Getting way too high is just a badge of honor that all of us diehard cannabis enthusiasts must earn. There is something to be said about pushing one’s limits, regardless of whether it is intentional or not, by ingesting more THC-infused Capow! than a fragile mind is prepared to handle at the moment. It is almost certainly a horrific experience, though, dealing with the souped-up anxiety and paranoia that an overzealous evening with the leaf can bring. If that rhymed a little, you’re probably too high right now. My advice is to get through as much of this article as possible while you still can.

No matter how much the many articles published on the subject of cannabis-induced paranoia and panic keep preaching, “Hey, man, never fear, you’re not going to die from this, you’re just freaking out,” nothing and I mean nothing is going to talk a person down from this madness once it takes hold. Still, that hasn’t stopped the internet from spreading all sorts of hippy-dippy come down tactics for calming down a wicked canna-panic. Presumably, they hope that people suffering from too much highness will click on their reports and find some comfort inside their lunatic brain. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: They probably won’t find much. Especially not with these five wacky remedies for taming that THC-infused animal running wild inside your skull.

Just Relax

The first thing people like to tell someone who is far too high for their own good is to just “try to relax.” The operative word here is try. Sure, the person hiding underneath the coffee table begging someone to call 911 may have embarked on their stoned journey fully aware that there was absolutely no possible way that they could die from biting off more than they could chew. They may have seen all the statistics, saw how even the DEA admits there have been no reported cases of fatal marijuana overdose. By all accounts, they were ready. Yet, in spite of their preparedness, the weed has them flipping their script, summoning all sorts of stink demons up from the bottom of the Earth to suck out their soul one shallow breath at a time. And all everyone around them keeps saying is, “Yo, you need to relax.” Listen, that’s easier said than done, we don’t care who you are. Edibles in high doses just have a way of climbing on top of a person and makes it hard to calm down. I’m not saying that trying to keep calm isn’t a solid move, but most people in this condition are far too busy trying to keep their heads from spinning off their shoulders to do it alone.

Break Out The Pepper & Maybe A Squirt of Lemon

When the situation involving an extremely high individual takes a turn for the worse — because none of that relaxation talk worked out — there is some science out there that suggests black pepper, and maybe even some lemon juice will help take the edge off. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but the pepper trick apparently works for Neil Young! Still, it’s not like sprinting off to the kitchen and snorting up lines of spices will keep your skeleton from clawing its way out of your skin. It’s a bit less Scarface meets Hellraiser than all of that. But there are some studies that show crushing up a pile of peppercorns and inhaling the aroma is effective at easing a relentless buzz. This is because the pepper binds to the same receptors as cannabis and works to produce a calming effect. Now, repeat after me: Om….. Om….. Achoo! The same goes for lemon juice. Science shows that knocking back some fresh lemon juice with some of the zest from the peel can help fight off the THC demons playing paddywhack in the brain. There is a distinct possibility, however, that the person leaning on the pepper and lemon methods to kick their canna-panic might just end up sneezy, all puckered up and still desperately wishing their high would go away.

Jump In A Cold Shower

Okay, I’ve have seen this method used countless times in the movies whenever someone gets insanely drunk and has like 30 minutes to sober up and get to work. But if you’ve ever tried this at home — and some of us have — the trick here is a bit of a disappointment considering that it really just leaves you drunk, cold and sopping wet. Nevertheless, some publications believe that tossing a person into a cold shower is a sure-fire way to get then to calm down from a buzz that just won’t let go. The idea is that by shocking the central nervous system with a cold shower, the THC will learn who’s boss and back off its mission to drive the person straight over the edge. But go ahead and give it your best shot. As far as we can tell, a legion of THC has no fear of whatever elements you throw at it. This cannabinoid is the postal worker of all cannabinoids. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” will ever keep an overabundance of THC from knocking your face in the dirt.

Get Some Fresh Air

Chances are the first place a THC spawned werewolf is going once a high gets too hard to handle is outside. It’s the next best thing to an oxygen tank, which they will most certainly be kicking themselves for not having around the house once the involuntary act of breathing all of a sudden exclusively falls on them. But in the dozens of times I have witnessed someone running for the door, trying to escape the high horrors that keep nibbling at their backside like a school of piranha with the munchies, I’ve never known a couple of whiffs of fresh air to help anyone get straight. But at least it gets these fools out of the house. As long as they don’t start howling at the moon and getting the cops snooping around, outdoors is probably the best place for them.

Get Some Rest

Oh boy, this one is a doozy. After all else fails, some of the best advice the internet has to offer is to just get the person to crawl into bed and get some rest. Only much like some of the other methods on this list, that’s not exactly the easiest thing to do. Trying to get someone who is freaking out on weed to lie still in a dark room with only their racing thoughts to keep them company is a recipe for taking a gnarly situation and making it worse. I’m sorry to say, but just putting the super high to bed and hoping they will no longer annoy everyone else in the house is never going to work. These people need special care — someone to talk to and coax them down off the proverbial ledge — otherwise, they could ultimately lose their composure and fall to pieces. Honestly, we’ve only seen this method work if a bottle of benzodiazepines is close by.

TELL US, what do you do to calm down when you get too high?

The post Weird Ways the Internet Says to Calm Down THC-Induced Panic Attacks appeared first on Cannabis Now.

For some, it might mean feeling a little uneasy when matched with an unknown entity that catches them off guard when they least expect it, or a looming dread of a weekly editorial meeting that keeps them from wanting to get out of bed. Hey, we’ve been there. There are other people, however, who have an irrational, crippling fear (otherwise known as a phobia) of something that hinders their lives with such ferocity that they will do everything in their power to maintain a safe distance.

You won’t catch these folks in or even around an airport, near the snake pit at the local zoo, in confined spaces, or checking out the view from the top of the Empire State Building. Oh, hell no. People with phobias are perfectly content living their lives without any of these perceived frightening situations turning them into a frayed ball of nerves. Maybe even you have a phobia that you’ve lived with ever since you can remember that still, to this day, scares the holy bejeezus out of you. You’d do anything to avoid facing it. But don’t feel bad, you’re not alone. Around 19 million people all across the U.S. suffer from an irrational fear of something, which makes it the most common mental disorder in the country, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

There is no need to fear, though, cannabis might be just what the doctor ordered. A body of evidence has emerged over the past six years or so suggesting that marijuana, or at least some of its essential compounds, might be able to help people with certain kinds of phobias be less afraid.

A study from the University of Michigan, which was published in the journal Neuropsychology in 2013, finds that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) might provide phobia patients with a trapdoor out of the horrific anxiety that comes with these conditions. In some cases, researchers discovered that the stoner cannabinoid is so beneficial in this respect that it even allowed some patients to work through their fears and moved past them. But it’s not like researchers just got a bunch of people super stoned and then tossed them in a closed space and let them work out their anxieties.

The study, which involved around 30 people, used a Pavlovian fear extinction paradigm and simultaneous skin conductance response recording while dosing patients with a synthetic version of THC called dronabinol, according to Science Direct. Still, researchers say that people under the influence of THC showed less fear over time. “These results provide the first evidence that pharmacological enhancement of extinction learning is feasible in humans using cannabinoid system modulators, which may thus warrant further development and clinical testing,” the study authors wrote.

Another study, this one from the Frontiers of Pharmacology, shows that America’s favorite non-intoxicating cannabis compound cannabidiol (CBD) might actually have some therapeutic benefit when it comes to dealing with specific phobias. The study, which was led by Chenchen Song of the University of Birmingham in 2017, shows that 10 mg injections of CBD were able to reduce the fear memory in rats. Sure, it’s not likely that these animals were afraid of heights or flying, but Song says that the cannabis component did make them less fearful of being eaten alive by predators. It’s the same reason that the compound has been shown effective in treating people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Essentially, some phobias, just like PTSD, manifest after a harrowing situation. The gist of the research is that CBD, which has gained some notoriety as an anxiety-squashing drug, was effective at preventing this fear from coming to the surface.

“In the more translationally-relevant stronger conditioning setting, CBD both acutely inhibited fear expression and enhanced extinction to produce longer-lasting reductions in fear,” the study reads. “These observations provide further support for the potential translational use of CBD in conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and specific phobias.”

It is possible, considering this body of evidence, that phobia patients might be able to contend with their fears with the use of medical marijuana. Traditionally, these conditions have been dealt with by prescribing beta-blockers, antidepressants and tranquilizers, but these drugs can be habit-forming and make a person feel less human than an irrational fear of anything. Still, it’s okay to be skeptical about the power of cannabis when it comes to treating phobia cases. I am. I mean, I’ve been pretty stoned in my day and never once was there a time when I felt any less freaked out by the thought of a snake slithering up next to me. And getting high and traveling to the top of the Empire State Building last year, well, that just gave me vertigo and made the experience even more frightening than it would have been under normal circumstances. However, at its most basic level, some strains of marijuana (Somari, Super Skunk Auto and Bigfoot) have been known to calm the anxiety that one experiences when those phobias kick in. Our best advice is to check with your budtender to find out what other fraidy cats are using to get through the terror.

TELL US, have you ever used cannabis to deal with a terrifying fear?

The post Marijuana Might Be Beneficial in Combating Phobias appeared first on Cannabis Now.

The average cannabis user living in states where marijuana is legal has the luxury of stepping inside his or her friendly neighborhood dispensary for access to a variety of pot products, like edible candies, pills, topicals, concentrates and even beverages. These processed variations of the cannabis plant are designed for those consumers who don’t necessarily want to smoke to achieve the desired effect. But when it comes to which method of consumption is best for patients suffering from chronic pain, a new study suggests that loading a bowl full of flower is still the most effective path to getting back to good.

Researchers at the University of New Mexico determined that people trying to manage pain through the use of cannabis are simply better off smoking bud than relying on other forms of the herb. The findings, which were published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine, indicate that “whole cannabis flower was associated with greater pain relief than were other types of products.” The researchers go on to say that “higher tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) levels were the strongest predictors of analgesia and side effects prevalence across the five pain categories.”

These results are especially interesting considering that cannabidiol (CBD), the non-intoxicating compound of the cannabis plant, is now being praised as a rockstar at taming pain. Even the folks pushing the hemp-derived version of this medicine, which is much weaker than the oils made from marijuana, swear that this sometimes truck stop novelty is the key to living pain-free. However, researchers beg to differ. They have concluded that the presence of THC, which produces the stoned effects we all know and love, is also essential if the user expects any discernible pain-relief results.

“Cannabis flower with moderate to high levels of (THC) is an effective mid-level analgesic,” the study reads.

But it just isn’t the existence of THC that makes smoking marijuana the best approach to pain management.

We have swelled into a society convinced that dissecting cannabis and separating its components into good and evil is the right approach to the plant. This is perhaps the reason that CBD has risen to such stardom in the past five years. The problem with this attitude is that it completely disregards the 100 or so other cannabinoids that the cannabis plant has to offer. It also discounts essential terpenes and flavonoids and thereby eliminates any possibility that the patient will benefit from the plant’s synergistic properties. Science established long ago that the entourage effect associated with whole-plant cannabis is what truly provides the therapeutic effects. So, all of you military service members prohibited from using CBD products, don’t worry, you’re definitely not missing much.

But what about kids suffering from epilepsy? Dr. Sanjay Gupta told us years ago that they needed the CBD compound to stop seizures. Sure, while some sick children might have had some luck controlling this affliction through the use of CBD alone, a study published found the compound was more effective at helping them stay seizure-free if it was complemented with just a hint of THC. Researchers found that the closer they got to allowing the two cannabinoids to work together, the better the results. “We saw a statistically significant reduction in motor seizures, and an increase in seizure-free days,” the study authors said.

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a CBD-based drug called Epidiolex to be prescribed to young patients suffering from two rare forms of epilepsy, not even it is expected to be a miracle cure. The drug, which contains absolutely no THC, is only effective in around 32% of patients, according to the FDA. Parents with epileptic kids have long complained that CBD alone just doesn’t do the trick and that the efficacy of this compound has been hyped beyond belief.

The study out of New Mexico, however, provides some guidance for an America looking for answers as to whether marijuana can relieve pain or not.

A separate study published from the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) shows that 75% of the U.S. population, most of them millennials, has a genuine interest in learning more about how pot can combat pain conditions. These folks, presumably those fed up with all of the anecdotal reports and the conflicting studies that emerge every other week, want to see the federal government finally roll up their sleeves on the cannabis issue and deliver real results.

Unfortunately, it seems that medical marijuana users are going to have to get high before they experience any noticeable pain relief. And that complicates things for a vast majority of the U.S. population — especially those in the workforce. Unlike over-the-counter pain remedies like acetaminophen and ibuprofen, which eliminate some of the hurt without a buzz, smoking marijuana to combat minor aches could lead to impairment issues on the job. Just like most companies don’t allow workers to drink booze on the clock, medical marijuana is not likely to be any different, even after federal legalization finally takes hold. So, don’t sell your stock in Tylenol just yet.

The post Smoking A Bowl of High-THC Flower Might Be Best For Combatting Pain appeared first on Cannabis Now.