Althouse: "Cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it..."

December 23, 2012

"Cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it..."

"Using brain imaging, researchers found that the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis reduced activity in a part of the brain linked to emotional aspects of pain."

25 comments:

rehajm said...: "cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it..."

Good to know. Will come in handy when I'm recovering from traffic accident cased by the guy high on weed.; 12/23/12, 12:25 PM
Sam L. said...: Sorta like Heinlein's lethe--didn't take the pain away, just the memory of the pain. Second by second, IIRC.; 12/23/12, 12:29 PM
Wince said...: The researchers' findings are published in the journal Pain.

I can think of a few Althouse commenters that could be the Alfred E. Newmans of that magazines's cover.; 12/23/12, 12:50 PM
Choey said...: That's approximately how opiate pain relievers work. They don't eliminate the pain so much as make it bearable.; 12/23/12, 1:03 PM
Carnifex said...: I experience the same effect with all sorts of medications, including morphine. I still felt the pain, just didn't give a crap.; 12/23/12, 1:06 PM
Ann Althouse said...: This seems to be how nitrous oxide works (at the dentist).

I have tested it by trying to think about topics that trouble me and finding myself supremely untroubled.; 12/23/12, 1:20 PM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: It always seemed to me that pot was nothing more than a mood amplifier. If you were happy, it made you happier, depressed, it made you more depressed. This was even more true of physical sensation. If I had a headache, smoking a joint made it a throbbing nightmare of a headache. In this sense, my personal experience has always made me highly skeptical of the medicinal value of cannabis.; 12/23/12, 1:23 PM
SteveR said...: If you want to get high, any B.S. you can come up with will do. I remember it made pain worse and not more easily ignored. But that was $20 a lid mexican pot from the 70s, not the fancy Starbucks pot they have now days. Amazing the medical value of that stuff.; 12/23/12, 1:45 PM
Indigo Red said...: This seems to be how nitrous oxide works (at the dentist).

NO is 10% of California's air according to a recent air survey.; 12/23/12, 1:47 PM
Bob Ellison said...: Pain is a fascinating thing. Like everyone, I have experienced it. They say memory of pain is weak or non-existent, and I think that's true.

In Catch-22, Yossarian argues with a prostitute that God should better have made a cosmic doorbell to alert one to personal injury. Yet God seems to have inhibited humans from remembering pain. That seems merciful.; 12/23/12, 2:28 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/23/12, 2:41 PM
ricpic said...: As a ginger my pain tolerance is way low, so maybe that's why I'm highly skeptical of people who equate mental suffering with physical pain. But my guess is that even those who are stoic about physical pain find it harder to bear than say, depression. A depression didn't stop me from shopping for food or doing the wash. Physical pain (say a migraine) makes doing even the minimal excruciating, it blots out everything. That's why I was thrown by "the emotional aspects of pain." What does that even mean?; 12/23/12, 2:45 PM
Synova said...: Isn't that what the "laughing gas" at the Dentist does? Still hurts like the dickens but you just don't care.; 12/23/12, 2:49 PM
Synova said...: *sigh* I should read the comments first.; 12/23/12, 2:50 PM
Bob Ellison said...: ricpic said "As a ginger my pain tolerance is way low".

This is a funny myth.; 12/23/12, 2:55 PM
edutcher said...: Translation:

No medicinal effect, it just makes you goofy.

Surprise!; 12/23/12, 3:00 PM
cubanbob said...: Can't say from any personal experience if MJ has ant pain relief or pain ignoring properties but years ago when an uncle was dying of cancer marinol did help him with nausea from the pain meds.

Weird thing I read was while a person is in a deep surgical anesthesia state their brain functioning looks identical to someone in a deep coma. Even stranger is that a brain dead donor is given anesthesia while the organs are being removed. Apparently the donors body reacts as if in pain unless it is given anesthesia.; 12/23/12, 3:13 PM
Alex said...: The question I have for anti-drug conservatives is why do they insist on so much suffering?; 12/23/12, 3:30 PM
Salamandyr said...: What question do you have for anti drug liberals?; 12/23/12, 4:38 PM
Anonymous said...: Back in my early twenties I had four impacted wisdom teeth extracted. They used sodium pentothal to knock me out but when I came to, there was a mighty painful ache in all four corners of my jaw.

The dentist gave me a week's worth of barbiturates for relief. However, I had seen what uppers and downers had done to people close to me so I threw the pills away.

Instead I relied on a bag of Colombian Gold, the best grass I ever had, to get me through. As claimed above, it did not reduce the pain as such but made it more bearable.

P.S. Don't believe the current propaganda that today's superweed is 10-20x stronger than the grass from the sixties and seventies. 'Tain't so. Today's herb may get you stoned a toke or two sooner, but that doesn't mean it will get you higher.; 12/23/12, 4:40 PM
papertiger said...: rehajm said...
"cannabis makes pain more bearable rather than actually reducing it..."

Good to know. Will come in handy when I'm recovering from traffic accident caused by the guy high on weed.

If you are in a traffic accident caused by a guy high on weed, you shouldn't have been driving at high speed on the sidewalk anyway.; 12/23/12, 8:21 PM
papertiger said...: P.S. Don't believe the current propaganda that today's superweed is 10-20x stronger than the grass from the sixties and seventies. 'Tain't so. Today's herb may get you stoned a toke or two sooner, but that doesn't mean it will get you higher.

Maybe it gets you higher but you just don't notice.; 12/23/12, 8:23 PM
Anonymous said...: Maybe it gets you higher but you just don't notice.

Well, anything's possible.

It may be that one's response to cannabis follows a long-term tolerance curve -- that whatever you smoked in the early years will be more powerful than what you smoked later.

I stopped smoking regularly in the mid-nineties. Since then I occasionally (every month or so) sample a friend's stash but only twice have I been affected as deeply as my routine highs in the seventies.; 12/23/12, 9:00 PM
Sam L. said...: Memory of pain: Could be why women have more children--they forget how much it hurt at the time. A woman told me her sister nearly choked her husband to death during a labor pain--grabbed his necktie and pulled him down onto the bedrail. Not long enough, fortunately for him. Good reason to carry a knife in a handy place.; 12/23/12, 10:01 PM
ndspinelli said...: The people here that are so against medical cannabis show their ignorance w/ their uninformed comments. C'est la vie. In Pardeeville, Wi. a man was arrested for his 12th DUI yesterday. Let's focus on the real problem..not conjured ones.; 12/24/12, 8:56 AM