Medical Cannabis and Forgotten Dreams

  • Scientists Studying Sleep Mechanisms Discover How Medical Cannabis Affects Your Sleep and Dreams

You might think that evening treatment with THC-rich cannabis (highly psychoactive) equals more abundant, wilder dreaming. However, as it turns out, that's not the case. Cannabis surprisingly acts as a "dream suppressor", but if you stop cannabis use for a longer period, dreams may return with double intensity.

"Sometimes I don't go to sleep under the influence of cannabis." Says Rod "And when that happens, I always have much more intense dreams. I thought it had something to do with having a 'smoked mental imaging device'.

The good news is that neither Rod's nor your "mental imaging device" is negatively restricted by cannabis. However, cannabis application does affect sleep. To understand how, we must first look at the sleep mechanism itself.

Sleep Phases and Types

"A healthy, complete sleep has certain phases of varying duration," says Dr. Elliot Lee from the Royal Sleep Disorders Clinic in Ottawa. He also explains that these phases can essentially be divided into two main types. "The first phase is REM, the dreaming phase. All others are non-REM."

Scientists further divide the non-REM phase into the following stages: The first, N1 phase is a transitional period when you start to doze off and fall asleep; N3 phase is the most mentally restorative phase, and finally, N2 phase is literally the cream in your Oreo. N2 phase is a transition period between REM sleep and N3 or N1 phases.

Although REM phase is commonly considered the dreaming phase, we can have dreams in non-REM - it's just less likely and we usually can't remember anything. "Approximately 80% of our dreams occur in the REM phase." Moreover, REM phase dreams are usually much stranger. While non-REM dreams are mostly about everyday matters, REM dreams are where you're trying to fend off an army of the undead next to Jamie Lanister, and it doesn't seem strange that you're doing so in the dairy section of the local supermarket.

Cannabis Impact on Dreaming

Cannabis use can be a literal dream killer for the following reasons. "Cannabis can be a very effective helper in fighting insomnia. It helps you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer," say Andrew Kuebbing and Felicia Carbajal from "My health freedom" in California. Studies indeed prove that cannabis reduces so-called "sleep latency".

Is it dangerous to lose dreams and stop dreaming completely? To this day, it's not precisely known what REM sleep is actually for. Dr. Lee himself admits, "REM sleep is still quite a mystery to us. We don't exactly know what the human body needs it for, but we have certain estimates and theories".

The most promising of these theories, according to Lee, is the "sleep to forget/sleep to remember" theory. It's possible that REM sleep has something to do with processing emotions and emotional experiences. If something traumatic happens to you, your brain ultimately records two different types of memories: declarative and emotional.

Declarative memory concerns specific details of an event, such as which people were involved, where it happened, how and why it happened. Emotional memory, as the name suggests, is the memory of how you felt about the event. In the time immediately following the event, these two types of memory mix together. You can't go through the entire event without feeling the emotions associated with it, and dreams may have a separating function that allows you to separate emotions from such events and thus help you move past the emotional consequences.

Will Cannabis Destroy My Ability to Dream?

If you're worried about losing most of your dreams due to cannabis, there's a simple solution. "After interrupting cannabis therapy, there's a certain 'rebound period' where the REM phase returns to the sleep cycle with greater intensity than before," says the team from the "My Health Freedom" institute. The REM sleep rebound occurs precisely after a period of its deficiency.

"If, for example, you stay up all night one day, your body will program more non-REM sleep the following night. Furthermore, if you use stronger doses of cannabis one night and completely skip cannabis the next night, you can expect quite an interesting night."

And you, our readers? Do you have wilder dreams or no dreams at all after cannabis treatment? Share your opinions and experiences in the comments section!