Something Else Cannabis Is Teaching Us: Another Study on Addiction
This is an example of how important cannabis is, even when cannabis is not even directly involved. Another great gift coming from a plant mistreated by too many of us.
It is widely known that cannabis is not addictive.
Let me say that again: cannabis is NOT addictive. If you know this, you can’t do anything but being upset when you realize that tobacco, alcohol and even caffeine are more addictive than marijuana. Isn’t this crazy? And what are the things people think about when you talk about these legal substances?
Do they think “oh my god, I am an addict”? Not really. Talk about coffee, and people imagine its aroma, maybe a Starbucks, or even Italy or Colombia. They think about cappuccino and espresso, latte and mocha, a coffee shop in Seattle and a café in Paris.
If you mention alcohol, youngsters think about fun and excitement, old men imagine a nice liquor, and men and women give you the list of their favorite cocktail or wines. What about cigarettes? Well, cigarettes are so dandy, aren’t they? Oscar Wilde said they are the perfect pleasure, because they never really satisfy your needs. Isn’t it charming? And what do people think when you start talking about cannabis? Of course, they think about all those stinky drug addicts who are wasting their lives.
What an injustice!
Well, it turns out that, thanks to cannabis, we might be able to actually fight against addictions. A team of researchers guided by Kiri L. Wills, Kiran Vemuri, Alana Kalmar, Alan Lee, Cheryl L. Limebeer, Alexandros Makriyannis and Linda A. Parker just published a new article on the academic journal called Psychopharmacology.
What do they claim? Well they say that “Neutral antagonism of the CB1 receptor is sufficient in mediating the effects, providing potential for neutral CB1 antagonists in the treatment of opiate dependence” (Wills, et al. 2014, p. 4291).
The findings they published are “the first to show that antagonism of the CB1 receptor is capable of interfering with the acquisition of the motivationally aversive state of acute morphine dependence as quantified by the place conditioning paradigm” (Wills, et al. 2014, p. 4295). And what does this mean? Quite simply that the findings “provide additional evidence for the ability of the cannabinoid system to modulate opiate addiction processes” (Wills, et al. 2014, p. 4300).
The cannabinoid system can help us regulate and fight addictions… what do you think about this, you coffee-tobacco-alcohol lovers? You should probably smoke some good pot at Green House Seeds Shops and forget about YOUR addictions.
