Gemma Speck

CBD is what you would often see marketed as medical products.

CBD oil, CBD gummies, CBD drops.

Some people think of it as a weaker weed, but it's a different cannabis compound or derivative entirely with a completely different profile of feelings or sensations.

It doesn't create that same overhaul in our consciousness.

In research, it's often described as actually having a potentially calming, antipsychotic, anticonvulsant, anti-inflammatory kind of job.

or role.

So whilst THC or typical weed tends to shift our experience psychologically into this altered intensified state, CBD is better understood as a compound that may influence our body more than our mind, but also our overall ability to regulate.

Okay, turning away from medicinal uses, one question I got from a lot of you when I said on Instagram that we were doing this episode is, why does it impact me?

Why does smoking weed impact me differently compared to my friends, compared to my boyfriend, my girlfriend, I don't know, my parents even?

Why do I have such a different response?

Two different people could consume the same product, same amount, same everything and have wildly different psychological experiences, particularly when it comes to feelings of calm versus feelings of anxiety.

Now, one of the main reasons is that and one of the main reasons it has such a different effect is simply because we have different brains and therefore different cannabinoid systems and

Different sensitivities to substances, different psychological profiles that impact how we interpret the physical and emotional sensations of weed.

This is all affected by things like personality, genetics, stress, even the setting that we are in when we use it currently, when we first used it.

THC changes how the brain filters attention, filters reward and emotion differently.

But it can also feel very different depending on what is already going on internally or the state of your CB2 or CB1 receptors.

Despite a lot of research suggesting that there is a casual link between cannabis and anxiety, a large 2024 review from researchers based at UCLA said,

actually suggests that this association can be best explained by the fact that anxiety predisposing individuals tend to use cannabis more as a method of self-medication compared to people who don't have an anxiety disorder.

So this suggests that it's not necessarily cannabis usage overall that makes you anxious, makes everybody anxious.

But it's just that when people with a certain anxiety profile or a certain personality do use cannabis, the effect of that on their anxiety is huge.