Using Cannabis For Anxiety and Depression: Will My Pills Sill Work?

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Some patients have reported they're using cannabis with medication for anxiety and depression & want to know which is the best for them.

The big question is not what’s better, as that’s a personal choice, it’s more of what will compete with one another and will a patient benefit while using both their medication and cannabinoid medicine at the same time. Here are a few often asked questions;

Does cannabis enhance the effects of my pharmaceutical medicine?

Generally, cannabis interacts with pharmaceuticals, but how and when is it a good thing is a bit more difficult to answer as one would need to know the type of cannabinoid medicine as well as the pharmaceuticals being used. Both THC and CBD can both interact with the 4 families of antidepressants but not always in a bad way. THC will intensify the sedating effects of some antidepressants but the opposite can occur when CBD is utilized. These are generalizations that simply don’t apply to everyone. Most patients with depression and anxiety will opt for a combination of the two cannabinoids but there are other options. CBN, which is a degraded compound of THC, is extremely useful with anxiety as well as depression. Personally, I find that CBD in the morning and afternoon with THC added to it throughout the day and CBN in the evenings does the best for me.

Will Cannabis use undermine our pharmaceuticals?

Cannabis use while using an antidepressant must be defined. Is it a THC or a CBD product? There are countless new studies in regards to the CBD-Pharmaceutical drug contraindications based on the CYP450 family of enzymes that are responsible for the metabolism of the vast majority of pharmaceuticals. CBD is targeted in these studies for either increasing the blood serum level of pharmaceutical drugs or reducing it due to using the same metabolic pathway, but THC can also do a tad of the same, just not as intensely. It’s very important for those with serious health issues, especially those with heart issues, seizures, diabetes, recent transplants, and more to actually research as well as try smaller doses of ingested cannabinoids as they venture out into natural plant medicine.

How does a consumer find the right dose of cannabis?

The biggest challenge in finding the right antidepressant while using cannabis is the individual responsibility we all have to cannabinoid medicine based on our unique physiology. Much like when a doctor attempts pharmaceuticals, it’s a trial and error process. There are no real universal doses with cannabinoid medicine in my strong opinion, which makes cannabis a very fascinating way to medicate. While one patient may find that adding CBD to their health care protocol will help them, another may find that they need THC or the whole plant as their medicine. Allowing patients to create their own treatment plan is the true beauty of medicinal cannabis, since we all have the ability to change our intake of cannabinoids based on how they make us feel, any patients best bet is to not quit based on lack of efficacy and continue to make adjustments via trial and error. Only a patient is truly going to know what will work for them.

Can cannabinoid medicine actually replace my antidepressants?

Pre-clinical and clinical studies dating back to 2007 in the Journal of Neuroscience proves that cannabis modulates mood and possesses antidepressant-like properties which explain why many that are suffering from depression and anxiety will turn to Cannabis to self medicate, while not knowing it’s a replacement for the antidepressant but lacks the side effects. One very good example of this would be a person with ADD or ADHD that also suffers from depression – anxiety is already a given with those diagnostics. This would be the highest bracket of people that are self-medicating in the recreational market while thinking they’re just ‘having a good time’. Many will notice that they no longer have the anxiety they had after employing cannabis as a substitute for medicine they no longer wanted to take. Many are aware that anxiety and depression are directly tied together. If you suffer from one of the two the other side will eventually hit if it’s not doing so in combination.

Will cannabinoid medicine help me reduce the number of pills I take?

For many people that have grown tired of the side effects of pharmaceuticals, cannabinoid medicine will do much more than reducing a dose of an antidepressant. Many patients will report that they have discontinued use entirely of the antidepressant medication once they’ve gained their life back through cannabinoid medicine and other lifestyle changes. It’s important to note that cannabis alone is not a new miracle – it’s been on the earth for thousands of years, if not longer. The importance of changing routines and stepping out of comfort zones is often left out when cannabis and anxiety/depression are spoken of. In order to beat anxiety, we’ve got to test our limits and allow ourselves to find out the world isn’t as scary as it seems and life can be managed easier than we thought. For me the pharmaceuticals were hindered, they never helped but everyone is different. As well, as patients utilize cannabinoids, some will work to inhibit the ability of the antidepressant to metabolize properly – which can render the pharmaceutical nearly useless other than its side effects. When a medicinal cannabis patient or even a CBD consumer realizes this on their own, the decision to reduce and even quit the dose of antidepressant medication occurs without this question.

It’s important that people are able to make their own unadulterated choice regarding medication or natural remedies they’d like to use. There are many instances when patients use both their antidepressant or anxiety medications with cannabis and they work together wonderfully. As the learning curve continues, we find that research is great in many ways but it will never replace the human ability to know what works for us individually. Most of the conclusions that we make as researchers are not backed by clinical trials, so we can only rely so much on what happens when mice are studied. As humans, we’re very unique beings and we’ll find what works – and that could be a bit of a different cannabinoid combination for each user with different dosing. important – Genevieve’s Daddy