it helps me

both. it creates a cycle. i only get depressed when i run out of weed, then when i smoke more i feel better. but if i didn't smoke weed i wouldn't get depressed (apart from when bad real life stuff happens)

Techniclly it's a depressent, But for a while it lifts the depression, Then brings it back worse.

How about if you've been clean for 7 days? My son, 16, indicated on his IM that he never felt so depressed in his life and needed the pot to relieve it? So being off of pot for a week can make one depressed and so one would need it again to feel better?

Here's how it worked for me. Many can probably relate. You're "depressed" and don't neccassarily realize it. You smoke weed and you get that "who cares" sort of feeling. Eventually those things that you are trying to suppress boil over and smoking weed won't help it. It only makes it worse. However, If you stop before this happens, those negative feelings will come up sooner and you'll want to smoke weed to deal with them. So, it doesn't actually depress you but it doesn't help when your self-medication stops working and begins to accentuate the problem.

Cannabis contains cannabinoids, which lock into the brain's cannabinoid receptors. They act like the brain's own endocannabinoids, which are a "happy chemical" and also control things like appetite. So, cannabis can make one less depressed (and in some places where medical cannabis is legal, it is even used as an antidepressant - proscribed by a medical professional, of course).

However, one can become addicted to feeling the "chemical happiness" produced by cannabis use, and so feel a longing for this feeling, which can be expressed as depression (for some people, for others it can be anger, and, of course, not all users of cannabis are addicted, so not everyone feels any longing to use when they aren't - it just depends on the person).

So cannabis can both act as an antidepressant, because it replicates a "happy chemical" in the brain, and can, because of emotional addiction to it, make one feel depressed. I guess the answer to your question is "both" or "depends on the person".

Oh, and depressant means something that slows down your body, not something that makes you depressed. *grin*

well it helps me if i smoke it alot but then if i dont i have the worst mood swings ever..

i feel good at first. the come down is a bit depressing

Now I understand it can relieve depression and, later, make you depressed when coming off of it. Having said that--- have any of you started smoking it because you were clinically depressed and didn't know it at the time that you had "true" depression", only later finding out the reason why you started? I hope that makes sense. I've been advised to get my son into the emergency room/mental health clinic to see if he has any underlying issues. He's expressed on-line in the past that he smokes to relieve his mental state. I honestly think it's the result of coming off the drug and not clinical depression. I also don't know how I would get him into anywhere because he only has small windows of depression and sometimes he seems perfectly fine. Just curious....

just because he seems fine doesn't mean that he is. i truly hope he is fine, but it seems that anyone using drugs on a semi-regular basis is, in some way, unhappy with reality as they perceive it.

maybe it's nothing, but wouldn't it be wonderful if he could want to be in the here & now without substances?