Dr. Matt Walker

And drum roll, it turns out that most of us don't live in that.

We live in this thing called the real world.

And so if you are facing a circumstance where if you're under pressure at work or if you're a high-performing athlete and this is it, this is the event, it's all or nothing,

Understand that you are going to sacrifice some sleep at night, but maybe that sacrifice is well worth it.

So again, I'm very open-minded.

I'm not trying to be simply too rigid with this.

It's very interesting if you look firstly at the motivational reasons why people use cannabis.

Based on the published study, somewhere in the top two reasons, sleep.

To fall asleep and stay asleep.

Obviously, usually the principal first reason is just to get high and have the experience and the pleasure of being high, if that's what sort of floats your train.

But certainly it's sleep and what we call a hypnotic to put you asleep from the Greek derivative of the God for sleep.

That is high among the reasons that people will use sleep.

We currently don't recommend it.

And here is why.

Certainly THC helps you fall asleep faster.

Very clear in the data.

The problem is that first you start to develop a tolerance and to get that same sleep onset benefit, you need to use, I should say, a higher dose.

So you start to develop dependency and your dose regimen starts to increase.

The second issue with THC is that it's very good at blocking your dream sleep, your REM sleep.

In fact, many people, when they come and they tell me, look, I was a heavy cannabis user, even a light cannabis user for some time.