[Permanent psychiatric effects in former addicts to marijuana or stimulants]

It's an evidence based data that the abuse of drugs produces toxic psychiatric effects, in the acute and sub acute phases of the intoxication and also in the recent abstinence. It is more conflicting the data about if they can produce or unmask vulnerabilities to long term psychiatric disorders; or to affect its course and phenomenology; or to influence the response to the therapeutic resources used to treat them, beyond the period of abstinence. The objective is to update the knowledge available on the ability of the marijuana and the stimulants to produce long term psychiatric disorders, or to unmask vulnerabilities to them. We have done an electronic bibliographical research in MEDLINE using the following key words: psychiatric disorders, amphetamine, stimulants, marijuana, cannabis, long term effects, psychosis, cognitive and cognitive deficits. The marijuana might induce permanent psychosis in subjects with vulnerability to schizophrenia or to psychosis. The cognitive effects are acute and subacute, related with the presence of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol in the central nervous system. The stimulants can produce a schizophrenia-like psychosis, and they can produce long term cognitive deficits. The stimulants also might produce subsyndromic mood disorders.