In a blog post, I explored some of the factors that influence whether cannabis helps or harms people’s mental health. I looked at relevant factors like someone’s struggles with particular mental health conditions (or proneness to them), as well as the type of cannabis used (with differing THC and CBD levels determining the overall effect).
Cannabis’s negative effects on mental health for some people aren’t always tied to acute negative effects, by which I mean, someone could generally enjoy the effects of cannabis, but in the long term, the outcome is negative. For instance, someone could be using cannabis as self-medication – to feel content while dealing with loneliness, depression, or social anxiety – but this could entrench avoidance patterns. And when the high fades, depression, anxiety, and paranoia may be heightened the day after. But the temporary relief and positive feelings from cannabis are enticing, and so, despite negative overall effects on mental health, addiction may follow.
Let’s take the case of someone who is not using cannabis in an addictive way – who doesn’t currently have a problematic relationship with it. This person may have enjoyed cannabis in the past, but no longer does, or their experience of its acute effects may be mixed. Sometimes the experience is enjoyable, sometimes it is unpleasant. When the experience is positive, they really see the benefits of cannabis – the recreational, sensory, aesthetic, creative, or spiritual benefits. So, they would like to have more of these experiences and fewer of the negative ones, which may be marked by overthinking, paranoia, and mental discomfort.
While the dose and strength of cannabis can certainly influence whether an experience is generally positive or negative, there are other important factors at play, too. In this post, I would like to apply the concept of ‘set and setting’, typically reserved for psychedelic use, to cannabis use. Moreover, I believe that making cannabis experiences more positive and less negative contributes to the lingering and short-term effects of cannabis, such as how one feels the next day, or even in general in day-to-day life. Again, the positive effects of cannabis may lead to addiction for some users, but for those who don’t feel they use cannabis in a compulsive or self-destructive way, it is, of course, desirable to have cannabis enhance quality of life rather than degrade it.
Set and setting are relevant to cannabis because it can be considered a ‘mild psychedelic’, or an experience that sometimes involves mild psychedelic effects, such as laughter fits, enhancement of colour, aesthetic enhancement, introspection, and insights. But in high enough doses or a high enough potency, and especially when consumed orally, cannabis can also result in much stronger psychedelic effects, with many users equating it with a psychedelic experience. (In fact, many people find psychedelics easier to handle than a strong cannabis experience.) Cannabis, like psychedelics, also has the potential to induce mystical experiences. Set and setting play a role in whether, or to what extent, some of these effects arise (as do, of course, dose and cannabis potency).
Given cannabis’s mild or sometimes mild psychedelic effects, set and setting are not as powerful an influence as they are for psychedelics (although high-dose experiences and edibles may be an exception).
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No luchar contra, la marihuana junto con los psicodelicos es de las sustancias más bonitas que hemos podido descubrir, capaz de abrir horizontes. Yo me siento en ese horizonte.
La vida es bella.