CBD Can Actually Enhance THC, Not The Other Way Around Says Australian Study

CBD Can Actually Enhance THC, Not The Other Way Around, Says Australian Study

cbd for thc enhancement

All this time, we’ve been told that taking cannabidiol is helpful in negating the effect of too much THC.

Now, science tells us otherwise. This just goes to show how little we still understand about how cannabis works in the human body; as reported by Marijuana Moment.

A study conducted by Australian researchers assessed 36 recruits; some of them were regular consumers of cannabis while others were infrequent users. The participants were made to administer vaporized cannabis in different doses so that the researchers could have a better idea of how both THC and CBD affected the individuals.

The doses were divided into 5: placebo, 8mg of THC alone, 400mg of CBD alone, 8mg of THC and 4mg of CBD, then 12mg of THC and 400mg of CBD. Blood samples and blood pressure levels were monitored, which the authorities used to examine how intoxicated the participants were during the experiment. Their findings were interesting, to say the least, especially when it came to those who consumed high amounts of CBD. Specifically, they found that the subjects who vaped 400mg of CBD “inferred intoxication but had no direct insight into the internal world of the participants, who felt intoxicated due to distinct feelings of depersonalization, derealization and altered internal and external perceptions,” they wrote.

“No such findings have been reported in the literature in relation to high doses of CBD,” reads the study, which is published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.

What’s intriguing is that they discovered that the participants who consumed the low-CBD and THC dose, the measured higher levels of intoxication than when they consumed THC only. This suggests that the CBD, in low doses, could actually augment the high of THC. They determined this by looking at the THC concentration in their blood plasma, stating that this was more common among the infrequent cannabis consumers.

“While precise mechanisms remain to be elucidated, the finding that low doses of CBD may potentiate effects of THC has significant implications for consideration of proportions of THC and CBD that may be recommended within plant matter. With cannabis increasingly being used for medicinal purpose, it is important to ensure that harms are minimized in favor of boosting therapeutic properties. While intoxication per se is not necessarily harmful overall, it is not welcome by many clinical patients, and it may be harmful in situations such as driving under the influence of cannabis.”

The study concluded that while CBD indeed can mitigate the psychoactive effect of THC, this phenomenon is typically only seen when CBD concentrations are high enough.

“These findings, while specific to vaporization and requiring replication, may have implications for recommended proportions of THC and CBD in cannabis being used medicinally or recreationally within the community,” write the researchers.

How CBD and THC Interact: What We Know So Far

This study is the first to break the mold of everything we’ve known about how CBD and THC interact so far.

The two cannabinoids are the power couple in the cannabis world; perhaps the best known for its various medicinal benefits when used in isolation or together.

A 2005 study published in the British Journal of Pharmacology explains that THC is an agonist, while CBD is an antagonist. What this means that when a person consumes both THC and CBD, THC’s agonising properties are mediated by CBD’s antagonizing properties. When a receptor is encountered by either molecule, it will readily bind to any of them. But if the first molecule it meets is THC, this results in downstream activity but if it meets CBD first there is no downstream activity.

Until this Australian study, we’ve also only understood that using both THC and CBD together in certain ratios will lead to an enhanced effect, in a phenomenon we know of as the entourage effect.

So although we’ve been led to believe that CBD may possibly block the psychoactive effects of THC, reduce it, or enhance each other, the findings we really have today are still inconsistent. Until the federal government reschedules cannabis, we should keep an open mind to all the new studies that come out.