Post-traumatic stress disorder is a serious psychological disease that can flip lives upside down. So if smoking a little ganja can possibly prevent it, shouldn’t we issue it to soldiers right away? Well, it’s still in its early stage of testing as scientists have only proved that it works on rats.
According to Dr Irit Akirav, the leader of the study, there’s a “critical window of time after trauma, during which synthetic marijuana can help prevent symptoms similar to PTSD in rats”. That “window of time” is within 24 hours of the trauma happening. That’s a pretty tight timeframe (especially given the work the army does) but according to the study, the rats that were administered marijuana within 24 hours didn’t exhibit any PTSD symptoms after while those who didn’t use marijuana or used marijuana 48 hours after trauma, still had signs of PTSD.
Whenever they’re ready to test on humans, I’m sure they’ll have a ton of volunteers willing to try it out. All in the name of science, right? [AFP via Death and Taxes Mag]
Image: Jason Swarr/Shuterstock
Salmonpie
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 8:16 AMMaybe this is why I have been able to cope with many tragic events in my life yet remain mostly positive. Or is it that I can’t remember what it was I was worried about, wheres the cake?
i2
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:32 AM+1 =D
H
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 9:21 AMDude…wait…what? Nahhh…nothing traumatic happened yesterday…where’s the cheetos?
Tom M
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:16 AMAnd then the enemy came storming into our tren—-tacotacotacotaco
sketchy
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 11:05 AMHow exactly do you measure PTSD in a rat? Do you send them off to serve in Afghanistan, and then sit them down with a psychiatrist afterwards and ask them how the are feeling? Dr Irit Akirav needs to stop sampling his own supplies I think.
Penmonicus
Friday, September 23, 2011 at 11:51 AMYeah, I was kinda wondering that, too. Do they have to come up with ways of traumatising a rat and then measuring its emotions afterwards?
Luke
Saturday, September 24, 2011 at 4:21 PMmaybe its a simple as letting a cat loose in its cage for a few mins? lol
Anon (You all know me!)
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 at 12:03 PMMy mum has PTSD, and is a long time, heavy weed smoker. She’s pretty relaxed and in good moods while she’s high and if weed is available. But as soon as it runs dry, she freaks out… It’s not a cure we should be looking into, it’s defiently a bandaid fix tho, and it defiently has positive results (I can tolerate mum more when she’s stoned haha)… And as for me, blazing up with my parents is pretty damn cool, we’re down to earth and have a very good relationship which is awesome. She does have occasional moments of depression when she’s smoking tho, but mostly it keeps her calm and let’s her sleep.
Matt L
Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 1:41 PMConsidering EckyThump hasn’t commented in this post yet, and he generally comments on every post… I’m assuming this was him =]