Why I gave marijuana to my autistic child

http://www.doublex.com/section/health-science/why-i-give-my-9-year-old-pot-part-ii?page=0,0

by tptacek • 17 years ago

48 53 17 years ago

icey5• 17 years ago

Okay, so I don't get it. What does giving pot to a kid have to do with hacking or startups?

axod5• 17 years ago

Nothing. Some people here have an odd fascination with drugs. Every so often a story on drugs (Usually about legalizing them) gets voted up high.

electromagnetic3• 17 years ago

At least it isn't as bad as reddit where it's nearly everyday that an article about drugs gets upvoted. It could be worse, and at least this article is an interesting read namely due to the fact that they're not claiming it's a miracle or a cure, it just helps.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

It's on Slate, not some hemp advocacy site, and it was interesting. Hence, submitted. I don't think I have an odd fascination with drugs (I actually think expirimenting with cannabis on a disabled school-age boy is ethically repugnant).

Here I might add, for no particular reason except human interest, that I have never in my life consumed marijuana.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

There's nothing odd about being fascinated by drugs and/or altered states of consciousness. The fact that our laws, culture, art, and religions are seemingly inseparable from their influence is intellectually interesting, to say the least.

I'm not saying that everyone should do drugs, certainly not, but if you don't at least take the time to learn about this stuff then you're cheating yourself out of a big piece of the human experience.

fnid• 17 years ago

I suggest it may also have, possibly, more reason to do with the autism, which is an interesting topic of mind which has a lot of interest at Hacker News. Also, there are lots of cases of autism in and around silicon valley which raises consciousness of the topic in the minds of many hackers.

NathanKP8• 17 years ago

It may not have to do with hacking but it has the hacking attitude. I mean who would think to give their kid pot to try to cure autism?

It is a daring move that I'm sure will bring much criticism from less liberal members of society. That by definition makes it something that I as a hacker would be interested in. I upvoted it for that reason.

axod5• 17 years ago

>> "much criticism from less liberal members of society. That by definition makes it something that I as a hacker would be interested in."

Are you saying all hackers are liberals?

icey5• 17 years ago

Irresponsible parents would give their children illegal drugs as an attempt to "cure" an ailment, I suppose. I still don't see how that has to do with hacking or startups.

ars• 17 years ago

> give their kid pot to try to cure autism?

It didn't work. It drugged him to be more passive, but had no effect on the actual autism.

Seemed like a plus to the parents though, and from what they write the kid was happier. But it was not a cure at all.

Next we'll hear about ADHD being treated this way.

Drugs to cure every ill.

ksvs• 17 years ago

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

NathanKP8• 17 years ago

Right. I would place this under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity," thus it is on-topic. That said I'm interested in some intellectual discussion on the article now that we have pretty much concluded that it is on-topic.

jamiequint• 17 years ago

anecdotal evidence that marijuana is an autism hack I guess

glhaynes2• 17 years ago

We've already got Reddit. My vote is for this site not to turn into another one.

electromagnetic3• 17 years ago

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

Come back in 300 days, you might have a valid point by then!

tptacek5• 17 years ago

Icey, you've been here for over 900 days, and you're arguing with the second sentence of the first graf of the site guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Come on.

icey5• 17 years ago

I can't ask a question regarding why this is hacker news? Because I really don't see how it is.

I didn't say it's not hacker news. I said I don't see what it's got to do with a site ostensibly titled "Hacker News". I think that's a fair question, isn't it?

dschobel• 17 years ago

a very liberal definition of the word 'hack'.

garply• 17 years ago

I think there's a small amount of overlap between hacker culture and drug culture. From the Jargon File:

Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make them stupid. On the third hand, many hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.

http://plumeria.vmth.ucdavis.edu/~saintly/bio/portrait.html#...

jbr2• 17 years ago

I was also surprised, but explained it to myself like this: Autism (and Asperger's, which is something like high-functioning autism) have a certain natural affinity with hackers. If there's something that works for autism, we might collectively be curious if it translates to asperger's as well.

Here's an old wired article on the asperger's/hacker affinity: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

bdr• 17 years ago

1. Autism is more common among children of engineers.

2. If a computer receives unexpected input, it may exhibit abnormal behavior. When it is given such input intentionally, we call that either hacking or taking drugs, depending on the computer.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

My understanding is that autism is basically an altered state of consciousness where pattern matching isn't happening correctly, and (so?) raw unedited sensory data has much more salience than normal. Since cannabis basically makes the brain pattern match more liberally, it would make sense that it would be effective.

(But I am not a doctor, neuroscientist, pharmacist, chemist, psychologist, etc.)

NathanKP8• 17 years ago

From what I have read autism is a condition in which inputs cause the child to feel strong emotions that are not necessarily rational. I don't see that cannabis would cause the child to think in a rational manner unless it was to cause him/her to focus on things more.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

"From what I have read autism is a condition in which inputs cause the child to feel strong emotions that are not necessarily rational. I don't see that cannabis would cause the child to think in a rational manner unless it was to cause him/her to focus on things more."

I think this is probably a symptom of what I described above, rather than the root cause. Read Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation if you want a better account.

The book is written by an autistic woman who discovered that she has a really uncanny ability to understand animals. Basically she is able to see which stimuli are causing cattle and other animals to freak out, and the way she is able to do this is because her perception of the world is altered in a way that makes these stimuli (and their effects) more salient. For example, she will realize that the reason the cow won't move is because it sees a shadow, which no one else can recognize even though it's right in front of them. Apparently both autistics and animals are set off by some of the same things, because they don't have the natural ability to generalize phenomena. (So if they see a shadow, it's like a completely new thing to them each time and it scares them.) Although it seems like this particular author has learned to intellectualize that ability, so as an adult she has learned to get around the fact that the part of her brain which is supposed to do that isn't working. Anyway I'd really recommend this book, it sounds really flaky but it's incredibly intellectually interesting, and has so many implications for so many things it's ridiculous.

(Note that there may be several types of autism, which science hasn't yet differentiated because people could be having different subjective experiences, while the behavioral outcomes are the same. I'm not saying this is the case, it's just a possibility that has to be kept in mind, because people as introspective and articulate as Grandin are rare so understanding in these areas moves slowly.)

brodie• 17 years ago

It sounds interesting, but how can they tell if he's tripping out or not if he already has issues expressing himself normally? I guess if he's functioning at a higher level than usual, he's probably OK, but it still seems kind of iffy to me. Maybe it's just the stigma surrounding cannabis that's coloring my perception on this.

I wonder if a medical study for something like this would be feasible. I also wonder if there could be negative long term or developmental effects from a treatment like this.

NathanKP8• 17 years ago

I wonder if a medical study for something like this would be feasible.

Finding enough parents willing to let their autistic kids participate would be challenge enough. But on top of that they would all have to live in California, where you can get the legal pot license, and the study would have to performed without causing a big uproar in the community.

Sounds like it would be quite challenging, but not necessarily infeasible.

electromagnetic3• 17 years ago

Medical studies don't need to be declared to the public, all they'd need to do is contact the doctors who already prescribe medical marijuana and ask them if they have any patients willing to participate.

If you're contacting practitioners who already prescribe MM they're unlikely to speak out against the study, besides you could force non-disclosure agreements on participants. It's kind of morally-grey, but if there's big enough concern about getting shut down then you'll get enough people willing to sign an NDA in the chance they might be able to help their child.

This wouldn't be the sort of study you stick an ad for in the sunday paper.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

"But on top of that they would all have to live in California, where you can get the legal pot license, and the study would have to performed without causing a big uproar in the community."

IIRC it doesn't matter what state the research is done in once the study gets approval from the federal government, which is needed anyway. That's why they're allowed to do psilocybin research at Johns Hopkins. (Which they still need about 70 more volunteers for; if anyone wants to participate, check out csp.org.)

jbr2• 17 years ago

As far as I remember from an undergraduate degree in psychology, autistic parents are some of the most willing to try experimental approaches. Autism is incredibly difficult for everyone involved and parents are often desperate to find something that works.

As far as having to happen in a state w/ medical marijuana, I also don't think that's necessarily true. Human research on controlled substances is pretty common, but requires the researcher to get past a lot of DEA & institutional HSRC paperwork. That's how the research that supports medical marijuana was performed in the first place.

Amazingly, a google scholar search for marijuana (or thc) and autism turns up nothing relevant. Really? It's amazing how little we know.

chasingsparks• 17 years ago

An Edge Essay (I think I read it after seeing it on HN, but I can't remember) had some interesting views on Autism and Schizophrenia: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/badcock08/badcock08_index.ht...

Do any Biohackers on here know of any sex based differences in the effects of THC? (I know sex hormones are strongly affected).

Alex39177• 17 years ago

"Do any Biohackers on here know of any sex based differences in the effects of THC?"

Marijuana itself is described by many enthusiasts (including Terence McKenna) as 'feminizing'. In other words, the way a man will perceive the world when high is somewhat similar to the way women perceive the world normally. If you want a more scientific look at this, this book is a presentation of a pretty good large scale study done on the effects of the drug.

http://www.druglibrary.org/special/tart/tartcont.htm

mikeryan• 17 years ago

Am I missing something here, is it the only upside that the kid is less aggressive on Marijuana? The kid sounds stoned. Even the parents admit "his autism has become more distinct".

I feel for the parents - autism is a very difficult issue to deal with but this seems to be helping their problem more then their sons.

NathanKP8• 17 years ago

I think the only other upsides mentioned in the article is that he has stopped eating his clothing, that he focuses on eating real food now, and that he washed his own dish after eating.

Basically, it would appear that the upside is that his lessened aggressive behavior is allowing him to engage in more constructive behavior.

But you are right. We have to wonder if the marijuana usage is doing more for the child or more for the parents.

rbanffy• 17 years ago

Unless it's harming the child, which, apparently it's not, I see no reason to stop the treatment if it's doing the child any good whatsoever, no matter how big the good it's doing the parents.

rgoddard• 17 years ago

From the sounds of it, one of the biggest improvements for the son was the elimination of his habit of eating nonfood items, which seemed to occur on a near daily basis. So I am sure avoiding all of that pain was a big plus for him.

Alex39177• 17 years ago

Since autism is a psychological problem, the effectiveness of the medication should be judged based on how the underlying thought processes are changed. The behavioral outcomes are only a proxy for what's going on inside the child's head.

Why I gave marijuana to my autistic child

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