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posted by chromas on Wednesday May 22 2019, @04:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the positive-outcomes dept.

Study finds CBD effective in treating heroin addiction

For their study, published Tuesday in the American Journal of Psychiatry, [Yasmin] Hurd and her colleagues looked at 42 adults who had a recent history of heroin use and were not using methadone or buprenorphine.

Recruited from social services groups, halfway houses and treatment centers, the participants had used heroin for an average of 13 years, and most had gone less than a month without using. They had to abstain from any heroin use for the entire trial period.

The participants were divided into three groups: one group given 800 milligrams of CBD, another 400 milligrams of CBD and another a placebo. All the participants were dosed once daily for three consecutive days and followed over the next two weeks.

During those two weeks, over the course of several sessions, the participants were shown images or videos of nature scenes as well as images of drug use and heroin-related paraphernalia, like syringes and packets of powder that resembled heroin. They were then asked to rate their craving for heroin and their levels of anxiety.

A week after the last administration of CBD, those who had been given CBD had a two- to three-fold reduction in cravings relative to the placebo group. Hurd said the difference between the two CBD groups was insignificant. The research team also measured heart rate and cortisol, the "stress hormone," and found that the levels in those who got CBD were significantly lower than those who hadn't received the drug

Cannabidiol for the Reduction of Cue-Induced Craving and Anxiety in Drug-Abstinent Individuals With Heroin Use Disorder: A Double-Blind Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trial (DOI: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2019.18101191) (DX)

Related: Study Finds That Legalized Medical Cannabis Led to a Decline in Medicare Prescriptions
Study: Legal Weed Far Better Than Drug War at Stopping Opioid Overdose Epidemic
Opioid Commission Drops the Ball, Demonizes Cannabis
Two More Studies Link Access to Cannabis to Lower Use of Opioids


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:09AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @08:09AM (#846102)

    I know exactly what papers I would include in such a post and even some exact quotes, but it's not really worth the effort for this site where it would probably just get downvoted.

  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday May 22 2019, @09:30AM (2 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 22 2019, @09:30AM (#846111) Journal

    Does ...

    "I know exactly what papers I would include in such a post and even some exact quotes, but it's not really worth the effort for this site where it would probably just get downvoted."

    ... mean the same as 'I didn't expect to be called out on this point!" Perhaps those references would help convince some of us to change our views?

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:04AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 22 2019, @10:04AM (#846116)

      No he's right in a way. Medical research got a lot more ethical. You can't experiment on people like you could back then, you can't even experiment on animals like they did on people. I'm certainly not saying this is a bad thing, but the research is a lot fuzzier these days.
      It's not politically correct but there is still a use for a lot of the data generated by Nazi and Jap experiments on prisoners. There is no way to repeat that data and some of it would be simply unobtainable now.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday May 22 2019, @04:32PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 22 2019, @04:32PM (#846287) Journal

        While that's a valid point, and there's certainly a lot more p-hacking now, I still disagree with his basic statement.

        What's happening is that if you look at "long ago history" the inferior stuff that happened at the same time has been pruned away, so all you see is the good stuff. At least that's a large part of what's happening.

        Another part is that the "low hanging fruit" has mostly been picked. So it's a lot harder to come up with good results. And corporate secrecy with academic cooperation has certainly gotten worse, so it's harder to see what's going on.

        But I still think that the main reason old stuff looks better is "Rust and the moth are the only true critics".

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.