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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

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)?

fwip 7y ago
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.
jcims 7y ago
This is for CBD. Anxiety from cannabis is typically attributed to the THC content.
TrinaryWorksToo 7y ago
The logic is that CBD is different than THC, the anxiety provoking, psychoactive chemical.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
Interestingly marijuana does make me feel anxious, but at the same time completely alleviates my social anxiety.
oaththrowaway 7y ago
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.
mettamage 7y ago
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.
- grenoire 7y ago
  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...
- ryanlol 7y ago
  I smoke THC distillate with essentially no CBD, I find it to be calming and not to induce anxiety or paranoia.
  - mettamage 7y ago
    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.
Tagbert 7y ago
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.
colordrops 7y ago
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.
- gnulinux 7y ago
  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.
  - inciampati 7y ago
    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.
    - wallacoloo 7y ago
      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.
hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
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.
- whalesalad 7y ago
  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.
  - hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > 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.
    - 78dfshj4 7y ago
      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.
mullingitover 7y ago
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.
eof 7y ago
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.
hrangozz 7y ago
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.
- duncan-donuts 7y ago
  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.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    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.
    - gnulinux 7y ago
      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.
      - bfuller 7y ago
        yes, its technically federally legal, but some cities around me are still prosecuting CBD possession
dragonwriter 7y ago
> 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.
ZeroFries 7y ago
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.
whalesalad 7y ago
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 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_the_world_poster.jpg 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.
rectang 7y ago
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.
halbritt 7y ago
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.
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
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.
- cmclaughlin 7y ago
  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.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    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.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
weerd 7y ago
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. :)
INTPenis 7y ago
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.
newsgremlin 7y ago
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

fwip 7y ago

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.

jcims 7y ago

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

TrinaryWorksToo 7y ago

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

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

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

oaththrowaway 7y ago

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.

mettamage 7y ago

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.

grenoire 7y ago
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...
ryanlol 7y ago
I smoke THC distillate with essentially no CBD, I find it to be calming and not to induce anxiety or paranoia.
- mettamage 7y ago
  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.

Tagbert 7y ago

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.

colordrops 7y ago

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.

gnulinux 7y ago
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.
- inciampati 7y ago
  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.
  - wallacoloo 7y ago
    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.

hn_throwaway_99 7y ago

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.

whalesalad 7y ago
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.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
  > 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.
  - 78dfshj4 7y ago
    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.

mullingitover 7y ago

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.

eof 7y ago

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.

hrangozz 7y ago

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.

duncan-donuts 7y ago
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.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  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.
  - gnulinux 7y ago
    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.
    - bfuller 7y ago
      yes, its technically federally legal, but some cities around me are still prosecuting CBD possession

dragonwriter 7y ago

> 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.

ZeroFries 7y ago

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.

whalesalad 7y ago

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 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_the_world_poster.jpg 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.

rectang 7y ago

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.

halbritt 7y ago

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.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

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.

cmclaughlin 7y ago
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.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  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.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

weerd 7y ago

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. :)

INTPenis 7y ago

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.

newsgremlin 7y ago

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