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It's interesting because the studies on pain management are all over the place regarding THC. Personally THC has never done anything for any pain I was ever experiencing. However, I'm not a chronic pain sufferer. Some studies suggest that it's the mere distraction that's perceived as helpful but doesn't actually manage the severity of the pain. Idk what to think. Probably pretty individual like most things.
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve used cannabis for chronic pain and mental health relief for a few years now. At least for me, more often it appears to be what you suggested: more of a distraction than I think actually helping with physical symptoms. It feels more like forgetting the pain is there than making to go away. But honestly, I’m fine with that. I know cannabis and CBD isn’t some miracle cure we’re sleeping on, but to me regardless of what it’s actually doing if it lets me be “normal” and forget the pain and anxiety for awhile, then it’s doing what I wanted it to anyways.
I used to work at a medical cannabis dispensary. We never prescribed thc for pain, mostly cbd. Moderate thc sometimes helped people relax & high thc was to help them sleep, but it was always most effective when paired with moderate to high cbd. It sucks that the article doesn’t go into detail about what the users consumed. Not all cannabis is made equal and has such varied effects
I will add that anecdotally (and only on one occasion) I tried high dose CBD after a back injury and it did absolutely nothing for me. I've heard answers all over the place though from others. The studies seem to be just as unpredictable. It seems like to me that CBD just works as any other anti inflammatory substance which in some situations will reduce pain in some people.
Adults with chronic pain who participated in New York State's (NYS) Medical Cannabis Program were significantly less likely to require prescription opioids, according to a new study published today in JAMA Internal Medicine and led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Health System.
“Chronic pain and opioid addiction are two of the most pressing health challenges in the United States,” said Deepika E. Slawek, M.D., M.S., the study’s lead author, associate professor of medicine at Einstein, and an internal medicine and addiction medicine specialist at Montefiore. “Our findings indicate that medical cannabis, when dispensed through a pharmacist-supervised system, can relieve chronic pain while also meaningfully reducing patients’ reliance on prescription opioids. Supervised use of medical cannabis could be an important tool in combatting the opioid crisis.”
The study involved 204 adults who were prescribed opioids for chronic pain and were newly certified for medical cannabis between September 2018 and July 2023. Participants were tracked for 18 months, with data on both their cannabis and opioid use collected from the New York State Prescription Monitoring Program.
Medical cannabis may not necessarily help every patient in every instance, but it should always be a legal option in cases when doctors and patients want to explore if it can help. Cannabis is undeniably safer and less addictive compared to pharma opioids.
Cool if this holds up, but this still screams “hypothesis‑generating, not policy‑ready” to me. People who opt into a pharmacist‑run cannabis program are already a very specific group, and without randomization you can’t really separate cannabis effects from physician behavior, pain severity shifts, or regression to the mean.
Anecdotally i know people who self medicated mental health problems with very high levels of cannabis use from highschool up to their late 20s.
I wasn't in contact with them for a few years but despite spending hundreds of hours or possibly thousands of hours with them. They couldn't even remember me. Which is beyond horrifying.
With such a significant gap in their memory its hard to say if they're even the same person I once knew. It hits especially hard since they were there for me when I was at one of my lowest.
Don't get me wrong I still care about them but that memory loss feels so so wrong.
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It's interesting because the studies on pain management are all over the place regarding THC. Personally THC has never done anything for any pain I was ever experiencing. However, I'm not a chronic pain sufferer. Some studies suggest that it's the mere distraction that's perceived as helpful but doesn't actually manage the severity of the pain. Idk what to think. Probably pretty individual like most things.
This is purely anecdotal, but I’ve used cannabis for chronic pain and mental health relief for a few years now. At least for me, more often it appears to be what you suggested: more of a distraction than I think actually helping with physical symptoms. It feels more like forgetting the pain is there than making to go away. But honestly, I’m fine with that. I know cannabis and CBD isn’t some miracle cure we’re sleeping on, but to me regardless of what it’s actually doing if it lets me be “normal” and forget the pain and anxiety for awhile, then it’s doing what I wanted it to anyways.
I used to work at a medical cannabis dispensary. We never prescribed thc for pain, mostly cbd. Moderate thc sometimes helped people relax & high thc was to help them sleep, but it was always most effective when paired with moderate to high cbd. It sucks that the article doesn’t go into detail about what the users consumed. Not all cannabis is made equal and has such varied effects
I will add that anecdotally (and only on one occasion) I tried high dose CBD after a back injury and it did absolutely nothing for me. I've heard answers all over the place though from others. The studies seem to be just as unpredictable. It seems like to me that CBD just works as any other anti inflammatory substance which in some situations will reduce pain in some people.
For many people they had to consume it over a period of about a week to start feeling the effects. It definitely wasn’t instantaneous
Interesting, I certainly didn't do that.
Medical cannabis may not necessarily help every patient in every instance, but it should always be a legal option in cases when doctors and patients want to explore if it can help. Cannabis is undeniably safer and less addictive compared to pharma opioids.
Cool if this holds up, but this still screams “hypothesis‑generating, not policy‑ready” to me. People who opt into a pharmacist‑run cannabis program are already a very specific group, and without randomization you can’t really separate cannabis effects from physician behavior, pain severity shifts, or regression to the mean.
As a physician in NY for 15 years, I don't think I've had one patient on chronic opiates get off them using thc.
I have though cut off opiate abusers, who are now using medical THC to control their pain.
Well maybe, but also cannabis use drastically increases the risk of dementia - https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/heavy-cannabis-use-could-increase-dementia-risk-by-72#Cannabis-Medical-and-recreational-use-increase-in-older-adults
Pick your poison, I guess.
You can find a study saying anything really
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK546328/
https://www.healthing.ca/dementia/cannabis-dementia-cognitive-decline-study
Anecdotally i know people who self medicated mental health problems with very high levels of cannabis use from highschool up to their late 20s.
I wasn't in contact with them for a few years but despite spending hundreds of hours or possibly thousands of hours with them. They couldn't even remember me. Which is beyond horrifying.
With such a significant gap in their memory its hard to say if they're even the same person I once knew. It hits especially hard since they were there for me when I was at one of my lowest.
Don't get me wrong I still care about them but that memory loss feels so so wrong.