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Comment by spectramax | Hacker News Reader

Stupid question but I’ve always wondered this - I hear Cannabis is used for anxiety relief but doesn’t smoking marijuana induce anxiety? Everyone I know who has smoked weed agrees with my experience - they’ve encountered some level of anxiety and paranoia. So, how exactly does weed help in reducing anxiety?

Edit: Follow up question -> Is weed used to treat anxiety during the high or when you are normal (and have general anxiety when not smoking pot)?

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As others have mentioned, it's the THC component that can cause anxiety. I have high anxiety and THC usually makes it worse, but that's just temporary. I find that THC is bringing subconscious worries and pains to the surface, and if I actively process them, then I come out of the high feeling extreme relaxation and peace, more than I ever got from pure CBD.

Just a data point. I dealt with anxiety my entire life, and too much weed absolutely destroys me but small amount of weed definitely calms me down. When I smoke too much weed, it really doesn't feel like my anxieties deep down are surfaces. It feels like my brain is making up new stupid things. To me, weed is a very strong sensory experience. When I'm too high it almost feels I'm hearing too much, feeling too much, seeing too much and that disorients me. Also due to my anxiety I've dealt with dp/dr in the past (luckily I don't have this problem any more) and too much weed induces this dp/dr back.

When I was young and stupid I did get too high and got bitten by it. One needs to learn lessons the hard way. You need to be respectful to drugs, try understand the science behind how substances affect your brain and start small and increase doses infinitesimally as you feel comfortable and as you decide it does not affect your life negatively in any way objectively.

What kind of made up anxiety have you encountered? I ask just to understand. I've never run into an anxiety after smoking weed that wasn't rooted in reality. I find it helpful for the same reasons the previous poster stated.

That the airplanes constantly flying over your home, which you can hear but not see, are actually missiles being lobbed across the world as countries that are not your own duke it out.

Not completely rooted in reality, and you’ll probably calm down as you come down. But now you feel a brief stab of anxiety any time you hear an airplane fly overhead.

For me it's just the feeling of anxiety, no specific anxiety inducing subject is running through my head and no paranoia. When I eat edibles (which I do rarely and almost always regret it) the anxiety is worse, I get really cold and my whole body shakes.

I stick to small amounts of vaped weed and I can enjoy it

Like one time I accidentally dosed my weed wrong. I prepared a bowl with super-high THC strain (I live in a legal state) when I was trying to smoke a 1:1 THC:CBD strain (I wasn't trying to get high, I was trying to medicate against my chronic inflammation problem). I vaped the entire bowl. Continued to watch Portlandia and 30 seconds in, I realized something is wrong and I can barely keep my eyes open. After managing the initial disorientation, I got up to take a shower because my heart was beating at 150 bpm so I wanted to distract myself. When I got up I heard someone talking outside. It sounded like it's my coworker's sound. I got worried for some reason. I was worried that my coworker would see me high and think I'm a "loser stoner" getting high alone. Of course it was just my neighbor talking on his phone outside. Anyway, I never felt like this before or ever since. This was a unique paranoid experience I felt at that moment.

You probably need to try a strain with less THC and more CBD (like a 2:8 ratio).

Yes nowadays I smoke mixed CBD-only and THC-only strains this way I can make custom ratios. Weed's been orders of magnitude more comfortable since I started doing this.

Another data point: I have anxiety and weed/hash reduce my anxiety, it helps a lot with falling asleep while I'm awake but I'm known to scream while sleeping under the influence; another time I was sound asleep near a friend who was snoring and his snoring woke me up and I was convinced he was in fact drowning in his own vomit and I slapped and shook him and tried to get him on his side, after I realized he was fine, I happily went back to sleep as if nothing happened.

I also had visual hallucinations, visual/auditory synesthesia once from a high dosage of hash, so I might be an outlier.

This is a good way of putting it.

I view THC as having an 'echoing' effect of whatever I am feeling. If something makes me laugh, the feeling of laughing will cause more laughter. If I am feeling anxiety, the feeling of anxiety will cause more anxiety.

That's absolutely true, weed is a big enhancer.

I feel like it makes your inner Voice louder.

some days you can control your inner voice better than others

Also thc tolerance helps, once you get the tolerance up it is a lot less anxiety inducing and more relaxing.

In my experience, if I smoke a very small amount of weed (like literally one hit) it can relax me and make me less anxious. It slows things down, and can just generally numb some of my underlying anxieties.

However, it doesn't take much for me to cross that threshold where it can make me extremely paranoid. Usually this is what I call the "will I be stuck this way forever" threshold, where I get stoned to the point where I start to freak out that I will never be able to think clearly again.

So my point is that, at least for me, it is dose dependent, and I could easily imagine a scenario where CBD can act to relax your nervous system responses but not alter your thinking to the point of it becoming a foreign and potentially scary experience.

The less you use, the more your body will become sensitive to the smaller amounts of it. Meaning, if you dose correctly, you can actually use less to achieve more.

So yep, dosage is extremely critical with THC.

> The less you use, the more your body will become sensitive to the smaller amounts of it.

Do you have any reference to back that up? I ask because I am genuinely curious. I haven't heard this before, and usually with most other drugs the opposite happens, i.e. you slowly build a tolerance that requires taking higher does to acheive the same effects.

Tobacco is very good at clearing things from the body, like drugs or caffeine. Smokers clear caffeine faster from the brain than non smokers.

Check out the P450 group of enzymes to find out how this works, part of the clearance rate is controlled by the liver becoming more efficient and altering your food and drink cravings.

Other foods/chemicals like grapefruit juice slow the metabolism of some drugs, so 2litres of grapefruit juice combined with 50Mg of viagra will see you visiting A&E with a 5hr priaprism, that has to be let down with andrenaline injections into the corpus spongiosum.

Generally if you want your illegal drugs to last longer dont smoke.

This comment made me curious and I did some googling for studies on the anxiogenic (anxiety-increasing) effects of THC. Some interesting resuts:

THC's anxiety inducing effects are (at least in part) caused by CB! receptor activity in the right amygdala. "Fourteen healthy males were studied with fMRI twice, one month apart, following an oral dose of either delta-9-THC (10 mg) or placebo, while they performed a fear-processing task. Baseline availability of the CB1 receptor was studied using PET with [11C]MePPEP, a CB1 inverse agonist radioligand. Relative to the placebo condition, delta-9-THC induced anxiety and modulated right amygdala activation while processing fear. Both these effects were positively correlated with CB1 receptor availability in the right amygdala. These results suggest that the acute effects of cannabis on anxiety in males are mediated by the modulation of amygdalar function by delta-9-THC and the extent of these effects are related to local availability of CB1 receptors." https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-14203-4

Would be interested to study if there is a difference in fear response in sober thc users and non-users. Does 'tolerance' of THC entail amygdalar CB1 downregulation? Does this have measurable effects besides intoxication-related anxiety?

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Anxiogenic effects in rats are greater in adults than adolescents https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17211649

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"Guiaol, eucalyptol, γ-terpinene, α-phellandrene, 3-carene, and sabinene hydrate all have significant correlations with decreased anxiolytic activity." (Certain strains may have constituents which increase anxiety - many of these have distinctive smells) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6204402/

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CBD is widely regarded as safe - this study raises some concern. Could chronic CBD use could possible cause upregulation of amygdalar CB1?

Anxiogenic-like effects of chronic cannabidiol administration in rats https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51798464_Anxiogenic...

Interesting, I was wondering about the paranoia and anxiety comments. Outside of once sharing a blunt and once trying a vaporizer, 2-3 drags on a joint was the maximum of weed I ever took and I never experienced anxiety from it.

Depends on whether you are smoking a sativa or indica, and what kind of activity you are involved in? Are you smoking alone or in a group setting. If you are smoking alone and have an anxious personality, I would rather smoke a Sativa strain with a higher CBD to THC ratio. Indicas sometimes take me to an anxious place, but it depends on my mental state before taking the drug. So much of it is setting ( great music, good company ), can make it all the more better.

> Depends on whether you are smoking a sativa or indica

People really need to stop repeating this. There are pure cbd sativas just as there are pure cbd indicas. There is no definition for what a sativa/indica is besides what the leaves look like. There's no bearing on subjective high and strains. What people are experiencing is differing THC/CBD ratios.

You need to stop incorrectly correcting people. CBD is neither sativa or indica. Which strain CBD comes from doesn't change how it effects you.

All of the indica and sativa flower that I purchase is 0% CBD, yet I can most definitely tell the difference. It has nothing to do with the amount of CBD in it.

Your subjective n=1 sample of "I can feel the difference bro" doesn't really mean much to me, especially when it seems like you haven't even really grasped my argument.

It wasn't until things were legalized that I had the option to try a 1:1 strain (equal ratio of CBD to THC) and I've found that to be a much better balance for me. The psychoactive aspects are still there, but less intense, more relaxing and without negative feelings. Kind of like sipping beer vs shooting tequila.

This is the most exciting thing about legalization to me. If I could go buy high cbd strains with a manageable level of thc I’d be first in line. I don’t want to get super high on thc. I just want all of the other effects.

They definitely sell 10:1 CBD:THC and 100% CBD in California. 100% CBD weed doesn’t even need to be sold at dispensaries. They sell that at lots of stores. My mom said the feed store has CBD oil for your pets.

Legalization is the best.

CBD is "technically" federally legal since the 2018 Farm Bill. Practically, it's in this limbo position where if it's allowed without any restrictions it's very hard to control THC which is a Sched 1 drug that Feds care a lot about. That's why even though you can buy CBD from your closest market, people still get busted for "smuggling" because CBD cannabis (and hemp) looks identical to marijuana. So currently it's in this weird limbo state where it's 100% legal but its legality cannot be enforced so in some places it's not possible to find CBD.

Also, I think CBD is effective for dogs and cats (e.g. for seizures) but apparently there is some evidence THC is toxic to cats and dogs. So PLEASE be sure your CBD doesn't include THC before feeding it to your pet.

yes, its technically federally legal, but some cities around me are still prosecuting CBD possession

Less THC in the leaves, more CBD in the leaves.

This is a perfect example of how prohibition doesn't work. When alcohol was illegal in the USA, the only drinks you could really get a hold of was whiskey, moonshine and other high percentage beverages.

When illegal, the dealers want to be the ones with the best (strongest) product on the market.

Once made legal, the lower percentage drinks became available such as wine and beer, and they became the best selling and most popular type of drink. Drink that doesn't smash them across the face by the end of the night.

The same will (and is) true in regards to weed legalisation, the powers that be will harp on about weed these days being too strong, and shouldn't be legalised for that very reason, yet it has been shown that stronger drugs is an effect of a ban on the sale of these products.

The sooner it is legalised, the better, as I will be able to go to a shop and have all the available information at hand to help me make the best decision for my anxiety requirements. Instead, atm, I have to go to a dealer, who sells all the finest buds, but I have nothing to go on other than look, smell, and anecdotal evidence from someone who's main purpose is sell all her flowers, not ensure her customer is getting the right product for her needs.

Not a stupid question. Stigma around the plant has created this vacuum of pop-culture knowledge on this sort of thing.

Over a hundred different cannabinoids have been identified. CBD is a cannabinoid, and so is THC. THC is what makes you high. CBD does not.

You really need to get high with a scientist who has a ton of experience with weed. Then you can actually try different things, knowing what you are ingesting and using different methods, too (like vaporizing oil vs. smoking a flower)

Check this out to learn more about all the different cannabinoid's that we know about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabinoid

Final thing to add would be to take a look at this picture: https://blogodiversity.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/dogs_of_t... and then think about all of your various experiences with dogs throughout your life. Dogs are all dogs, but they are TOTALLY different across breeds and even within breeds. The same applies to Marijuana... you will enjoy or dislike the characteristics of certain strains the same way you might like or dislike a dog or cat.

I've never been able to tolerate marijuana and have been around recreational users all my life. It's always caused me extreme anxiety. In the past year, I've experimented with various CBD products for chronic pain.

I've had mixed results for the pain, but the CBD definitely produces an anti-anxiety and a relaxing effect with none of the negative effects that I associate with marijuana, presumably with a great deal more THC.

Anecdotally, it depends on the person.

Marijuana makes it easy for my over-worrying brain to relax and trust that things will turn out okay. Other people I know find the opposite.

Edit: this is also a study of CBD specifically, not of weed as a whole.

To summarize a bit unnuanced:

THC induces paranoia

CBD reduces it

The ratio is an important one between them as it alters the experience a lot.

Weed is a bit like love, the term is convoluted and overloaded.

E.g.

Dutch weed: HIGH in THC! Normal in CBD. Oh dear, the Dutchies... Sigh

Swiss weed: high in CBD, extremely low in THC

The experience? Completely different.

Sources (cannot Google search atm, am on mobile):

- I am Dutch, and am well acquainted w/ Dutch weed

- In Switzerland they sell weed in cigar shops and they have labels on THC and CBD levels.

More or less my experience as well, stuff I go for regularly are 13-15% THC to 1% CBD. Depending on where you get your weed from, coffeeshops do occasionally mark their ratios.

I should probably go for higher CBD ones...

I smoke THC distillate with essentially no CBD, I find it to be calming and not to induce anxiety or paranoia.

That's possible, for some it does nothing, for others it can be the path to non-recoverable schizophrenia. My advice to people who smoke high THC is: if you have had weed-induced psychosis then you might be able to develop schizophrenia with prolonged use of high THC weed. In other words: smoke seldomly.

However, it might also be possible that one simply doesn't notice their cognitive decline. To check on this, people would need to listen carefully to their environment. If they say something is wrong with you, then something is probably not right indeed.

The reason for this is: schizophrenia and psychosis related phenomenon take away the ability to self-reflect.

Unfortunately, I don't have sources for this, other than that I read up on it. But for now, it simply is just one opinion on the internet. Search engines are your friend here, especially academic search engines. And I have friends who are psychiatrists, so those conversations help.

there are two major active components in cannibis: THC and CBD. THC is generally responsible for the “high” and also for tendency for anxiety in some people. CBD is though to give the “mellow” feelings and to have anti-inflammatory properties. A give strain of Cannibis will have different proportions of the two and different people will react more strongly to one or the other producing varied results. CBD is often extracted and use for calming and anti-inflammation.

This is for CBD. Anxiety from cannabis is typically attributed to the THC content.

Probably depends on the person, strain, and frequency of usage... for me it melted away stress and helped me sleep.

I used it pretty sparingly though.

From my experience and own research it's highly dependent on the ratio of THC to CBD (there are over one hundred cannabanoids in the plant which have the desired benefits, but for simplicity sake just these two are used in general discussion). I found when I have recently experienced, or have underlying feelings of general anxiety, high THC strains make the anxiety worse, ruminating thoughts become unbearable. The more you take the worse this feeling gets. (Edibles can be a horrible experience in this state)

Essentially it depends on your predisposition to anxiety, the dosage you take, and the ratio of THC to CBD.

Balanced ratios that would make this much less likely and induce a more relaxed or energetic state depending on the more dominant chemical. Unfortunately the legality of it makes it impossible to verify the ratios of cannabis substances

> I hear Cannabis is used for anxiety relief but doesn’t smoking marijuana induce anxiety?

This is, as I understand, dose, strain (apparently, largely CBD/THC relationship), and user (anecdotally, I've heard reports of basically reverse the more common relative effect of different strains from people on the autism spectrum, along other variations).

Even for single drugs that don't have issues like the CBD/THC one, there are lots that have dose dependent (not just more with higher doses, but switching at some threshold) and/or user dependent effects like that.

I'm anonymous on HN so I can tell you that some people go out of their way to grow special strains that have more CBD in them than they do THC.

One such strain I have experience with is CBD Kush and I know for a fact that it has helped someone with ADHD.

CHD Kush is supposed to have an equal amount of CBD and THC but is very easy to grow and get a good yield like 50-60g dry per plant.

But there are other strains out there I'd love to try like Charlotte's Web which is the most famous example.

People tend to maximize the THC because it's psychoactive but it also makes people anxious.

From my layman's understanding of it: cannabis lowers blood sugar, and low blood sugar can trigger the release of adrenaline, and that fight or flight feeling combined with inhibited short term memory can be stressful. For people who are susceptible to psychosis, this can trigger a psychotic state.

If you're having a bad time after smoking, get your blood sugar up.

One more factor, besides the ones other posters have pointed out, is tolerance. I find my tolerance to the anxiety provoking effects increases faster than my tolerance to the anxiolytic effects. If I haven't consumed any in a while, I find I can get that initial panic. Ride it out though and the more relaxing effects take over.

A few personal anecdotes:

Sativa has a stronger anxiety producing effect for me than Indica if I remember correctly. I really only smoke sativa. That said, some sativa strains produce more anxiety than others. But when I do experience marijuana-induced anxiety, it tends to be very near the beginning of the high and subsides pretty quickly.

Just the opposite for me. I find Sativa to generally lift my mood. I'm more likely to be social, carry on conversations and have interesting thoughts. Compared to Indica, which for me has more of a lazy effect. That may be great for serious pain management, but if I'm laid up my mind is more likely to go in different directions.

The mood lifting effects happen with sativa for me too. But if I happen to feel anxiety from it, it will be a short lived bit at the beginning.

Part of this phenomenon is likely that thc heavy strains have been selected for over time (at the expense of cbd) because people valued the “potency” of the flower.

Another major aspect is that weed has been illegal for most of its modern usage, and the fact that people are doing something illegal/dangerous adds to the anxiety.

Here's one possible vector... Intoxicants in general make people overconfident. If you get to doubting — with good reason — whether you're actually as entertaining and creative as you feel, that'll make you anxious.

A friend had an explanation for this, and I really agreed with him. The antianxiety effects of THC arrive after the initial high. The beginning is a spike of feelings that a lot of people find to be intense... and leads to paranoia and an increase in anxiety. But as this brief rush fades there is relief and a longer lasting calm.

To put it another way: after a stone is dropped in a pond the splash is a mess, but the ripples that follow sure are pretty. :)

Interestingly marijuana does make me feel anxious, but at the same time completely alleviates my social anxiety.

The logic is that CBD is different than THC, the anxiety provoking, psychoactive chemical.

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