[stephengillie]

How is self-medication handled in the study analysis? To me, it sounds like men who are hurting start self-medicating early, which supports the social stigma hypothesis. They often use this as their sole resource.

Women wait much longer to self medicate, it sounds like. This may be from women being given other social support options, or because they face a larger stigma around handling their problems themselves. Nevertheless, women who are hurting do begin to self-medicate as a last resort.

It sounds like men have more opportunity to develop a solo coping mechanism, with women not developing this because they aren't isolated early, and instead have other resources to try first.

Disclaimer: I've been a functional daily cannabis smoker for 7 years. I use it to cope with loneliness, depression, and social anxiety. I work for a major cloud and ISP company.

[nashke]

We analysed self-medication variables from the data and found that indeed men tend to self-medicate more. However, our findings regarding cannabis self-medication for suicidality are opposite, i.e. women were much more likelt to initiate cannabis use after reporting suicidality, but not men. Of course, self-medication is but one of the possible explanations for this finding.