What are your opinions on weed's affects on serotonin, and your opioid receptors?

[KyleOpium]

Hey all. I haven't smoked weed in about 6 months, as I'm trying to clear the brain fog before fall semester starts, as I feel it dumbed me down last spring semester. Anywho, I'm wondering what you think weed's affects on serotonin are?

I had an incident where I took a small dose of kratom, smoked a huge dab, and ended up having very mild serotonin syndrome like symptoms that lasted for about 6 hours.

After using many serotonergic drugs, and being prescribed SSRI's, SNRI's and tramadol on and off for the last 10 years, I can definitely tell that weed does SOMETHING to serotonin. Which is why I believe so many with depression and anxiety turn to weed, even though weed tends to worsen anxiety and depression. I haven't been able to find any scientific studies on weed's affects on serotonin, but I definitely know it affects it in some way, just from how it feels.

I personally think it modulates serotonin in a way that LSD does, but does not agonize or release it, just changes the way it's used. If it released or agonized serotonin you would constantly hear of terrible SS stories, and OD's from weed, but like LSD, I believe it just modulates it in an odd way that can cause seizures and bad reactions when mixed with MAOI's or serotonergic drugs.

I do not feel it affects dopamine significantly, however I do know it releases mass amounts of norepiniphrine as welll, but I have also read a study that weed mildly affects your kappa opioid receptors. This is why new users can become very dissassociated and nauseous on strong bud, the same way that a high dose of the opioid tapentadal, or kratom can get you feeling.

What are your opinions on weed, serotonin, and your kappa opioid receptors.?

 

[Tommyboy]

When you say it caused serotonin syndrome like effects can you be more specific?

As for weeds effects on anxiety and depression, I think that it largely has to do with the strain (indica vs sativa) and the amount you smoke, i.e how high you got.

 

[KyleOpium]

Well, I had typed a full report of the incident but accidentally hit the backspace button on my laptop, thus deleting all my work, so this is gonna be a quicker description now.

It was about 10 grams of kratom, which is a normal dose, and about .8 of weed smoked in one hit. At the time, I had a huge tolerance to both (still do with kratom), and smoking 4 grams of hash in a day was not unheard of for me at the time. I used to be able to smoke 1.2 grams out of my bong in one hit. I spent well over $750 on cannabis products every week, so I feel this was not anything new to me. The strain I was smoking was Elvis, and was not in any way shape or form adultlerated or moldy.

About 10 minutes after hitting the bong I began to feel a feeling of malaise, and that I might actually be in some shit. Symptoms were as follows:

Pounding headache

Unable to see anything and blurry vision

Very very dizzy. Like an extreme version of the spins. Forced myself into the bathroom, and made myself purge. This ended the dizziness but not the other symptoms.

My legs were kicking uncontrollably, and when I held my arms out and tried to keep them steady they were twitching and shaking like crazy.

I don't know if I was convulsing or shivering, but even under 4 heavy blankets, was still shivering uncontrollably.

I also believe I had a seizure. One minute I was on the bed, I blacked out, next thing I knew I was on the floor, with pain in my head. Either way I blacked out and hit my head off something.

The worst lasted for about 36 hours. I called off work the next day, something I had never done in the 5 years I worked there. I'd say the symptoms got better each day, with me being completely back to baseline about a month later. This was the end of my long love affair with the herb as every time I tried to smoke during that month, the symptoms would return, although not as intense as the original incident.

Based on this, do you feel I had a minor case of serotonin syndrome? Also, like I said, it was weird, as it was not unheard of for me to spend $1000 on weed per week. I smoked bong hits multiple times per hour, even sneaking out probably once an hour at work to smoke. At the time my life revolved around weed, and I had never ever had anything like this happen.

Also, I am positive weed affects norepiniphrine, dopamine, serotonin, kappa opioid receptors, and to a lesser extent GABA. You can find the sources for this in the wikipedia article on cannabis, and THC. I believe it is sort of like acid, in that it doesn't directly release or inhibit the reuptake of this chemicals, but more modulates them, which is why you will never hear of someone dying from weed or acid toxicity.