By Brandon Manns
Many people see CBD as a miracle cure for all their problems. While
this is expressly false, CBD has been shown to be a useful remedy for a
host of illnesses, from epilepsy to cancer, and, more recently,
addiction.
CBD oil is legal in all 50 states in the US, as long as it’s extracted from hemp – the same plant that gives us hemp oil. When extracted from the marijuana plant, the laws around it are fuzzy at best, but as long as it doesn’t contain more than 0.5% THC, you’re in the clear.
What really sets apart the effect of CBD oil on addiction to, say,
chronic pain relief is the fact that it’s backed up by a scientific
clinical study carried out at the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai in
New York City.
Are current methods ineffective?
Addiction is poorly understood, at best, and there are tens of known factors that influence both the addiction process and the recovery phase – a lot of them environmental, and more still physical.
In this study, the kind of addiction under study was to opioids. Heroin is the best-known opioid, but other legal drugs that fall under this category include OxyContin, a powerful painkiller.
The US is currently struggling with an opioid epidemic that has
claimed over 300,000 lives so far, and we need more solutions. The most
common and effective opioid addiction treatments are buprenorphine and
methadone, which can be used to treat any kind of opioid addiction,
including heroin and legal painkillers. But if they’re so effective, why
don’t people use them?
Two reasons: the drugs used to treat addiction have their own addiction risk and there is a lot of stigma regarding opioid rehabilitation. Most people would rather not face these factors.
Additionally, the two drugs are very highly regulated and won’t easily reach even patients that require them
In the search for an alternative treatment, all the rage around CBD and its benefits caught the radar of these researchers.
How CBD helps cure addiction
The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, is the most concrete evidence we have to date of CBD’s effectiveness with treating addiction. It involved 42 people with the heroin-use in their recovery phase, as they tried to abstain from the drug.
Before the lab session, participants of the study were either given a CBD tincture or a placebo. They were then shown cues that were intended to trigger drug cravings. This includes videos of people using heroin, for example. In an uncontrolled setting, seeing such cues have been known to trigger relapses.
Lower drug cravings were reported in people that received the CBD oil as compared to those that had the placebo, in response to the cues. The link between CBD and addiction is further improved since the results were somewhat durable – they lasted more than a week – and other benefits included lower anxiety.
Is it now safe to take CBD oil for opioid addiction?
Far from it, no. This was only a preliminary study, and the results are far from being definitive.
The new findings suggest that CBD could be a useful remedy in the future for treating heroin-use disorder, but more tests, including one to find out the effectiveness of CBD outside a controlled setting, still need to be conducted.
If anything, self-treatment using any form of CBD is not advised at this time, a sentiment echoed by leading CBD vendors such as Greenleaf Farms. A lot of research regarding how CBD interacts with other drugs, particularly with strong medicines such as buprenorphine, still need to be conducted.
The risk is even greater considering the CBD industry is highly unregulated and might not contain the advised amounts of CBD or high amounts of THC (which is known to react with several drugs).
It’s always advisable to buy CBD oil from outlets with independent third-party verification such as Greenleaf Farms, and even then, consult a doctor before self-medicating.
CBD oil is legal in all 50 states in the US, as long as it’s extracted from hemp – the same plant that gives us hemp oil. When extracted from the marijuana plant, the laws around it are fuzzy at best, but as long as it doesn’t contain more than 0.5% THC, you’re in the clear.
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Are current methods ineffective?
Addiction is poorly understood, at best, and there are tens of known factors that influence both the addiction process and the recovery phase – a lot of them environmental, and more still physical.
In this study, the kind of addiction under study was to opioids. Heroin is the best-known opioid, but other legal drugs that fall under this category include OxyContin, a powerful painkiller.
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Two reasons: the drugs used to treat addiction have their own addiction risk and there is a lot of stigma regarding opioid rehabilitation. Most people would rather not face these factors.
Additionally, the two drugs are very highly regulated and won’t easily reach even patients that require them
In the search for an alternative treatment, all the rage around CBD and its benefits caught the radar of these researchers.
How CBD helps cure addiction
The study, published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, is the most concrete evidence we have to date of CBD’s effectiveness with treating addiction. It involved 42 people with the heroin-use in their recovery phase, as they tried to abstain from the drug.
Before the lab session, participants of the study were either given a CBD tincture or a placebo. They were then shown cues that were intended to trigger drug cravings. This includes videos of people using heroin, for example. In an uncontrolled setting, seeing such cues have been known to trigger relapses.
Lower drug cravings were reported in people that received the CBD oil as compared to those that had the placebo, in response to the cues. The link between CBD and addiction is further improved since the results were somewhat durable – they lasted more than a week – and other benefits included lower anxiety.
Is it now safe to take CBD oil for opioid addiction?
Far from it, no. This was only a preliminary study, and the results are far from being definitive.
The new findings suggest that CBD could be a useful remedy in the future for treating heroin-use disorder, but more tests, including one to find out the effectiveness of CBD outside a controlled setting, still need to be conducted.
If anything, self-treatment using any form of CBD is not advised at this time, a sentiment echoed by leading CBD vendors such as Greenleaf Farms. A lot of research regarding how CBD interacts with other drugs, particularly with strong medicines such as buprenorphine, still need to be conducted.
The risk is even greater considering the CBD industry is highly unregulated and might not contain the advised amounts of CBD or high amounts of THC (which is known to react with several drugs).
It’s always advisable to buy CBD oil from outlets with independent third-party verification such as Greenleaf Farms, and even then, consult a doctor before self-medicating.
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