How to Make Marijuana Brownies?

When a group of California pre-school teachers came down with nausea and tingly limbs after consuming some street bought brownies, Los Angeles health officials launched a full investigation. The cause? The brownies were laced with weed, leading the CDC to caution the nation that weed must now be considered “a potential contaminant during foodborne illness investigations.”
Yep, CDC, people put marijuana in food. It’s one of those ways people get high without a whole lot of evidence. There are entire cookbooks devoted to the cause of how to make marijuana brownies. I especially think teenagers are enticed by this novelty. With all of the talks about the legalization of marijuana, it’s important to remember that weed isn’t necessarily harmless. Like alcohol, marijuana can still be a devastating force in certain people’s lives- especially teenagers’. Getting clean at a young age sometimes made me question my drug use. Was it bad enough? I often thought that because I “just smoked weed,” that I wasn’t a real addict. The reality was that marijuana made my life truly unmanageable, and I couldn’t stop even when I wanted to. I truly felt like I would rather die than have to keep being a slave to using drugs. In teen drug treatment, I began to see that my addiction wasn’t about the substance, it was about the feelings behind my drug use. Today, I am free from using. I don’t have to use drugs and I certainly don’t have to worry about my brownies poisoning anyone. If you think your teen may be struggling with marijuana abuse, contact us today.

Jack Osbourne Visions Adolescent Treatment Center Alumni On Access Hollywood

Jack Osbourne takes Access Hollywood on a tour of Visions Adolescent Treatment Center.

Only seven years ago, Jack Osbourne was a party animal, now a grown up Jack Osbourne cleans up his act and gives Access Hollywood a rare look at his life in drug and alcohol rehab.

Watch this clip and see how we helped Jack with his problems with alcohol, oxycontin, marijuana and vicodin, and we can help you too.

If you need treatment for yourself, or you know someone who does and need immediate answers to your questions, please call 866 889-3665.

The Gateway Drug

“The Gateway Drug”


When I was in middle school taking that D.A.R.E class that they make you take, there was a lot of talk about marijuana being the “gateway drug”. I always thought that it was just a scare tactic that adults used to instill fear in us kids about using drugs. Yet when you actually look at the statistics it is quite amazing how true the saying is that marijuana is a gateway drug. The statistics show that teenagers who use marijuana are 17 times more likely to move on to using harder drugs. Statistics also say that boys are 29 times more likely to use harder drugs after using marijuana and girls are 11 times more likely.

The reasoning behind this is thought to be that marijuana helps one develop curiosity for harder drugs as well as introduces them to the menacing subculture that may be attractive to them.

To Teach At an Adolescent Treatment Center

To teach at an adolescent treatment center has been such a gift to me. I have recognized my own weaknesses and strengths. The residents’ struggles remind me of my own when I was their age. Their strengths remind me to strive higher than I ever thought possible for myself and others. The adolescent years are very crucial in forming their perception towards who they are and who they choose to be. It is the time that they can recognize that they have a choice. It is their crossroad.

The lists of drugs that are available today are much more extensive than when I was in high school. During my time, it was marijuana and alcohol. Now, the kids have been introduced to a variety of pain killers, more harmful drugs such as heroin, meth, cocaine and more. I feel for these kids. They have a difficult battle to fight. I have to say, they surprise me more often than I thought with their progression towards recovery than their regression towards using.

Solange Petrosspour

Teen binge drinking

Teen binge drinking is a huge problem with teens and more common than one might think. Depending on tolerance and body weight, binge drinking is defined as having five or more drinks within a few hours. This risky behavior can result in serious health problems, sexual promiscuity, and death. Recent research indicates that two-thirds of those high school students surveyed admitted to binge drinking. Teenage males tend to engage in binge drinking more than their female counterparts. Teen binge drinkers were also more likely to use dangerous drugs like marijuana, cocaine, and inhalants. They were also much more likely to smoke tobacco cigarettes.

It seems that binge drinking takes away all capacity for reason, as studies show that binge drinkers are more likely to get in the car with a drunk driver. That’s not to mention the dangers of binge drinkers behind the wheel of a car. Further proof that extreme alcohol consumption is harmful, teen binge drinkers were shown to have lower grades than non-binge drinkers. Perhaps most disturbing, binge drinkers were nearly four times more likely to be highly sexually active, victims of rape, and suicidal.

Twins Study Bolsters Pot “Gateway Theory”

Twins Study Bolsters Pot “Gateway Theory”

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Study of Twins, Marijuana Bolsters “Gateway Theory” That Pot Can Lead to Hard Drugs

CHICAGO (AP) — A study of Australian twins and marijuana bolsters the fiercely debated “gateway theory” that pot can lead to harder drugs.

The researchers located 311 sets of same-sex twins in which only one twin had smoked marijuana before age 17. Early marijuana smokers were found to be up to five times more likely than their twins to move on to harder drugs.

They were about twice as likely to use opiates, which include heroin, and five times more likely to use hallucinogens, which include LSD.

Earlier studies on whether marijuana is a gateway drug reached conflicting conclusions. The impasse has complicated the debate over medical marijuana and decriminalization of pot.

Because this study involved twins, the findings would suggest that genetics play a subordinate role in drug use.

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association and was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.

It does not answer how marijuana, or cannabis, might lead to harder drugs.

“It is often implicitly assumed that using cannabis changes your brain or makes you crave other drugs,” said lead researcher Michael Lynskey, “but there are a number of other potential mechanisms, including access to drugs, willingness to break the law and likelihood of engaging in risk-taking behavior.”

Lynskey is a senior research fellow at Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane and a visiting assistant psychiatry professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where some of the research was done.

Lynskey and colleagues acknowledged the study has several limitations, including relying on participants' reporting of their own experiences.

In an accompanying editorial, Denise Kandel of Columbia University's psychiatry department said the study does not explain “whether or not a true causal link exists” between marijuana and hard drugs.

“An argument can be made that even identical twins do not share the same environment during adolescence,” she said.

Study participants were age 30 on average when they were asked about their teenage drug use. They included 136 sets of identical twins, who share the same genetic makeup.

About 46 percent of the early marijuana users reported that they later abused or became dependent on marijuana, and 43 percent had become dependent on alcohol.

Cocaine and other stimulants were the most commonly used harder drugs, tried by 48 percent of the early marijuana users, compared with 26 percent of the non-early marijuana users. Hallucinogens were the second most common, used by 35 percent of the early marijuana twins versus 18 percent of the others.

Phone 866-889-3665
Visions Adolescent Treatment Center