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Cannabis can help erase bad memories, research group says
By Hempology | August 2, 2002
From the Globe and Mail, August 1st, 2002
By Alanna Mitchell
Can it finally be medical proof of the old hippie bromide smoke your troubles away?
An international group of biochemists and pharmacologists has found that the brain
can use cannabis to wipe away painful memories.
The findings, published yesterday in the journal Nature, are the results of experiments
on mice. But the study’s lead author, Beat Lutz of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry
in Munich, said that the findings may have implications for humans.
“The obvious idea is to smoke marijuana and to get rid of bad memories,” he said yesterday
from Munich. “It can erase bad memories faster. But it has to be supported by psychotherapy.”
The findings add to the mounting evidence that marijuana, an illegal drug, may have
widespread medical benefits.
Canada is caught up in a policy struggle over marijuana. The Depeartment of Health grows
the stuff and has set up a system so that the sick can legally possess it for medical
reasons. The federal government has a stash of several hundred kilograms but can’t figure
out how to distribute it to those in medical need, because selling and buying the substance
is illegal.
Federal Justice Minister Martin Cauchon has been talking about decriminalizing the
substance, and he admitted to smoking it.
Dr. Lutz’s study will only add to the argument in favour of decriminalization. But it
is also a landmark in medical terms because it deals with one of the central survival
mechanisms of the vertebrate brain: the ability to spot danger and flee from it.
Scientists have long understood that the brain can reprogram itself not to flee if the
danger goes away. That is called extinction of a memory. But scientists have not understood
how it happens.
Dr. Lutz’s research shows that the answer lies in the body’s store of cannabinoids,
or cannabis-like natural chemicals, produced whenever the body needs them. The brain
has a receptor for these cannabis-like chemicals and can use them to help reprogram
the response to a fear.
A problem is that the fear reaction can stick around when no longer needed. That can
lead to panic attacks or paralyzing irrational fear.
Dr. Lutz said his finding could mean that a person in the grip of trauma might be
able to summon up the terrible memory, with the help of a psychotherapist, then
smoke marijuana to enhance the ability of the brain to extinguish the memory.
He said that smoking is bar far the most efficient way of getting the substance to
the brain, although researches are looking at an aerosol to administer it straight to
the lungs.
But Dr. Lutz was vehement in pointing out that simply smoking dope is not the way to
take away the emotional pain. If this were to work, the patient would have to
consciously retrieve the memory and concentrate on extinguishing it through the
moderate, controlled use of cannabis. The practice of smoking dope to get happy is not
going to have this therapeutic effect.
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