Cannabis-Assisted Psychotherapy Highlighted In New Research

Two well esteemed researchers from the Institute of Psychiatry in the U.K. wrote an intriguing paper in regards to how cannabinoids can assist in psychotherapy – and even more interesting was the parallel made to Psilocybin. Both plant compounds allow us to face our past and current life experiences and research shows these can give rise to negative and overwhelming psychological, emotional, and physical symptoms.

Factors such trauma, loss, discrimination, poverty, and other negative life experiences can shape our perception of ourselves and the world, including how we react and respond to life's challenges and our ability to navigate our emotions. These researchers published a daring editorial that boldly states that cannabinoids can help therapists with patients much like the mushroom rush has – and that's groundbreaking for both plant medicines.

Researchers find that cannabinoids and mushrooms allow us to overcome perceptions that can become habitual patterns and cycles that contribute to our own suffering. In this paper the two researchers found that high levels of THC cause the same type of reaction in patients that are taking low levels of the psychoactive fungi – allowing them to parallel the two and come to a finding that the two are very comparable. They went on to address multiple new 2021 research studies on CBD that prove it is successful in stopping the 'seeking habits' in both cocaine and methamphetamines addictions. Adding to these interesting revelations are even more current citations on studies that prove cannabinoids allow stress responses to be easily measured in patients.

Although the debate about decriminalization of cannabis has seemingly moved little in the past quarter century (Ashton and Young, 1995), the science evaluating both the underlying neuroscience and the benefits and harms of cannabinoid medicines continues to advance greatly and seems likely to pay dividends for human health in the future.

Here's the study – enjoy the citations as they are beyond informative.

Published first only days ago on Sage Journals:

More than just smoke: Psychopharmacology of cannabinoids

Allan H Young, David J Nutt

July 5, 2021 (Editorial)

https://doi.org/10.1177/02698811211028673

Although everyone seems to have an opinion about cannabis, we still seem far from a coherent, evidence-based drugs policy that enables individuals to make informed decisions about the consequences of their drug use (Weissenborn and Nutt, 2012). On the other hand, the long-predicted era of cannabinoid medicines seems to be slowly dawning (Nutt, 2005). In this edition of the Journal, several studies focus on various aspects of cannabinoid psychopharmacology in both preclinical and clinically relevant studies.

Addiction and all attendant issues are rarely ever entirely removed from consideration in clinical psychopharmacology. Schlag et al. (2021) critically review cannabis-based medicines and cannabis dependence. Interestingly, their narrative review concludes that medical and recreational cannabis use differs in significant ways thus highlighting the challenges of extrapolating findings from the recreational cannabis literature to medical use. Although cannabis legalization is expanding patchily, internationally there are no established methods for detecting cannabis impairment. Spindle et al. (2021) report an assessment of subjective effects, cognitive and psychomotor impairment, and blood delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ-9-THC) concentrations following acute administration of oral and vaporized cannabis. Standard approaches for identifying impairment due to cannabis exposure were found to have severe limitations, but novel methods offer the prospect of more valid and reliable measurement. Freeman et al. (2021) reported in a mega-analysis that whether the variation in trait schizotypy and frequency of cannabis use influences the acute subjective, cognitive, and psychotomimetic effects of Δ-9-THC. Among a number of interesting findings, they reported that trait schizotypy did not moderate THC’s effects on psychotomimetic symptoms. O’Neill et al. (2021) detailed a study of cannabidiol (CBD) modulation of hippocampal glutamate in early psychosis. Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy was used to measure left hippocampal glutamate levels after single doses of CBD. Their data suggest a link between the increase in glutamate levels and concomitant decrease in symptom severity under CBD treatment observed in the psychosis patients which may underlie the antipsychotic effects of CBD. In another imaging-based study, Schnakenberg Martin et al. (2021) reported altered cerebellar-cortical resting-state functional connectivity in cannabis users. Cannabis use was associated with altered patterns of connectivity from the cerebellum to the cerebral cortex, a finding which may be associated with changes in behavior and cognition. Xia et al. (2021) evaluated responses to social evaluative stress in regular cannabis smokers. They reported that cannabis smokers have blunted mood responses to social stress, but unimpaired physiological stress responses.

Earleywine et al.’s (2021) paper is intriguingly entitled “Cannabis-induced oceanic boundlessness,” and their study examined if self-reported responses to cannabis products parallel to those found in clinical trials of psilocybin administration. Findings suggest that high doses of cannabis can induce subjective effects comparable to those of psilocybin and thus raise the interesting prospect of cannabis-assisted psychotherapy. Hernandez et al. (2021) used a rat model of the effects of repeated adolescent exposure to cannabis smoke on cognitive outcomes in adulthood. Somewhat reassuringly, their findings were consistent with limited long-term adverse cognitive and affective consequences of adolescent exposure to relatively low levels of cannabinoids. Two further preclinical studies complete this issue. Calpe-López et al. (2021) reported that CBD prevents priming- and stress-induced reinstatement of the conditioned place preference induced by cocaine in mice, suggesting that CBD could reduce cocaine seeking after a period of abstinence. Finally, Ebrahimi-Ghiri et al. (2021) examined whether the fatty-acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) inhibitor, URB597, could abrogate anxiogenic and depressive behaviors in the methamphetamine-withdrawal mouse model. Results suggest that URB597 has a potential to prevent methamphetamine-withdrawal evoked anxiety and depression. Cannabinoid type 1/2 receptors (CB1Rs and CB2Rs) and transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) may differently affect depression-related behaviors in this paradigm.

Although the debate about decriminalization of cannabis has seemingly moved little in the past quarter century (Ashton and Young, 1995), the science evaluating both the underlying neuroscience and the benefits and harms of cannabinoid medicines continues to advance greatly and seems likely to pay dividends for human health in the future.

Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: Professor Young’s independent research is funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health.

References

Ashton, CH, Young, AH (1995) Decriminalisation of cannabis. Lancet 346: 1708–1709.
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