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Heavy Cannabis Use May Be Doing the Opposite of What You Want, Scientists Say

They don’t fully understand what’s happening, though.

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Now that cannabis has become widely available across much of the United States, the scientific community is finally getting a clearer picture of what heavy long-term use might actually be doing to our brains. And according to a massive new review published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, one of the clearest patterns emerging is a strong connection between cannabis use disorder and major depression.

The study analyzed 55 previous studies involving more than 3.2 million people and found that nearly 32 percent of people with cannabis use disorder, or CUD, also experienced major depressive disorder, more commonly known as MDD. On the flip side, just over 10 percent of people with depression also met the criteria for problematic cannabis........

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