MARIJUANA MOOD SWING

Tokers Say Weed Works Wonders, But Science Divided On Pot For The Blues

Things not going so well? Bummed? Living life in an endless D minor?

There's therapy, of course, and a whole pharmacopoeia of mood
changers ready to pump your serotonin levels.

Or there's marijuana. Maybe.

Two months ago, the International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS)
held its annual huddle in Budapest, Hungary, where participants
reviewed, among other items, the latest studies on pot's effect on mood.

A quick perusal of the conference agenda, however, gives an idea of
the yawning gap that now exists between what scientists are able to
prove and what tokers are experiencing.

For some years, many smokers have claimed reefer as a tonic for funk,
posing the possibility that even more are self-treating for
depression without even knowing it. And now some therapists are
prescribing pot as as an alternative to pharma products, with their
scary side effects.

But recent studies are contradictory. Some conclude that the green
worsens the blues, while others are more hopeful. Last year, for
example, a team headed by Dr. Xia Zhang at the U. of Saskatchewan
discovered that a synthetic version of the cannabinoid compound found
in pot reduced depression in lab rats.

With the profit motive in full force, increasing pharma bucks are now
being spent on the pot-mood equation, and we may at last have an
answer. Does pot trump Prozac? It depends.

One enthusiastic observer is Umar Syed, vice-president of scientific
and strategic affairs at Cannasat, a firm hoping to bring
cannabis-based pharmaceuticals to market and an attendee at July's
ICRS meet. "There's decent scientific evidence that marijuana works
for depression," he says.

He points out that back in the 80s, scientists located two
cannabinoid receptors in the brain: CB1 and CB2. CB1, in particular,
works with THC to alleviate depression, "though the exact mechanism
is unknown."

It's no wonder there are so many reports of successful
self-medication, he says, because although there are up to 60 active
ingredients in cannabis, most North American plants have been bred
for the high and contain 4 to 8 per cent THC, a substance known to
raise depression-easing serotonin levels in the brain.

But not everyone is convinced it's THC that makes the difference.
Researcher Richard Musty, executive director of the ICRS and a
University of Vermont professor emeritus, believes it's cannabidiol
(CBD), a non-psychoactive component of the marijuana plant, and not
THC, that shows the most promise.

"This is kind of a confusing area right now. It's going to take more
time," he cautions. Musty, with others, conducted studies of rats and
concluded that CBD has therapeutic potential. He also monitored
patients using CBD, and found that two out of five showed improvement.

But he doesn't recommend trying to get your CBD fix from a reefer,
because "there's just nothing out there," says Musty, referring to
the low CBD content in Canadian pot. And the kicker: when he ran a
depression study on animals using THC, "it actually made the animals
worse," he says.

Dr. Richard Deyo, a professor of psychiatry at Winona State U. in
Minnesota, agrees that while there are positive results from
components in marijuana, it's not time to roll a J.

"Cannabis itself causes depression in some people and seems to
alleviate it in others," says Deyo, who presented a paper at the ICRS
conference. "There are too many cannabinoids in it, and it's not
stable. It can produce one effect today and one effect tomorrow.
That's the danger."

Deyo, whose research is funded by drug companies, claims many factors
can affect marijuana's effects, including a smoker's age, gender and
mental state. He emphasizes that the chemistry of marijuana differs
greatly according to the climate in which the plant is grown, making
consistent research results tricky.

This, in fact, seems to be the major hurdle of pot studies today.
With prohibition the law of the land in North America, researchers
have trouble experimenting with the many plant varieties. "Until we
have a [conducive] legal environment, you're not going to see any
good tests," says Cannabis Culture magazine publisher Marc Emery, who
points out that more than 500 different kinds of seeds are available.

"The modern medical world is all about dosage ranges that are
quantified. Cannabis doesn't work that way; you take it until it
works," he says.

While clinical reports are smoky, things certainly look a lot
different on the front lines. Here, an empiricism of a different kind
is at work: what patients report works for them.

At the Toronto Compassion Centre, Jim Brydges has been dispensing pot
for nine years, and while he has no fancy science to describe how it
works, he says he's had repeated success treating depressed clients
with the leafy green. His technique is mix-and-match; he uses
different plants on different people, combining various strains of
pot and keeping at it until the client reports feeling better.

"A cannabis-indica-based product we know as M-39, for example, is
traditionally known to take away anxiety and relax the person using
it," says Brydges.

In California, the only U.S. state that allows doctors to prescribe
marijuana for mental illness, there are similar reports. "There's a
lot of anecdotal research recorded," says Allen St. Pierre, exec
director of the Washington-based National Organization for the Reform
of Marijuana Laws. "About 35 per cent of people who go to the
dispensaries indicate they're taking cannabis in conjunction with,
but more often as a substitute for, everything from attention deficit
disorder drugs to very powerful anti-depression and anti-psychotic meds."

This positive experience mirrors that of more scholarly med pot
specialist Dr. Lester Grinspoon , associate professor emeritus of
psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and author of several landmark books.

Grinspoon points out that no double blind studies had been done on
lithium way back when he became the first to prescribe it for bipolar
disorder. So he can't see why it shouldn't be acceptable for his
patients, many of whom have been helped by pot, to have legal access
to it. Why, he seems to ask, don't patient reports count?

His website documenting hundreds of users' positive experiences opens
with a quote by native American poet Simon Ortiz: "There are no
truths, only stories."

"Government propaganda notwithstanding, marijuana is much less toxic
than anything we as psychiatrists have to offer," says Grinspoon.
"Some patients find it more useful than Prozac for low-grade depression."

Grinspoon's not the only psychiatrist reporting such findings.
California's Tod Mikuriya, who was in charge of marijuana research
for the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health Center for Narcotics
and Drug Abuse Studies some decades back, says it's shocking that
modern medicine has ignored the history of cannabis in the 100 years
before the 1940s, when it was taken off the market.

"It's usually patients who have had poor results with standard
antidepressants" who do best with marijuana, he says. "One of the
things I've been learning is the complicated relationship between
emotional and physical conditions. Depression is closely connected
with pain, and most of the medications prescribed [such as opiates]
have a bad effect. Cannabis operates on a totally different system in
the body."

Scientists, he says, are desperately looking for something
patentable, "but they're going to have a hard time. They're calling
things 'cannabinoids' instead of admitting that they are molecules
from good old cannabis that are unpatentable. The reason I feel so
strongly is because I am so aware of the chemical studies done prior
to the contemporary ones."

Studies or no, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, seems to have
positioned itself carefully outside the fray. "We don't have any
official guidelines," says CPA spokesperson Helene Cate.

At Health Canada, too, officials remain noncommittal. Spokesperson
Carol Saindon points out that while the Marijuana Medical Access
Regulations don't specifically mention psychiatric conditions,
physicians may prescribe pot for whatever purpose they think is
appropriate, if they attest that they have consulted a specialist.

But while inhaling for depression has a trail of backers, things look
different when it comes to other mental ills. Toking may not be what
the doctor ordered for bipolar illness, for example. Says Cannasat's
Syed, "THC is only safe in the depressive states of bipolar. If a
patient is in a manic state, they would probably benefit from CBD.
But they could be on the precipice of a manic attack, take THC and
make it worse. I would be very hesitant to recommend any cannabinoid
for bipolar disease."

The same caution applies to schizophrenia. "A fair number of studies
point to a significant increase in risk of either causation or
relapse of schizophrenia in smokers of pot," says Dr. Harold Kalant,
professor emeritus of psychiatry at U of T.

Syed, however, says growing evidence suggests that CBD is effective
for this disorder. "The strongest data out there is that CBD, in
strong enough doses, controls schizophrenia. This is the hottest area
of research fresh out of Hungary, and no one really knows it yet," he says.

As momentum builds for cannabis-based meds, there's a chance the bid
for legalization of just plain weed may get left in the dust. NORML's
St. Pierre sees that as the great irony of pharma's new interest in the plant.

"Many pot reformers are investors in these companies. They think
their investment can free up the politics [and end prohibition], but
it's more likely the government will soon say, 'There's a product and
it's safe and you have to go through the drug system. '"