Is weed a sleep aid or a red herring?

By John Garvey

You don’t know why you’re behind the wheel of a Jeep Wrangler, but you’re enthusiastically gunning it down an unfamiliar country road toward a space shuttle launch site. A giraffe in the passenger seat is reading a magazine. And you’re trying to wriggle into a space suit because you’re running late to your daughter’s piano recital on the moon. Better hustle!

Dreams. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, a common effect of quitting weed is a much richer dream life. And that’s one of the keys, really, to the whole discussion of cannabis and sleep.

Cannabis is perceived as a sleeping aid by most adults who use it regularly. There is no doubt that, for many people, it is extremely useful in that regard. But when you take a hard look at the science, the picture is less clear.

Let’s first discuss why it’s so complicated.

Conundrums

As with any discussion about cannabis and health, there are caveats relating to dose, strain, frequency of use, illness, and the entourage effect. Here’s a snapshot of the complications you run into when trying to make sense of it all.

• CBD, best known as an anti-epileptic and anxiety-relieving cannabinoid, is actually stimulating in low doses and sedating in high doses.

• Conversely, THC, the key psychoactive component in cannabis, is often sedating in low doses and stimulating in high doses.

• If you use cannabis rarely or not at all, the evidence suggests that it can help you fall asleep and get more restorative, deep sleep with fewer awakenings. But this effect reverses when you use it routinely. Habitual cannabis users have more frequent awakenings, take longer to get to sleep, and enjoy lower quality sleep than non-users.

• Cannabis has helped many people to wean off benzodiazepines and opioids, which harm sleep quality more than THC.

• A large subset of users actually gets too much sleep, which sounds like a good problem to have except chronic oversleeping is associated with a lot of the same pathological health problems as chronic sleep deprivation.

Why is everything always so complicated?

The term entourage effect describes how different components in marijuana, especially cannabinoids and terpenes, influence one another’s effects. It is the reason that the highs from different strains of cannabis flower can have such distinct effects, even with similar concentrations of THC.

Terpenes, the plant components that give cannabis its scent and flavor, play a key role in the entourage effect. Some, such as linalool (which is prevalent in lavender) and myrcene (also found in hops) are relaxing. Some, like l-caryophyllene, are anti-inflammatory. A number of terpenes appear to have anxiety-relieving and antidepressant qualities. But some terpenes can contribute to THC’s stimulant effects, making it hard to fall or stay asleep.

Medical conditions

Cannabis has proven sleep benefits for at least a half dozen conditions: REM sleep behavior disorder, chronic pain, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), multiple sclerosis, restless leg syndrome and obstructive sleep apnea. CBD in particular has been shown to help people with epilepsy, PTSD and other chronic illnesses.

THC interferes with REM sleep, which plays a key role in emotional regulation, learning, and memory. But if you have PTSD or REM sleep behavior disorder, you want to temper REM sleep because the nature of your dreams or your unusual sleep architecture can wreck your overall sleep. (Sleep architecture is the term for the sequential way we move through different stages of sleep, and the roles of each in growth and recovery.) Something that’s bad for healthy people can benefit someone with a diagnosis.

An important point here is that weed is probably benefiting patients by alleviating the symptoms that interfere with sleep, rather than directly improving sleep quality or sleep architecture.

Here’s to a good nightcap … or none at all

If you wish to pursue better sleep either through cannabis experimentation or by quitting, here are some evidence-based ideas:

• If you have a sleep disorder, there is a decent, though uncertain, possibility that low-dose THC or high-dose CBD can be quite helpful.

• If you struggle to get to sleep, rather than stay asleep, THC might be helpful in low doses, like 1-3 mg. The studies and surveys I’ve seen pointing to its adverse effects involve comparatively high doses.

• If you wish to cut back on weed because you’re not waking up feeling as good as you used to, very low-dose edibles can ease or possibly eliminate withdrawal symptoms. Consider trying The Quarter Gummy Solution.

• When in doubt, try to control for one variable at a time. If you’re using edibles, this may be dosing. If you’re vaping or smoking, this may be THC concentration. It also can be the ratio of CBD to THC, etc.

• It’s also not a bad idea to try strains or edibles high in CBN (cannabinol, another cannabinoid), which many have found helpful for sleep. Although there’s scant evidence that CBN is a sleep aid in itself, experts have theorized that the conditions that produce higher concentrations of CBN also produce higher concentrations of sedating terpenes.

John Garvey is a storyteller, freelance writer, illustrator, and nerd. You can see more of his creative ventures at clippings.me/johngarvey and CreativeFollies.com.