Treatment with CBD – Your Gateway to the Science of Cannabidiol
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Treatment with CBD – Your Gateway to the Science of Cannabidiol
The issue of synthetic cannabinoids (SCs) often comes up in connection with cannabis, cannabinoids, THC and CBD. SCs might be sold as a legal alternative to marijuana. However, they are dangerous illegal drugs. This review assesses the psychological effects of SCs. We are discussing the following in this article:
Chemists first created synthetic cannabinoids for potential medical uses in the 1960s. However, increasingly many people have been using them as recreational drugs in the past decade. Their use has been spreading especially among poor and socially disadvantaged people, because these drugs are cheap and strong.
SCs bind to and activate CB1 receptors. However, they are much stronger drugs than natural cannabis, because:
Many media accounts report on “zombies”, who are people that become either unresponsive or psychotic after synthetic cannabinoid use.
Watch this 2:18 minute video by the New England Journal of Medicine: “Mass Intoxication with a Synthetic Cannabinoid”
Due to a lack of clinical data, much of the report below was comparisons of synthetic cannabinoid users with other clinical populations, such as schizophrenic patients. In addition, often times what we have is only self-reports of these users themselves without any comparison to any other group.
Very little clinical research is available on SCs. What we know though from user reports is that these drugs might have the following effects:
Complications of taking synthetic cannabinoids might call for hospitalization, especially among people with already existing health condition. Theses complications include:
Watch this 1:56 minute video by LegitScript: “Synthetic Cannabinoids”
Comparing to placebo, SC users were unsurprisingly more likely to have a “high”, meaning they tended to:
A large proportion of people who used SC reported that they experienced hallucination and paranoia.
As a matter of fact, compared to people who used other drugs, those who used SCs were more prone to:
Natural cannabis users were more likely than SC users to:
Nevertheless, users of SCs were more likely than natural cannabis users to have symptoms of:
As a contrast, patients in a psychiatry ward who developed psychosis after they had used SCs had less severe psychotic episodes than schizophrenic patients. Moreover, they had less severe psychiatric symptoms as well.
Compared to people who did not use any cannabis or cannabinoids, people who used SCs reported more depressive symptoms, such as:
In addition, users of SCs reported higher levels of anxiety than:
Compared to schizophrenic patients, synthetic cannabinoid users had about the same levels of:
There was another study that actually found these measures to be worse among users of SCs. However, in that study SC users had lower education and had a more socially disadvantaged background than the comparison group. As such, these background differences – and not their substance use – might have contributed to the observed cognitive differences.
Watch this 3:25 minute video by Addaction: “Synthetic Cannabinoids (Spice, Black Mamba) – what you need to know”
Some studies used online questionnaires. In these studies, people use SCs reported that the effect of the drugs lasted for about 1-2 hours. Moreover, these where the symptoms that users reported:
Intoxication symptoms included:
Withdrawal symptoms were:
Available research shows fairly similar results across studies. However, given the diversity and different potency of SCs, it is very difficult to draw appropriate clinical conclusions.
As of 2018, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addictions (EMCDDA) reported almost 200 SC compounds, which is more than the number of known natural cannabinoids. Given the ease of producing newer compounds (this is why here drugs are also called designer drugs), it is almost impossible to regulate them.
It is very important, however, to inform people who use or are interested in using recreational drugs that SCs are:
Watch this 13:54 minute video by Vice: “The Hard Lives of Britain’s Synthetic Marijuana Addicts”
NOTICE: Age restricted material
Akram H, Mokrysz C, Curran HV. What are the psychological effects of using synthetic cannabinoids? A systematic review. J Psychopharmacol. 2019 Mar;33(3):271-283.
Peacock A, Bruno R, Gisev N, Degenhardt L, Hall W, Sedefov R, White J, Thomas KV, Farrell M, Griffiths P. New psychoactive substances: challenges for drug surveillance, control, and public health responses. Lancet. 2019 Nov 2;394(10209):1668-1684.