Marihemp: Medical: The Drug of Choice (Part 3 of 4)

The Drug of Choice

Cannabis as Medicine

(Part 3 of 4) by Gary Stimeling

Antibiotic and Antiviral

A poultice of crushed fresh cannabis leaves, or a powder of the dried leaves, was used in several ancient medical traditions to prevent or cure infection in wounds and sores. Though it was not a sure cure, during the 19th century, doctors in the West often used extracts of the herb systemically to treat infectious diseases of the time, such as typhus, typhoid fever, and cholera.

In 1960, Czech researchers at Palacky University in Olomouc found that cannabidiolic acid (CBA) suppresses the growth of many types of bacteria, including staphylocci that are resistant to standard antibiotics [Bulletin of Narcotics 12: 20–22, 1960]. They successfully treated cuts, ear infections, and second-degree burns with CBA ointment and lotion. The ancient Greek herbalist Dioscorides, as well as Ayurvedic doctors, recommend the juice extracted from the leaves for ear infections. One of the Czech researchers cut his thumb during a dissection. The infection resisted penicillin and other antibiotics, until amputation seemed inevitable. But surgery was prevented and the wound healed by applying CBA. There has been no research followup due to prohibition.

Some components of cannabis may have antiviral properties as well. Several people have reported successfully treating warts, corns, and outbreaks of herpes (both oral and genital) by applying to the infected skin some rubbing alcohol in which cannabis has been steeped. In 1991 a research group reported evidence that THC inactivates the herpes virus by binding to it [Drugs of Abuse, Immunity, and Immunodeficiency, ed. H. Friedman, Plenum Press, New York, 1991, pp. 287–304].

Anticancer Agent

Ayurvedic doctors apply a paste of fresh cannabis leaves to external tumors. Experimenters in the early 1970s injected cancer cells into the lungs of mice and treated the resulting tumors with cannabinol, delta-8-THC, or delta-9-THC [The Pharmacology of Marihuana, ed. M. C. Braude and S. Szara, Raven Press, New York, 1976, vol. 2, pp. 773–776]. All three compounds worked. The tumors shrank by 25 to 82 percent, and the THC mice lived longer than the controls.

Then in the mid-1990s, apparently unaware of this work, the DEA, FDA, and NIDA funded a $2 million study by the National Toxicology Program intended to buttress prohibitionist arguments by finding out how much cancer could be induced in mice given huge doses of THC and then injected with cancer cells. Unfortunately for them, the THC-treated mice in this experiment also developed far fewer tumors and lived dramatically longer than the controls. The government never published the results, allegedly due to a shortage of personnel [AIDS Treatment News, January 17, 1997; Boston Globe, January 30, 1997]. In both studies the cancer-preventive effect was greater the higher the dose and the longer the treatment, indicating a genuine direct effect. One theory is that cannabinoids interfere with signaling chemistry in tumor cells but not in normal cells. In “Cannabinoids: Potential Anticancer Agents” [Nature Reviews: Cancer, vol. 3, October 2003], Manuel Guzmán reviews the current state of knowledge and presents a testable theory of the drug’s demonstrated effectiveness in the laboratory against nine kinds of cancer. In laboratory studies of gliomas, tumors of the nerve sheath cells, various compounds from marijuana switched on apoptosis, the self-destruct chemistry that normally kills defective cells and whose deactivation lets tumor cells multiply out of control. Yet the cannabinoids protect normal sheath cells from apoptosis.

The 1999 Institute of Medicine report gave voice to fears that smoking cannabis may cause lung cancer, though acknowledging that research to date had failed to find such a connection. Indeed, studies among long-term marijuana smokers in Costa Rica and Jamaica found that those who smoked both tobacco and ganja had less lung cancer than those who smoked tobacco alone. The IOM didn’t mention the above research on mice, nor data showing a lack of carcinogens in vaporized resin.

An Aid in Diabetes?

A number of diabetics have reported that cannabis has immediately lowered their high blood sugar and over time has helped stabilize it, controlling the mood swings caused by up-and-down blood sugar. Type 1 (childhood) diabetes affects 1 million Americans; Type 2 (adult), 15 million. Despite the testimony of arrested diabetics at their trials, there has been no systematic research on this use due to prohibition.

A Help in Hepatitis C?

The hepatitis C virus infects 3 percent of world’s population, including more than 4 million in United States. The disease takes 30 years to fully develop, but a liver transplant is the only treatment in late stages of the resultant fatal cirrhosis. Some patients report that marijuana relieves some of the symptoms of the disease, and side-effects of antiviral drugs tried in an attempt to clear the virus from the body. In general, hepatitis patients tolerate drugs poorly, since all must be metabolized in the liver, yet for some reason the cannabinoids, also metabolized there, don’t seem to be a problem. Indeed, specialists now seldom forbid their patients cannabis until a couple of weeks before transplant surgery.

An Aid to Withdrawal from Opiates and Alcohol

Alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, nicotine, and opiates all cause varying degrees of psychological dependence (uncontrollable craving), tolerance (the need to use more), and physical addiction (the need to continue to use in order to avoid withdrawal symptoms). Despite abundant federal money and strenuous efforts by researchers hoping to prove pot addictive, no one has ever shown the drug to be more habit-forming than other pleasures. Those who use it a lot, especially for medical needs, often develop a tolerance to the high, and to the pulse-rate increase. On the other hand, many users report a sort of reverse tolerance, in which they gradually come to need less weed to reach their comfort zone, especially when seeking a gentle high for creative work. Some researchers claim a mild withdrawal syndrome—basically a few days of crankiness. Some people indulge more than they say they want to, and wish they could stop, but when they do, they seem to pay no penalty more serious than “a slight toothache of the soul,” as writer Ron Rosenbaum once put it.

All known addictive drugs increase or decrease supplies of dopamine, one of the two major stimulant hormones in the brain, especially in the pleasure center in the central cortex. Cannabinoid receptors are concentrated elsewhere, however. Furthermore, anandamide modulates dopamine’s activity and so may dampen the chemical forces of addiction to both stimulants and depressants. Novelist and drug explorer William Burroughs found cannabis useful in the late stages of heroin withdrawal but detrimental in the beginning, because it made him more acutely aware of his agony. In the 19th century, doctors in Europe and America used cannabis with great success for opiate addiction, alcoholism, and delirium tremens. Far from being a “gateway drug,” for some, marijuana is an exit drug back to functional sobriety. Psychiatrist Tod Mikuriya believes the ability of pot euphoria to prevent relapse to more debilitating drugs during times of stress is the key to its effectiveness.

An Aid in Menstruation and Childbirth

Hemp drugs have traditionally been used as an oxytocic, that is, to make childbirth easier. Finds from an archaeological site at Bet Shemet near Jerusalem show that cannabis was used in the form of an ointment and as incense for this purpose in the 4th century. A woman quoted by Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar in Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine recounted how, after she’d been given standard anesthesia for her first delivery, she and her baby had been too drugged to leave the hospital for three days. By her third birth, with the aid of marijuana, she had reduced her hospital stay to nine hours. The ability of cannabis to promote relaxed contractions with less pain was mentioned in the Journal of the American Medical Association as late as 1970, along with the assessment, “As far as is known, a baby born of a mother intoxicated with cannabis will not be abnormal in any way.”

Hemp drugs have also been very widely used to relieve menstrual cramps and what’s now known as PMS—for millennia in the East, and in the West during the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Marijuana’s antinausea effect works well against morning sickness, and its appetite stimulation helps keep both mother and unborn in good health. In 1994, the American Academy of Pediatrics conducted a large-scale study among mothers in Jamaica, where cannabis is widely used during pregnancy and birth [Pediatrics, February 1994, vol. 93, no. 2, pp. 254–260]. Not only were infants born to marijuana-using mothers not harmed, researchers found; they consistently scored higher on tests of alertness, reflexes, calm, consolability, and cognitive organization than did children born to a group of carefully matched control subjects, mothers who did not use cannabis. In the United States, however, this is the most vigorously suppressed use of hemp. Courts have taken children from parents and revoked midwife licenses for it.

Hypnotic Relaxant and Sleep Promoter

Cannabis, especially C. indica, is an antidote to Type A behavior and overstimulation. The sedative, sleep-promoting component is cannabidiol, not THC. Unlike Valium, marijuana does not suppress REM sleep and dreaming, though some users say they are less likely to remember their dreams on waking. It is not known whether sativa and indica strains vary in this property. The Nepalese, Tibetans, and Indians sometimes prepare hashish mixed with a small amount of opium (5–10 percent) to maximize the sleepy, dreamy effects as both pleasure and medicine.

Nature’s Antidepressant

To traditional Indian doctors, ganja is the chief facilitator of Ayurvedic medicine’s ultimate goal: joyous harmony between the patient and nature. The herb’s ability to replace melancholy with laughter was stressed by French physician Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, a founding member of the Club des Haschischins of Paris in the 1840s. In this group he introduced the Moroccan hashish candy majoun to the French art scene. The U.S. Dispensatory listed cannabis as treatment for melancolia from 1854 until prohibition in 1937.

There are hundreds of case reports on record, both early and modern, attesting to cures of depression by marijuana. Controlled studies are few, however, involving only small numbers of patients. Some showed great benefit, others found equivocal results, possibly due to the depressing effect of hospital surroundings.

There are also testimonials from many people for whom psychiatric drugs have failed, who find it’s the only substance that helps them climb out of the pit. Some have also found help from cannabis in poorly understood ailments like chronic fatigue syndrome, in which depression is a major factor. Psychiatrist Tod Mikuriya says, “The power of cannabis to fight depression is perhaps its most important property.” It is one reason for the drug’s usefulness in so many different diseases. However, it does not work in all people or at all times. High-THC, low-CBD sativas are often considered better for depression than indicas, but panic attacks may be more common with them. Anxiety reactions are a common side effect of Marinol, which is pure synthetic THC.

Motivational Syndrome

Far from inducing the asocial apathy and laziness ascribed to it in drug war propaganda, for many users marijuana is an aid to concentration. It is well known as the drug of conviviality, and it helps bring the same playful mode of relaxed attention to bear on work.

It is true that cannabis can lead to introspection and questioning of received values. A state of mind that tends toward peace and love is obviously a danger to life as we know it. A plant that induces such a state of mind is a direct threat to the ethic of consumptive competition. It’s a puff of smoke in the eye to all that is mean, self-righteous, greedy, and belligerent in people. After encountering marijuana the first few times, a period of pensive withdrawal may ensue as one looks for a new path, a search that unsympathetic evaluators will call antisocial.

But the myth of amotivational syndrome has long been laid to rest by science. Numerous studies of American college students have failed to find any link between cannabis use and poor academic performance. In fact, some have found that users have slightly better grades and higher scores on standardized tests than nonusers. Attention-deficit disorder may be largely a fad diagnosis, but some doctors, such as California mother and pediatrician Claudia Jensen, say marijuana may be the best remedy for true cases of it.

At one end of the work spectrum, cannabis lets the mind float free, so as to make arduous, boring, repetitive work tolerable. Scientists have studied field hands in India, Jamaica, and Costa Rica, including many sugar cane cutters, who have one of the most exhausting jobs on earth. They’ve documented how the laborers use ganja breaks to relax and energize themselves for more of their brutal toil.

But cannabis is also cherished as a catalyst for creative work. Its scent has sweetened the air of American music ever since Storyville launched the Jazz Age, and melodic group improvisation would be hard under a drug that causes confusion and memory loss. Shen Nong recommended it for absent-mindedness in his Pen Cao. But ganja can also lend itself to a sort of absent-minded professor state where you follow a convoluted train of thought right into a mud hole. Psychiatrists believe that this increased tracking attention to thoughts is what gives us the sense of expanded time. In any case, Ayurvedic medical texts also recommend it for alertness and intellectual stamina. For thousands of years, students seeking to master the vast literature of Hinduism in the great universities of Benares have been encouraged to seek the aid of goddess ganja. And William Burroughs said he wrote the best parts of Naked Lunch after “a sip from the twisted tit of Miss Green.”

Creativity is as important in sickness as it is in health. Motivation and the ability to work hard at getting well are crucial aspects of healing. Too often we overlook them in Western medicine’s schema of patient as passive recipient, first of disease and then of therapy.

Enhancer of Empathy and Sexual Desire

Sexuality is another powerful force behind the will to live, and marijuana’s ability to fire both fantasy and fulfillment is well known throughout the world. If circumstances are right, it enhances in both genders the temporary rise in blood levels of androgens that is the hormonal hallmark of lust. Androgens, including testosterone and related compounds, are the so-called male hormones, which are produced in smaller quantities in females as well. Marijuana is the only aphrodisiac known to directly facilitate sexual desire, as opposed to erectile potential, the aspect of sex upon which Viagra acts.

Marijuana’s enhancement of sensory pleasure combines with its tendency to evoke empathy. The result can be exquisite sensitivity to a partner’s response. The slowing down of perceived time encourages patience. Lovemaking becomes less rushed, more than a performance. Masters and Johnson surveyed 1,000 cannabis users; 83 percent of the men and 81 percent of the women said it enhanced their sexual pleasure. R. Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), once remarked, “If you think you need Viagra, you haven’t tried cannabis.”

No significant effects of cannabis on fertility have been noted in animal studies or statistical research on large populations of users. A few scientists in the early 1970s claimed to have shown dramatically lowered testosterone levels from high THC intake in rats or heavy pot smokers, but their conclusions were disproved by later, more careful work. Very high doses of THC slightly reduce the rate of ovulation and testosterone production in animals, and probably in humans, but these rates return to baseline even with continued dosing at the same level.

Balm for the Soul

Skeptics often wonder how it is possible that marijuana can be so much help in so many different afflictions. Surely there must be some mistake, they think, some druggy delusion.

Speaking materialistically, the many chemical ingredients of cannabis can account for a wide variety of direct effects on the human mind and body. But the progress of disease is not all decided at the molecular level. A few authors recently have delved into the effects of cannabis on the psychological and spiritual aspects of healing.

San Francisco therapist Beverly Potter and journalist Dan Joy map the territory into states of relaxation, optimism, determination, faith, hope, and laughter. All are allies of healing, and ganja tends to evoke and reinforce all of them. The drug’s serene euphoria is intrinsic to its therapeutic action. The “scientific” view of the high as an objectionable side effect is, for the most part, ludicrously wrong-headed. All of the attitudinal allies just mentioned can be learned in meditation, visualization, and other practices for which cannabis can help focus the mind even under the gun of illness. Healing states entered with the herb then open more easily at times when it’s not available.

In addition, cannabis can disinter long-buried traumas or unconscious conflicts. These can be the source of an anxiety attack, but their emergence can also trigger a breakthrough. With a sensitive friend or therapist, such anxious moments can become chances to integrate walled-off feelings into a stronger, less defensive ego, thus removing another barrier to health.

Joan Bello, a psychologist and scholar of Eastern medicine, suggests that the varied healing properties of cannabis are, in a way, side effects. She theorizes that anandamide and cannabinoids work as homeostatic (balancing) substances in physiological processes throughout the body.

In particular, Bello notes, cannabis promotes balance between the stimulant sympathetic and the sedative parasympathetic sides of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is the collection of unconscious nerve pathways that regulate essential bodily functions, such as heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, and muscle tone. In sympathetic overload—known as fight-or-flight syndrome, or simply “stress”—the muscles tense, pulse and blood pressure rise, breathing is fast and shallow, and brain activity is dominated by beta waves, 14–19 cycles per second, which denote agitation. In parasympathetic overload—lethargy and depression—the muscles are flaccid, pulse and blood pressure are both low, breathing is slow and irregular, and the brain is full of theta waves, 4–7 cycles per second, which normally characterize deep sleep. Marijuana promotes a happy medium, an ANS equilibrium in which the muscles have relaxed tone, pulse rises but vessels dilate so blood pressure falls, breathing is deep and regular, oxygenation improves throughout the body, and alpha waves of calm alertness flood the brain at 8–13 cycles per second.

To sum up, cannabis prevents and heals illness in several ways, which mutually reinforce each other. Its biochemical effects cure or relieve some diseases directly. It works throughout the body to balance opposing forces. Its pain relief improves mood and outlook, and thus a patient’s condition as well. The high, an exalted state of awareness and harmony, indirectly bolsters the immune system and fosters a long-term improvement in one’s state of mind.

When talk comes around to such things, most users seem to agree that the plant’s ability to help a person see this blessed earth from a cosmic, truly religious viewpoint is its greatest gift of all. The very word religion means to “re-link” to eternal truths. Clay tablets make it clear that many ancient Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians sacrificed cannabis incense every day under a meditation tent to concentrate the fumes, in order to stay in touch with their “personal deity,” a sort of guardian angel who put in a good word for them with the big gods.