Cannabis has been marketed as a viable therapy for many conditions, but the scientific evidence for most of those claims has been scanty. It is thus exciting that a recent study concluded that cannabis consumption provides significant relief for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Researchers from Washington State University conducted the study. They discovered that roughly half of people with OCD tend to reduce the symptoms after the subjects smoked cannabis. The findings were observed within four hours after the subjects consumed cannabis. OCD is usually characterized by compulsive, repetitive behavior, and persistent thoughts.
OCD patients that consumed cannabis were observed to have about 60% fewer compulsions. Their anxiety dropped by 52%, while their intrusive or unwanted thoughts dropped by roughly 49%. The findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Affective Disorders. The researchers also observed that patients who consumed higher concentrations of cannabidiol experienced better results in reduced compulsions.
“The results overall indicate that cannabis may have some beneficial short-term but not really long-term effects on obsessive-compulsive disorder,” stated Professor Carrie Cuttler, who was one of the lead authors in the study.
Professor Cuttler also described the CBD study’s findings as promising, considering that it does not cause intoxication. He also believes that there should be more CBD research with clinical trials to observe the changes caused by pure CBD as far as compulsion is concerned.
The researchers involved in the study collected data from over 1,800 cannabis sessions through the Strainprint app with 87 participants. The lengthy duration of the study allowed the researchers to determine whether study participants developed cannabis tolerance. However, the results on tolerance were inconclusive. However, they observed that the intrusion reductions continued to become smaller the more the subjects continued to consume cannabis, indicating that they might be building tolerance.
The study on the effects of cannabis consumption on OCD patients is one of the few studies that have so far been conducted to establish the benefits of CBD. There have been a few other studies examining the impact of cannabis on headaches and PTSD.