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Category Archives: Marijuana

Secondhand Marijuana Smoke and Drug Tests

04 Wednesday Jan 2023

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Drug Tests, Handout, Marijuana

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secondhand smoke

People who are exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke may feel a bit of the “high” that comes with using the drug, a study finds. They may also feel unable to think clearly, and they may even have detectable levels of the drug in their urine or blood. But all of this happens only if they are exposed to marijuana smoke under severely unventilated conditions, the study found.

“If you’re going to breathe in enough passive cannabis smoke to feel high and potentially be slightly impaired, you could fail a drug test,” said Evan S. Herrmann, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “But this only happens under a very extreme situation.”

Cannabis is the world’s most commonly used illicit drug. It is often smoked in small, enclosed spaces with poor ventilation, according to the study.

Studies in the 1980s showed that such “social exposure” to pot smoke could trigger positive drug tests for cannabis’ main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). But such studies had several limitations. They used marijuana that had much lower potency than that available today and they failed to account for normal levels of ventilation in rooms. They also did not examine how people may feel or behave after such exposures.

“This study probes a question people have been wondering forever,” said Ziva Cooper, an assistant professor of clinical neurobiology at Columbia University, who was not involved in this research. “Do people actually get high from these ‘hot box’ effects? And if so, does it change your capabilities or cause you to fail a drug test?”

In the first study of its kind, Herrmann’s team recruited about 20 healthy people between the ages of 18 and 45, including some who smoked marijuana and some who didn’t use the drug. The researchers tested the participants’ blood, saliva, urine and hair samples for cannabis biomarkers, and then asked six smokers and six nonsmokers to relax in a Plexiglas and aluminum smoke chamber about the size of a dorm room. Participants underwent two separate sessions, each an hour long.

The researchers gave each of the six smokers 10 marijuana cigarettes, each containing 1 gram of high-potency weed, and instructed them to smoke at their leisure for the hour while the six non-smokers sat by their side in the chamber.

During one test session, the room’s ventilation system was switched on, allowing air to flow in and out at a standard office-building rate. In the other session, the researchers restricted the airflow in the chamber. After the 60 minutes, each participant completed a series of biological, cognitive and subjective surveys and tasks at regular intervals for up to 34 hours after exposure.

“Our results are pretty consistent with what we expected,” Herrmann said. The new findings confirm “it’s really hard to get a positive [drug test result] from passive smoke unless you’re in an extreme scenario,” he said.

Under the unventilated, “hot box” condition, the nonsmokers showed slight impairments on cognitive tests, reported feeling high, and had detectable levels of THC in their blood and urine for up to 22 hours post-exposure. Those in the ventilated condition had much lower levels of THC in their blood, did not feel impaired or high, and did not test positive for THC in their urine.

But the unventilated room is not representative of most real-life situations, the researchers said. “We modeled the worst-case scenario,” Herrmann said. “You are in an enclosed room for an hour with 15 grams of cannabis being smoked.”

Ideally, the study would have had a placebo group, in which nonsmokers were exposed to smoke without THC. This would have helped the researchers determine whether the feeling of being high was due to the marijuana or simply a placebo effect, from being exposed to smoke.

Still, “this study is really important because it adds to our limited knowledge of the direct effects of cannabis smoking and the potential dangers of second-hand smoke,” Cooper said.

Marijuana Addiction in the Age of Legal Weed

03 Tuesday Nov 2020

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Creative Therapy Tools, Marijuana, Research

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Generation X writer Neal Pollack thought he had it all: a good writing career, a strong marriage, even a lucrative 3-day run on “Jeopardy”! That brought him national attention. Like many in his generation, he also smoked a lot of marijuana. He had discovered that food, music and even his beloved yoga was much better when he smoked. In 2014, as several states in the country legalized pot, Pollack scored a writing gig for a marijuana site that provided free weed. He saw his drug use as harmless and joked about it often in his writing. But as more states, including California, began to legalize the drug, Pollack’s life began to fall apart, in part because of his drug use. Both of his parents died and he soon found himself spiraling out of control, sometimes in public. By 2018, Pollack admitted publicly he had a marijuana addiction and set about to conquer it, through honesty . . . and humor. Pollack’s new book, Pothead, is about coming to terms with his marijuana problems just as the country increased its recreational availability. The book is a cautionary and timely tale for those who think the drug isn’t dangerous and can’t cause serious addictive problems. Join us for a special evening program as Pollack discusses his story with Los Angeles novelist Bucky Sinister.

Researchers seek answers of brain on (legal) cannabis

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Marijuana, Research

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brain

For those suffering depression or anxiety, using cannabis for relief may not be the long-term answer.

That’s according to new research from a team at Colorado State University seeking scientific clarity on how cannabis — particularly chronic, heavy use — affects neurological activity, including the processing of emotions. 10501634_10152483771078046_6376046067124349017_n

Researchers led by Lucy Troup, assistant professor in the Department of Psychology, have published a study in PeerJ describing their findings from an in-depth, questionnaire-based analysis of 178 college-aged, legal users of cannabis. Recreational cannabis became legal in Colorado in 2014. Since then, seven other states have enacted legalization for recreational use, while many others allow medical use.

“One thing we wanted to focus on was the significance of Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, and its own unique population and use that occurs here,” Troup said.

Through the study, which was based solely upon self-reported use of the drug, the researchers sought to draw correlations between depressive or anxious symptoms and cannabis consumption.

They found that those respondents categorized with subclinical depression, who reported using the drug to treat their depressive symptoms, scored lower on their anxiety symptoms than on their depressive symptoms – so, they were actually more depressed than they were anxious. The same was true for self-reported anxiety sufferers: they were found to be more anxious than they were depressed. MORE HERE

Daily marijuana use has a measurable effect on the brain, a new study finds.

28 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Marijuana, recovery, Research

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Teenagers who smoked marijuana daily for three years performed poorly on memory tasks and showed abnormal changes in brain structure, according to a Northwestern Medicine study. Researchers in Chicago observed the brains of teenagers who were heavy users of marijuana. In those individuals, memory-related structures in the brain appeared to shrink and collapse inward, possibly indicating a decrease in neurons.

These abnormalities were recorded two years after the teens stopped using marijuana, possibly indicating long-term effects, and look similar to schizophrenia-related brain abnormalities.

The brains were shaped more abnormally for individuals who began marijuana use at a younger age, according to the reports, which suggest that memory regions of the brain are more susceptible to the drug at earlier ages.

The research was published in the December issue of Schizophrenia Bulletin.

Heavy marijuana use may harm the brain

12 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Marijuana, Research

≈ 1 Comment

New NIDA-funded research shows that heavy marijuana use (at least four times per week over the past six months) is linked to adverse changes in the function and structure of brain areas associated with reward, decision making, and motivation.  Heavy marijuana use can also enhance some brain circuits – possibly to compensate for reduced function in specific brain regions. This effect was more pronounced in those who started using at a young age, indicating that developing brains are particularly vulnerable to marijuana’s effects.

Illustration of a neuron cell

Although further long-term studies are needed to determine whether marijuana caused these effects, these scientific findings add to the growing literature showing that heavy marijuana use may harm the brain.

For a copy of the abstract (published online November 10), go to www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/05/1415297111.abstract.

Secondhand marijuana smoke

09 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by RichardB in Addiction, Marijuana

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People who are exposed to secondhand marijuana smoke may feel a bit of the “high” that comes with using the drug, a new study finds. They may also feel unable to think clearly, and they may even have detectable levels of the drug in their urine or blood. But all of this happens only if they are exposed to marijuana smoke under severely unventilated conditions, the study found.

“If you’re going to breathe in enough passive cannabis smoke to feel high and potentially be slightly impaired, you could fail a drug test,” said Evan S. Herrmann, the study’s lead author and postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “But this only happens under a very extreme situation.”clocie.jpg

Cannabis is the world’s most commonly used illicit drug. It is often smoked in small, enclosed spaces with poor ventilation, according to the study.

Studies in the 1980s showed that such “social exposure” to pot smoke could trigger positive drug tests for cannabis’ main psychoactive ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). But such studies had several limitations. They used marijuana that had much lower potency than the pot available today and they failed to account for normal levels of ventilation in rooms. They also did not examine how people may feel or behave after such exposures.

“This new study probes a question people have been wondering forever,” said Ziva Cooper, an assistant professor of clinical neurobiology at Columbia University, who was not involved in this research. “Do people actually get high from these ‘hot box’ effects? And if so, does it change your capabilities or cause you to fail a drug test?”

In the first study of its kind, Herrmann’s team recruited about 20 healthy people between the ages of 18 and 45, including some who smoked marijuana and some who didn’t use the drug. The researchers tested the participants’ blood, saliva, urine and hair samples for cannabis biomarkers, and then asked six smokers and six nonsmokers to relax in a Plexiglas and aluminum smoke chamber about the size of a dorm room. Participants underwent two separate sessions, each an hour long.

The researchers gave each of the six smokers 10 marijuana cigarettes, each containing 1 gram of high-potency weed, and instructed them to smoke at their leisure for the hour while the six non-smokers sat by their side in the chamber.

During one test session, the room’s ventilation system was switched on, allowing air to flow in and out at a standard office-building rate. In the other session, the researchers restricted the airflow in the chamber. After the 60 minutes, each participant completed a series of biological, cognitive and subjective surveys and tasks at regular intervals for up to 34 hours after exposure. [11 Odd Facts About Marijuana]4_lies.jpg

“Our results are pretty consistent with what we expected,” Herrmann said. The new findings confirm “it’s really hard to get a positive [drug test result] from passive smoke unless you’re in an extreme scenario,” he said.

Under the unventilated, “hot box” condition, the nonsmokers showed slight impairments on cognitive tests, reported feeling high, and had detectable levels of THC in their blood and urine for up to 22 hours post-exposure. Those in the ventilated condition had much lower levels of THC in their blood, did not feel impaired or high, and did not test positive for THC in their urine.

But the unventilated room is not representative of most real-life situations, the researchers said. “We modeled the worst-case scenario,” Herrmann said. “You are in an enclosed room for an hour with 15 grams of cannabis being smoked.”

Ideally, the study would have had a placebo group, in which nonsmokers were exposed to smoke without THC. This would have helped the researchers determine whether the feeling of being high was due to the marijuana or simply a placebo effect, from being exposed to smoke.

Still, “this study is really important because it adds to our limited knowledge of the direct effects of cannabis smoking and the potential dangers of second-hand smoke,” Cooper said.

Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

Smoking Weed = less Creativity

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by RichardB in Creativity, Marijuana

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cannabis, Creativity, illusion, muse

People sometimes think that smoking cannabis makes them more creative. However, research by Leiden psychologists Lorenza Colzato and Mikael Kowal shows that the opposite is true.

Strong cannabis doesn’t work

The findings show that cannabis with a high concentration of the psychoactive ingredient THC does not improve creativity. Smokers who ingested a low dose of THC, or none at all (they were given a placebo), performed best in the thinking tasks that the test candidates had to carry out. A high dose of THC was actually shown to have a negative effect on the ability to quickly come up with as many solutions as possible to a given problem.

Increased creativity is an illusion18

The research findings contradict the claims of people who say that their thinking changes and becomes more original after smoking a joint. There’s no sign of any increased creativity in their actual performance, according to Colzato. ‘The improved creativity that they believe they experience is an illusion.’

Too much cannabis is counterproductive

Colzato said, ‘If you want to overcome writer’s block or any other creative gap, lighting up a joint isn’t the best solution. Smoking several joints one after the other can even be counterproductive to creative thinking.’

The research method

Colzato and her PhD candidate Kowal were the first researchers to study the effects of cannabis use on creative thinking. For ethical reasons, only cannabis users were selected for this study. The test candidates were divided into three groups of 18. One group was given cannabis with a high THC content (22 mg), the second group was given a low dose (5.5 mg) and the third group was given a placebo. The high dose was equivalent to three joints and the low dose was equal to a single joint. Obviously, none of the test candidates knew what they were being given; the cannabis was administered via a vaporizer. The test candidates then had to carry out cognitive tasks that were testing for two types of creative thinking:

  • Divergent thinking: generating rapid solutions for a given problem, such as: “Think of as many uses as you can for a pen?”
  • Convergent thinking: Finding the only right answer to a question, such as: “What is the link between the words ‘time’, ‘hair’ and ‘stretching’. (The answer is ‘long’.)

Mikael A. Kowal, Arno Hazekamp, Lorenza S. Colzato, Henk van Steenbergen, Nic J. A. van der Wee, Jeffrey Durieux, Meriem Manai, Bernhard Hommel. Cannabis and creativity: highly potent cannabis impairs divergent thinking in regular cannabis users. Psychopharmacology, 2014; DOI: 10.1007/s00213-014-3749-1

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