The article makes no mention of the effects of THC consumption on sleep. Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
If you quit weed, how will you measure whether there is any increase in REM sleep?
1. Remembering some dreams in the morning. Especially that I dreamt right before waking up.
2. Calmer mood, less jittery, harder to irritate.
3. Easier to maintain focus on things that are not fun, easier to resist distractions.
How I tell the level of cannabinoids/alcohol in the body fell enough to allow good sleep with both deep and REM phases:
- The first night you sleep with a proper REM phase you get a REM sleep rebound. It's characterized by lot of vivid, intense, often rare dreams. Easy to notice after a period in which you pretty much don't remember any dreams. Happens because there is much pressure in the body to catch up for lost REM sleep, but rebounds are not enough to catch up.
The sad and deeply diabolical thing about cannabis is that it's half time in body is quite long (though adapted bodies metabolize it faster), so smoking/consuming chronicly (defined in Huberman Lab as 2 times per week or more often) is enough to pretty much completely rob you of REM sleep. You can't remember any dreams and even worse, you loose your everyday free emotional therapist that is REM sleep. If you add some other negative experiences or just a difficult period in life, you're in for depression or at least sad/tired/boring days. And what you might escape into in these days? Often more weed.
x: anecdotal, most likely influenced by huberman lab's episodes on marijuana and on sleep. They describe what roles both deep sleep and REM sleep perform. Episode on weed is a must - listen for people consuming cannabis in any form, even sporadically, because lot of things around cannabis are counter intuitive (f.ex. that it doesn't help with sleep). If you thing problems with sleep affect you or that your sleep quality suffers because of drug (including alcohol) use, consider listening to these Huberman Lab episodes or talking to a specialist if that's available to you.
I smoked weed every day for 10 years and basically forgot what dreaming was, people would tell me about their dreams and I thought they're nuts... I presumed I must be dreaming but I just didn't remember it, but the idea people could remember these extreme vivid crazy dreams they could control seemed totally foreign to me. I moved to a country where weed was very illegal and stopped smoking it, after about 5 months of no weed I started to have the most insane, crazy cool, very very vivid dreams. Then I moved back to Canada for a year and started to toke, again, I almost immediately stopped dreaming. When I left Canada again, and stopped weed again, dreams came back again. My personal very unscientific hypothesis is that I process a lot more of that emotional/thoughtful stuff when I'm awake and stoned, but honestly, who knows.. I find it somewhat concerning to be honest, the difference in my dreaming on and off weed is markedly very stark.
I almost wanted to start smoking again after I quit just to stop dreaming. Quit 3 years ago and the dreams are just so vivid and intense versus the dreamless sleep when I was smoking.
I can totally relate, I actually really don't enjoy the intense dreaming either. I find it overwhelming and uncomfortable and much prefer my dreamless sleeping. That being said, I also accept there is evidence that dreaming is important for your health. I don't particularly enjoy having to go pee throughout the day either, but if I stopped doing it, I'd be pretty concerned for my health.
Not disagreeing with you overall, but I just wanted to add a bit of nuance to things you've mentioned.
> Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
First, as far as I know, smoking weed would only affect your sleep if you consumed it a couple of hours or so before sleep (exact numbers vary per person, but you get the idea). If someone consumed some weed during lunch, I would expect theit nighttime sleep to be pretty much unaffected.
Second, what do you mean by "sleep well"? They might fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. But how good was their sleep quality in reality? We are talking in terms of measuring REM cycle length and such.
From anecdotal experience, I also thought that my sleep shortly after consuming was "good", as I would fall asleep easier. However, I can confirm that it wasn't high quality sleep at all for me, my REM cycle was very short, and I definitely noticed extra groginess after waking up (along with the rest of the things mentioned in sibling comments, like lack of dreams and such). Doing some more A/B testing on my sleep in regards to consumption of weed pretty much made it clear that it makes my sleep quality worse, but makes it easier to fall asleep.
I measure it with a Mi Band. It might not be the most precise measuring method, but I feel like I'm able to correlate "better sleep" shown in the app with "better mood" or "feeling better" the day after. And quitting weed does improve both of those measures.
Of course I was not able to notice this when I was younger. Only now at 32 and a family these measurements are starting to actually be noticeable.
> I feel like I'm able to correlate "better sleep" shown in the app with "better mood" or "feeling better" the day after
If you look at the app and see that it says "better sleep" before starting the day and then notice that you had a good mood or felt better after that could be a placebo effect.
You could check that by not looking at the app until after your day is done and you have noted if you had a good mood or felt better. If the app and your day's mood still correlate then it probably is something real.
On the other hand checking if it is real risks making it no longer work, and a good mood is a good mood even if it was caused by a placebo. I'm not sure I'd check.
> On the other hand checking if it is real risks making it no longer work,
The placebo effect doesn't go away if you know it's a placebo: if it's worked in the past because you thought it did, it will continue to work if you think it will. https://xkcd.com/1526/
So... don't do that? If it worked before, but it doesn't work in theory, it works.
It might not even be placebo! Perhaps the combination of (well rested) + (optimistic) means you have a good day, and the experiment changes those conditions enough that you get different results. Heck, you might end up having better days more often. You never know if you don't try.
There have been studies on it. Whether its harmful or not I do not know. [1]
"To address this question, Feinberg, et al. (1975) compared the sleep patterns of experienced marijuana users on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and a placebo. Feinberg, et al. (1975) reported reduced eye movement activity and less REM sleep in the THC condition. They also reported a REM rebound effect, which is more REM activity, on withdrawal from THC. So, there exists some scientific evidence that marijuana interferes with REM sleep." [1]
Studies don’t tell you facts about your own experience, especially weak studies. Studies only tell you about statistical patterns in whatever population they represent. Here, the study is so poor that it doesn’t actually say anything reliable at all. Check your references, folks!
> Studies don’t tell you facts about your own experience
I'm not even sure how to respond to this. Personal experience not based in science is something that should never be regarded as factual or can be broadly attributed to others biological effects. This is just one study. There have been others, but enjoy your experience.
>Anecdotally, there are people who smoke weed every day and still sleep well at night.
Sleep well, or "sleep enough hours"/"don't have insomnia"?
Because sleeping well and REM sleep can't be deduced from the latter, it needs to be measured.
Not even self-reporting is enough - because chronic bad sleep becomes the baseline, so people used it to just consider their mental clarity/energy levels when they wake up normal (like a person with shortsightedness, who doesn't know he has it -- they're then suprised when they finally get glasses and see that, no, it wasn't normal actually).
Anecdotally i learned stopping a few hours before sleep gives a way better sleep that night, but many smoke weed to fall asleep which is sort of counter productive..
Pretty much every sedative, ambian, alcohol, etc, will decrease REM sleep and increase deep sleep. I have no idea about THC but assume the effect is similar.
I'm curious now...how does it work legally if you really baked in a jurisdiction where weed is legal, immediately fly to a place where weed is not legal, and are still baked when you arrive?
Word of caution - this does not apply to countries with the most severe drug laws and associated punishments.
There have been cases in UAE and especially Singapore[0] where travelers are drug tested on arrival and the presence of banned substances in blood or other bodily fluids is against the law.
Correct. In the U.S., you can report to a police officer that, "yeah man, I'm high out my mind. Stoned as fuck, bro." As long as you aren't driving or causing a disturbance, they legally can't do anything other than search your person for the substance.
I don't see any reason as to why this was downvoted. The username ChatGPT's first activity was this day, and thus colored green hence my very valid comment.
Perhaps prior to downvote access, a user should be educated and quizzed.
If you quit weed, how will you measure whether there is any increase in REM sleep?