Science Vs - Cannabis: I Get High With a Little Help From … Science

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Weed has gone mainstream, and it's been rebranded as a wellness drug that you can customize to fit your needs. Want to feel relaxed? Well, you'll need a kind of pot called Indica. Want to get pepped up? Go for Sativa. But what can weed really do for us? We’re going to pack a bowl full of science facts, sit back, put our feet up and find out: Can cannabis really improve your mental health? Does it matter what strain you take? And how safe is it – can it mess with your memory? To find out, we talk to agricultural scientist Dr. Sean Myles, psychopharmacologist Dr. Amir Englund, and psychologist Dr. Carrie Cuttler.  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/ScienceVsCannabisTranscript  In this episode, we cover: (00:00) A New World of Weed (05:32) Can Different Strains of Weed Do Different Things for You? (13:18) Can CBD Give You a More Mellow High? (22:46) Can Weed Help with Anxiety or Depression? (24:55) What Are The Risks of Using Cannabis? (35:30) What’s the Safest Way to Use Cannabis? (38:25) Can Weed Boost Your Creativity? This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Joel Werner. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke to including Professor Ryan Vandrey, Professor Christopher Barnes, Dr. Siqi Xue, Professor Susan Tapert, Dr. Michael Dunn, Dr. Linda Parker, Professor Deepak D'Souza, Professor Vikaas Sohal, Professor Loren Frank, and Dr. Ethan Russo. Also thanks to Jill Conforti, the Zukerman Family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson, Bernadette Sciandra, and Chris Suter.  Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus. This is the show that pits facts against firing up a J as we tackle cannabis. More and more people have been using weed. According to one Gallup poll, last year around one in six American adults smoked pot, which is more than double what it was 10 years ago. And recently, when I was visiting New York, you could just smell it in the air. It was that huge wave of pot just came over me, not mine, just the city. I just forgot how much New York just smells like weed. All the time.

It's all pretty apropos. Because I was walking to a cannabis shop in Manhattan, a legal one. I opened the door to a clean, brightly lit weed store. It just looks like an Apple store. With something that kind of looks like a dildo. It's like a... Hi! Hi! Hi! I'm meeting senior producer Meryl Horne,

and we marvelled at the giant dildo together, which was actually a five-foot-tall sculpture of a joint. Then we met one of the bud tenders, Kiara. She told us about the store's grand opening last year. It was just packed in there. There's, like, you're, like, trying to move, and, like, do you need any help? And you're, like, going around other people, and It was just packed in there. There's, like, you're, like, trying to move and, like, do you need any help?

And you're, like, going around other people. And it was just crazy because, like, we're actually selling weed and I'm, like, pulling pre-rolls and giving aids. And I'm like, this is crazy. But what feels even more crazy is that looking around this store, it's not just, you know, grab some pre-rolls and light up. These days, there's a whole world of weed options available to you. Different kinds of weed that you can buy

to tailor to the exact experience that you're after. Uh, wellness oil. Oh, man. Whoa, what is that? Cannabis-infused sparkling water. Like, Kiara told us that if you're looking for a pot to make you feel relaxed, then you need to try this kind of weed called indica. Indica, in the bed, in the couch, in the house. We're not leaving.

It's so good for, like, that quiet mind. You're relaxing. Sativa strains, on the other hand, are supposed to get us pepped up. Sativa, I always tell people, I'm like, you want to have a good time? Like, when it's like a group of homegirls are, like, coming in, they're like, yeah, we just want to get a little... I'm like, yeah, get this, get this. So, no, you're going to have a good time.

You're going to be dancing, you're going to listen to the music. Online, you'll read that Blackberry Kush can, quote, de-stress the most anxious minds and maybe even help you with depression, while White Rhino, with its high high THC can smack you down. And if you get paranoid from smoking pot, which I do, then supposedly we've got to buy pot that is filled with a chemical called CBD.

Here's Kiara. The CBD will hold your hand, and she's like, you're good, we're here together, relax. And in the store, there were all these science-y looking signs showing the different properties of different chemicals in weed. Meryl and I read them out. Memory enhancer and anti-inflammatory. Sedative sleep aid.

Mood enhancer. So, pot has truly entered the wellness industrial complex. And looking around, we had a very obvious question. Is this for real? Can you really customise your weed for the perfect experience that you want? Because there is another side to this story. You see, not everyone reckons that cannabis is the next celery juice. Some say that this drug is dangerous, that it can mess with your memory, or even worse. Every marijuana lover will tell

you how safe the plant is. They say it's a gift from God. It comes from Earth. But is it more dangerous than we believe? The use of cannabis in young populations is very strongly predisposing people to psychotic episodes. A woman claims she was under a marijuana-induced psychotic episode when she stabbed her boyfriend to death, striking him over 100 times. So what is going on here? Today on the show, we are going to find out, one, do these different kinds of weed, sativa, indica, mean anything? Two, can CBD wipe away your pot paranoia? Fingers crossed on that one. Three, can pot really help you with your depression and anxiety? And finally, what are the risks here? Despite the scary headlines, just before leaving the store,

I grabbed some pot pills with CBD in them. You know, just in case the science has some good news for us. There you go. Is that the first time you've bought pot? Uh, yes. Ever? Ever. Wow.

Yes. Thank you so much. My receipt for pot, right? Ever. Wow. Yes. Thank you so much. My receipt for pot, right? When it comes to cannabis, it turns out there's a lot of... Something that kind of looks like a dildo. But then there's science. Science versus pot is coming up just after the break. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology and what do they think?

I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist?

And where is Jan 11? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right, I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jan 11. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is...

Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Welcome back. Today on the show, we're looking at the science of cannabis and finding out what can it do for you. And to find out more, we're going to need a real pothead. Hey, hey. A bong queen. Hi, Dr. Meryl Horne, PhD.

Hi, Wendy. Are you finally going to teach me how to smoke a bong? Yes, that's what we're doing. Is that what we're doing today? I don't think of myself as a pothead just for the record um but i i did want to look into this idea from the store that you can get um different kinds of weed to feel specific things but like indicas will make you feel relaxed and sativas will make you feel more energized and sprinkle sprinkle a little CBD on, and you won't feel as anxious. Like, I want to know if all of that's true or not.

Yeah, yeah, I want to know too. Yes. Yeah, so for this, I wanted to talk to Sean Miles. He's an associate professor in agricultural science at Dalhousie University in Canada. And he says that weed is super interesting compared to most of the plants researchers like him study. Most, you know, agricultural breeding and genomics and the kind of stuff we do is like, how do you make the carrot bigger? How do you make the tomato redder? Yeah. And now it's like, how do you make the pot putter?

How do you make it do this or that or the other thing? It's like there's so many different possibilities for a pot. It's like, you know, you walk into a weed store and there's all these different varieties or strains. And the fact that we have these different types of weed actually puts it in this elite family with some of our greatest hits. Like, okay, so most of the time, like a carrot is just a carrot is a carrot. But then there are these things like apples and grapes, where we actually name the specific plants.

Like, you know, a Macintosh and a Granny Smith and a Honeycrisp and that kind of thing. Then, you know, in wine, there's grapes. There's Pinot Noir and there's Chardonnay. And there's all these different grape varieties. They all smell and taste very different from each other. And then in cannabis, there's Bubba Kush and there's, you know, Durban Poison and there's, you know, Durban poison and there's whatever, whatever, whatever. And Sean says that these names for grapes or apples mean

something really specific. If you go to the grocery store and it says honey crisp apples, like they have to be honey crisp apples. You can't, that's a unique singular genetic identity. They're all identical. I love his defense of Honeycrisp apples. I would be very pissed as an apple person if I went in for that Honeycrisp and out came, I don't know, some Fuji or something. Yeah. And so even if you got that Honeycrisp from a totally different store, it shouldn't be the same, right? Like almost identical genetically. To its core, the same apple. Yeah. And Sean wanted to know if the same thing was true for cannabis. Oh, it's not.

Oh, I thought it had to be true because it's in the elite special family. Oh, no. Like, we've always assumed that these different plants have these different effects because people give them fun names. But like, pretty much nobody had actually bothered to like sequence the plants, look at the DNA and see like, wait a minute, is there something called bubba kush that's actually the same no matter where you're getting that bubba kush? Okay. So Sean's team got some white rhino.

They got some Dr. Grinspoon. They got some King's kush. They got all these different types of weed from different growers in Canada. And then he sequenced the DNA to find out, like, if he had two white rhinos from two different growers, how similar are they to each other? Okay. And they should be the same. If this is a Honeycrisp situation, they should be identical. Yeah. Yeah, they should be identical or almost identical.

Right. But no. Yeah, he did not find that. With a lot of the samples, he couldn't find much in common between them. And a third of the time, the white rhino or whatever was more similar to a completely different thing

than it was to the other white rhino in his data set. Which is nuts. Like, that just shouldn't happen. Even if they were siblings of each other or they were in a tight family with each other, you would expect them to be more closely related. Yeah. So the takeaway here is that the names don't really mean anything. It's not like when someone hands you a glass of Chardonnay or a Honeycrisp Apple. So in cannabis, you go to the store and they say, this is Bubba Kush. And that's the biggest

piece of bullshit I've ever heard in my life. That name means absolutely nothing. Whoa. Whoa, that is the biggest piece of bullshit I've ever heard in my life. Wow. I spat out my water then. That's what that sound was. Ha.

Okay. Okay. So does that mean that like Indica and Sativa are also bullsh**? It must, right? Sean wanted to actually look at that too. So yeah, he wanted to see if these two big categories, Indica and Sativa, are real. So he analyzed the weed samples genetically and chemically, but he told me that no, like there basically were not two clean groups that fell out. Not at all. Overall, what we're finding is that the use of this

indica and sativa thing is more misleading than it is helpful. This really like puts a spin on the whole cannabis marketing campaign, right? Basically. I mean, like there were some differences here, like some chemicals that mostly affect how the weed smells actually were a little bit more likely to be in either the indica stuff or the sativa stuff, but even that wasn't consistent.

So now Sean's starting to spread the word about how unscientific these names and categories are. Like the evidence for this is so poor, But when I went to give this talk at a CannaCon, it was like a cannabis conference out in Seattle. You could just see people in the audience like shaking their heads. They're like, there's no way. He's like, basically, you just got samples from an idiot because we totally know what's Indica and what's Sativa. Did he get samples from an idiot? Well, I mean, I guess he got samples from a bunch of different people in the Netherlands.

So, yeah, sure, maybe they're all idiots. And then... Quick to throw the Dutch under the bus, Meryl. And he's out of the Canadian pot, found the same thing. And then another group did this on a bunch of different places in the U.S. You know, California, Washington, Colorado. And in all three of these studies, the whole indica and sativa thing hasn't borne out.

Oh, wow. Oh, man. But like Sean says, that when you really think about the history of this plant, how it's been bred for hundreds of years, like maybe it's not actually that surprising. We've been using this plant like crazy and moving it around the world like mad. And it's been shuffling and we've been mixing the genomes together like crazy. And then it goes underground. Nobody's allowed to talk about it. And the only people who are able to go and do all this breeding

are, you know, smoking a ton of weed and hanging out, you know, breeding a bunch of cannabis. Things were flying around everywhere, right? So at the store, when they were like, indica will put you in the couch and sativa will get you, like, that's all garbage then. You can't even tell the difference between these plants. Then what they functionally do in your body also shouldn't be different, right? Yeah, if there's no consistent thing that is an indica or a sativa, then it makes no sense that they... It doesn't even matter if maybe there are some things that would give the weed special effects. But if it's not consistent that indicas always have these things and sativas have these things,

then it just is meaningless. Okay. All right, Meryl. So my next question is about CBD. Asking for a friend on this one. Apparently it can wipe away the paranoia that some of us get from pot, which, you know, would be nice. Yeah, it would be. So that's the way people talk about CBDbd it's like thought to be the

kind of mellow chemical cousin to thc um so thc is the thing and weed that gets you high and that is still true right that is still true yes all the myth busting going on today thc still makes you high yes thc is the thing that gets you stoned, but it can also make you anxious and paranoid. And there's this idea that CBD can really help with that stuff. But is that true? That's what Amir England wanted to find out. He's a research fellow at King's College, London. When you're talking about cannabis and you tell people that this is what you study at a party, are people just like, whoa, that's the coolest job ever. Yeah. Yeah. And obviously the next question is, oh, can I help with research?

You know, do you need research participants? Yeah. So Amir had done this study several years ago and it looked like, like maybe CBD was helping with paranoia. And he got excited. So recently, he set up a much more robust study, this double-blind clinical trial. I love it. To really test whether CBD could do anything here. So he gave people THC and CBD. Okay.

And he wanted to find out what's the perfect dose of CBD? So they also tried a few different ratios of THC to CBD. And they were using, like, kind of a lot of THC, about the same as what's in a joint. Yeah. No, people got very decently stoned. And Amir stood over them with a stopwatch to make sure they inhaled long enough and that they got through the whole amount. Oh, God. It's like my nightmare. Yeah. I don't think you would do well on this experiment. Definitely not. Yeah. A bunch of people didn't actually. So 20% of the people he tried this with ran into some trouble. A lot of the times we haven't even gotten halfway through the dose and the participant looks horrible.

So we just stop it there, let them rest. Oh, man. We call them sometimes whiteys. Whiteys. Yeah, whiteys. So blood, you know, runs from your face and you go all pale. You feel nauseous and lightheaded and horrible. So that was one of the most common reasons for not carrying

on the study. So yeah, so that would be you. But for everyone else who could handle the study, Amir wanted to see whether the CBD was working. So yeah, he asked them several times about how anxious they were and also looked at paranoia, which did happen. Like, he told me about this one person. They thought that while they were doing the cognitive tasks on the laptop, that the fan above them started to sound like an audience of women talking about them negatively. Oh, God.

So just a buzz. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. And then other people got paranoid of the researchers. Like, one person was convinced Amir's colleague was filming them during the experiment. And they had to, like, show their phone to convince them that they weren't doing that. So, a lot of people had a really crappy time. Oh, my God. And so, after all of this, what did he find?

All right. So, he remembers when he got the results. He was actually trying to take a break from all the research. He was in a hotel room in Istanbul. I was on holiday, actually. And I got a text message from my friend and colleague who had the news for me. I just couldn't believe it at the time.

I was a bit in a state of shock. What did it say? It said that CBD doesn't work. Okay. So by that, you were just as likely to get paranoid or anxious. Yeah. Wow. And I was like, no, that can't be true. It was really depressing. It was just really, really consistent that CBD did not have an effect on pretty much anything that we studied.

On anything? Yeah, at all. The only thing that it did influence was the amount of coughing that the participant experienced. Yeah, so weirdly, CBD made people cough more. But that was it. And it's not just Amir's lab, though. There's another lab that found early promising research around CBD like Amir did,

but then they also couldn't replicate their own results when they tried it later. Oh, no! Yeah, so it does not seem like we can really count on CBD to take away our anxiety or paranoia. Interesting. Just maybe bad news for you. But yeah, you actually bought some pot. Did you take it? Yes, I did. I did. I actually took it on my last day while I was in the US because I was like, I cannot forget and I cannot fly to Australia with pot in my back.

Good call. I've watched those movies. They don't end well. Yeah. And so I did take it and I was a little anxious because I do get paranoid. The pill had THC and CBD in it. And I was in Denver at the time and I took it at the Denver Art Museum. I recorded a little bit.

Do you want to hear it? Yeah, of course. Hey. So I'm just trying to, like, lean into the feelings, you know? And right now I'm, like, looking at this amazing sculpture of this, like, large figure with these huge feet. Maybe the feet aren't, maybe they're proportionate. Maybe because it's just like the statue is huge.

It's really cool. It's so embarrassing. I am digging this. No paranoia kicking in so far, is great it's only grabbing some fun sorry could i just clarify the statue was very big and so the feet were big the question was whether the feet were proportionate to the rest of the statue. Okay, okay. So you didn't get paranoid. So this is probably the first time that I really didn't get paranoid on pot. But so you don't think it's about the CBD. Why do you think this might have been helpful? Yeah, even though your weed had CBD in it, I think the thing that might have actually mattered more

is just the dose of THC. Because when I looked at the photo you sent me of the package, I noticed that it was like a really small amount of THC, only 2.5 milligrams. Of THC, uh-huh. And that could explain why you generally like didn't have a lot of anxiety. Because people who have too much THC

are more likely to get anxious. Oh, so it's about the THC. That's the thing. Yeah. Okay. I also looked into these chemicals called terpenes, by the way, since they're like a big part of the modern like weed lore.

People will say that they like work synergistically and give you these amazing feelings um and there is a review on this that gets cited a lot that kind of suggests that like maybe there is something here but when i looked into this i couldn't really find like great evidence that terpenes do much for us um like at least at the levels you find them in in weed. Uh-huh. So yeah, as far as we know right now, it's really just about the THC. Here's how Amira puts it. Easiest way to reduce negative effects is just to reduce the use of THC. Just use less. Get less high.

Obviously not what everyone wants to hear. So, okay, so here is where we're at, Meryl. Despite all of the science-y sounding words that you see in weed stores and online about all these strains and these chemicals that can like tailor your pot to your personal needs. That's pretty much all bullshit. And it's really just about the THC and how much is in there. Yeah, as far as we know right now, yeah. All right, so after the break, can pot help you weed out your anxiety and depression?

And also the downsides, like a lot of our listeners wanted to know, can it mess with their memories? Coming up. Welcome back. Today on the show, we're looking at weed, what it can do for us, and also what are the risks, which are coming up a little bit later. With me here, the expert blazing through the science, is Meryl Horne. Hey, Meryl.

Hello. So the next thing we're tackling is whether pot can help you when you're feeling depressed and anxious. Does it? Yeah. So a lot of our listeners wanted to know about this. And it's kind of interesting because like we just talked about, for some people, pot can give you anxiety. But then there's a ton of people who say it helps with their anxiety. Okay. Yeah. And so I wanted to look at that. So I called up Carrie Cutler. She's an associate professor at Washington State University. And she told me about this one study that she did on this. So she got data on over a thousand people who were tracking their

symptoms, like their anxiety and their depression, using a medical cannabis app. And then she could look to see, did people feel better after using weed? And what we see by and large is that symptoms of all these conditions are reduced by about 50% right after people use cannabis. Yeah. People said that they felt like 50% better right after using weed. Oh, wow. And a lot of studies like seem to back this up. And so it kind of feels like weed is working some real magic here. But OK, so part of this

could be the placebo effect. Of course. And then Carrie also told me that the benefits here don't stick around. So when the high wears off, though, they sometimes just come back. This is a band-aid. It's temporarily masking the symptoms, making the person feel just generally less distressed. So this isn't a long-term solution. It's sort of like a little vacation. I feel like even a vacation from your symptoms is nice. Is this a win for cannabis? I don't know. Because if it wears off, that does mean, I guess, you have to keep smoking it and smoking it

and smoking it to get the effect. Yeah. Which maybe takes us to the risks. Is that bad? Exactly, yeah. Like, it brings up

this whole question of, like, how safe is this? So, one big fear here is to do with people's memories, since there's this feeling that we can like scramble our brains and ruin our memory. And Carrie's looked into this too. So like she'll do memory tests on people who are stoned. Like she'll give them a list of words and then ask them what words they remember. And like, maybe not surprisingly, when people are high,

their memories are little bananas. And what I'm noticing when I do verbal memory tests with them is they just make up all sorts of random words. I read a list of words that have like a fruit theme and, you know, tools theme. All the words are related to like fruits or tools. So they'll give a list like banana, mango, pineapple.

And then like just randomly, people are coming up with words that have nothing to do with anything, like barbecue, like that. All right. So yeah, there are tons of studies that back this up. When you're high, you don't do as well on a lot of these memory tests.

Okay. But then the big question is, what happens when you're not high anymore? Yes. So let's start with what happens pretty soon after you use weed, like in the next few days or a week or so after. I asked Carrie about this. I guess a lot of people might have questions about whether the effects stick around after you're not stoned anymore. They sure do. Absolutely. They stick around. So we have tested sober cannabis users. So people who use very regularly, but when they are not at all under the influence and they haven't used it all that day. And there, yes, again, we see problems with verbal memory. And I'm trying to think what other aspects of memory off the top of my head. There

goes my memory, of course. But yes, absolutely. You see issues with memory when people are sober. So one meta-analysis looked at a bunch of memory studies, and they found that when people who use pot a lot are sober, they still do about 25% worse on memory tests than people who don't use weed. So do we have a mechanism as to why it might be messing with people's memory? Yeah, we do know how this could be happening. So there's a system in our brain that's really important for a bunch of stuff, including how we make memories. It's actually called the endocannabinoid system.

So there are chemicals in our brains that are sort of similar to THC. And we make them like whether or not we smoke weed. We have compounds that are within us. And it's like our own little THC kind of, right? That we have within us naturally occurring. So these chemicals will latch on to a type of cannabinoid receptor in our brain. That's how they work. Uh-huh. Right. Normally, these chemicals latch onto the receptors. They do a delicate little dance in your brain. And that helps us do things like make memories. And then if you smoke pot, THC will come in and just like flood the whole system.

And it'll attach to all these cannabinoid receptors. Now, the problem is if you keep on blasting the system with THC, your receptors are going to be like, well, we're overstimulated. The reason this matters is because then your brain will basically take away a bunch of these receptors. So we can see this inside the brains of basically take away a bunch of these receptors. So we can see this inside the brains of people who use a lot of weed. They'll have fewer cannabinoid receptors, even when they've sobered up. Oh, wow. Okay, so this was regular users that hadn't smoked for like a week or something, right? We still see these memory problems. Yeah.

So then is it permanent? No, no. Okay. So it's not permanent. As far as we can tell, even if you use weed regularly, like a joint a couple of times a week, the brain can bounce back. So like those brain changes I was just telling you about with the receptors, those go away if you stop using weed. And after about a month, studies find that people's memories are fine too. And then for people who don't use that much weed at all, like maybe just a few times a month, their memories are fine when they're sober. So yeah. Right. Okay. So the take home message is like, if you smoke a lot of weed and don't remember,

I don't know, our great dildo joke at the beginning of this podcast, maybe give it a rest. Yeah, that would be tragic. So that's a sign. Maybe lay off it. And so then I guess just quickly, I have read some stuff online that if you're using pot when you're young, like you're a teenager, then you really have to worry. Is pot more dangerous if you're smoking when you're younger? Yeah. And so some studies do find that if you use weed like a lot before you're 17 or so, maybe the brain will have a harder time bouncing back. So I read those studies and it does look pretty bad. But then you find other studies that didn't find that.

Oh, okay. So what would you have told like little pothead Meryl when you were in high school, if you knew everything you knew now? Just don't use too much weed. Like, especially before you're in your 20s, that's around when the researchers told me is the kind of the time

area where if this is a thing, it should be like, you know, okay by then. But something that's fun is that we've been getting some like glimmers of research suggesting that using weed if you're over 60, like might actually be good for your brain. Oh. It could be boosting cognition, but we're not really sure yet. Oh. Well, that's fun. That's fun. Give the boomers something.

I mean, they've got the houses. Yeah. But what else? Good for them. All right. So something else that I've been hearing more and more about which is scarier than this idea that pot could mess with your memory,

and it's psychosis. Yeah. I mean, you do hear a lot of these scary stories about people who use weed, and then it'll trigger this really intense reaction where people will turn psychotic. He's been talking gibberish. Like, he was out of his mind.

Spetcher stabbed Amelia, the man she was dating over 100 times. The two had smoked marijuana and Spetcher had a catastrophic reaction. And is this actually from the pot? Yeah, the short answer is yes. Like there's something called cannabis-induced psychotic disorder. So this is where people can show up to the hospital after using weed with these really scary symptoms. I talked to Amir England about this. You can have grandiose delusions thinking that you're some famous celebrity or super important person like Jesus Christ.

And you're the second coming, you're here to save the world. Hallucinations, which is, you know, seeing, hearing, smelling sometimes. Smelling? Yeah. I mean, some patients have reported smelling horrible, nasty smells like sewage or something like that. And this can all happen from using cannabis? Yes. Oh my gosh. How common is that? We think it can happen to like somewhere around 1% of people who use cannabis regularly.

Does it ever not go away? Yeah. So one thing that's pretty scary about all of this is that researchers have tracked people who experienced that kind of thing and then see how likely it is that they'll go on to develop a major long-term psychotic illness like schizophrenia or bipolar. And it's almost 50%. Oh, shoot. Wait, so that's half of what? Half of the people who end up in a hospital with cannabis, that's a bit of a red flag to maybe not go back to that drug. And then like outside of this, like even if you don't have one of those episodes, there's also just research that generally shows if you use a lot of weed, you're more likely to get schizophrenia. What's frustrating is that we're still not sure

if using weed is causing schizophrenia. So what we see is an increased risk. If you smoke pot, it seems like it ups your risk of getting schizophrenia. Okay. But just to put things in perspective, there are a bunch of different things that we think can increase your risk for schizophrenia

which aren't making these like scary headlines. So like living in a city can up your risk for getting schizophrenia by about the same amount that weed does. And so can owning a cat. Oh, is that because that taxoplasmosis, that disease that cats have that could get in your brain? Yes. Yeah. So that is also linked to schizophrenia.

Right. And you live in a city and you have a cat. Meryl. I do. Yeah, which like, on the one hand, it's like, well, maybe I really shouldn't use weed if I'm doing all these other things that increase my risk for schizophrenia. But it also just makes me, yeah,

like, I'm not going to get rid of my cat. Or your bong. Will you get rid of your bong? Because I don't have a bong. But it just helped me, like, yeah, put this into perspective. Yes, yes. I'll probably still use weed occasionally. Yeah, interesting.

I don't think I would. Huh. I will not. I feel like maybe after the experience in the art gallery, I was like, oh, maybe I might experiment with this drug a little more. And now I'm like, nah, it's not worth it. It's not my drug. Yeah, that makes sense.

So, but I guess for people who, there'll be a lot of people who are like me. There'll be a lot of people listening right now who are like, Wendy, give me my bong. So we had a lot of listeners who just wanted practical advice on the safest way to take it. All right. Yes. So just quickly, what is the safest way to use cannabis? So first off, smoking pot, like even if it's medicinal in some ways, it's still bad for your lungs.

Right. Yes. It's not good to smoke anything. Like weed isn't special. But vap, it's still bad for your lungs. Right, yes. It's not good to smoke anything. Like weed isn't special. But vaping can also be bad for your lungs though. Like a lot of the stuff that's in these vapes have a bunch of nasty chemicals that can be toxic. And that leaves us with another option I asked Carrie about.

And what about edibles? No concerns with lung health there. You bypass all of that. So that's great. But the concern then is just that some people eat too much. It takes a long time for edibles to kick in. It can take like an hour for them to kick in. And people can get impatient and think, oh, it's not working. I need to take more. But then it hits and they're like, oh, like I took way too much now. And that's when they might feel like their heart rate really going or starting to have some anxiety and stuff like that.

So this can all add up, though. One report from Colorado said that people who ate pot were more likely to end up needing medical care than people who inhaled it. Right, right. So if you don't want to mess with edibles or vape oils or smoking, there is another option for you. Something called dry herb vaporizers. And these let you vape the cannabis flower directly. Okay. And this is actually what a bunch of scientists use in their studies. So it's sanctioned by the nerds. Great. So it looks like there will never be a need for me

to learn how to rip a bong then. No, you're off the hook. I'm off the hook. All right. So it's time for us to roll up our doobies and finish up this episode. These are our questions. Number one, do these different kinds of weed, sativa, indica, babacush, mean anything? The answer to that is no. Nope. Right. Number two, can CBD wipe away our pot paranoia?

No. Just go low on the THC. Three, pot might help you with your anxiety and depression, but it's really just a band-aid. And placebo effect. Yes, right. Sprinkle on a little of that. And finally, if you do use pot a lot, be aware it can muck up your memory. Now, before we go, there is this one little fun thing that Meryl, you found this study to see whether pot can boost your creativity.

Yeah. So I wanted to see if pot can boost your creativity. And it turns out there's actually this kind of fun way of measuring this in the lab. So maybe our listeners can try this as they dry or vape some weed. All right, so let me demonstrate on you, Wendy. Yes, while I am stone cold sober. So the test will be that you're going to have to think of as many uses for a brick as you can in four minutes. Oh, I hate these tests. Wait, of what a brick is? Yeah, how many different uses you can come up with for a brick in four minutes. All right, ready?

Ready. Go. Okay, a footstool, obviously to build a house. In four minutes. All right. Ready? Seti. Go. Okay. A footstool. Obviously, to build a house. As a paperweight. Use it as, like, a massage stone.

You could use it as a weapon. You could hit someone with it. If you had two of them, they could be ears. You could use it as a unicorn's horn. To cook. To cook, like, a pizza or something. You could... Could you eat it? You could use it to break your teeth.

If you really need to break your teeth, that's a tool for you. As a bra, maybe more as a bra, like under the boobs, hat. Time is up. All right. That was so many ideas. You did great. I feel like I just ran a marathon. All right. So in the study, they got these independent judges to come in and rate how creative everyone's ideas were.

And some of the ideas that you gave were actually in the paper. Oh. Like one of the ones that the independent judges said were creative was an outdoor pizza oven and for self-defense. Oh. I don't know. I think my favorite might have been two ears. I wouldn't be having that high creativity. But yeah. And then some of the other low creativity ones that they said were like to look at on a coffee table or to make a brick boat like that's not useful at all and so I think you did better than some of those oh thanks but what the f**k's a brick boat brick ears that's a thing what's a brick boat it sinks it doesn't no no nothing okay Okay. So did people on pot come up with more creative ideas? No, they didn't.

It did not help people's creativity. But there is something kind of fun about this, which was that the stone people thought that their ideas and just everyone's ideas were more creative. All right. So that caps off our podcast. Meryl, how many citations in this week's episode? We have 105 citations. So if you want to see them, you can go to our show notes and click on the link to the transcripts. Great, great. If you are on Instagram this week,

there's a fun video of Meryl and I at our brightly lit pot store with all that science-y looking stuff. So you can come check it out at science underscore VS. And if you're on TikTok, come say hello. I'm at Wendy Zuckerman. Thanks, Meryl. Thanks, Wendy.

This episode was produced by me, Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Joel Warner. We're edited by Blythe Sorrell. Fact-checking by Eva Dasher. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, and Peter Leonard. Thanks to all the researchers we spoke with, Thank you. Professor Vikas Sohal, Professor Lauren Frank, and Dr. Ethan Russo. Also thanks to Jill Conforti, the Zuckerman family, Joseph Lavelle Wilson, Bernadette Chandra, and Chris Suter.

Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. See you next week.