It’s extremely common for someone to quit smoking because something in the experience turns against them. What once created an atmosphere of joy and relaxation suddenly shifted into neurosis and overthinking.
Some scientists at Northwestern University tried to figure out why this is the case. In order to make sure this was something that could be scientifically observed, they gave a synthetic drug cannabinoid to mice and put them in a dangerous situation (introducing the scent of fox urine) to see how they reacted differently from the placebo group.
What they found after analyzing brain tissue from the mice is that cannabis allowed the somatostatin neurons in the amygdala to activate more frequently. Basically the foot was taken off the brakes, and stress signals could run amok.
“Higher doses of cannabinoids and environmental stress worked together to synergistically release the ‘brake’ on the central amygdala, which in turn drove excessive anxiety,” said the author of the study, Dr. Patel.
“Suppressing the activity of somatostatin neurons in the central amygdala could represent a final pathway for reducing anxiety symptoms, not just in the context of cannabis side effects.”
So there you have it, the scientific reason your thought process fell into a death spiral. This is all hopeful because now that we can point to where the issue is coming from, we can manufacture ways to alter the cannabinoids to not have this issue. If that ever ends up being the case, I think you’d see weed’s popularity skyrocket pretty quickly.
Read the original article at The Debrief.
