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Why is cannabis so safe in combination with other CNS depressants?

Bad_Boy_Blue

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Jan 2, 2004
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Like GHB for example; if you mix other depressants, you seriously run the risk of dying, but if you mix it with weed, it's normally quite safe. Is it because weed is not a true depressants?!
 
I find cannabis to be much more of a CNS stimulant than a depressant.

(actually, it's both... I believe THC is a stimulant and CBN/CBD are depressants)

Check your heart rate a few minutes after the next time you get really baked... see if you think it's still a depressant ;)
 
i though weed was considered a hallucinogen. and an antioxidant. not a depressant.

and i wouldn't think it was a stimlant either. just my opinion, but i think the vascular constriction causes your body to have slightly less effecient circulation. thus your heart has to beat harder, sometimes faster (which i think has a lot to do with you feeling your heart beating harder, then some people over analyze it and get antsy and such).
this also might explain the chills and the "fuzzies" that people get.

anyways, i just dont' think weeds a depressant, so mixing it w/ depressants wouldn't increase their effect.

i could be completely wrong tho.
 
Other CNS depressants affect receptor types that are all over the brain, including primitive, basic areas in the brainstem that control vital, automatic bodily functions like breathing and heartbeat.

Cannabis works on a secondary pain modulation system that is much more restricted in scope, evolutionarily newer, and doesn't reach those areas, in fact I think it doesn't impact the brainstem at all, although it definitely hits most of the other areas.
 
Yeah, the analgesic effects and the mechanism of it is stil pretty vague..
 
Yeah, basically what Molybdenum said. Opiates directly depress breathing centers in the brain stem. Something most people don't know, is that benzos by themselves aren't actually that dangerous. You can take relatively massive doses, and you'll just wake up a long time latter. (Not that I'm suggesting anyone trys that). But in combination with opiates, benzos potentiate there inhibitory action in the brain stem.

Meanwhile, cannabinoids, working via the CB1 receptor inhibit both excitatory and inhibitory transmission... so in total, there really isn't that much of a alteration of the balance between excitation and inhibition.

On a single cell level, you could call THC and depressant, but on a whole organ level, it isn't.
 
CB2 activity, especially of "lesser" cannabinoids, accounts for a lot of weed's pharmacological profile. There are of course the subjective mental effects, fatigue and sedation, but physiologically, it appears cardiovascular pressure is moderately reduced (vasodialation), whereas cerebral blood flow is noticably increased, heartrate and plasma content increases, and mild muscle relaxation occurs. The sum total of which is not nearly equivalent to the action strong CNS depressing agents such as GHB or heroin have to slow down respiration and heartrate, to the point at which at a high dose the heart simply stops, and they may have syngergistic action on eachother, so safely dosing a combination accordingly is difficult and still dangerous. However, people can pass out on weed, though this is unrelated to its depressant activity, know that during sleep your breathing and heartrate also slows down and this can be dangerous.
 
You'd have to be silly to use marijuana every day.. *itches.. Argh!! It's nearly been 3 minutes since my last hit!!*

But seriously, some awesome discussion here.

I have wondered something simular before, but in the way of, why does our heart not explode out of our chests when I take sometihng like a decent dose of a phenethylamine with alot of stimulation and heart increase... and then smoke weed, which also makes the heart pump fast enough...
 
Can you counteract the nasty side-effect of your heart beating fast by taking a little heroin?
 
^it's usually the other way around for me, i use weed to potentiate the heroin, not the heroin to potentiate the weed. BUUUT wutever floats ur boat!:)

and ya, it'll slow down your heart rate. breathing too. be careful with the stuff if you're gunna do it. read up on it first.

:)
 
Lol thanks, being a neuroscientist has to be useful once in a while, right?

why does our heart not explode out of our chests when I take sometihng like a decent dose of a phenethylamine with alot of stimulation and heart increase... and then smoke weed

I don't know about this for sure since no one has studied phens in real depth, but here are some guesses. There might be an additive effect, but neither one is driving the heart incredibly hard and you're tripping anyway so it isn't that noticeable; in addition, tolerance to the heart speeding effects develops in many long-term smokers. Alternatively, you might nearly max out your flight-or-fight (i.e. autonomic) system with the phen dose and the shock from the cannabis doesn't really boost it more (it would take hard stimulants that act directly on dopaminergic pathways).

Getting flaky, I would argue that weed has a strong energetic push in the heart area... this can cause panic and therefore heart speeding in smokers. No panic = no speeding up from the weed.
 
The heart effects of weed are supposidly due to increased sympathetic tone... vagal outflow and all the adrenergic rubbish.
 
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