Cannabis Research: Unger

Came across an excellent research paper:

Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin and Personality Change

Sanford M. Unger, Ph.D.*

from: Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes
Vol. 26, No. 2, May, 1963. © The William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation

courtsey: http://bluehoney.org/

Although this paper discusses the effects of only LSD and magic mushroom – Psilocybin and Mescalin, most of the experiences of the subjects are astonishingly similar to the ones I had after taking Cannabis. To quote a few:

The predominance of visual experiences in the picture is striking— not only on account of the persistent hallucinations and illusions, but by the impressiveness of seen real objects, their shape and color….

Changes in the perception of visual form occur in virtually everyone…. Consistently reported [are] the plasticity which the forms of the visual world assume . . . the emphasis upon play of light and color, as though light were alive

The above observation explains my light blobs through the palm fronds turning into various deities (refer to my post titled – II Voyage – Imagination Overdrive).

Then again:

There is an awareness of an abnormal distance between the self and what happens in its consciousness; on the other hand, the experience of an abnormal fusion of subject and object

Some degree of depersonalization probably occurs during every LSD experience . . . the detachment of the conscious self, a sort of detached ego. This self is in touch with reality and is in touch with the self experiencing the psychic phenomena.

It is difficult to classify the state of consciousness during the intoxication which allows such self-observation and, at times, seems to foster detachment and self-scrutiny.

. . . in a state of clear consciousness [the subject] . . . is able to describe in detail the manifold mental changes daring drug intoxication

I have noted very similar experiences in my post titled – III Voyage:Multiple consciousness

Cannabis Research: Grinspoon and Bakalar

Following is an excerp from a research paper which traces briefly the history of Cannabis use in the Orient and South America and indicates how valuable research by the medical community in the West, regarding the immense potential for the treatment of various physical and mental ailments of Cannabis was stifled by Western government on flimsy basis.

There is an old saying in India: ‘There is nothing wrong in having sex as long as you do it with the right person, at the right time, in the right place and with the right attitude’ !! The same applies to the consumption of Cannabis, however in this case the right person can be replaced with the right dosage ! This plant, as the following paper notes, was used in all ancient civilizations for various purposes ranging from treatment of minor physical ailments to communication with spirits and contact with the higher spheres of reality. Among the Sufis, the adept had to have reached a certain level of spiritual maturity and subjected himself to fasting and meditation before he was considered ready to consume Cannabis. Elaborate rituals were performed among various cultures by the head priest or shaman to create the right atmosphere and frame of mind during the consumption of this plant.

The Western consumers in their hurry for instant gratification did not heed this warning or were ignorant of it. This led it a widespread abuse and overuse of Cannabis in the West, with expected consequences. The old wisdom of the Orient is long dead. The respect that this divine plant enjoyed in the oriental cultures is almost lost now.

 

Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine Chapter one – The History

of Cannabis

Lester Grinspoon, and James B. Bakalar Yale University Press, Copyright 1993

The marihuana, cannabis, or hemp plant is one of the oldest psychoactive plants known to humanity. It is botanically classified as a member of the family Cannabaceae and the genus Cannabis. Most botanists agree that there are three species: Cannabis sativa, the most widespread of the three, is tall, gangly, and loosely branched, growing as high as twenty feet; Cannabis indica is shorter, about three or four feet in height, pyramidal in shape and densely branched; Cannabis ruderalis is about two feet high with few or no branches. There are also differences among these species in the leaves, stems, and resin. According to an alternative classification, the genus has only one highly variable species, Cannabis sativa, with two subspecies, sativa and indica. The first is more northerly and produces more fiber and oil; the second is more southerly and produces more of the intoxicating resin.

Cannabis has become one of the most widespread and diversified of plants. It grows as weed and cultivated plant all over the world in a variety of climates and soils. The fiber has been used for cloth and paper for centuries and was the most important source of rope until the development of synthetic fibers. The seeds (or, strictly speaking, akenes – small hard fruits) have been used as bird feed and sometimes as human food. The oil contained in the seeds was once used for lighting and soap and is now sometimes employed in the manufacture of varnish, linoleum, and artists’ paints.

The chemical compounds responsible for the intoxicating and medicinal effects are found mainly in a sticky golden resin exuded from the flowers on the female plants. The function of the resin is thought to be protection from heat and preservation of moisture during reproduction. The plants highest in resin therefore grow in hot regions like Mexico, the Middle East, and India. When the reproductive process is over and the fruits are fully ripe, no more resin is secreted.

The cannabis preparations used in India often serve as a folk standard of potency. The three varieties are known as bhang, ganja, and charas. The least potent and cheapest preparation, bhang, is produced from the dried and crushed leaves, seeds, and stems. Ganja, prepared from the flowering tops of cultivated female plants, is two or three times as strong as bhang; the difference is somewhat akin to the difference between beer and fine Scotch. Charas is the pure resin, also known as hashish in the Middle East. Any of these preparations can be smoked, eaten, or mixed in drinks. The marihuana used in the United States is equivalent to bhang or, increasingly in recent years, to ganja.

The marihuana plant contains more than 460 known compounds, of which more than 60 have the 21-carbon structure typical of cannabinoids. The only cannabinoid that is both highly psychoactive and present in large amounts, usually 1-5 percent by weight, is (-)3,4-trans-delta-l- tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as delta-1-THC, delta-9-THC, or simply THC. A few other tetrahydrocannabinols are about as potent as delta-9-THC but present in only a few varieties of cannabis and in much smaller quantities. A number of synthetic congeners (chemical relatives) of THC have been developed under such names as synhexyl, nabilone, and levonatradol. The other two major types of cannabinoid are the cannabidiols and the cannabinols. It appears that the plant first produces the mildly active cannabidiols, which are converted to tetrahydrocannabinols and then broken down to relatively inactive cannabinols as the plant matures.

The recent discovery of nerve receptors in the brain stimulated by THC (and the cloning of the gene that gives rise to these receptors) suggests that the body produces its own version of the substance. The receptors are found mainly in the cerebral cortex, which governs higher thinking and in the hippocampus, which is a locus of memory (1).

A native of central Asia, cannabis may have been cultivated as long as ten thousand years ago. It was certainly cultivated in China by 4000 B.C. and in Turkestan by 3000 B.C. It has long been used as a medicine in India, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and South America. The first evidence for medicinal use of cannabis is an herbal published during the reign of the Chinese emperor Chen Nung five thousand years ago. Cannabis was recommended for malaria, constipation, rheumatic pains, “absentmindedness,” and female disorders. Another Chinese herbal recommended a mixture of hemp, resin, and wine as an analgesic during surgery. In India cannabis has been recommended to quicken the mind, lower fevers, induce sleep, cure dysentery, stimulate appetite, improve digestion, relieve headaches, and cure venereal disease. In Africa it was used for dysentery, malaria, and other fevers. Today certain tribes treat snake bites with hemp or smoke it before childbirth. Hemp was also noted as a remedy by Galen and other physicians of the classical and Hellenistic eras, and it was highly valued in medieval Europe. The English clergyman Robert Burton, in his famous work The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621, suggested the use of cannabis in the treatment of depression. The New English Dispensatory of 1764 recommended applying hemp roots to the skin for inflammation, a remedy that was already popular in eastern Europe. The Edinburgh New Dispensary of 1794 included a long description of the effects of hemp and stated that the oil was useful in the treatment of coughs, venereal disease, and urinary incontinence. A few years later Nicholas Culpeper summarized all the conditions for which cannabis was supposed to be medically useful.

But cannabis did not come into its own in the West as a medicine until the middle of the nineteenth century. During its heyday, from 1840 to 1900, more than one hundred papers were published in the Western medical literature recommending it for various illnesses and discomforts (2). It could almost be said that physicians of a century ago knew more about cannabis than contemporary physicians do; certainly they were more interested in exploring its therapeutic potential………

The complete paper is available at :

http://www.ukcia.org/research/ForbiddenMedicineChapter1.php

Suppression of short term memory and enhancement of long term memory recall ?

Brain Chemicals Mimic Marijuana

By Johnathan S. Choi

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Two chemicals found in the brain seem to mimic some of the effects of marijuana and bind to the same brain receptor, according to two studies to be published Thursday. The research offers new clues on how the brain regulates memory and learning, and may lead to the development of new drugs.

The substances — anandamide and sn-2 arachidonylglycerol (2-AG) — bind to the same receptors in the brain as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active compound in marijuana and hashish. Besides their psychoactive properties, THC has some therapeutic effects such as pain relief and appetite stimulation. THC also interferes with a process in the hippocampus of the brain called long-term potentiation (LTP), which is important to memory and learning.

“Normally, these brain cells would communicate with a certain level of efficacy or strength. However, under certain conditions — these are the conditions under which we tend to remember things — the strength of the communication will be increased,” explains Daniele Piomelli of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, senior author on the report published in Science. “This phenomenon is called potentiation of synaptic (nerve) transmission. Potentiation that is prolonged for many hours is therefore called long-term potentiation.”

The fact that the cannabinoid receptors are highly concentrated in the hippocampus is very important in understanding LTP and learning, says Piomelli. “The hippocampus is a small region of the brain present in all mammals, including man, that participates in short-term memory formation and learning. The way people look at the hippocampus is as a ‘relay station’ where sensory inputs go to become either discarded, or become prolonged memories. In fact, patients who have lesions in the hippocampus, while they can retain old memories, cannot form new memories.” By blocking LTP, drugs like THC interfere with this memory-relaying process.

The study found that 2-AG mimicked the effect of THC by blocking long-term potentiation. They believe this is the same mechanism by which smoking marijuana may cause short-term memory lapses. In contrast, there was no production of anandamide detected in the hippocampus. This suggests that 2-AG, but not anandamide, modulates the formation of short-term memories, producing a type of “physiological forgetting.”

In a separate study published in the journal Nature, scientists report on the mechanism by which anandamide becomes biologically inactivated. Anandamide released from neural cells binds to the cannabinoid receptors present on the surface of neighboring cells. Once it is bound, a way to stop its actions is required. Otherwise, THC stimulation could continue indefinitely, and a perpetual ‘high’ could be maintained from just a few puffs of marijuana. The researchers discovered that anandamide was deactivated by being transported into the cell and broken down into nonfunctional fragments. Though anandamide was not found in the hippocampus, it is believed that THC is inactivated in a similar manner.

“This is of course a hypothesis, but we think that there is a division of labor between anandamide and 2-AG. 2-AG is produced in certain areas and subserves certain functions, whereas anandamide is produced in other areas and subserves other functions,” explains Piomelli. “In both cases, the compounds bind to the cannabinoid receptors, but they’re not necessarily produced together or at the same time…. Now that’s important, because it opens a number of perspectives from the standpoint of therapy. As I mentioned before, there are certain effects of THC which are favorable and interesting therapeutically, such as analgesia. There are others that are not considered favorable such as the psychotropic effects. If they could be split apart… they would be very useful, therapeutically. They might have some of the positive effects of anandamide and THC, without most of the negative effects.”

SOURCE: Science (1997;277:1094-1096); Nature (1997;388:773-777)

My interpretation:

It is clear, from the above study, that Cannabis consumption leads to short term memory lose by suppressing that part of the brain which is responsible for this function. Is it possible that the supperssion of short term memory areas in the brain results, by default (?), in the activation of long term memory areas or receptors. Could this be the reason why I was able to re-visit and recollect, in greater detail, old dreams and past hypnagogic images ?

III Voyage:Multiple consciousness

The third time, apart from the earlier experiences, another dimension of experience was added – the mental/abstract dimension. This time, as soon as I felt entering that ‘certain’ state of mind/consciousness I started taking down notes. I took a spoon of Cannabis powder at 3:30pm and entered an altered state within an hour. Unlike earlier when it took longer for the plant to take effect. I will write about my explanation for this at the end of this post.

I realized how different the experience is every time I consume the plant. This time the emphasis was on conceptual clarity, lateral logic, and right brain thinking. It was almost as if the right brain had almost completely taken over. Ideas, concepts rose in the mind like smoke…or water….ephemeral….they were within my grasp now and the next moment they just evaporated…multiple ideas entered the mind…I was aware of parallel streams of thought…as if I had multiple minds and multiple personalities and each mind was reacting independently to every thought..ideas and feelings were like a web, intercrossing and interchanging…streaming past my consciousness. Realized exactly what Gurdjeiff meant when he wrote that every human is made up of multiple ‘I’ s. Logic became very fuzzy, could not follow one stream of thought, could not recollect the previous thought…physical senses became super sensitive, became aware of my breathing which was a bit heavy and erratic. I was made of multiple personalities each reacting independently to a given thought or feeling and above and apart from all this there was a ‘permanent’ me who was watching this ‘show’ like a non-attached witness. The metaphysical concept mentioned in the Bhagavat Geeta, of two ‘Selfs’ one individual self which lives, feels and does and the other permanent Self who watches without any attachment or revulsion, became crystal clear. I was ‘living’ /’experiencing this truth.

Emotions and desires ran very deep, imagined a snow clad mountain with a monastery on it….the yearning to be there brought tears in my eyes…..

Memories of scenes and moods came and went, as if the ‘buttons’ in my visual memory bank, were being randomly pressed.

Breathing was much heavier, always felt thirsty, wanted to drink something sweet. Throat felt slightly constricted.

Realised how a schizophrenic would feel….but my mind seem to be devided into two- one half was schizophrenic and the other half was the ‘sane watcher’, passive observer, almost as if a part of my mind was standing outside of me and was watching me.

The rise in body temperature did not feel the way a fever feels. But seemed to be less of the flesh and more of the mind and consciousness.

A mere suggestion easily evoked whatever feeling I wanted to, with great intensity. There was no sense of tiredness or exhaustion, but an energetic calmness of the body and mind.

Multiple personalities, multiple moods, come and go, not in a linear fashion but like a web. It was like a multiple or layers or multidimensions of everything: thoughts, feelings, visiual memories, moods….trying to recall previous thought felt like trying to recall a dream…very ephemeral…reality felt dream- like, shallow, pathetic, trivial. The people around me appeared to behave very mechanically like robots. All existence appeared to be very superficial, petty, irrelevant…..

Realized that logic does not have to be linear, like cause and effect. In this state my ‘normal’ left brained logic, was completely taken over by some form of lateral right brained logic which helped me to not ‘understand’ but ‘realize’ some of the metaphysical and spiritual concepts I had read about. Human consciousness was like a sphere, with the outer layer water/gaseous-like always moving, disturbed, in a flux, in ripples and currents. Beneath this swirling exterior was a calm relatively solid core.

I realized that one needs a higher level/higher dimension of conceptual intelligence not the normal rational intelligence to understand the nature of Reality – Gyan Yoga. That is why so many enlightened souls have said that the mind is a hurdle towards true realization.

My appetite felt like that of a ‘hungry ghost’ from Tibetan book of the Dead. Mind seemed to be very porous/susceptible to the thought forms around me.

The unreality of all around me was overwhelming. I began thinking why was every experience/voyage different. Could it be possible that we have multiple receptors in the mind for this kind of a chemical and they are stimulated at random depending on the state of mind you are in, your personality and the state of your spiritual evolution.

The nature of the human mind is so fleeting….everything is so fleeting and at the supeficial level….the state of mind can be so confining that it almost traps you at one level….you cannot penentrate deeper or higher…

Mind is almost on the edge of hallucinating but not quite there yet…its like an orgy of abstract thoughts taking forms that a ‘normal’ mind cannot grasp. Complete comprehension of the phenomenal world and its transitiary nature. I am trapped, at the same time, in a very mental/abstract plane as well as a very primal plane.

Soon the light headedness is replaced by melancholy, a slight depression, the environment seems threatening and people around me appear to be hostile…cold strangers…unfriendly…the effect began to wear off after six hours…but the physiological hangover continued till next morning….muscles were very relaxed…body temperature slightly high…loss of appetite…slight constipation.

My theory for, why does Cannabis give you a different experience everytime is that probably the human brain has quite a few dormant recepters for the active chemical/s in Cannabis, and everytime we consume Cannabis a different set of receptors are stimulated.

II Voyage – Imagination Overdrive

The second time was different. Physiological and physical symptoms were the same as before, but my mind/consciousness reacted differently. All the senses were became super-sensitive. Imagination went into an overdrive – I was looking at a blurred vision of lights shining through the palm fronds in the darkness of the night and slowly the hazy blobs of light began to take shape- limitless shapes and forms of sculptures of light…they looked like some deities in a temple, some feminine, others masculine, but they kept shifting….flowing from one form to another…..almost infinite. As long as I stood there staring at them they kept changing….had I stood there for eternity they would have taken on eternal number of forms….!! I never realized that the human mind was capable of such imagination!!

I then began staring at a window of a house. The window looked into a dimly lit room. My mind began to sense different moods in the room, as it imagined how the inside of the room could look…again infinite shapes and infinite moods. In a normal state, quite a few people, when they enter a house or a room for the first time, they can sense a mood in the room/house. Atleast I can. Edgar Allan Poe once wrote in one of his short stories that there are combinations of simple natural objects which have the power of affecting our moods. But under the influence of Cannabis, the interior of the imagined room took up limitless combinations of things and shades thus invoking limitless moods…one after another…in me.

I Voyage: Hypnagogic Blitzkrieg

The first time it took some time to take effect. I had it in the afternoon and it took effect little later after midnight. I woke up with a hypnagogic blitzkrieg. Under normal state I experience hypnagoia quite often, but under the influence of Cannabis, it was like a blitzkrieg ! In addition I could recollect and revisit my past hypnagogic images with greater clarity and detail.

Pysically I felt my pulse beating faster, a slight rise in my body temperature. Eyelids felt a little heavy. Random thoughts, feelings, moods began to bombard me. I could revisit my memories with greater detail. In normal state, I also experience flashes of images related to people and places that I have not seen before. I am yet to figure out what these are. But under the influence of Cannabis, I could recollect these flashes with greater clarity and could also ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ the mood/ambience of these images/flashes/scenes.

The feeling of physical pain and taste had been blunted, but I felt like eating and drinking what ever I could get my hands on. I could eat a lot of sweet and spicy stuff without the feeling of unease in my stomach. My appetite became insatiable.

Understanding the sequence of events, actions became almost impossible, there was short time memory loss. When I sat down to watch a movie, I had a hard time following the story line !! It seemed as if imagination was running wild at the cost of logic.

The effect lasted for upto nine hours or more.