreationally than in states where it's not? Yes. So it's not just higher than alcohol, it's higher than states without okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:29

And and there was a very nice study done in Europe because uh, like the United States, different states have recreational marijuana and others don't. Well, they did a broad study of this of the countries in Europe, some who have recreational marijuana and some who don't. And the rate of psychosis and the rate of addiction is six times what it is in the in the in the countries that have not legalized uh marijuana. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

So what does it do to the brain?

SPEAKER_03 10:04

What what lots of things, lots of things. So let's start with um a pregnant woman who is using marijuana during pregnancy. Uh one of the outcomes during middle school is psychotic-like experiences of that child compared to the parent, the mother who did not use or who used very little. But the more she used, the higher the incidence of psychotic-like experiences, emotional dysregulation, behavioral problems, cognitive difficulties, sleep problems, relationship difficulties. Um, is there anything else the brain does that I've left out?

SPEAKER_00 10:56

So this is in the child of the woman who smokes while she's pregnant. Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_03 11:02

Yes, those kids grow up. What are they like? And I just described it's as it's evident as early as middle school. So if you look at the brains of people who have smoked constantly or have used high potency marijuana, it affects so the brain is developing up until age 25. If you add a cannabinoid, THC is a cannabinoid, it alters the way nerve tracts are are set forward. They're not normal. And one particular place is because we've all had, I think, this kind of experience, the pre-cuneus is a part of the brain just so there's the there's the occipital lobe right in the back here, okay, and then there's the temporal lobe, and then between the occipital lobe and the parietal lobe up here is this precuneus. That the function of the precuneus is insight, is is the ability to remember an episode of life in a in an accurate way. So when we talk to, and when I talk to my daughter, and I think when you talk to someone with schizophrenia, they remember things very differently. It's almost like they're making it up sometimes. And you wonder, are they lying? It is a brain disease, and a particular part of the brain, the hippocampus, which has lots of memory functions, and this precunius, which is self-consciousness. So it was confusing to me until I read this literature, because my daughter could identify all kinds of things that she didn't like about me, and nothing that she disliked about herself. Despite her life not going very well at all. And why did she have such a poor sense of her own difficulty? Well, that particular part of the brain has was affected by enemy.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

It's sad, uh, you know, how parents sometimes get treated by our children when they're when they're not doing well or when they're using drugs. You mentioned your daughter did not have schizophrenia. Is it possible for someone who does not have the genetic component that makes you more susceptible to getting schizophrenia? If that person who doesn't have those genes uses marijuana, could they still get schizophrenia?

SPEAKER_03 14:04

So um, yes, because um there is a psychosis, as you talked about, uh Mindy. And uh I had my experience in in medical school where I suddenly thought I was in part of a movie that I had seen earlier, and it was not a wasn't a fun part of the movie that I was in. Um, and it gradually went away, and I didn't use marijuana after that. But um, and there's no history of psychosis in my family, uh, although your family is different. So it can happen whether you have the genetic disposition or not. And um, once you develop the psychosis from cannabis, the next step is a continued lengthy psychosis that in about a third of the cases are indistinguishable from schizophrenia.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

And if for the viewers, uh we were talking a little bit before we did this program. So, what George is referring to with my experience with psychosis is the one time I used marijuana when I was in college to try it out, I became um psychotic for that evening. And I looked up and saw a picture on the wall, and it was moving around, and I got so scared I screamed, and the party everyone fled, of course. I never used marijuana again because that scared me to death. And um I wonder if I had used it, if I wouldn't be in the same boat as my son.

SPEAKER_03 15:41

So uh this uh symptom of of schizophrenia or of not being able to evaluate your own predicament very well is just one of the aspects that cannabis affects in the developing brain, including the frontal cortex and making decisions.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

Um and the illness itself does a does a job on the frontal cortex as well. So you have the that combination that going on.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

So if you look at brain scans of people with schizophrenia and people who are chronic hyperpotency cannabis users users, they look very similar. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 16:27

One of the things that the doctor that I had mentioned said to me is that the pot that I used to smoke in the 70s is a whole different animal than what is out there today. How are the stronger new strains of pot different from the old stuff?

SPEAKER_03 16:46

Do you want me to answer that? Yeah. Yeah. So it's high potency. You know, the old stuff was uh 0.3 or 0.5% THC, and now it's 10 times that much. And the evil thing is the people who sell it put other things in it. They put fentanyl in it, they put psychedelics in it, they put whatever bath salts are in it. All of those things are dangerous in their own right. And so when you smoke it, uh the vapor goes directly into your bloodstream and to your brain.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

What is the chemistry of THC that's so bad for people with schizophrenia?

SPEAKER_03 17:38

There is so there's a lot of uh receptors in the brain, um, dopamine, uh serotinergic receptors, but there's a cannabinoid receptor. And that cannabinoid receptor has an influence on the development of the brain. I don't know what it's doing there, I don't know if anybody knows what it's doing there, but it's there, and and that product, cannabis, attaches to that receptor and influences the way the brain is going to develop. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

Yeah. So in our case with my son, there is no schizophrenia anywhere in the family until him. I know um, you know, Mindy's grandmother had it. And I find myself wondering about the chicken and the egg, because my son started exhibiting odd symptoms and paranoid thoughts that he shared with me way before he started using marijuana. And in periods of coherent behavior after the diagnosis, he told me that he smoked marijuana after he started feeling different. He doesn't call it schizophrenia, because it made him feel better and calmer. And I will also say that I kind of threw this question out on Facebook and some of the support groups. And many people in those groups who are diagnosed with schizophrenia have said in those groups, I like marijuana because it calms my psychosis. So I think it's it's different for everybody, but the big question people ask me is like, so did marijuana cause my son schizophrenia, or did he just turn to it because he already had schizophrenia and it actually made him feel better? Now we're going back 20 years. I think the stuff he may have been using lately is probably way stronger. So I don't know about now, but at the beginning, when he was graduating in the prodromal stage of schizophrenia when he was developing it. I hear conflicting research, and yours is just going to be one opinion, I guess, but depends on what study. Does marijuana cause schizophrenia or do they turn to marijuana because they already have schizophrenia or both?

SPEAKER_03 20:04

Yeah. So the there's 200 compounds in marijuana. One of the reasons that physicians didn't want to have anything to do with marijuana is because we didn't know, we didn't have enough research to say it was good for anxiety, but not good for PTSD. It was good for Tourette's, but it wasn't good for depression. We knew nothing. So the the um were you still in the legislature in 2015, Mindy? Oh, I left in 2013. Uh so that's when that's when the medical marijuana bill was approved. And the way it was approved, psychiatrists had very little oversight. It that whole process needs to be revised because we know so much more, because there are now studies that say it is good for this, but not good for that. So in the old days, 20 years ago, the marijuana plant also has CBD. CBD is a very relaxing chemical. If you have low THC and a significant amount of CBD, this is how I understand it, that the CBD may have been that relaxing, calming uh uh molecule that was helpful. But the THC causes psychosis. It causes psychosis. Um what's in your marijuana? How much THC?

SPEAKER_00 21:43

We can't say for sure that the marijuana caused my son schizophrenia. No, we can say cannabis causes psychosis. Thank you. That that clarification helps a lot. Okay, so the naysayers can't say to me, Well, it's your fault. Because you didn't stop your son from smoking marijuana, and therefore he got schizophrenia because of the pot. So that is not true, but it could have increased his psychosis at that time. Is that pretty?

SPEAKER_03 22:13

Yes. Increases risk, increases psychosis, but not everybody who uses marijuana.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Right. And it doesn't cause schizophrenia, but it can affect it, I would say. Increase the risk. With that in mind, and just we have about 10 minutes left and still a lot to talk about. We can go a little bit over, but let's talk about early detection. And we talk about early detection of schizophrenia, but let's talk about early prevention of marijuana use. Are there things that families and schools can do? I know there's a lot of talking about it. What are early indicators that we need that prevention?

SPEAKER_03 22:54

So the patients that I saw when I was in practice, adolescents have no sense of addiction. For example, uh, they get they drink beer. Well, beer comes in a six pack. They don't understand that you just drink one beer and put the other five in the refrigerator. It comes in a six pack. Drink the six pack. They don't have any regulation of addictive substances. And and and to say things like just say no doesn't help you understand how you regulate your addictive substances. So somebody I live with who will go on named has two drinks. She has a family where there's lots of addiction. Valium is uh is a drug that is very calming, but people can get addicted to Valium. Why don't why doesn't everybody get addicted to Valium? Because they look at the prescription on their bottle and it says once per day. Okay, once per day, that's not addiction. Addiction is I take one the first day, two the second day, three the third day. That's that's the difference between addiction. A drug that has the potential and the and and it is controlled in some way, either by a parent or by the person themselves, because they have that insight that that that's a risky substance.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

So families in schools can take which steps that they're not currently taking? Is there anything to be done? And because the frontal lobes of the adolescents aren't there till they're like 25. They have to borrow our sense of logic and sense and cause and effect. So uh are there things that you think families in schools should be doing to help prevent or just control it?

SPEAKER_03 25:09

So mixed. The message about marijuana and alcohol is so mixed. It is um the uh so boys, teenage boys watch uh watch sports. One of the major advertisers for sports is beer and wine and and and alcohol. And and uh and everybody who's there uh in their room watching this thing is drinking and they're having a good time. The association of alcohol and having a good time is is just so obvious. Yeah, uh, but with marijuana, uh the message is it's more it's natural. Alcohol is dangerous. People get into auto accidents because they drink alcohol, but marijuana, it's natural, and it grows, it grows from dirt, and isn't that natural? And so they have no sense about that.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So we need to change the message and be more realistic, yes.

SPEAKER_03 26:18

So the marijuana bill that's in the in the legislature now, there is a piece for prevention, but there's no funding for it. So, what will happen is um there will be there's 17 million dollars to create this industry, and at some point down the line, someone will say, How come we didn't put in a prevention park oh yeah, it was there, you just didn't fund it.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

This is a bill in Minnesota, and I noticed today I was happy to see um President Biden supporting decriminalization of um marijuana, the use of marijuana, and that I think is something most people can agree upon. But the bill in Minnesota is steaming ahead, and uh Nami at one point anyway was arguing for age 25 before it could be legal, and the bill, the last I saw was age 21. So thank you, uh George, for doing yeoman's duty in Minnesota at the legislature, trying to put education into people's minds. But I fear it's so political now and so tied to the fact that um people want it, that it's popular, you can up your voting totals if you're for it. And on top of that, in Minnesota, we had two third-party candidates that were for legalizing marijuana. So both parties then worried that if they don't meet if they're not for it, those parties will drain their vote totals. So it's very political, not very scientific, it's very um, very worrisome. But I'd like to ask um what getting past being able to prevent or educate once somebody actually is using and is also has developed a mental illness. What would you say? What kind of progress do we have about treating both at once rather than the two silos that we all know about and hear about?

SPEAKER_03 28:21

Yes. Mindy, your book was so descriptive of just how difficult it is uh once once you have comorbidity, because there's the addiction silo, and and they are uh, you know, if you wanna if you want to ruin your life, that's your life to ruin. Um, and they recognize nothing about how this is a brain disorder, like we have been talking, and people with a brain disorder. So, you know, what I say to them is, well, if there was an Alzheimer, a person with Alzheimer's wandering the street, would you say, well, it's up to them to decide where they're gonna go or what they're gonna do? You wouldn't would you expect I should return them to their nursing home? It's a brain disorder. Of course you would return them to their nursing home. So the brain disorder of people with chronic cannabis use or schizophrenia, they need they need such continuous dialogue about how they're running their lives. You know, in your book, you describe these conversations you had with your son, and it was madden, maddening, sorry to use that word, to you because it didn't make any sense. And he was at times impervious to taking any advice. But it, you know, was that enabling? I don't think so. I think the people around that person need to be so intrusive, frankly, in their lives and and talk through their plans, talk through what they're thinking all the time. It's the reality testing, you know, that mental health people do. But I mean, that's ridiculous because this is they're thinking all the time, and who's there with them helping them think more clearly?

SPEAKER_02 30:32

I have a question. Um I think back to when this all started with my son, when he was a teenager, 15, 16, and all the kids are smoking pot. You know, all the parents dealt with it in different ways, and we actually came down pretty hard about it. But um all of Nick's friends are now doctors and lawyers and artists and have wives and families, and these were all the same kids who are doing exactly what Nick was doing 20 years ago. So to me, the problem of marijuana is deciphering where it's a problem. Because yes, it's a it's a brain disorder, addiction, but by and large, you know, vast majority of people who smoke pot live productive, terrific lives. So you from my view, you can't solve the problem by saying no more pot. I mean, that that horses out of the barn at this point, anyway. So is there some kind of a warning signal or a red flag where you know where this is not okay for your kid? Because I firmly believe that if I had known and I'd been able to really put a stop to it, that there's a chance Nick might not have schizophrenia today. But I didn't do anything, I wasn't any more strict or lax than any of the other parents.

SPEAKER_03 32:05

Yes. So I I could say the same thing about the fate of my daughter. What did we know 20 years ago and why should we beat ourselves up about it now? Uh, I don't think that's a good plan. Um, but there is the experimentation phase, you know, when when my stepson uh was uh snowboarding and decided to go off the trail and went off a cliff and crushed his spleen. See, though that's one of those things where you only have one spleen, and once it's crushed, you don't do that again. Marijuana, you could keep smoking. There's a lot of experimentation that goes on in adolescence. When does it go from experimentation to a lifestyle? When does it go from experimentation to that's my usual form of recreation? How do you know if one experimentation has stopped and recreational use and and uh lifestyle has begun?

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Unfortunately, we don't. That's my question.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

Yes, that is the difficulty.

SPEAKER_00 33:12

All we really have are the questions, because when my son, when we thought I could fix this by sending him out west to a troubled team camp, then the first thing they did was get him off pot. He was much better, but he was still delusional. He was better, so we removed that question mark of, oh, is it just the marijuana causing the problem, or is there something else going on? Well, clearly there was something else going on. And I remember I in this fight to convince him, which can be fruitless, as we know, cutting out an article that said, one of the big effects of marijuana is it makes you feel as though you've accomplished something even when you haven't. And I sent that to him thinking some light bulb would go off in his head. Um, Mimi, unlike you, I don't think I could have prevented the schizophrenia by coming down harder on the marijuana because there's only so much a parent can do. I know that some people can smoke cigarettes and not get addicted, and others can't. And they're done. Some people can have a drink and stop at a glass of wine. I'm one of those. I'm like, my thermostat is working and it says, you've had enough. You're feeling it's fine. Let's have water now. I'm just lucky that my brain functions that way. In my husband's family, there are many alcoholics who couldn't. I was my first husband was an alcoholic. So I know you can't leave five beers in the fridge. You got to finish all, you know. So I've lived with that. So I think a lot of that is still a mystery. Addiction is still a mystery to many of us. And um the connection between marijuana and schizophrenia today has been explained a little bit better. I understand it better. I think we're left with a lot of questions, which is okay too. The more we understand the effects. The one thing I think about, and I know with my son, he was hanging out with a friend of his who has MS and has medical marijuana. And so that's where he was smoking to begin with. But I believe that medical marijuana can at least be prescribed specifically for somebody with a specific problem. So that that might make more sense than just saying, okay, POD is legal, just go get it. I mean, so we could talk a half an hour about legalization, but I thank you so much for stepping in with the answers that you have. I learned a lot today. And I think I'd like to for us to leave with final words and specifically from you, George. Can you end with some hope for us? Some progress or some hope.

SPEAKER_03 36:01

Sure. Um, parity. Um, the parity that we need for mental illness and addiction is not there. Uh, there's federal legislation that empowers states to do audits among healthcare companies to evaluate whether they're using methods that are equivalent or equal for mental illness and addiction compared to other disorders. There is more concern about addiction, especially because of how it has blossomed during COVID times, so that many more people understand how isolation is a cause of addiction. And so we have many more people who are more sympathetic to the issues of addiction and mental illness compared to people who thought this was some kind of a moral insufficiency and a choice. I hate that term. That's your choice, and uh, it is perhaps a choice when you're experimenting. After that, it's not a choice.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

And and some of that might be genetic, the way your body responds to experimentation. So thank you.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

So I think those are uh differences that may make a difference.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Okay, thank you. Mindy or Mimi, anything to say to close this out here?

SPEAKER_01 37:30

I would just urge any listeners who are have any influence over young people to have those young people search into their family tree and see if they can find anybody with serious mental illness. And if you find that, do what I've done with my granddaughter and serve a warning. Schizophrenia is a horrible illness. It's not worth a few um fun times of experimenting.

SPEAKER_02 37:59

Yeah, I think that that's a really great thing. I mean, it wouldn't have made a difference in my case, but I think that that that is something that could really head off. I mean, my husband is an alcoholic, he's been sober for 25 years, but he had that talk with our kids and saying, look, this is in your genetics. You need to go forward with that knowledge, and you're gonna do with it what you will. But I think that that if we could warn like you've warned your granddaughter, I think that that might make a difference.

SPEAKER_03 38:31

There are these first episode programs that are funded by our state, so that early detection and wraparound services are now the the standard of care. And that was not the standard of care when our kids became ill.

SPEAKER_00 38:48

Right. That's really good to know. That's really good to know. I think my final word would be I'm an actress and voiceover talent when I'm not doing these things. And so I, you know, I've appeared in plays and done scenes where the bottled up person suddenly becomes free because they smoke a joint with somebody. I think marijuana has become very worshipped in in many movies and television.

SPEAKER_02 39:15

Totally.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

It represents a lot of, I mean, even listen, like nine to five, like the buttoned-down person suddenly breaks free. So I think part of it is media training to just teach our kids to look at media as something that is trying to convince them of something that may not be true. And to to always train our children to look with their own eyes can be helpful. And parents don't feel guilty about laying down the law about pot. Use it while you have it, I would say. Um, thank you so much for joining us, George. Or thank you for your story and your knowledge and your expertise in sharing it all with us today.

SPEAKER_03 39:55

It was my pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next episode will be talking to uh a judge from Connecticut about probate and conservatorship and what it's like on her side of the bench when dealing with families with mental illness. So I hope you'll join us for that. Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for joining us for this episode of Schizophrenia Three Moms in the Trenches with Randy Kay, Mindy Gryling, and Miriam Feldman. To get in touch with us or to learn more about our books, please visit our websites at MiriamHyfenfeldman.com, mindygryling.com, or randyk.com.