Smoking pot after LASIK

I know, strange concern. I got LASIK eye surgery about a month ago
(I'm absolutely thrilled with the early results btw). You're
supposedly still healing from LASIK for a few months after treatment.
My eyes have been doing great since the procedure. I've been taking
very good care of my eyes. Until last night.

Last night at a party I took one teensy-weensy little tiny hit of pot,
which of course makes my eyes really dry, on top of the existing
post-LASIK dryness.

Aside from the temporary increase in dryness, can the one hit of pot
permanently alter the way my eyes heal? Can it affect the final
results in terms of vision power and eye health?

Are my eyes going to fall out?

(by the way, my marijuana use is extremely low. I rarely smoke pot. I
KNOW it was incredibly stupid to do it last night, so please be gentle
and dont lecture me).

Maybe I am over-reacting?

Rodger The Remorseful

 

You already know the lecture, so just replay it to yourself.

No, your eyes won't fall out. Although some studies have shown that
marijuana use may lower intraocular pressure, it takes quite a bit for
quite a long time to do even that, and the intraocular pressure
returns to normally quickly anyway.

You probably didn't do much more damage than being in a smoky
environment would do and the dry eyes that you have already mentioned.
Use preservative-free artificial tears, go forth, and sin no more.

8^)



Glenn Hagele
Executive Director
Council for Refractive Surgery Quality Assurance

Email to glenn dot hagele at usaeyes dot org

http://www.USAEyes.org
http://www.ComplicatedEyes.org

I am not a doctor.

 

I bet Hanson thinks doing heroin is good for something too.

 

Hi Fran,
Did your friend end up with mental health problems? My husband deals
with drug addicts on a day to day basis as a policeman and one of the
major things that he has noticed is the amount of pot users that
become schizophrenics. Pot is not the "soft" drug that people think it
is. I thought "all" types of smoking is bad for the blood vessels in
the eyes. Dr G????
Regards,
Linda

 

(Linda) wrote in

Is he sure its not that many schizophrenics tend to use drugs, but the
diagnosis comes late?

Scott

 

Hear hear - I hate people making these nonsensical deductions

What about the hundreds of thousands of pot smokers your policeman
husband doesn't bump into? It's wrong to assume that it turned them
schizo without proof - chances are these people were that way
beforehand and the pot's their way of dealing with it. They could
always turn to alcohol and get violent instead

I smoke and it didn't seem to cause any trouble other than the usual
dry eyes effect.

Iain

 

Hi Iain,
I also have brothers who are doctors. The link between marijuana and
schizophrenia has been proven over and over again. I can understand
why people would not like to believe this, but it's true.
Linda

 

Is it just the link that has been proven, or has the cause and effect been
proven also?

Many smokers acknowledge that smoking and lung cancer are linked, but
refuse to believe that smoking is a cause of lung cancer, because it
hasn't been proven. It would be easy to disprove the theory that lung
cancer causes smoking, because people always start smoking first, and then
get lung cancer. Also, lung cancer is pretty clearly the cause of a
death, because you can cut up the body and actually see that the lung
cancer caused the death. Schizophrenia is less clear, because we can't
tell how it works.

There's a lot of weird stuff around about drugs, because people are
looking for reasons why other people shouldn't use drugs, and so they make
up stuff that sounds plausible. One claim is that marijuana use causes
people to progress to heroin. Of course, the same argument can be used to
prove that milk drinking causes heroin use, since all heroin users started
by drinking milk.

 

(Linda) wrote in

Linda,

I'm not a proponent of marijuana use or a marijuana user, but a
scientist. I've been looking over the abstracts of review articles in
response to your assertion. Just about every abstract starts with
"Controversy remains as to whether cannabis acts as a causal risk factor
for schizophrenia...."

This would seem to indicate that the link isn't perfectly clear. It
seems that the link is there, but it certainly hasn't been "proven over
and over again".

It would seem as if the matter were scientifically up in the air as
recently as 2004, when in response to an article in "Addiction" a Public
Health Official in Australia responded
"Sir—The research reviewed by Smit, Bolier & Cuijpers
(2004) has substantially reduced our uncertainty about
the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. "

Again, this would suggest that the issue was still up for grabs in 2004.
Some commentators to this cited article, while agreeing with the
conclusion that there is a link, still find problems with the
epidemiological techniqes.

Scott

 

I definately know it leads to other things...
Mainly junk food.

Cut

 

Quite. Isn't there also a potential self-medicating aspect to this
sort of thing as well? I have read that the vast majority of
schizophrenia sufferers smoke cigarettes, which I have read is thought
to have at least some effect towards making symptoms milder.

 

(Rebecca) wrote in

Actually, it turns out that the self-medicating hypothesis is pooh-poohed
in the literature.

Scott

 

I am wondering if pot smoking helps relax the eyes for helping vision?
I was going to find a group of pot smokers but since you posted...did
you ever try vision exercises w/o glasses before lasik? I do tend to
notice that pot smokers don't wear glasses. Just wondering....I would
think that if properly researched there could be a med that can help
vision down the line. Something that targets vision and eyes.

 

I wonder if one can receive a government grant to do the research on this.

SErebel

 

Fist-bump for Dan

FIST BUMP FOR DAN!

I have to say Dan is extremely on-point. For anyone to assume something unproven, it's purely an assumption. It seems not many of us actually are doctors (despite knowing some). I will offer my opinion as well as people before me. First of all, the part about marijuana being a "gateway" is ridiculous. I will borrow (in a sense) Dan's analogy. I believe pizza is a gateway drug. If someone really likes pizza and decides to eat lasagna as a result, one could say pizza led that person to heart disease and high blood pressure. "But that doesn't make sense! Pizza isn't a drug!" Anything that causes mood alteration, by definition, is a drug. I know plenty of people whose moods get changed simply because of pizza.

I just had Lasik surgery yesterday at 2:00 p.m. I absolutely have no problems with smoking pot, nor anybody who does. I do smoke, and I truly feel it's my choice. I'm not so brash to take my VISION so lightly and light up today, but I will in the near future. I have sensitive eyes, and both eyes make me look like I've been in a nasty fight (from surgery). My vision is already "fine" and neither eye is in pain.

Despite all my frustration towards people who speak "from the hip" and don't really know what they're talking about, I will always take my overall health as being most important. As much as I would love to kiss the sky while watching baseball, I will not. For anyone reading this, take it easy on marijuana for God's sake (in terms of hatred). Be aware that it DOES have medicinal qualities and is most-likely more safe than ANYTHING produced by Pfizer, Lilly, Merck, Bayer, Tylenol, or any other major manufacturer you could think of. It grows from this earth, naturally, and isn't concocted in some lab that kills mice to see if what they create is actually safe. Note that the Bible states, "I give you all seed and herb-bearing plants to use."