hether you love marijuana (cannabis from here on out), or not, it is a “drug” unlike the rest. Ignoring psychedelics, cannabis’ psychoactive component is not objective or concrete such as “the stimulating effects” of crack, or the “couch lock euphoric dance” with heroin. What I mean is, marijuana’s effects have a wide range of variance embodying the amalgamate range/gradient of human emotion. The outcome or “high” is a result of your present mental state; anxious feelings beget paranoia and panic attacks, and as the user gains more and more focus on the present, the euphoria or “pleasurable experience” increases. To me, this is a phenomenal notion.
One of the most glaring examples of human idiocy is the fact that we have kept illegal the use and distribution of marijuana, and as a result not been able to use it in researching the one topic we have yet to have firm grasp of, how the brain works. As you may have guessed, the implication I’m trying to convey is my belief that cannabis directly effects centers of the brain responsible for relegating consciousness (and voila – form and function are revealed). And there’s more, it’s not just which receptor cites are saturated by which (cb1, cb2, ect. cannibinoid receptors) particular receptor ligands (thc, cbd, ect.), cannabis effects conscious neural processes shortly after they occur – towards the beginning of conscious situational contexts or moments lapsing through time:
We’re having a moment now, you and me. Your reading at some point what I’m currently writing and both situations are similar contexts as far as what comprises our subjective experience of reality while we’re awake. More specifically, we are both sitting, starring at a computer screen with our attention and focus on digesting these written words. There are contexts for all occasions/situations/circumstances; birthdays, breakups, holidays, sexual escapades, ect. and in these, an increasing refinement that slowly breaks up each context into it’s discrete unit parts (photons for example).
As a more veteran user of cannabis, I’ve slowly come to love the drugs utility. At first, every time I smoked pot, I would be thrown into a panic ridden abyss of insanity; I would be dieing or even worse on the precipice of losing my mind. But I persisted in using it for I felt, ‘such a silly thing, dying from a substance that has no recorded history of persons dying after it’s consumption’. Slowly I realized, it’s not just the state of mind you were in before hand, it’s your ability to steer clear of the damn rabbit hole (come on Alice – ha ha). Honing your ability to guide your experience with cannabis just lends further credence to the idea that the cannabinoid system sits in the forefront of a set of neural processes overseeing the painting of our conscious portrait of “reality”.
Looking at the cascade of neural activity occuring after synaptic receptor binding of cannabinoids (in addition to any endocannabinoid current saturation) such as what occurs upon cannabis usage. The cannabinoid receptor, CB1, is mostly distributed throughout various parts of the brain, thus I’ll be discussing what is currently known about CB1 functionality. First among all other receptor cites, CB1 is mostly co-located (existing at the same synapse) with the serotonin 5HT1A, 5HT2A, and 5HT2C receptors. Briefly, 5HT1A adjusts the flux of serotonin release, 5HT2A is a critical communication vector between the sensory hub (hypothalamus) and cortical regions throuought the outer cerebral cortex, and is believed to be the receptor most responsible for inducing the psychoactive effects of hallucinogenic drugs, and the deactivation or antagonism of 5HT2C receptors accelerates the release of the other two critical components of consciouness, dopamine and norepinephrine – Monoamine Hypothesis of Depression. The relationship between these three is established through allosteric modulation (binding to CB1 at these serotonergic colocations indicrectly affects the three receptors previously mentioned) which is a more delayed propagation of neural signaling. The more immediate response illicited from CB1 binding is established via actions upon GABA (GABA)and Glutamate (Glu) neural systems. Glutamate is simply the neurotransmitter that primes (activates) neural system response while Gaba performs the opposite by disengaging/desensitizing (inhibits) neural system response. For the most part, their receptors are ligand-gated (fast-acting – quickest form of neuron-neuron signalling) while dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine have G-Coupled protein receptors (slow-acting – delayed neuron(s)-neuron(s) signaling). More on this later.
As we abstract the neural activity stated above, the behavioral and cognitive effects of cannabis, play out in a seemingly consistent fashion. Regardless of the quality of “high”, a fervor of activity within the cannabinoid system, tends to cause; disruption in memory retention, perceptual enhancements, heightened arousal (autonomic activity <- Norepinephrine), modulation of systems associated with establishing reward (tokens of survival) a la the opiate system and the endogenous cannabinoid ligand (anandamide) and those necessary in seeking out such rewards – attention/focus/concentration and resultant motor activity (involuntary and voluntary) a la the synnergistic neurotransmitter triad, serotonin (5HT), dopamine, (DA), and norepinephrine (NE). These are the basic constituents of conscious awareness. After all, it boils down to sex and food (and the occ. means to survive whatever consequences arise from our sexcapades).
The difficulty in understanding how the brain works is not due to a lack of tools to detect and measure brain activity. It is due to the fact that brain function is a result of quantum mechanical processes, and any measurement at all, muddies the ability to interpret the results – Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. For those of you who’ve seen Transcendence (Johnny Depp), the his conception of AI was only made possible through the usage of quantum computing – Quantum Computing
If the cannabinoid system sits at the forefront of conscious neural activity then activity occurring mainly between the neurotransmitter triad (5HT, DA, and NE) subsequent to CB1 actions upon Glu, and GABA, comprises the rest (meaning or association established between short and longer term contexts via short and long term memory encoding).
At the most local level, typical contexts range anywhere between 8ms to several hours in length; studying, watching a movie, ect. Given the fast acting nature of GABA and Glu signaling and the premise that cannabinoids initiate “contextual splicing” of time while conscious, neural processing can be thus be construed as the encoding of the more moderate signaling of our “triad” upon the fast (excitatory/inhibitory) neural oscillations of GABA and Glu. So a context can be likened to a 3-D projection of the rippling effect caused by deluge of rainfall upon a body of water. In keeping with this analogy, the degree to which a rain drops velocity (particular set of DA, NE, or 5HT signal) is conferred as energy; the amplitude of the resultant wave of water, is decreed by Glu/Gaba input signaling (GABA’s overt influence would diminish the size of the ripple generated, Glu would do the opposite). From this vantage, information garnered in studies about other neurtransmitters purpose and relationship to other neurotransmitters, a map of general brain function can be pieced together theoretically. The day we develop imaging technology capable of measuring electrical/metabolic brain activity of a person performing quotidian tasks over differing periods of time, aspects of this theory could possibly be validated empirically. But because such equipment does not yet exist, and the fact that studies, even recently published, always bear the burden of some caveat, I have quite a bit of philosophical license to tackle the subject from various aspects or points of view (not that I’m Einstein, but what would have happened if Einstein never drew outside the lines when he was a kid?).
I’ll piece the rest together at some point in the future..
WIP>>
Politics: Putrid Petty Pompous Paegentry 