Drugs doesn't help Anxiety-PTSD or anything else

SwiftFox

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260319044656.htm

Littlefatfriend

Thanks for bringing this up SwiftFox. It's an interesting study.
However:
A: It's only considering cannabis, lots of other "drugs" do work for those conditions, so your title is a tad misleading (I recognise and appreciate your reference to the song, though!).

B: This study was published very recently (20/03/2026 - six days ago now) and therefore few people have prepared comprehensive responses to it. The wheels of research doth grind slow.

C: Researchers and industry sources have already criticised its limited evidence base. The studies included in the review were often focused on different formulations than those used in the real world, such as oral capsules vs. smoked cannabis.

D: Scientific research is essentially a process of debate. Researcher A finds result X, Researcher B contradicts that with result Y, and on and on. Many aspects of the means used in each piece of research can have unpredictable effects for reasons we don't yet understand. This is just one review of many studies, many of which are mutually exclusive in their processes.

D: Experts have noted that the study had strict criteria for inclusion, which may exclude positive evidence from real-world, long-term observational studies. It raises the issue of confirmation bias (a researcher choosing to review studies which support their hypothesis and ignoring those that don't).

E: Critics have argued that the findings demonstrate a "gap in the evidence" rather than proof that cannabis is totally ineffective, arguing more high-quality research is needed to understand its potential benefits. Particularly in human psychology, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence...

F: Because much of this is reliant on establishing the subjective experience of participants, differences in how people perceive, comprehend and describe their experiences (and other factors in their lives which may be affecting those experiences) are virtually impossible to reliably control against. Precisely some of the conditions listed are recognised to often cause communication issues.

G: Unfortunately outside of holocausts and genocides during wars, precise, effective means of conducting comprehensive studies on human beings are a nightmare to get through ethics committees.
Only certain types of people will give consent to hand over their personal autonomy to researchers who may want to physically isolate and confine them, and control all aspects of their behaviour and experience. If participants are paid, results will be unreliable, so they must be willing to do it for free and it may take a long time.
Subjects who are only a "certain type" of people will clearly bias that research, making it pointless.
Even in wars these days, some countries pay at least superficial attention to human rights and international law. Therefore very controlled/exploitative research would only be published/trusted among certain elites. It probably wouldn't become public information, because the researchers would be confessing to war crimes.

H: Also, many users and some medical practitioners in the study reported significant benefits in personal experiences, leading to disputes over the study's conclusions. Often these drug treatments are aimed at helping people cope with the symptoms of their illnesses. They very rarely aim to "fix them".

I: As this wasn't an entirely comprehensive review of all the research that's been (and continues to be) done in these fields, I guarantee that if I had sufficient motive I could find at least hundreds of studies which contradict these findings. An obvious potential criticism is the question of which studies they chose to include, which they did not, and why they chose those studies. Again, there's huge scope for confirmation bias.

J: Because these are studies of people being "treated", there's very little use of "blind" studies (where participants and/or researchers don't know who is being given the drug and who is just getting a placebo). Such studies are absolutely crucial but ethics committees...

That's just six days after it was published, and this is precisely how scientific research works. It's a process of debate, not a search for impossible "truths".
Hopefully however this will become a part of multi-layered and repeated testing of these questions. We are slowly conquering our fear of certain drugs, and fear is very rarely good for us. Research such as this only at best helps guide future research.
Please pardon me, I enjoyed writing this!
😇

Ross1975

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1112467#Comment_1112467

I found the title misleading too, I thought he was going to be going on about anti depressants in the topic.

Littlefatfriend

I assume he was referring to the song by The Verve (The drugs don't work) Ross1975.

It's a great choon

😇

Catherine21

Maybe big parma companies worried people making thier own choices as sick people make them billions ive been researching natural herbs how they been used as medicine for centuries and no i dont smoke it or eat or whatever you do with it do know people who says helps with thier pain

SoapySoutar

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1112495#Comment_1112495

It's not a particularly cat friendly song! 🐱👜🛁

Littlefatfriend

😹🤣😹 SoapySoutar

"Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown" is an analogy. He isn't encouraging people to do it.

Maybe the cat put itself in the bag? Cats often like being in bags because they only have one entrance. Perhaps that cat he's referring to had been very unhappy for a long time or has a terminal illness?

Those details aren't made clear.

😸

SoapySoutar

Maybe he was referring to Schrödinger's cat, who is in fact hypothetical?

chiarieds

I wondered about the title of this post, but then read it was about 'cannabis.' As there are hundreds of compounds/chemicals found in the cannabis sativa plant, I was also interested to read more, as I felt it was perhaps a sweeping generalisation.

I agree with some of Littlefatfriend's comments, therefore, about the limitations of this study. It is looking at Randomised Controlled Trials, but the 54 of the medical papers retrospectively studied had a very high preponderance of males (sixty nine % male & 31% female), so there's already some bias there.

I think when there's talk about 'cannabis,' people think that it's where the cannabinoids include THC, which can give a 'high' feeling, but the cannabis plant is much more than this, tho there are more studies about this than cannabidiol (CBD) which doesn't contain THC & can be bought as a so-called food supplement here in the UK.

We all have an endocannibinoid system which helps our bodies keep in balance, or homeostasis, which wasn't discovered until the 1990s. Different receptors in the brain & elsewhere react to THC or CBD, so the effects can be different, e.g. studies suggest that CBD has an anxyiolotic effect (reduces anxiety).

Here in the UK, 'medicinal cannabis,' or that containing THC, is only prescribed on the NHS (following NICE's guidelines) for MS patients suffering from mild to moderate spasticity, e.g. Sativex (which also contains CBD), & CBD also for intractable childhood epilepsy. The research in the paper linked to had mainly Australian authors & it seems they were concerned about 'cannabinoid medicine', which is a very broad generalisation, in Australia, as well as the USA & Canada.

As so little is comparitively known, I feel that real life studies can be of value, tho the responses will remain subjective.

About my own disorder…..certainly not conclusive, but as a user of CBD for many years, it's also a subject I've been interested in researching; CBD does help with my neuropathic pain. This published Nov 2025: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20503245251398260

Catherine21

https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1112569#Comment_1112569

Thats so intreasting wow you really know your stuff growing up i had a close friend from 3 till 12 she was amazing at ballet Dancing tap dancing fantastic a gymlastics as well she has the same condition as you we grew up in the 70s and very little known then