THC to CBD balance

[Ingwey Gooblebogger]

....Right on man, although cannabis does not cause pyschosis, it can encourage its development in those who have the condition already....

Yes. However, it is also true for booze and any other psychoactive substance. If one has a mental illness, then it would be wise to use caution when drinking/getting high.

The "science" on the "encourage its development" is relatively weak.
Often it is of the form...look at someone who has/had mental illness, and then at their prior behaviors. If nothing else emerges as a possible "developer", then it must be the use of cannabis.

A hugely confounding factor is that many folks, with mental illness, use booze or cannabis or other drugs to self-medcate. If these folks are then later diagnosed and their previous drugs history becomes known, then AHA..it was due (or partially due) to the drugs.

Cannabis is neither the evil weed or the solution to all problems and completely harmless, it is in fact most likely to be the middle way. Like our friend the Buddha would of said.

Yes. Any psycho-active substance should be given its regard.
In fact, even pure water can be deadly. If one drinks too much water in a short period of time, it can kill. No joke!

However, when compared to the other legal intoxicants, cannabis is the most benign. So, to be logically consistent, we either prohibit booze, coffee/tea, tobacco, and so on OR we should legalize cannabis. (NOTE: booze prohibition did not work and would not work, so this would be counter-productive.)

Get out there campaigning man!

Yep, that is the way to go. Also, go to local candidate debates (and/or their constituency offices) and ask them their stand on legalization.

[Sir Niall of Essex-sire]

IMO, the problem is that the media, prohibitionists, and many others fail to notice re: the, supposedly, higher THC levels is the following:

Dosage titration.

That is, the stories go on about the supposedly higher THC levels and then lead into the scare stories. However, IF the THC levels were going up, then we smoke less quantity of grass/hash for the same effect. (i.e we titrate, or set, our dosages accordingly.) Since the only health problems associated with cannabis are due to the effects on the lungs from the smoking (and these effects have not really been demonstrated scientifically) then the, supposedly, higher THC level strains actually become a more healthy option.

So, we smoke a pin joint, instead of a hugh fatty, to get high. Or if it is a lad's night out, instead of smoking 30 joints, in an evening, we only smoke 5.

As an aside: To see the ridiculous nature of the "Strong THC skunk = scary problem" media horror stories, consider this. Beer is generally about 5% alcohol, and, if all of a sudden, spirits (i.e whiskey, vodka, etc, which are generally about 40% alcohol), were invented would the media be shouting about this 8 times stronger "Killer" booze....NO.

Again, we titrate our dosages. I might drink one or two pints of beer, but I wouldn't dream of trying to drink that much whiskey in one sitting!!

You raise good points man, but i think the highlighted comment is a little bit fantasy land. Those who smoke the higher THC containing cannabis will not just roll a pin joint i do not think, from personal experience when i am in Amsterdam i roll the same size joints as do back in England, despite the weed being a lot stronger. I just get more mashed. If the only weed available on the market is the higher thc strains, then those just getting into the hobby would only of had experience with these strains, they would presumably bulid up a higher tolerence to the THC than they would if they were smoking the strains which contained less THC. This means that they would need more THC to reach the desired effect so they could be playing around with higher THC levels, which the new 'man made' cannabis has not been fully researched containing these massive THC levels. Man made in regards to the selective breeding which the plant became formed out of. Has not really been fully researched.

I do in no way think that the whole THC will cause you to sit in the corner and rock back and forth talking to an imaginary man called Steve headlines. All i know is that when usually when man gets involed in mother natures buisness, it fucks up somewhere along the lines.

[Ingwey Gooblebogger]

they would presumably bulid up a higher tolerence to the THC than they would if they were smoking the strains which contained less THC.

It is true, for all pyscho-active substances, that a tolerance does build up with use, over time. However, the cannabis tolerance increase is MUCH less prominant than that for most other substances.

This is not only true from personal experience, but you might want to read some of the scientific journals to confirm it. ALAS, it is not fantasy land.

It sounds like you are going to Amsterdam to get fucked up. That is not a bad idea, but don't you think that you would smoke 2/3/4/etc times as much lower THC weed/hash to get as fucked up, if the high THC alternatives were not available? So, instead of smoking 5 to 10 joints maybe you would smoke 30?

[Lemming]

THCV or CBG. Or the numerous others.

Tbh, there is so much more scope for being a pretentious pot enthusiast (pot-bore?) than there is for alcohol. Enough even to eclipse Jilly Cooper's descriptions.

I’d not even heard of CBG before! But I guess that’s the point – unlike alcohol, which is just strong or weak, cannabis contains an assortment of interesting cannabinoids, which may complement each other or cancel each other out.

Does anyone have any theories about how varying quantities of cannabinoids other than THC might change the nature of the high? Does anyone have the full breakdowns of some old outdoor varieties like Columbian, Afghani, Thai, etc. in terms of THC, CBD, THCV, CBC, CBG, etc. so we could compare the buzz?

Wine enthusiasts only describe flavours, they spit the wine out! They don’t bother to compare the effects because they already know, it gets you drunk! We can have much more fun being pretentious; we can inhale and rate the nature of stonedness, not just the flavours.

[geoffk]

I don't think you could include absinthe in the alcohol analogy though.

[Sir Niall of Essex-sire]

they would presumably bulid up a higher tolerence to the THC than they would if they were smoking the strains which contained less THC.

It is true, for all pyscho-active substances, that a tolerance does build up with use, over time. However, the cannabis tolerance increase is MUCH less prominant than that for most other substances.

This is not only true from personal experience, but you might want to read some of the scientific journals to confirm it. ALAS, it is not fantasy land.

It sounds like you are going to Amsterdam to get fucked up. That is not a bad idea, but don't you think that you would smoke 2/3/4/etc times as much lower THC weed/hash to get as fucked up, if the high THC alternatives were not available? So, instead of smoking 5 to 10 joints maybe you would smoke 30?

Yes when comparing cannabis to other drugs it may be less, however this do not mean it is completly no existent. We speak of scientific journels, but how can scienctific journals be written on the newer cannabis strains with much higher THC levels than previously found in plants due to the selective breeding that takes place. If these strains are new and contain higher levels of THC and lower levels of other chemicals such as CBD, then due to the short time they have been in production i find it hard to believe that any scientific journals would of been written on those strains and the effects the higher THC and lower CBD percentage. So although i only provided anecdotel evidence and no scientific evidence, i think the same can be said for your theory that stoners will roll small or pin joints if the THC level is higher. Which then leads to the conculsion that we need to educate people on the higher level THC plants and the fact they may need less in their joints, so that people will take the percaution that you say of rolling smaller joints. I fear it not people like us that need the educating but those kids on the street who may not have any idea of the dangers of cannabis.

TBH man these days when i go to amsterdam its more about the freedom of being able to smoke and the strains i know i like, i am a creature of habit so frequent the same coffeeshops and buy the same weeds and hash's i love. Although i do go for the newer strains on recommendation. Since the trips these days inculde the miss's i tend to go for the lower THC products during the day anways. Smoking to me is not so much about the effect, it is about everything which comes with it, the conversations which i like to be sober enough to follow, the atomsphere the views etc. The miss's also likes to walk around so i tend not to go for the complete mind fuck indicas anyway. At night in the apartment is a different story all together, and i would say i smoke just as much of the higer end strains as i do of the lower less strong strains. Purely because as i said i like the whole ceremony and action of smoking a joint. So tbh the amount of THC in a joint does not really effect how many of the bad boys i smoke.

I am a great beliver in the power and wisdom of the natural world, and i can never see anything good coming out of mother natures chemical balence being fucked with, espically when the consequences are not fully known. Which as i said earlier means that we should educate kids fully on the possible dangers instead of ingoring it and hoping the kids will suddenly want to stop smoking because of the reclassification.

I will try to find any scientific data to back up my views, unfortantly i have a goverment inspection on the horizon so have to catch up with work.

[doobydave]

I’d not even heard of CBG before!

Neither had I until I read the Trainwreck breakdown above.




/ LOL - I wrote Jilly Cooper instead of Jilly Gordon but I think I might have got away with it.

[Ingwey Gooblebogger]

I’d not even heard of CBG before! But I guess that’s the point – unlike alcohol, which is just strong or weak, cannabis contains an assortment of interesting cannabinoids, which may complement each other or cancel each other out.

Does anyone have any theories about how varying quantities of cannabinoids other than THC might change the nature of the high? Does anyone have the full breakdowns of some old outdoor varieties like Columbian, Afghani, Thai, etc. in terms of THC, CBD, THCV, CBC, CBG, etc. so we could compare the buzz?

Wine enthusiasts only describe flavours, they spit the wine out! They don’t bother to compare the effects because they already know, it gets you drunk! We can have much more fun being pretentious; we can inhale and rate the nature of stonedness, not just the flavours.

The cannabinoid profile, is the particular combination of the various cannabinoids in the current batch you are consuming. There are over 60 known exogenous cannabinoids (i.e. those found in cannabis plants) AND humans have endocannabinoids (natually produced in our bodies) called anandamides. I suspect that, in the future, we will discover even more cannabinoids, both exogenous and endogenous.

The cannabinoid profile can vary from grass batch to grass batch, due to various factors, such as, genetics, harvesting times/methods, curing and storing methods, age of the batch, and so on. Even with genetically identical plants (i.e. clones), if the harvesting/curing/etc method is different then, you can end up with different cannabinoid profiles between the batch from one clone and the batch from the other clone.

IMO, this is, in additon to personal preferences, partially, why rating cannabis, in absolute terms, is so difficult.

As another issue, the toxicology of cannabis is far more complex than that for alcohol. It is far easier to estimate how intoxicated someone is when they have consumed alcohol, even when taking different alcohol tolerances into consideration, by the BAC's (Blood Alcohol Counts), (or urine, bile, liver, or vitreous measures. The latter 3 for deceased folks). For cannabis, this is extremely difficult. Also, the range of different effecfts, between the different types of booze is much much narrower than those between the different strains/batches of cannabis.

I hope that made sense.