The topic of legalizing medicinal marijuana is a growing conversation in our society today as it is already legal in 17 states across our nation. The article “Endocannabinoid system and psychiatry: in search of a neurobiological basis for detrimental and potential therapeutic effects” looks at how cannabis can be used medically to help aid in depression, anxiety and eating disorders and highlights the main negative effects of cannabis use. Although scientists and psychologists have worked together to determine that cannabis can successfully help with depression, anxiety and eating disorders, is it really the best option for therapy?
While reading this article, the negative effects of cannabis use stuck out to me much more drastically than the positive effects. The article described one side effect of cannabis use as being the development of schizophrenia. Although scientists haven’t directly linked cannabis use to schizophrenia, there is proof that it can induce schizophrenia in users that are genetically predisposed to developing this disease and it works together with other risk factors to speed up the onset of the disorder. This side-effect alone, without even considering the negative psychotropic effects of cannabis that are frowned upon by many, seems serious enough to wonder if cannabis is really a drug that should be used for treating any sort of mood disorder.
Another major piece of the article that stuck out to me while reading focused on the specific piece of cannabis called Cannabidiol (CBD). The writers briefly described the positive effects that CBD can have on treating anxiety and depression and stated that CBD doesn’t have the negative effects that cannabis has. Immediately after reading about CBD, I wondered, could isolating this component of cannabis, CBD, be an alternative drug to medical marijuana?
Cannabidiol is the main non-psychotropic component of cannabis and exhibits many of the same therapeutic effects as marijuana. The other main component of cannabis is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC is responsible for the psychotropic effects that many people think of when they think about marijuana. All cannabis has a different ratio of THC and CBD as each strain of cannabis is different. After noticing that different strains of marijuana were more or less successful in treating depression and anxiety, scientists explored the contents of cannabis and found that the strains with higher amounts of CBD worked much better for treating mood disorders. This finding is responsible for the additional research that has been done to make CBD so popular as scientists look for a new possible drug that will exhibit the same therapeutic effects as marijuana without all of the negative side-effects that marijuana has.
The understanding of Cannabidiol is a very intriguing aspect of cannabis, as it would be great to develop a new way to treat depression and anxiety without having the negative psychotropic effects. This would make it much more socially acceptable for a patient to treat their depression or anxiety when they didn’t have to experience the “high” that is so commonly associated with marijuana. After both human and animal testing, scientists have found a lot of promising evidence that CBD could be the new drug for treating many different disorders and ultimately eventually replace medical use of marijuana as a whole. One of the main effects of CBD that scientists discovered is that with low doses, CBD is alerting and helps reduce depression, while at high doses it actually acts as a sedative and can reduce anxiety. Scientists have also found that CBD can be used in many other medical ways, such as relieving convulsion, inflammation, nausea as well as inhibiting cancer growth.
After reading this article my eyes have been opened to the fact that it is very important that our society finds an alternative therapeutic drug rather than marijuana to help aid in the therapy of common mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. I look forward to following the further research of Cannibidiol that must be done in order for it to become this alternative therapeutic drug that everyone is looking for. After looking at what we know so far about CBD, it has definite potential to be a successful alternative to medical marijuana and even provide therapy in a wider array of patients than marijuana does today.
For more information, click on the link below, What is CBD?
What is CBD?
Clearly the author has a bias against cannabis. The writer of this article does nothing to point out the negative effects of harsh pharmaceutical drugs currently used to treat every disorder referenced herein. It’s written as though cannabis is the only and most popular thing people are currently using to treat these issues
All chemical antidepressants on the market also have risk of triggering further mental illness in fragile predisposed patients.
Many of them are hard on the liver and kidneys, can cause Nausea Insomnia anxiety, restlessness, decreased sex drive,dizziness, weight gain, increased risk of suicide, exacerbation of bi-polar disorder. In people over 65, increased bone loss and more frequent falls and fractures.
Does the writer think that people on benadryll, ambien, Valium, Vicodin, Oxycontin are not getting high? And anyway, what’s wrong with getting high? Are people on alcohol not getting high? And for recreation.. and at a MUCH greater risk to themselves?
Also, herbal cannabis should be used as a whole plant medicine. The interaction of THC, CBD, CBG, CBN and the individual terpene profiles of the strains are paramount to the herb’s effectiveness as a medicine. They modulate, balance and cooperate with one another. Singling them out through breeding rather than in engineering makes much more effective medicine.
The world has been fed a false narrative about cannabis for 70+ years, but if one takes a moment to look back at the history of man and his biology, one finds that cannabis has been used as a medicine in recorded history for centuries. Not to mention the fact that our bodies have cannabinoid receptors in them. That means that the chemicals in cannabis are biologically designed to interact with our bodies. Apples don’t have that. Beef doesn’t have that. Not milk, not wheat, not peaches, not carrots.
It is laughable how quickly people dismiss cannabis because of it’s psychoactive effects in a society where regulations allow us poisons in our food and water and harsh chemicals are called medicine. And here we see, even when they can no longer dismiss cannabis as medicine, they call to dismantle it for parts.