You ever hit the blunt after a long day and feel the stress melt away? Scientists just tested whether that is real, and the answer is uncomfortable.
Researchers at Washington State University ran a placebo-controlled trial on regular cannabis users, published this week in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. People vaped THC or a placebo, then got stressed out in the lab while the team tracked cortisol, heart rate, heart rate variability, and skin conductance.
The weed did lower some stress markers, like cortisol. But it also raised heart rates and did nothing for heart rate variability. Every measure told a different story.
The strongest stress relief came from the one thing no machine can measure: what people said. Everybody reported feeling calmer, including the group that vaped the placebo.
“Consumers should understand that while they feel like cannabis is reducing their stress, that could largely be a kind of placebo effect, due to their expectations of what they think cannabis is going to do,” said lead researcher Carrie Cuttler, an associate professor of psychology who runs WSU’s Health and Cognition Lab. Which is really, actually called the THC Lab.