May 3, 2016 • 57 mins
Humans have known about cannabis for thousands of years, crafting hemp textiles and consuming its psychoactive THC. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian examine the cannabis plant, its travels through human populations and its famed sensory and psychological effects.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
Robert who said the following, The illegality of cannabis is outrageous,
an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps
(00:26):
produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately
needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. Oh well, well,
that's of course a quote from Mr X from the
early nineteen seventies. Yeah. Mr X. He's that guy who
is on The X Files. He replaced the deep throat
character in like season three, Right, is that true? There's
(00:47):
a Mr X on there? Oh yeah, totally totally. He
was like their inside informant. Uh, he's the guy from
twenty one Jump Street. He said that. No, no, okay,
turns out this was actually Carl Sagan. Why yeah. Mr
mr X was his um, his his marijuana advocate pseudonym
back in the day. Well, Carl Sagan must have had
(01:09):
a contact high. That's my worst pot joke that I'm
gonna tell during this episode. But yeah, so Carl Sagan
said that. But We didn't find out about that until
after he died. You know, I learned about Carl Sagan
saying that listening to a podcast. I was listening to
the Dead Authors podcast with Paula Tompkins and Matt Gorley
was his guest, pretending to be Carl Sagan, and they
(01:30):
talked about this quote at length. Yeah, and it's and
it's more than a court like, it's a full piece
and you know, in which he talks about his experiences
with marijuana, the effects marijuana had in his own life,
on creativity, on making connections things outside of his out
of the scientific discipline. But he at least alluded a
(01:50):
little bit to it's it's used to make scientific connections
as well. So we figured we did a two parter
on M D M A. There are a lot of
positive comments about that, and we thought, you know what,
maybe we should do this as kind of like an
ongoing series where we explore different UH drug substances, the
cultures around them, but mainly the science of how they
(02:12):
work and the potential medical properties that they have. Right, Yeah,
as well as you know, some cool historical and cultural
material as well, more way more so than M D
M A Cannabis is a subject where you could easily
have a stuff to blow your mind esque show that
just covers nothing but marijuana. Like each day, you could
(02:35):
look at a different uh each week, you could look
at a different historical tidbit, some different cultural tidbit. You
could look at some new study about its applications. You
could look at some new study about it's you know
that that tackles it from a you know, drug abuse,
drug prevention angle. There's just so much material out there,
uh that you could just go on forever. And we're
(02:55):
not going to go on forever. We're going to listen
two pieces here. Yeah, we we did our best to
condense this down. Robert's right. There's an absolute infinity of
hot research out there, and that's a good thing because
there's a lot of things that we have to learn
from this one plant that are our species has become
(03:15):
totally obsessed with. Yeah. I mean, we stand it in
a you know, an interesting place in history where um
acceptance of marijuana is growing in many circles. Uh. We
see a lot more research, scientific research going on right
now than we have in the past. And uh, yeah,
it's it's hard to exactly predict where we'll be ten
(03:36):
years from who knows. Yeah, but but yeah, we're gonna
give it the old stuff to blow your mind. Shake
here and if there if you want more information or
you want one more of just a general overview, there
are a couple of great articles over how stuff Works
dot Com, one on marijuana, how marijuana Works, another one
how medical marijuana Works, that will give you the basics.
(03:57):
You know, us, we're liable to maybe dwell on some
of the weirder, cooler things about the topic, and you
might very well want to then go back and export
some of the basics. Yeah, I want to start the
episode with a disclaimer that, like, what we're going to
do isn't the standard how marijuana works type episode. Uh,
And in fact, our colleagues over at Stuff you should
(04:19):
know to to how medicinal marijuana Works episode that you
should go listen to if you're looking for something like that.
This is going to be more us really drilling as
far as we could, uh into the science behind it,
how it affects the brain, uh, some kind of odder
unknown cultural connotations of it through history, how it's evolved
(04:40):
over the years, and in particular, one of the things
I'm psyched to talk about is like it's migratory patterns
across the planet. Yeah, that that is some really fasting
material there. And then we're gonna break and we're gonna
do another episode later this week that's going to be
solely about the health benefits and the medical properties of it. Uh.
And so you know this will be a little bit different.
(05:02):
This is in our voice and as such, you know,
it's a subjective experience. So Robert and I will also
probably bring our own experiences of growing up as adults
in America in a society that, uh, plenty of people
smoke marijuana and do do whatever they want with marijuana,
but it's sort of still illegal. Depends on where you
(05:22):
live now, Yeah, yeah, And I imagine pretty much everybody
out there is gonna have some level of familiarity with
with marijuana. Either you have tried it in the past,
you're an active user, you know somebody who fits either
these categories, or you've at least seen it on television,
you've heard about it in the lyrics to two various
songs and um and in various hip hop tracks. You
(05:45):
probably know something about what we're talking about here, all right,
So let's dive in then real basic cannabis as an organism,
it is closely related to some other species plant species,
But really that just of it is that it is
a plant that probably originally originated natively in India somewhere
(06:06):
just north of the Himalayas. We know that it can
grow somewhere between eight to twelve feet tall, almost in
some cases as tall as twenty five ft. I can't
imagine that. Uh. And then one thing that you know,
we'll just get out of the way, but this is
not going to be something we're gonna talk a ton about.
Of course, it has uses as a textile fiber, right,
(06:27):
and hemp has particular woody fibers in it that have
industrial applications that that could be again like that could
be its own podcasts, all the ways that you can
use hemp, right, Uh. And I mean it is important
to hit because because essentially you have two very common
subspecies of cannabis. You have a Cannabis Sativa L and
(06:50):
L stands for Carl Linnaeus, Carl Linnaeus who named it
in three and this is the non psychoactive hemp variety.
This is the version of of cannabis that is used
to create these various textiles and has been used for ages.
Will discuss in a little bit um and and and
to put that in perspective, hemp contains less than one
(07:13):
percent th HC. Meanwhile, you have Cannabis sativa, the psychoactive
cannabis plant, and that when that one you'll see t
ch th HC levels that range from four to and
the upper end of that the twenty percent area. You're
going to see that in some of the specially strains
that humans have cultivated. So then there's also Cannabis indica
(07:35):
and there's another one called Cannabis rudder alis uh. And
these are different species. There's variants, there's subspecies. But one
thing that's worth saying right up front about these is
that these categorizations sometimes get used over simplistically, and this
is gonna be something that we keep coming back to
over and over again, especially with medicinal use. Uh. The idea,
(07:56):
for instance, that indica makes you sleepy but sativa makes
you hyper uh. But then there you can find strains
of both that have totally opposite effects. Right. So there's
like there's a lot more going on here. And the
reason why is this plant is like incredibly dynamic and complicated.
It has more than five hundred chemicals in it, including THHC.
(08:18):
A hundred and nine of those chemicals are what we
call cannabinoids, and those are the important ones when we're
talking about the effects on the brain. But this seems
really diverse. It's got a lot going on inside of it. Uh,
And depending on how it spread, depending on the different strains, whatever,
it's gonna have different effects, right yeah, I mean the
effects of th HD of consumption is gonna depend down
(08:39):
the strain, how much you took, how you took it, Uh,
your your individual makeup, your past usage, a number of
different factors. Um. It's also worth a stressing here that
the female cannabis plant is the one that produces the
sticky resin that contains the cannabinoids, most notably delta nine
tetra hydro a banal, which is th h so th HC.
(09:05):
Let's let's start with just like a simple brain explanation. Okay,
here's this is the This isn't your brain on drugs.
This is just your brain. Okay. Our gray matter contains neurons,
and neurons are cells that talk to other cells with
electro chemicals. Right, the electro chemicals are called neurotransmitters, and
(09:27):
one type of neurotransmitter in our brains that exists without
smoking marijuana are called endocannabinoids. Yea, endocannabinoids aren't in your
brain right now, regardless of your past usage or nine
usage of marijuana. And there's one plant that also produces them,
(09:47):
and that's cannabis. So keep that in mind throughout all
of this, right, Is that, like, the things that are
going on the effects of cannabis on the human body
are basically the king things that we are already going on,
right increasing or decreasing them. Yeah, I mean you can
you can sort of say that for from for pretty
(10:07):
much any Yeah, that's substance. It's not like a magic
hand supernatural force reaching into your brain. Is this substance
that is causing your brain to do things that it
already does, though perhaps in different intensities and in different ways. Yeah,
I just kind of want to dispel the notion of
the and you and I grew up with this the
this is your brain on drugs type commercials where it's
(10:28):
like the drugs are doing the things to you, and yeah,
like and they are, I mean, it's a cause and
effect relationship. But like the chemistry sets already there on
your skull, right, an egg does not fry itself exactly,
all right, So an individual takes th HC it can.
We already mentioned that the exact results are gonna depend
(10:50):
on strain, dosage, delivery method, individual frequency of use, but
the it's gonna ultimately produce a variety of effects of
both sensory and psychological and looting. Uh. One of the
sources listed it is mild reverie, which show we were
just talking about about that off air. Well, what's what's
the more relatable term for that fun? Yeah, And that's
(11:11):
what I would think of it as that's that's another
thing that like I guess we should point out as
like along the way and the research of this is
of course academics who are studying marijuana or cannabis and
its effects, like they're in this sort of weird, precarious
situation right where they want to be as scientifically accurate
as possible to maintain their standing of this being a
(11:32):
serious study. Uh, because and I read this in multiple pieces,
they're like, well, there's a stigma on people who study
this as like, you know, we're just a bunch of
hippies who just want to smoke weed or something like
that while while also holding professorship, and they're paranoid about it.
Almost yeah, uh so there is almost uh an impenetrable
(11:56):
language use in some of these, including uh equent reverie. Yeah,
and they rarely use the word dank, but yeah. Some
of the other effects include a euphoria, heightened sensory awareness, creativity, empathy,
impaired short term memory, altered senses of time and space,
(12:16):
enhanced appetite and sexual desire um not necessarily at the
same time, occasional drowsiness, and a tendency to enhance introspection. Okay, okay,
and this this, These are all the kind of like
basic assumptions that we have as just like general people
who exist, at least in America, of like what happens
when you smoke weed? Yeah, I mean, if you just
(12:38):
watch television, you see varying level. So like the guy
in this show he smokes a little breaking back and
suddenly he is a little more creative, creative, or oh,
this character in this show Aida Pott Brownie and then
just set there thinking about death for an hour. You
know that. Yeah, totally a lot of people are gonna
be familiar with these these basic uh sensory and psychological effects.
(13:00):
So back to the brain. Those cannabinoids work their way
up through our blood and into our brains, and they
mimic or block the neurotransmitters, interfering with our normal functions. Right. So,
because there's high concentrations of cannabis cannabinoid receptors in our hippocampus,
(13:21):
our cerebellum, and our basil ganglia, the THHC binds with
the receptors there and interferes with our recollection of recent events.
So this is the whole memory thing. We're gonna talk
a lot about this um. In fact, I had previously
written an episode for our video series brain Stuff on
how much marijuana actually affects your memories, so I was
able to incorporate a lot of that research here. And
(13:43):
of course, as we also know, it affects your coordination
and your muscle movement. So okay, like we said, our
brains have already got these endocannabinoids in them, right, and
cannabis cannabis basically hijacks this process. Now, the system of
the endocannabinoid system influences pain, our memory, our mood and
our appetite, all those things that Robert just listed as
(14:04):
being affected by using cannabis, which is a nice uh,
which nicely foreshadows the air eventual discussion on medical applications
because you can already see this is a substance that
is it is already involved in a number of of
the things that are affected by various illnesses and diseases. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh.
(14:25):
And one of the things that we're really getting into
now and we're going to talk about more, but like
research is relatively recently in the last five years, is
that the endocannabinoid process also has a big role in
how our brains grow. Now, recall from when we talked
about m D m A and the m D m
A episodes, Our brains are actually growing until we're twenty
(14:47):
five years old. Like it's easy to say, like, oh,
I'm I'm growing up, I'm eighteen, I'm done, but that's
not true, Like your brain is still evolving, and uh,
using marijuana definitely seems to have an effect on how
your brain grows if you use it in adolescence. But
I think like what they're referring to is like anything
before years old, and that that's on a regular use,
(15:10):
but we'll get into that later. And the thing about
the endocannabinoid system, we've only known about this thing since
the late nineties, so, uh, we know, okay, we know
it's complex neurosystem. We know it affects these couple of
things that I just mentioned, but we're only beginning to
understand it. So it's weird when you go down the
rabbit hole on marijuana research because there's tons of it.
(15:33):
Like we mentioned, it's everywhere, but a lot of it
is the same. Like, here's this endocannabinoid thing. We sort
of get it, but not really. More research is needed. Uh.
And then here's my fun fact for the episode. The
reason you can't overdose on marijuana is because our cannabinoid
(15:54):
receptors aren't densely packed inside the medulla. The medulla control
our cardiovascular system, right, So if you use heroin and
you overdose on heroin, that'll shut down your respiratory control center.
But pot can't do anything like that. Do not mistake
us when we say you cannot overdose on marijuana. We
(16:15):
are not saying that you cannot take too much. You cannot.
You can take more marijuana than than is than you
should or is comfortable for the user experience. Um, But
you can say that about anything, right. You can say
that about chocolate. Yeah, I mean one, you can say
that about plenty of things just in your on your
spice rack that take too much of it, you can
(16:36):
they can have dire consequences. Bottom line being you cannot overdose,
but you can't take too much. Okay, So we're gonna
talk about the positive effects. But I'd like to think
that most of the people out there, again, like whether
(16:57):
you've had personal experience with it or you've just watch
a TV show, you pretty much get what those positive
effects are, right at least the positive recreational effects that
we're talking Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the the reduce of
pain and inflammation. Uh. And then the medicinal applications we're
going to talk about in the next episode and primarily
just you know, spoilers for that episode. It's primarily used
(17:19):
to treat epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, and of course we
also discussed some of its uses, um for people who
are undergoing chemotherapy from cancer. Yeah, there's all kinds and
and PTSD as well. There's just like with m d
m A, uh, that same maps research Institute is looking
at how marijuana can help with PTSD. So this leads
(17:42):
us though, let's talk about the adverse effects. Okay, and
this isn't I'm not gonna do like the Nancy Reagan
like sit here and tell you all the bad things, right.
I think the way that we need to approach this,
just like we we talked about with m d m A,
is like, let's be mature about it. This is plant.
This plant does these things to the human body. We're
(18:04):
listing them. We can apply positive or negative connotations to them,
but just it's important for us to walk through what
they are, right, all right, So memory is the big one. Uh.
And then the answer like, does does marijuana affect your memory? Oh? Yeah,
it absolutely does. And the reason why is because the
(18:26):
th HC latches onto the cannabinoid receptor type CB one
in your brain. Uh. And this affects your short term memory.
In fact, we've done forty years worth of studies that
show that th HC disrupt that disrupts our short term memory.
It also makes it difficult to remember what happened when
you were actually high. Uh. And yes, when you take
(18:48):
larger doses like Robert was talking about, you can take
too much, it has an even even more of an
effect on your memory. However, you can also develop a tolerance, uh,
and so like if you are a chronic user, yeah,
you can build up a tolerance and subsequently you'll have
less of the memory problems. But this also plays into
the medicinal stuff we're gonna talk about later in that
(19:09):
like the medicinal applications don't always work again because you
can build up a tolerance to it, right, And it's
and on the short term memory stuff. I do want
to mention here that like there's a difference between say, oh,
this user um consumes some marijuana and they can't quite
remember all the details of that that episode of of
Breaking Bad they watched, as opposed to an idea of
(19:33):
like somebody just having a complete blackout experience. Like there
are varying levels of memory disruption and it's not just
the black and white I remember and oh I have
a black hole in my life, right you know, Yeah, yeah,
totally totally, which reminds me of like, you know, I
mean I have friends who over the years used too
much alcohol and that was kind of their experience with that,
(19:54):
which was just like the the whole in in time
and space. They don't remember it happened, or at least
they say they don't remember what happened. I have far
less friends who use marijuana that have said the same thing. So,
but let's let's clarify to existing memories are not affected
by marijuana use. Uh. And this does not lead to
(20:16):
memory loss, you know, or dementia. UH. That needs to
be clarified because there's I think, you know a lot
of the scare campaigns about cannabis leads to sort of
these misunderstandings. Researchers do, though, hope they can use THHC
to help people with forgetting bad memories associated with PTSD,
(20:39):
and the reason why is because the endo cannabinoid system
regulates memory formation, but it also is involved with how
we quote make negative memories extinct. That's a weird phrasing,
but apparently there's has something to do with us basically,
like I guess like the metaphor would be like put
(20:59):
a negative memory in a box and shoving it in
a closet way in the back of your brain, right
and just like I'm done with this. But you know,
this touches again on the complexity of PHC because it's
a substance that almost paradoxola involves sometimes the like the
the the overexamination of a negative element in one's memories
or in this case, we're discussing now the potential eradication
(21:22):
of of negative connotations for a memory. Right, And we
didn't do a lot of like real deep dive research
into the PTSD application here, but I'm gonna guess based
on all the stuff that we did on m D,
m A and PTSD that probably has a similar use
and that it's done in conjunction with therapy, and that
you know, you use it a little bit with a
(21:43):
trustworthy therapist and then you talk your way through the
memories and the problems, rather than it's it's not like
this magical thing where like you take a certain amount
of marijuana and book your memory just goes and close it. Right, Like,
we need to stop thinking about it as being like
this just magic wand thing. Okay. The chronic use effects
(22:03):
are important to consider as well, because as we age,
chronic use of marijuana can hasten the loss of neurons
in our hippocampus. So teens, and this is where it
comes into the like growing up and how it affects
your brain. Thing. Teens who smoke it for three or
more years may have abnormally shaped hippocamp i, and they
(22:27):
get more abnormal the longer they use it chronically. Now,
these deformations are connected to poor performance on memory tests
and they don't go away either. Uh. They've been observed
in individuals who are in their early twenties who stopped
using marijuana up to two years before. So it's like,
(22:47):
there's this window in your life and let's be honest,
for a lot of us, that's the window when we're
most likely to use marijuana. Uh and and it if
it's used on enough of a regular basis, it can
affect the shape of your brain. Yeah. I mean this
is the period of time in our development where we're
hardwired really to to break out and uh and and
(23:09):
attached to different peer groups. It's like a survival instinct
to to take more risk as a survival instinct. Uh.
So it's it's unfortunate this is also the time where
we should we should probably not be experimenting with a
whole bunch of different substances. Yeah. I know, like reading
this like I almost thought like wow, like in a
in a mature society it would be. And I wonder
(23:31):
if there's like some kind of uh like smaller micro
culture somewhere where it's like this where it's like, yeah,
like we accept that this is a thing that exists
and it has these properties, but you know, for the
most part, like we want to keep that away, uh,
from our from our youth until they're of a particular age,
and then we'll have like a ceremony or whatever, like
like a celebration spring yeah, like the yell yeah, the
(23:54):
rum spring of marijuana where you're ready and it won't
affect how your brain shaped and and and and affect
your cognition. Basically, basically your programming here is to is
to rebel, run away from your tribe and go find
another tribe that you can breed with and uh find
safety among But yeah, way to you get to other
(24:16):
tribe until you tryal these substances should be the uh
the caveat there. Yeah, I don't know, that would be interesting.
I wonder if any of the listeners out there aware
of like if there's some there must be I would
assume that there's got to be some kind of mature
society where that is how it's handled. Although I guess
like based on sort of like nation state regulations, we
(24:37):
wouldn't necessarily be able to do that anymore. Well, I
think you do see traditional uses of marijuana and other
substances where control of the substances held by shamans and
relise individuals, and therefore you would have to reach a
certain age a certain place in your life before they
would be administered to you. That's so that would be
(24:59):
I think the most likely form of that. Okay, yeah,
that's interesting to consider going forward with this. Um. So. Yeah,
So we know this endocannabinoid system, even though it's super
complex and we're only just now learning about it, it's
important to how our synapses form. It's important to our
early brain development during adolescent uh. And so yes, it's
possible that marijuana is affecting the development of our brains. Uh.
(25:24):
And we know of course that they also adversely affect
our motor coordination, our attention, our judgment. It also can
raise our heart rate, cause anxiety, and it has irritants
inside the smoke that possibly cause cancer. And this is
a good moment for us to all Right, so memories
the big one, right, that's the big like quote unquote
(25:45):
adverse effect. But let's go through a list of other
adverse effects that have been tracked through science. It's been
linked to having at lower sperm count you have used
at least once a week. Uh. It's also it's not
highly addictive. However, ten scent of users become dependent. I've
also I've seen that number represented as high as thirty.
(26:07):
It kind of depends on who's tweaking the numbers, because
I think it depends on like your definition of dependence. Yeah,
I think the thirty percent I saw was something like, quote, um,
some degree of dependence. Yeah. Um. But the so that's
the thing is the addiction like definition is complicated. It's
possible that you might be influencing a neurochemical dopamine addiction
(26:29):
that's linked in our brain. There's a couple of other
science things going on here. Uh. It may also change
the quote feel good part of the brain, including our
neurons that produce dopamine. And if you're you know, it's
constantly producing dopamine, that's going to make people to want
to keep using it obviously. Uh. And somehow we know this.
It's reducing the number of those CB one receptors that
(26:51):
we have in our brains, and that too could be
leading to addiction of some type. It's also been linked
to cardiovascular problems, long damage for heavy smokers, high risk
of but up in chronic gobronchitis. But its effects on
respiratory function and respiratory cancer on clear mostly because of
mixed use with tobacco. So on a lot of this,
we're just talking about the fact that the primary method
(27:12):
of consuming it is the smoke, So of course you're
going to end end up with smoke and relation issues. Yeah,
And now going back to my story of my stupid youth,
cannabis intoxication can double a driver's risk of a crash,
as reported in a study, and I'm here from a
subjective experience to tell you that makes a lot of sense. Also,
(27:35):
maternal cannabis used during pregnancy can modestly reduce birth weight. Okay,
And there is a connection between youthful exposure to to
cannabis and early onset psychosis, including schizophrenia. Now I want
to add here though, that these people are usually already
(27:55):
genetically predisposed towards these mental illnesses. So it's not like
smoking weed makes you crazy, right, Like, it's not that.
And it's also associated with the use of other ellipic drugs. Yeah,
and I feel like this is a good moment, like
with that particular one to just like add a note
here that I personally think that there's a difference between
(28:18):
cannabis's socio cultural role and its scientific effects on the
human body. And some studies suggest that cannabis is a
contributing cause to these things like for instance, that you'll
drop out of school or something, while others are arguing that, yeah,
there's a relationship there, but there's also lots of other
(28:39):
shared causes, right, like makes me think of wicked problems.
There's a lot going on there. And just from my
own personal experience growing up with with with kids who
dropped out of school and we're pot smokers, Like, I
don't think it was necessarily just the pot that made
them drop out of school, right Like, they had a
lot of other things going on in their lives and
it was a convergence. Yeah, And and you know, it's
(29:02):
easy to get into. You could you could do a
whole episode just talking about the whole Gateway drug band.
You know, to what extent is it a gateway drug?
To what extent is anything a gateway drug? If you
keep it like legally and socially stored in the box
with these other things. It's kind of like saying, hey,
if you keep the bubble gum in the liquor cabinet,
then bubble gum is the gateway to liquor, right, because
(29:24):
that is the you inevitably fall in proximity to it. Yeah,
but the official lingo in one of the studies we
read says that, yes, they find a consistent association between
regular cannabis use and poor psycho social outcomes in adulthood. Now,
my personal experience, I would argue against that, but that's
(29:45):
very subjective. You know, I am an adult, uh thirty
eight years old, and I have lots of friends who
partake in using marijuana, and they make great decisions and
are pretty stable adults. Now, we mentioned uh, we mentioned smoke,
We mentioned different methods of consuming cannabis. I do want
(30:06):
to mention here that for cannabis to release THHD into
the bloodstream, it must be heated above one hundred degrees
celsius or two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. So it has
to be cooked, it has to be smoked. And this
is why we inevitably end up talking about the inhalation
of cannabis smoke, the brewing of cannabis teeth, the creation
of cannabis oils that can be absorbed through the skin,
culinary infusion generally you know, in the form of or
(30:30):
often in the form of butters and other things that
are then used in baking. Uh. Some cultures in the
past just threw it into a communal camp fire and
everyone um inhaled it that way, and the use of
pipes was actually rather uncommon until the sixteenth century. So
so yeah, the whole sort of it's easy to miss
that given how prevalent the bong and you know, one
(30:52):
hitter culture is today. But yeah, that is a in
the long history of human cannabis used. Uh, that's a
relatively new thing. Yeah, it's kind of worth realizing that,
like we are only just a little blip on the
radar of its uh influence on human history, especially like
when you when you look at how far back it goes. Indeed,
(31:16):
so hey, on that note, let's take a quick break
and when we come back, we're going to dive into
a little bit on the evolution of cannabis and the
overall successive cannabis is it just spreads across our world
through human culture. So cannabis thrives in a sunny environment
(31:40):
or alternative way, like a massive grow house I'm thinking of,
like a gyp. Have you seen that movie Attack the Block? Yes,
the like sky rise grow house that they have that's
in like one of those like apartment complex. Oh yeah,
you can grow pretty much anywhere. Grow Houses are are
fascinating subject under themselves. I wrote an article for our
Stuff Works about them several years back, and I'm not
(32:03):
even sure to what extent with our growing uh, with
with our shifting acceptance of marijuana, to what extent, grow
houses are still quite the weird urban spaceship that they were,
you know, where you basically have an environment that is,
you know, like a human can barely live inside one
of these things. Uh, it's all about growing the marijuana plants.
(32:26):
I don't even know to what extent those are. Those
are still as extreme a situation as they were a
few years ago. But um, but for the most part, yeah,
they need a sunny environment. Uh. We mentioned earlier. They
probably evolved in um in India, perhaps Central Asia specifically.
Some theories say Mongolia or southern Siberia, though you'll also
(32:49):
find people to make a case for the Honghi River,
valley of Hindu Kush Mountains, South Asia or Afghanistan. It's
one of those things that's ultimately kind of lost to history.
This is that thing where you go, all, right, hold up,
how long have people been interacting with cannabis. Well, the
first written account is in Chinese records from the twenty
(33:13):
eight century BC. That's way back. I mean, it's pretty far.
And then when you look at it, you know, around
twenty or sorry, around twelve thousand BC, humans started domesticating
the crop, and this is where it steadily started moving
across the world. And let's talk about that for a
(33:34):
little bit. We've got like a map here in front
of us that well we'll try to translate to you listener.
Uh that it's just fascinating how it kind of made
its way around the world. Right, So it's best we
can tell by two thousand BC, you had cannabis in China, Japan, Korea, Persia,
(33:54):
Eastern Europe, and India. And then during the first millennia
um u it spreads through northern Africa and in the
following millennium travels north into western Europe, South into Southern Africa,
into Southeast Asia, and then in the centuries to follow
it follows the wave of colonialism into the New World.
(34:17):
So we're talking South America in the eighteen hundreds and
then the early twentieth century it's making its way into
North America and becoming firmly rooted there. And you may
be wondering, well, well, how do we know this other
than like you know, a general historical record. Right, Well,
this is a fascinating thing that I read about in
a Newsweek article. There's a guy out there. His name
(34:38):
is Maudli Holmes, and he operates a lab called the
philos Bioscience Lab, and the whole point of this lab
is to try to sequence the DNA of every kind
of cannabis in the world. And the goal is basically
that they're gonna sample all of it so that they
can clarify, you know, what all these different types are
(34:58):
in the marijuana u unquote market. And it's called cannabis genomics.
So we're talking about subspecies, we're talking about strains, all
the weird ways that cultivation is is tweaking the marijuana.
Like I've seen it pointed out before that if you
look at pictures of just basic cannabis crop from just
(35:20):
fifty years ago. It's it's often just unrecognizable compared to
like your modern, um, uh centerfold cannabis. You don't know
what is the magazine high times, Like like it doesn't
even look like the same plant because we've just we've
micromanaged its development so much. Yeah. And also like it's
worth considering too that like a lot any kind of
(35:41):
like botanical improvements that have been going on have been
going on behind closed doors for the most part, right,
so there hasn't been a whole lot of like, uh
shared information about this. And and this is kind of
this Mowgli homes goal. He's he's sort of like the
Alexander Shulgin of of marijuana, it seems, uh and um,
the only way that they can research this cannabis because
(36:04):
it's illegal on the federal level here in the United States,
is to get approval from both the U s d
A and the f d A. But uh, there are
federally funded universities that are reluctant to even host anything
like this. And I remember I was talking about at
the beginning with academics who study this because of the
stigma attached to it. But Homes and his team have
a way around this. They handle only the DNA of
(36:27):
the marijuana and not the marijuana itself. So he's collected
specimens of DNA from all over the world Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan, India, Uruguay, Namibia,
and South America. And this process is extremely time consuming
because they have to design a new method for DNA
extraction for every sample collected. It's not like there's the
(36:50):
same formula. They have to go in and basically build
it from scratch. So the goal is that they're gonna
complete this plan, they're gonna hand over all the data
they have to a group that's called the in Cannabis Project.
This is a nonprofit that's building an archival record of
every strain for the sake of the public domain. And
the idea here is this will be better regardless of
(37:11):
whether it's legal or not, because, like I said, even
growers don't really know what they're growing out there. Much
of the marijuana that's consumed in the US today comes
from strains that were smuggled over here from Afghanistan and Thailand,
but we also know it was here long before that,
and we don't know why, so we want to know
(37:33):
where it originated and even more, what can it tell
us about human migratory patterns too. Indeed, because we see
time and time again where people go where if people
have cannabis in their culture, they bring it with them
when they travel. Yeah. Absolutely, and it quite literally takes
route wherever it goes. This is pretty much the entire
premise of Sleep's Dope Smoker album. So we already mentioned
(37:57):
the literary records going back to about on the Gates
century BC, and there'll be more on the specifics of
that in our next episode because of concerns the medicinal
history of cannabis, But as far as just the earliest
known archaeological traces UH, some of our earliest traces of cannabis,
they relate not to UH the drug, but rather just
to the use of hemp in fiber arts, which is
(38:18):
important because it shows that the plant was out there
people were using it. So we see ten thousand year
old Taiwanese pottery shards that reveal hemp rope imprints in
the pottery. Additionally, we see weaving design and himp cloth
imprints from on pottery from around UH fifteen to thirty
five hundred thirty five b C. Found in uh Vanpo villages.
(38:43):
These are the the earliest examples of Neolithic and possibly
UH matriarchal Uh young Shall culture. UH. And this is
from the Shanzi province in northwest China. Uh. So again
just to go back, you know, China was was one
of the earliest regions that would have add access to cannabis.
Burned cannabis seeds have been found in Kurgan burial grounds
(39:06):
of the Pazyak tribes in Siberia dating back to around
three thousand BC. And I can only imagine, um, my,
my Highlander history is little foggy that I'm assuming that
the Kurgan. Uh, maybe that's it. Yeah, yeah, probably very
heavy marijuana user, the Kurgan. Yeah. Yeah, we had a
(39:26):
lot of brown. That's how you get that, like really
nice smoky deep voice. That's smoky ground clancy brown. Uh. Additionally,
we see from eleven twenty two to nine BC Chinese
Child Dynasty burial sites that reveal himpcloth fragments. In Egypt,
we've seen cannabis pollen in the tombs of Uh in
(39:48):
the tomb of ram Ramesses the second and that's from
around twelve seventy nine to twelve thirteen BC, and several
mummies UH from that time period contain trace cannabinoids as well.
You know, based on our episode on preparing mummies in
Egyptian burial and knowing all of the different like spices
and things like that they stuffed inside the orifices of bodies,
(40:10):
I wonder if they were stuffing um cannabis in there
as well, has like a potential, uh, I don't know,
like way of preserving the corpse. So then we get
to a thousand BC, and this is when hemp cloth
from a debris pile is found in modern day Turkey
near Anjara, Jordan's and fragments of paper containing hemp fiber
(40:33):
have been found in Chinese graves dating back to the
first century of BC. Now we're closing in on our
own present age here, but in two d b c.
Chulie writes of hemp's use as a fiber in particular,
there's evidence of cannabis as a domesticated seed crop. So
we know that, you know, somewhere through those times it's
(40:54):
it's domesticated, it's become part of agriculture, and uh, it's
being is medicinally. Yeah, it does hemp too. Yeah, So
it's easily it's easy to sort of put ourselves in
the in the mindset of of early individuals who like
maybe they discovered the the use of himp first and
then began to discover this other property. Um, you know,
maybe they sort of discovered each independently, but pretty early.
(41:18):
On cannabis, in one form or another, it becomes an
important crop and a crop that that that knowledge of
is passed from generation degeneration. Yeah. Now, and this is
one of those like I can only imagine, uh, like
horrible pot humor of like a bunch of stoners sitting
around and being like man like who first figured this out?
(41:39):
Like that they just like smoke every plant they came across, well,
you know, in a way. And we'll get to that.
There's a there is concerning that. Um. Now, a lot
a lot of this we've talked about this concerning that
they help. But what about the actual smoking of the marijuana,
the actual consumption of of the cannabis and the THHC. Well,
some of our earliest known evidence here takes us back
(42:00):
to thirteen twenty C. And here you'd have to travel
to the Labiala Caves of Ethiopia, where we find two
ceramic pipe bowls containing traces of cannabis uh. And then
the Artharva Veda in two thousands to fourteen hundred BC
references something called bang not bong uh, a concoction of
(42:24):
dried cannabis leaves, seeds, and stems. And this is considered
like mild Indian cannabis, about half the strength of ganja. Yeah,
and I know we're sort of moving around in time
a little bit here, but so so sorry. For instance,
this last you might get doctor who uh, tour of
the marijuana. Yeah. You will also find cannabis use interwoven
(42:48):
into tantric to traditions that have influenced both Hinduism and Buddhism.
And uh, I mean really we could just go on
and on. You can't even begin to look at cannabis's
role in every culture in a UM. But you know,
we thought to be interesting to discuss a few key
examples that are they're either interesting or have some sort
(43:10):
of importance later on in our discussions. So one that
probably comes to a lot of people's minds is that
of the assassins. I'm not sure how how familiar people
are with this. I feel like the Assassin's Creeds Getting
Creed games get into this a little bit. So maybe
I've played half of those, but I don't remember there
(43:30):
being anything particularly connected to this. But I haven't played
the first one. And that's the like if if my
memory is correct about those games, that they're uh chronological
in order. Yeah, and they have time travel and they
do so. Just to clarify, hashish comes from the Arabic
for dry herb, and it consists of purified cannabis resin
(43:53):
and is considerably more potent. And this would have spread
through the Arab world from seven to the thirteen centuries
due to trade, travel and war, which are generally the
things that move cannabis historically. And here's the thing, though
it was around not necessarily accepted. It's often considered an
intoxicant in Islamic communities and is therefore prohibited, though some
(44:17):
Sufi holy men have allegedly used it in their rights
as well, so that much is more or less accepted.
As for the idea that the Assassins that there are
these dreaded um uh ashishing warriors that would have imbued
and hashish prior to their attacks on Western Crusaders during
(44:37):
the Holy Wars. Well, that is that that remains either
unclear or complete fabrications. There's nothing really to back up
that idea. Um, the Crusaders were the ones circulating these tales,
and it is a huge possibility that these tales were
just about downplaying um Muslim bravery, saying oh, well, sure
(44:59):
they beat but that was because they're they're they're crazy.
They took some drug that gave them essentially superpowers and
made them into mad man and came at us. So
all right, I'm gonna show my ignorance here because this
is one of the sections that I researched. Is this
connected to the whole legend of Hassana Saba? This is
the old old man in the mouth? Yeah very much? Okay, okay, yeah,
(45:20):
so so the these were a real group, Yeah, they
they existed. The idea that they smoked hashish some sort
of like a pre attack ritual, there's little or nothing
to back that up. Very different from our episode on
Wolf Spain, in which we did find that there was
some kind of a connection between was it what was
(45:41):
it vikings or not vikings in particular, but a particular
kind of like northern European warrior that's sort of like
smear wolf Spain on their lips, so that they had
like foam at the mouth. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
interesting because on one hand, you can imagine that being
the case. We know that there are various properties, uh,
in various substances that would be advantageous prior to rushing
(46:03):
into battle. But it also allows the loser to explain
away their losses like that, oh yeah, they beat us,
but they were totally doping. Yeah, exactly. It's the early
finger pointing of stereo ideas. And it's also interesting because
we see marijuana's use in the demonization of another culture
or or racial group and the idea that it turns
(46:26):
people into into you know, monsters of some sort. And
all this comes up again when we start looking at
the twentieth century America. Yeah, yeah, totally. Another cultural entity
that has has become pretty synonymous with marijuana uses that
of the Rastafari movement. Uh certainly, you know, you know
(46:47):
Jamaican music, um be a, you know, dub or reggae.
They're huge, huge influence of cannabis. Yeah, those artful and
I think like through most of like present day a
Western pop culture that is like a stereotype. Yeah. But
but certainly the Rostoi Rastafari movement is real. It's a
(47:09):
Jamaican Abrahamatic faith that rose in the nineteen thirties following
the coordination of highly Selassie the First as Emperor of Ethiopia,
and they thrived to this day. They recognized Selassie as
the Messiah, and they regard cannabis as a spiritual act
and a metaphor for the burning bush of the Old
Old Testament. Uh. And by the way, cannabis would have
(47:30):
spread to the Caribbean during the nineteenth century via Indian
laborers brought in by the British um So, but this
is an interesting modern example where we see cannabis as
as a part of a religion, as a religious right.
Here in the States, you have you also have various
movements of i think varying levels of seriousness, such as
(47:54):
the Christian THHC Ministry, the Cannabis Assembly, the Church of
Cognitive Arapy, of course Temple for twenty. The list goes
goes on and on. But but throughout human history you
do see cannabis playing a role to varying degrees. You know,
maybe not as extreme as rastafari. But you see it
(48:15):
playing varying degrees in religious right. Yeah, that certainly makes
sense given it's a biochemical properties. Uh. And this thoroughly
connects right back to two of our more recent episodes,
the Cargo Cults episode and the hyper Real Religions episode. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And again we could we could spend a whole series
of episodes just going through all the various different cultural examples.
(48:38):
Now when we get to the United States in our
modern times, well we pretty much have to mention reefer
madness because, uh, this was if you were not familiar
with this, this was this game on the nineteen thirties,
and it was an exploitation propaganda film about how marijuana
turns young people into just raving maniacs, like joker faced,
(49:00):
maniacal crazy people or just like complete you know, gut
or crawling junkies. Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, like
the thirties, twenty years before the nineteen fifties when the
same thing was going on with comic books. Right, It's
a real tradition in the last century of American life
of finding a thing and blaming it for juvenile uh,
(49:24):
delinquents or hyperactivity or just behaviors that we don't find
that fits to the conformity of of quote traditional America, right, right,
and and in this case too, helping to bring about
moral panic surrounding the thing, which of course ties back
into our episode on a satanic panic. But essentially, you
had u s laws against marijuana and other drugs, drugs
(49:46):
popping up in the nineteen twenties. Uh though marijuana laws
at the time they didn't differentiate between himp and psychoactive cannabis.
And this is apparently doing a large part to the
influence of the cotton industry because they didn't want the
the industry to come in and take away their business
because it's like significantly cheaper, isn't it. Yeah, that's my
understanding of it. And then, uh so, so you have
(50:08):
the Federal Bureau of narcrott and Narcotics under Harry J.
And Swinger, and he waged war on marijuana just throughout
the thirties. He rejected clinical analysis that even at the
time concluded that marijuana did not induce violent behavior or
lead to the use of more, you know, heavily addictive drugs. Instead,
he waged this campaign of yellow journalism and propaganda tied
(50:30):
in the evils of jazz. So you're you're getting, you know,
some racist tendencies right where we got the jazz cigarette.
The jazz cigarette also tied it into imperial Japan and
communism as well. So again this idea of that, um,
this heavy tone of this marijuana is tied to this
(50:50):
ethnic threat to the white female. Uh, because you see
that in some of the posters at the time. You
see like the marijuana brandishing individuals kind of a darker
demonic figure and of course he's preying on the the
the the Caucasian woman. Um. So it's it's really like
it's really ify the more and more you look at. Yeah,
(51:12):
I mean, like refor madness is one of those things
that like a lot of people, especially of our generation,
like kind of look at and they're like, oh, isn't
that ironic? Funny? Ha ha ha, But like it's just
another example of humanity just like pointing its fingers at
the wrong things, you know, and not really kind of
like taking a decent step back and looking at like
what the actual situation is. Right, And even though today
(51:34):
we can we can watch reefer madness and laugh at it,
that might even be on Netflix or something like that. Yeah, periodically.
I think it's it may be in the public domain.
I know there's a riff track on it and and
it is just goofy and and an awful But we're
still to a large extent living in its shadow, right,
I mean that that era of of cannabis, a version
(51:56):
of moral panics around surrounding cannabis like that never truly
completely went away. I mean, it's certainly that we had
cultural shifts we had the nineteen sixties and in the
post nineteen sixties. Um. And we've touched on this before
in a M d m A episodes just about like
the difficulty of coming back from that even with just
clinical research. Yeah, right, exactly, and that we'll talk about
(52:17):
that more in the next episode, the sequel to this
about medicinal applications. But it's like tremendously difficult to do
studies on this stuff because of the results of this
sort of movement that Robert's describing. So where this interesting
point in history, right, We've we've seen a great deal
of post drug war decriminalization overall and overall cultural acceptance
(52:41):
outside of the US, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands
and Belgium of all decriminalized marijuana possession to varying degrees,
and it's also quite villa, but it's also quite vilified
and outlawed in such places as the United Ara, Memirates, Indonesia, Malaysia,
the Philippines, and Japan. I can tell you having lived
in Singapore as they could, it is not very welcome there. Uh. Yeah.
(53:05):
And it's interesting because I just recently took a trip
to Portland, Oregon, uh and the medical dispensaries are all
over the place there now. Uh. And it was so
it was such a like culture shock thing, like, oh,
I'm in America, but this is a very different America
than Georgia, where I can't imagine the medical dispensaries happening
(53:27):
anytime soon. But like, yeah, it was like dunkin Donuts,
Like on every block there was a little shop with
and they're very professional looking. They didn't look like head
shops or anything, you know. They had like nice, nice
signs with a little green uh plus symbol to to
signify what it was for. It was everywhere. Yeah, So
it's interesting to just try and figure out where we
(53:48):
are in the overall continuing history of marijuana, Like, is
this is this the peak? Like every is everything about
to go? Uh in an entirely different direction? Is it? Can? Can? Can?
Can you continue to change towards acceptance and research? I
think our generation Maybe it's just the people that I
spend time with, but I really feel like our generation
(54:08):
isn't as easily fooled by the whole reefer madness rhetoric, right,
Like we think about it a little bit more maturely
than that and and realize like the actual benefits and
adversities of cannabis on the brain at least, I like
to think, so, um yeah, So hopefully that like the
(54:28):
current generation and then even the most the most recent
generations to sort of reach that acceptable ami acceptable however
you want to look at it, uh, you know, drug
experimentation age, Like hopefully they are injuring into it with
a lot more balanced information and not just like fearmongering
on one side and uh and you know hippie mumbo
(54:49):
jumbo on the other, but the middle path that incorporates
some level headed decision. Yeah, totally. Like I said, like,
I would love to see us go back to some
kind of like shamanistic cultural thing where you know, we
celebrate that when you've reached the age that it will
no longer deform your brain. So on that note, I
think we should pause, uh, sign out for today, and
(55:13):
then you can rejoin us in the next episode, which
will publish on Thursday, where we will talk about medicinal
marijuana and all the different things that can be used.
It can be used for it's associated with, right, And
if there's something that we just briefly touched on in
this episode, or that we briefly touch on in the
next episode, and you think yourself, hey, I'd like to
hear more on that, let us know, because there's there
(55:36):
are so many areas in these two episodes that we
could really blow it out and do an additional episode
or two related to the content. Yeah. And in addition
to you know, we've been talking, like I said at
the top of the episode, about doing like a sort
of ongoing series of these where you know, not like
every week, but every you know, a couple of months,
will explore a different drug. And you know, like we've
(55:57):
thrown around the idea of doing one on ayahuasca. I
think Joe's interested and is it d M t um
So you know, let us know, if there's a particular
thing out there that you want us to cover, uh,
you know, let us know, uh and and we'll try to,
you know, basically take the same framework and apply it there. Indeed,
and hey, in the meantime, you want to check out
past episodes, including that two part on M d M A,
(56:18):
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is our mothership. That's where you'll find all the
podcast episodes. You'll find videos, you'll find blog posts, you'll
find links out to our social media accounts such as what,
Facebook and Twitter. We're blow the Mind on both of those.
We're also and Tumbler, and hey, we're also on Instagram,
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posting pictures from the various Alien movies because it was
(56:41):
Alien Day. We had a blast on Alien Day on
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want to write us directly, hit us up that blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(57:01):
on this than thousands of other topics. The House up
Works dot comm
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop
dot com. Hey, wasn't the stuff to blow your Mind?
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager. Hey,
Robert who said the following, The illegality of cannabis is outrageous,
an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps
(00:26):
produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately
needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world. Oh well, well,
that's of course a quote from Mr X from the
early nineteen seventies. Yeah. Mr X. He's that guy who
is on The X Files. He replaced the deep throat
character in like season three, Right, is that true? There's
(00:47):
a Mr X on there? Oh yeah, totally totally. He
was like their inside informant. Uh, he's the guy from
twenty one Jump Street. He said that. No, no, okay,
turns out this was actually Carl Sagan. Why yeah. Mr
mr X was his um, his his marijuana advocate pseudonym
back in the day. Well, Carl Sagan must have had
(01:09):
a contact high. That's my worst pot joke that I'm
gonna tell during this episode. But yeah, so Carl Sagan
said that. But We didn't find out about that until
after he died. You know, I learned about Carl Sagan
saying that listening to a podcast. I was listening to
the Dead Authors podcast with Paula Tompkins and Matt Gorley
was his guest, pretending to be Carl Sagan, and they
(01:30):
talked about this quote at length. Yeah, and it's and
it's more than a court like, it's a full piece
and you know, in which he talks about his experiences
with marijuana, the effects marijuana had in his own life,
on creativity, on making connections things outside of his out
of the scientific discipline. But he at least alluded a
(01:50):
little bit to it's it's used to make scientific connections
as well. So we figured we did a two parter
on M D M A. There are a lot of
positive comments about that, and we thought, you know what,
maybe we should do this as kind of like an
ongoing series where we explore different UH drug substances, the
cultures around them, but mainly the science of how they
(02:12):
work and the potential medical properties that they have. Right, Yeah,
as well as you know, some cool historical and cultural
material as well, more way more so than M D
M A Cannabis is a subject where you could easily
have a stuff to blow your mind esque show that
just covers nothing but marijuana. Like each day, you could
(02:35):
look at a different uh each week, you could look
at a different historical tidbit, some different cultural tidbit. You
could look at some new study about its applications. You
could look at some new study about it's you know
that that tackles it from a you know, drug abuse,
drug prevention angle. There's just so much material out there,
uh that you could just go on forever. And we're
(02:55):
not going to go on forever. We're going to listen
two pieces here. Yeah, we we did our best to
condense this down. Robert's right. There's an absolute infinity of
hot research out there, and that's a good thing because
there's a lot of things that we have to learn
from this one plant that are our species has become
(03:15):
totally obsessed with. Yeah. I mean, we stand it in
a you know, an interesting place in history where um
acceptance of marijuana is growing in many circles. Uh. We
see a lot more research, scientific research going on right
now than we have in the past. And uh, yeah,
it's it's hard to exactly predict where we'll be ten
(03:36):
years from who knows. Yeah, but but yeah, we're gonna
give it the old stuff to blow your mind. Shake
here and if there if you want more information or
you want one more of just a general overview, there
are a couple of great articles over how stuff Works
dot Com, one on marijuana, how marijuana Works, another one
how medical marijuana Works, that will give you the basics.
(03:57):
You know, us, we're liable to maybe dwell on some
of the weirder, cooler things about the topic, and you
might very well want to then go back and export
some of the basics. Yeah, I want to start the
episode with a disclaimer that, like, what we're going to
do isn't the standard how marijuana works type episode. Uh,
And in fact, our colleagues over at Stuff you should
(04:19):
know to to how medicinal marijuana Works episode that you
should go listen to if you're looking for something like that.
This is going to be more us really drilling as
far as we could, uh into the science behind it,
how it affects the brain, uh, some kind of odder
unknown cultural connotations of it through history, how it's evolved
(04:40):
over the years, and in particular, one of the things
I'm psyched to talk about is like it's migratory patterns
across the planet. Yeah, that that is some really fasting
material there. And then we're gonna break and we're gonna
do another episode later this week that's going to be
solely about the health benefits and the medical properties of it. Uh.
And so you know this will be a little bit different.
(05:02):
This is in our voice and as such, you know,
it's a subjective experience. So Robert and I will also
probably bring our own experiences of growing up as adults
in America in a society that, uh, plenty of people
smoke marijuana and do do whatever they want with marijuana,
but it's sort of still illegal. Depends on where you
(05:22):
live now, Yeah, yeah, And I imagine pretty much everybody
out there is gonna have some level of familiarity with
with marijuana. Either you have tried it in the past,
you're an active user, you know somebody who fits either
these categories, or you've at least seen it on television,
you've heard about it in the lyrics to two various
songs and um and in various hip hop tracks. You
(05:45):
probably know something about what we're talking about here, all right,
So let's dive in then real basic cannabis as an organism,
it is closely related to some other species plant species,
But really that just of it is that it is
a plant that probably originally originated natively in India somewhere
(06:06):
just north of the Himalayas. We know that it can
grow somewhere between eight to twelve feet tall, almost in
some cases as tall as twenty five ft. I can't
imagine that. Uh. And then one thing that you know,
we'll just get out of the way, but this is
not going to be something we're gonna talk a ton about.
Of course, it has uses as a textile fiber, right,
(06:27):
and hemp has particular woody fibers in it that have
industrial applications that that could be again like that could
be its own podcasts, all the ways that you can
use hemp, right, Uh. And I mean it is important
to hit because because essentially you have two very common
subspecies of cannabis. You have a Cannabis Sativa L and
(06:50):
L stands for Carl Linnaeus, Carl Linnaeus who named it
in three and this is the non psychoactive hemp variety.
This is the version of of cannabis that is used
to create these various textiles and has been used for ages.
Will discuss in a little bit um and and and
to put that in perspective, hemp contains less than one
(07:13):
percent th HC. Meanwhile, you have Cannabis sativa, the psychoactive
cannabis plant, and that when that one you'll see t
ch th HC levels that range from four to and
the upper end of that the twenty percent area. You're
going to see that in some of the specially strains
that humans have cultivated. So then there's also Cannabis indica
(07:35):
and there's another one called Cannabis rudder alis uh. And
these are different species. There's variants, there's subspecies. But one
thing that's worth saying right up front about these is
that these categorizations sometimes get used over simplistically, and this
is gonna be something that we keep coming back to
over and over again, especially with medicinal use. Uh. The idea,
(07:56):
for instance, that indica makes you sleepy but sativa makes
you hyper uh. But then there you can find strains
of both that have totally opposite effects. Right. So there's
like there's a lot more going on here. And the
reason why is this plant is like incredibly dynamic and complicated.
It has more than five hundred chemicals in it, including THHC.
(08:18):
A hundred and nine of those chemicals are what we
call cannabinoids, and those are the important ones when we're
talking about the effects on the brain. But this seems
really diverse. It's got a lot going on inside of it. Uh,
And depending on how it spread, depending on the different strains, whatever,
it's gonna have different effects, right yeah, I mean the
effects of th HD of consumption is gonna depend down
(08:39):
the strain, how much you took, how you took it, Uh,
your your individual makeup, your past usage, a number of
different factors. Um. It's also worth a stressing here that
the female cannabis plant is the one that produces the
sticky resin that contains the cannabinoids, most notably delta nine
tetra hydro a banal, which is th h so th HC.
(09:05):
Let's let's start with just like a simple brain explanation. Okay,
here's this is the This isn't your brain on drugs.
This is just your brain. Okay. Our gray matter contains neurons,
and neurons are cells that talk to other cells with
electro chemicals. Right, the electro chemicals are called neurotransmitters, and
(09:27):
one type of neurotransmitter in our brains that exists without
smoking marijuana are called endocannabinoids. Yea, endocannabinoids aren't in your
brain right now, regardless of your past usage or nine
usage of marijuana. And there's one plant that also produces them,
(09:47):
and that's cannabis. So keep that in mind throughout all
of this, right, Is that, like, the things that are
going on the effects of cannabis on the human body
are basically the king things that we are already going on,
right increasing or decreasing them. Yeah, I mean you can
you can sort of say that for from for pretty
(10:07):
much any Yeah, that's substance. It's not like a magic
hand supernatural force reaching into your brain. Is this substance
that is causing your brain to do things that it
already does, though perhaps in different intensities and in different ways. Yeah,
I just kind of want to dispel the notion of
the and you and I grew up with this the
this is your brain on drugs type commercials where it's
(10:28):
like the drugs are doing the things to you, and yeah,
like and they are, I mean, it's a cause and
effect relationship. But like the chemistry sets already there on
your skull, right, an egg does not fry itself exactly,
all right, So an individual takes th HC it can.
We already mentioned that the exact results are gonna depend
(10:50):
on strain, dosage, delivery method, individual frequency of use, but
the it's gonna ultimately produce a variety of effects of
both sensory and psychological and looting. Uh. One of the
sources listed it is mild reverie, which show we were
just talking about about that off air. Well, what's what's
the more relatable term for that fun? Yeah, And that's
(11:11):
what I would think of it as that's that's another
thing that like I guess we should point out as
like along the way and the research of this is
of course academics who are studying marijuana or cannabis and
its effects, like they're in this sort of weird, precarious
situation right where they want to be as scientifically accurate
as possible to maintain their standing of this being a
(11:32):
serious study. Uh, because and I read this in multiple pieces,
they're like, well, there's a stigma on people who study
this as like, you know, we're just a bunch of
hippies who just want to smoke weed or something like
that while while also holding professorship, and they're paranoid about it.
Almost yeah, uh so there is almost uh an impenetrable
(11:56):
language use in some of these, including uh equent reverie. Yeah,
and they rarely use the word dank, but yeah. Some
of the other effects include a euphoria, heightened sensory awareness, creativity, empathy,
impaired short term memory, altered senses of time and space,
(12:16):
enhanced appetite and sexual desire um not necessarily at the
same time, occasional drowsiness, and a tendency to enhance introspection. Okay, okay,
and this this, These are all the kind of like
basic assumptions that we have as just like general people
who exist, at least in America, of like what happens
when you smoke weed? Yeah, I mean, if you just
(12:38):
watch television, you see varying level. So like the guy
in this show he smokes a little breaking back and
suddenly he is a little more creative, creative, or oh,
this character in this show Aida Pott Brownie and then
just set there thinking about death for an hour. You
know that. Yeah, totally a lot of people are gonna
be familiar with these these basic uh sensory and psychological effects.
(13:00):
So back to the brain. Those cannabinoids work their way
up through our blood and into our brains, and they
mimic or block the neurotransmitters, interfering with our normal functions. Right. So,
because there's high concentrations of cannabis cannabinoid receptors in our hippocampus,
(13:21):
our cerebellum, and our basil ganglia, the THHC binds with
the receptors there and interferes with our recollection of recent events.
So this is the whole memory thing. We're gonna talk
a lot about this um. In fact, I had previously
written an episode for our video series brain Stuff on
how much marijuana actually affects your memories, so I was
able to incorporate a lot of that research here. And
(13:43):
of course, as we also know, it affects your coordination
and your muscle movement. So okay, like we said, our
brains have already got these endocannabinoids in them, right, and
cannabis cannabis basically hijacks this process. Now, the system of
the endocannabinoid system influences pain, our memory, our mood and
our appetite, all those things that Robert just listed as
(14:04):
being affected by using cannabis, which is a nice uh,
which nicely foreshadows the air eventual discussion on medical applications
because you can already see this is a substance that
is it is already involved in a number of of
the things that are affected by various illnesses and diseases. Yeah. Absolutely, Uh.
(14:25):
And one of the things that we're really getting into
now and we're going to talk about more, but like
research is relatively recently in the last five years, is
that the endocannabinoid process also has a big role in
how our brains grow. Now, recall from when we talked
about m D m A and the m D m
A episodes, Our brains are actually growing until we're twenty
(14:47):
five years old. Like it's easy to say, like, oh,
I'm I'm growing up, I'm eighteen, I'm done, but that's
not true, Like your brain is still evolving, and uh,
using marijuana definitely seems to have an effect on how
your brain grows if you use it in adolescence. But
I think like what they're referring to is like anything
before years old, and that that's on a regular use,
(15:10):
but we'll get into that later. And the thing about
the endocannabinoid system, we've only known about this thing since
the late nineties, so, uh, we know, okay, we know
it's complex neurosystem. We know it affects these couple of
things that I just mentioned, but we're only beginning to
understand it. So it's weird when you go down the
rabbit hole on marijuana research because there's tons of it.
(15:33):
Like we mentioned, it's everywhere, but a lot of it
is the same. Like, here's this endocannabinoid thing. We sort
of get it, but not really. More research is needed. Uh.
And then here's my fun fact for the episode. The
reason you can't overdose on marijuana is because our cannabinoid
(15:54):
receptors aren't densely packed inside the medulla. The medulla control
our cardiovascular system, right, So if you use heroin and
you overdose on heroin, that'll shut down your respiratory control center.
But pot can't do anything like that. Do not mistake
us when we say you cannot overdose on marijuana. We
(16:15):
are not saying that you cannot take too much. You cannot.
You can take more marijuana than than is than you
should or is comfortable for the user experience. Um, But
you can say that about anything, right. You can say
that about chocolate. Yeah, I mean one, you can say
that about plenty of things just in your on your
spice rack that take too much of it, you can
(16:36):
they can have dire consequences. Bottom line being you cannot overdose,
but you can't take too much. Okay, So we're gonna
talk about the positive effects. But I'd like to think
that most of the people out there, again, like whether
(16:57):
you've had personal experience with it or you've just watch
a TV show, you pretty much get what those positive
effects are, right at least the positive recreational effects that
we're talking Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the the reduce of
pain and inflammation. Uh. And then the medicinal applications we're
going to talk about in the next episode and primarily
just you know, spoilers for that episode. It's primarily used
(17:19):
to treat epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, and of course we
also discussed some of its uses, um for people who
are undergoing chemotherapy from cancer. Yeah, there's all kinds and
and PTSD as well. There's just like with m d
m A, uh, that same maps research Institute is looking
at how marijuana can help with PTSD. So this leads
(17:42):
us though, let's talk about the adverse effects. Okay, and
this isn't I'm not gonna do like the Nancy Reagan
like sit here and tell you all the bad things, right.
I think the way that we need to approach this,
just like we we talked about with m d m A,
is like, let's be mature about it. This is plant.
This plant does these things to the human body. We're
(18:04):
listing them. We can apply positive or negative connotations to them,
but just it's important for us to walk through what
they are, right, all right, So memory is the big one. Uh.
And then the answer like, does does marijuana affect your memory? Oh? Yeah,
it absolutely does. And the reason why is because the
(18:26):
th HC latches onto the cannabinoid receptor type CB one
in your brain. Uh. And this affects your short term memory.
In fact, we've done forty years worth of studies that
show that th HC disrupt that disrupts our short term memory.
It also makes it difficult to remember what happened when
you were actually high. Uh. And yes, when you take
(18:48):
larger doses like Robert was talking about, you can take
too much, it has an even even more of an
effect on your memory. However, you can also develop a tolerance, uh,
and so like if you are a chronic user, yeah,
you can build up a tolerance and subsequently you'll have
less of the memory problems. But this also plays into
the medicinal stuff we're gonna talk about later in that
(19:09):
like the medicinal applications don't always work again because you
can build up a tolerance to it, right, And it's
and on the short term memory stuff. I do want
to mention here that like there's a difference between say, oh,
this user um consumes some marijuana and they can't quite
remember all the details of that that episode of of
Breaking Bad they watched, as opposed to an idea of
(19:33):
like somebody just having a complete blackout experience. Like there
are varying levels of memory disruption and it's not just
the black and white I remember and oh I have
a black hole in my life, right you know, Yeah, yeah,
totally totally, which reminds me of like, you know, I
mean I have friends who over the years used too
much alcohol and that was kind of their experience with that,
(19:54):
which was just like the the whole in in time
and space. They don't remember it happened, or at least
they say they don't remember what happened. I have far
less friends who use marijuana that have said the same thing. So,
but let's let's clarify to existing memories are not affected
by marijuana use. Uh. And this does not lead to
(20:16):
memory loss, you know, or dementia. UH. That needs to
be clarified because there's I think, you know a lot
of the scare campaigns about cannabis leads to sort of
these misunderstandings. Researchers do, though, hope they can use THHC
to help people with forgetting bad memories associated with PTSD,
(20:39):
and the reason why is because the endo cannabinoid system
regulates memory formation, but it also is involved with how
we quote make negative memories extinct. That's a weird phrasing,
but apparently there's has something to do with us basically,
like I guess like the metaphor would be like put
(20:59):
a negative memory in a box and shoving it in
a closet way in the back of your brain, right
and just like I'm done with this. But you know,
this touches again on the complexity of PHC because it's
a substance that almost paradoxola involves sometimes the like the
the the overexamination of a negative element in one's memories
or in this case, we're discussing now the potential eradication
(21:22):
of of negative connotations for a memory. Right, And we
didn't do a lot of like real deep dive research
into the PTSD application here, but I'm gonna guess based
on all the stuff that we did on m D,
m A and PTSD that probably has a similar use
and that it's done in conjunction with therapy, and that
you know, you use it a little bit with a
(21:43):
trustworthy therapist and then you talk your way through the
memories and the problems, rather than it's it's not like
this magical thing where like you take a certain amount
of marijuana and book your memory just goes and close it. Right, Like,
we need to stop thinking about it as being like
this just magic wand thing. Okay. The chronic use effects
(22:03):
are important to consider as well, because as we age,
chronic use of marijuana can hasten the loss of neurons
in our hippocampus. So teens, and this is where it
comes into the like growing up and how it affects
your brain. Thing. Teens who smoke it for three or
more years may have abnormally shaped hippocamp i, and they
(22:27):
get more abnormal the longer they use it chronically. Now,
these deformations are connected to poor performance on memory tests
and they don't go away either. Uh. They've been observed
in individuals who are in their early twenties who stopped
using marijuana up to two years before. So it's like,
(22:47):
there's this window in your life and let's be honest,
for a lot of us, that's the window when we're
most likely to use marijuana. Uh and and it if
it's used on enough of a regular basis, it can
affect the shape of your brain. Yeah. I mean this
is the period of time in our development where we're
hardwired really to to break out and uh and and
(23:09):
attached to different peer groups. It's like a survival instinct
to to take more risk as a survival instinct. Uh.
So it's it's unfortunate this is also the time where
we should we should probably not be experimenting with a
whole bunch of different substances. Yeah. I know, like reading
this like I almost thought like wow, like in a
in a mature society it would be. And I wonder
(23:31):
if there's like some kind of uh like smaller micro
culture somewhere where it's like this where it's like, yeah,
like we accept that this is a thing that exists
and it has these properties, but you know, for the
most part, like we want to keep that away, uh,
from our from our youth until they're of a particular age,
and then we'll have like a ceremony or whatever, like
like a celebration spring yeah, like the yell yeah, the
(23:54):
rum spring of marijuana where you're ready and it won't
affect how your brain shaped and and and and affect
your cognition. Basically, basically your programming here is to is
to rebel, run away from your tribe and go find
another tribe that you can breed with and uh find
safety among But yeah, way to you get to other
(24:16):
tribe until you tryal these substances should be the uh
the caveat there. Yeah, I don't know, that would be interesting.
I wonder if any of the listeners out there aware
of like if there's some there must be I would
assume that there's got to be some kind of mature
society where that is how it's handled. Although I guess
like based on sort of like nation state regulations, we
(24:37):
wouldn't necessarily be able to do that anymore. Well, I
think you do see traditional uses of marijuana and other
substances where control of the substances held by shamans and
relise individuals, and therefore you would have to reach a
certain age a certain place in your life before they
would be administered to you. That's so that would be
(24:59):
I think the most likely form of that. Okay, yeah,
that's interesting to consider going forward with this. Um. So. Yeah,
So we know this endocannabinoid system, even though it's super
complex and we're only just now learning about it, it's
important to how our synapses form. It's important to our
early brain development during adolescent uh. And so yes, it's
possible that marijuana is affecting the development of our brains. Uh.
(25:24):
And we know of course that they also adversely affect
our motor coordination, our attention, our judgment. It also can
raise our heart rate, cause anxiety, and it has irritants
inside the smoke that possibly cause cancer. And this is
a good moment for us to all Right, so memories
the big one, right, that's the big like quote unquote
(25:45):
adverse effect. But let's go through a list of other
adverse effects that have been tracked through science. It's been
linked to having at lower sperm count you have used
at least once a week. Uh. It's also it's not
highly addictive. However, ten scent of users become dependent. I've
also I've seen that number represented as high as thirty.
(26:07):
It kind of depends on who's tweaking the numbers, because
I think it depends on like your definition of dependence. Yeah,
I think the thirty percent I saw was something like, quote, um,
some degree of dependence. Yeah. Um. But the so that's
the thing is the addiction like definition is complicated. It's
possible that you might be influencing a neurochemical dopamine addiction
(26:29):
that's linked in our brain. There's a couple of other
science things going on here. Uh. It may also change
the quote feel good part of the brain, including our
neurons that produce dopamine. And if you're you know, it's
constantly producing dopamine, that's going to make people to want
to keep using it obviously. Uh. And somehow we know this.
It's reducing the number of those CB one receptors that
(26:51):
we have in our brains, and that too could be
leading to addiction of some type. It's also been linked
to cardiovascular problems, long damage for heavy smokers, high risk
of but up in chronic gobronchitis. But its effects on
respiratory function and respiratory cancer on clear mostly because of
mixed use with tobacco. So on a lot of this,
we're just talking about the fact that the primary method
(27:12):
of consuming it is the smoke, So of course you're
going to end end up with smoke and relation issues. Yeah,
And now going back to my story of my stupid youth,
cannabis intoxication can double a driver's risk of a crash,
as reported in a study, and I'm here from a
subjective experience to tell you that makes a lot of sense. Also,
(27:35):
maternal cannabis used during pregnancy can modestly reduce birth weight. Okay,
And there is a connection between youthful exposure to to
cannabis and early onset psychosis, including schizophrenia. Now I want
to add here though, that these people are usually already
(27:55):
genetically predisposed towards these mental illnesses. So it's not like
smoking weed makes you crazy, right, Like, it's not that.
And it's also associated with the use of other ellipic drugs. Yeah,
and I feel like this is a good moment, like
with that particular one to just like add a note
here that I personally think that there's a difference between
(28:18):
cannabis's socio cultural role and its scientific effects on the
human body. And some studies suggest that cannabis is a
contributing cause to these things like for instance, that you'll
drop out of school or something, while others are arguing that, yeah,
there's a relationship there, but there's also lots of other
(28:39):
shared causes, right, like makes me think of wicked problems.
There's a lot going on there. And just from my
own personal experience growing up with with with kids who
dropped out of school and we're pot smokers, Like, I
don't think it was necessarily just the pot that made
them drop out of school, right Like, they had a
lot of other things going on in their lives and
it was a convergence. Yeah, And and you know, it's
(29:02):
easy to get into. You could you could do a
whole episode just talking about the whole Gateway drug band.
You know, to what extent is it a gateway drug?
To what extent is anything a gateway drug? If you
keep it like legally and socially stored in the box
with these other things. It's kind of like saying, hey,
if you keep the bubble gum in the liquor cabinet,
then bubble gum is the gateway to liquor, right, because
(29:24):
that is the you inevitably fall in proximity to it. Yeah,
but the official lingo in one of the studies we
read says that, yes, they find a consistent association between
regular cannabis use and poor psycho social outcomes in adulthood. Now,
my personal experience, I would argue against that, but that's
(29:45):
very subjective. You know, I am an adult, uh thirty
eight years old, and I have lots of friends who
partake in using marijuana, and they make great decisions and
are pretty stable adults. Now, we mentioned uh, we mentioned smoke,
We mentioned different methods of consuming cannabis. I do want
(30:06):
to mention here that for cannabis to release THHD into
the bloodstream, it must be heated above one hundred degrees
celsius or two hundred twelve degrees fahrenheit. So it has
to be cooked, it has to be smoked. And this
is why we inevitably end up talking about the inhalation
of cannabis smoke, the brewing of cannabis teeth, the creation
of cannabis oils that can be absorbed through the skin,
culinary infusion generally you know, in the form of or
(30:30):
often in the form of butters and other things that
are then used in baking. Uh. Some cultures in the
past just threw it into a communal camp fire and
everyone um inhaled it that way, and the use of
pipes was actually rather uncommon until the sixteenth century. So
so yeah, the whole sort of it's easy to miss
that given how prevalent the bong and you know, one
(30:52):
hitter culture is today. But yeah, that is a in
the long history of human cannabis used. Uh, that's a
relatively new thing. Yeah, it's kind of worth realizing that,
like we are only just a little blip on the
radar of its uh influence on human history, especially like
when you when you look at how far back it goes. Indeed,
(31:16):
so hey, on that note, let's take a quick break
and when we come back, we're going to dive into
a little bit on the evolution of cannabis and the
overall successive cannabis is it just spreads across our world
through human culture. So cannabis thrives in a sunny environment
(31:40):
or alternative way, like a massive grow house I'm thinking of,
like a gyp. Have you seen that movie Attack the Block? Yes,
the like sky rise grow house that they have that's
in like one of those like apartment complex. Oh yeah,
you can grow pretty much anywhere. Grow Houses are are
fascinating subject under themselves. I wrote an article for our
Stuff Works about them several years back, and I'm not
(32:03):
even sure to what extent with our growing uh, with
with our shifting acceptance of marijuana, to what extent, grow
houses are still quite the weird urban spaceship that they were,
you know, where you basically have an environment that is,
you know, like a human can barely live inside one
of these things. Uh, it's all about growing the marijuana plants.
(32:26):
I don't even know to what extent those are. Those
are still as extreme a situation as they were a
few years ago. But um, but for the most part, yeah,
they need a sunny environment. Uh. We mentioned earlier. They
probably evolved in um in India, perhaps Central Asia specifically.
Some theories say Mongolia or southern Siberia, though you'll also
(32:49):
find people to make a case for the Honghi River,
valley of Hindu Kush Mountains, South Asia or Afghanistan. It's
one of those things that's ultimately kind of lost to history.
This is that thing where you go, all, right, hold up,
how long have people been interacting with cannabis. Well, the
first written account is in Chinese records from the twenty
(33:13):
eight century BC. That's way back. I mean, it's pretty far.
And then when you look at it, you know, around
twenty or sorry, around twelve thousand BC, humans started domesticating
the crop, and this is where it steadily started moving
across the world. And let's talk about that for a
(33:34):
little bit. We've got like a map here in front
of us that well we'll try to translate to you listener.
Uh that it's just fascinating how it kind of made
its way around the world. Right, So it's best we
can tell by two thousand BC, you had cannabis in China, Japan, Korea, Persia,
(33:54):
Eastern Europe, and India. And then during the first millennia
um u it spreads through northern Africa and in the
following millennium travels north into western Europe, South into Southern Africa,
into Southeast Asia, and then in the centuries to follow
it follows the wave of colonialism into the New World.
(34:17):
So we're talking South America in the eighteen hundreds and
then the early twentieth century it's making its way into
North America and becoming firmly rooted there. And you may
be wondering, well, well, how do we know this other
than like you know, a general historical record. Right, Well,
this is a fascinating thing that I read about in
a Newsweek article. There's a guy out there. His name
(34:38):
is Maudli Holmes, and he operates a lab called the
philos Bioscience Lab, and the whole point of this lab
is to try to sequence the DNA of every kind
of cannabis in the world. And the goal is basically
that they're gonna sample all of it so that they
can clarify, you know, what all these different types are
(34:58):
in the marijuana u unquote market. And it's called cannabis genomics.
So we're talking about subspecies, we're talking about strains, all
the weird ways that cultivation is is tweaking the marijuana.
Like I've seen it pointed out before that if you
look at pictures of just basic cannabis crop from just
(35:20):
fifty years ago. It's it's often just unrecognizable compared to
like your modern, um, uh centerfold cannabis. You don't know
what is the magazine high times, Like like it doesn't
even look like the same plant because we've just we've
micromanaged its development so much. Yeah. And also like it's
worth considering too that like a lot any kind of
(35:41):
like botanical improvements that have been going on have been
going on behind closed doors for the most part, right,
so there hasn't been a whole lot of like, uh
shared information about this. And and this is kind of
this Mowgli homes goal. He's he's sort of like the
Alexander Shulgin of of marijuana, it seems, uh and um,
the only way that they can research this cannabis because
(36:04):
it's illegal on the federal level here in the United States,
is to get approval from both the U s d
A and the f d A. But uh, there are
federally funded universities that are reluctant to even host anything
like this. And I remember I was talking about at
the beginning with academics who study this because of the
stigma attached to it. But Homes and his team have
a way around this. They handle only the DNA of
(36:27):
the marijuana and not the marijuana itself. So he's collected
specimens of DNA from all over the world Colombia, Thailand, Mexico, Afghanistan, India, Uruguay, Namibia,
and South America. And this process is extremely time consuming
because they have to design a new method for DNA
extraction for every sample collected. It's not like there's the
(36:50):
same formula. They have to go in and basically build
it from scratch. So the goal is that they're gonna
complete this plan, they're gonna hand over all the data
they have to a group that's called the in Cannabis Project.
This is a nonprofit that's building an archival record of
every strain for the sake of the public domain. And
the idea here is this will be better regardless of
(37:11):
whether it's legal or not, because, like I said, even
growers don't really know what they're growing out there. Much
of the marijuana that's consumed in the US today comes
from strains that were smuggled over here from Afghanistan and Thailand,
but we also know it was here long before that,
and we don't know why, so we want to know
(37:33):
where it originated and even more, what can it tell
us about human migratory patterns too. Indeed, because we see
time and time again where people go where if people
have cannabis in their culture, they bring it with them
when they travel. Yeah. Absolutely, and it quite literally takes
route wherever it goes. This is pretty much the entire
premise of Sleep's Dope Smoker album. So we already mentioned
(37:57):
the literary records going back to about on the Gates
century BC, and there'll be more on the specifics of
that in our next episode because of concerns the medicinal
history of cannabis, But as far as just the earliest
known archaeological traces UH, some of our earliest traces of cannabis,
they relate not to UH the drug, but rather just
to the use of hemp in fiber arts, which is
(38:18):
important because it shows that the plant was out there
people were using it. So we see ten thousand year
old Taiwanese pottery shards that reveal hemp rope imprints in
the pottery. Additionally, we see weaving design and himp cloth
imprints from on pottery from around UH fifteen to thirty
five hundred thirty five b C. Found in uh Vanpo villages.
(38:43):
These are the the earliest examples of Neolithic and possibly
UH matriarchal Uh young Shall culture. UH. And this is
from the Shanzi province in northwest China. Uh. So again
just to go back, you know, China was was one
of the earliest regions that would have add access to cannabis.
Burned cannabis seeds have been found in Kurgan burial grounds
(39:06):
of the Pazyak tribes in Siberia dating back to around
three thousand BC. And I can only imagine, um, my,
my Highlander history is little foggy that I'm assuming that
the Kurgan. Uh, maybe that's it. Yeah, yeah, probably very
heavy marijuana user, the Kurgan. Yeah. Yeah, we had a
(39:26):
lot of brown. That's how you get that, like really
nice smoky deep voice. That's smoky ground clancy brown. Uh. Additionally,
we see from eleven twenty two to nine BC Chinese
Child Dynasty burial sites that reveal himpcloth fragments. In Egypt,
we've seen cannabis pollen in the tombs of Uh in
(39:48):
the tomb of ram Ramesses the second and that's from
around twelve seventy nine to twelve thirteen BC, and several
mummies UH from that time period contain trace cannabinoids as well.
You know, based on our episode on preparing mummies in
Egyptian burial and knowing all of the different like spices
and things like that they stuffed inside the orifices of bodies,
(40:10):
I wonder if they were stuffing um cannabis in there
as well, has like a potential, uh, I don't know,
like way of preserving the corpse. So then we get
to a thousand BC, and this is when hemp cloth
from a debris pile is found in modern day Turkey
near Anjara, Jordan's and fragments of paper containing hemp fiber
(40:33):
have been found in Chinese graves dating back to the
first century of BC. Now we're closing in on our
own present age here, but in two d b c.
Chulie writes of hemp's use as a fiber in particular,
there's evidence of cannabis as a domesticated seed crop. So
we know that, you know, somewhere through those times it's
(40:54):
it's domesticated, it's become part of agriculture, and uh, it's
being is medicinally. Yeah, it does hemp too. Yeah, So
it's easily it's easy to sort of put ourselves in
the in the mindset of of early individuals who like
maybe they discovered the the use of himp first and
then began to discover this other property. Um, you know,
maybe they sort of discovered each independently, but pretty early.
(41:18):
On cannabis, in one form or another, it becomes an
important crop and a crop that that that knowledge of
is passed from generation degeneration. Yeah. Now, and this is
one of those like I can only imagine, uh, like
horrible pot humor of like a bunch of stoners sitting
around and being like man like who first figured this out?
(41:39):
Like that they just like smoke every plant they came across, well,
you know, in a way. And we'll get to that.
There's a there is concerning that. Um. Now, a lot
a lot of this we've talked about this concerning that
they help. But what about the actual smoking of the marijuana,
the actual consumption of of the cannabis and the THHC. Well,
some of our earliest known evidence here takes us back
(42:00):
to thirteen twenty C. And here you'd have to travel
to the Labiala Caves of Ethiopia, where we find two
ceramic pipe bowls containing traces of cannabis uh. And then
the Artharva Veda in two thousands to fourteen hundred BC
references something called bang not bong uh, a concoction of
(42:24):
dried cannabis leaves, seeds, and stems. And this is considered
like mild Indian cannabis, about half the strength of ganja. Yeah,
and I know we're sort of moving around in time
a little bit here, but so so sorry. For instance,
this last you might get doctor who uh, tour of
the marijuana. Yeah. You will also find cannabis use interwoven
(42:48):
into tantric to traditions that have influenced both Hinduism and Buddhism.
And uh, I mean really we could just go on
and on. You can't even begin to look at cannabis's
role in every culture in a UM. But you know,
we thought to be interesting to discuss a few key
examples that are they're either interesting or have some sort
(43:10):
of importance later on in our discussions. So one that
probably comes to a lot of people's minds is that
of the assassins. I'm not sure how how familiar people
are with this. I feel like the Assassin's Creeds Getting
Creed games get into this a little bit. So maybe
I've played half of those, but I don't remember there
(43:30):
being anything particularly connected to this. But I haven't played
the first one. And that's the like if if my
memory is correct about those games, that they're uh chronological
in order. Yeah, and they have time travel and they
do so. Just to clarify, hashish comes from the Arabic
for dry herb, and it consists of purified cannabis resin
(43:53):
and is considerably more potent. And this would have spread
through the Arab world from seven to the thirteen centuries
due to trade, travel and war, which are generally the
things that move cannabis historically. And here's the thing, though
it was around not necessarily accepted. It's often considered an
intoxicant in Islamic communities and is therefore prohibited, though some
(44:17):
Sufi holy men have allegedly used it in their rights
as well, so that much is more or less accepted.
As for the idea that the Assassins that there are
these dreaded um uh ashishing warriors that would have imbued
and hashish prior to their attacks on Western Crusaders during
(44:37):
the Holy Wars. Well, that is that that remains either
unclear or complete fabrications. There's nothing really to back up
that idea. Um, the Crusaders were the ones circulating these tales,
and it is a huge possibility that these tales were
just about downplaying um Muslim bravery, saying oh, well, sure
(44:59):
they beat but that was because they're they're they're crazy.
They took some drug that gave them essentially superpowers and
made them into mad man and came at us. So
all right, I'm gonna show my ignorance here because this
is one of the sections that I researched. Is this
connected to the whole legend of Hassana Saba? This is
the old old man in the mouth? Yeah very much? Okay, okay, yeah,
(45:20):
so so the these were a real group, Yeah, they
they existed. The idea that they smoked hashish some sort
of like a pre attack ritual, there's little or nothing
to back that up. Very different from our episode on
Wolf Spain, in which we did find that there was
some kind of a connection between was it what was
(45:41):
it vikings or not vikings in particular, but a particular
kind of like northern European warrior that's sort of like
smear wolf Spain on their lips, so that they had
like foam at the mouth. Yeah, it's I mean, it's
interesting because on one hand, you can imagine that being
the case. We know that there are various properties, uh,
in various substances that would be advantageous prior to rushing
(46:03):
into battle. But it also allows the loser to explain
away their losses like that, oh yeah, they beat us,
but they were totally doping. Yeah, exactly. It's the early
finger pointing of stereo ideas. And it's also interesting because
we see marijuana's use in the demonization of another culture
or or racial group and the idea that it turns
(46:26):
people into into you know, monsters of some sort. And
all this comes up again when we start looking at
the twentieth century America. Yeah, yeah, totally. Another cultural entity
that has has become pretty synonymous with marijuana uses that
of the Rastafari movement. Uh certainly, you know, you know
(46:47):
Jamaican music, um be a, you know, dub or reggae.
They're huge, huge influence of cannabis. Yeah, those artful and
I think like through most of like present day a
Western pop culture that is like a stereotype. Yeah. But
but certainly the Rostoi Rastafari movement is real. It's a
(47:09):
Jamaican Abrahamatic faith that rose in the nineteen thirties following
the coordination of highly Selassie the First as Emperor of Ethiopia,
and they thrived to this day. They recognized Selassie as
the Messiah, and they regard cannabis as a spiritual act
and a metaphor for the burning bush of the Old
Old Testament. Uh. And by the way, cannabis would have
(47:30):
spread to the Caribbean during the nineteenth century via Indian
laborers brought in by the British um So, but this
is an interesting modern example where we see cannabis as
as a part of a religion, as a religious right.
Here in the States, you have you also have various
movements of i think varying levels of seriousness, such as
(47:54):
the Christian THHC Ministry, the Cannabis Assembly, the Church of
Cognitive Arapy, of course Temple for twenty. The list goes
goes on and on. But but throughout human history you
do see cannabis playing a role to varying degrees. You know,
maybe not as extreme as rastafari. But you see it
(48:15):
playing varying degrees in religious right. Yeah, that certainly makes
sense given it's a biochemical properties. Uh. And this thoroughly
connects right back to two of our more recent episodes,
the Cargo Cults episode and the hyper Real Religions episode. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And again we could we could spend a whole series
of episodes just going through all the various different cultural examples.
(48:38):
Now when we get to the United States in our
modern times, well we pretty much have to mention reefer
madness because, uh, this was if you were not familiar
with this, this was this game on the nineteen thirties,
and it was an exploitation propaganda film about how marijuana
turns young people into just raving maniacs, like joker faced,
(49:00):
maniacal crazy people or just like complete you know, gut
or crawling junkies. Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, like
the thirties, twenty years before the nineteen fifties when the
same thing was going on with comic books. Right, It's
a real tradition in the last century of American life
of finding a thing and blaming it for juvenile uh,
(49:24):
delinquents or hyperactivity or just behaviors that we don't find
that fits to the conformity of of quote traditional America, right, right,
and and in this case too, helping to bring about
moral panic surrounding the thing, which of course ties back
into our episode on a satanic panic. But essentially, you
had u s laws against marijuana and other drugs, drugs
(49:46):
popping up in the nineteen twenties. Uh though marijuana laws
at the time they didn't differentiate between himp and psychoactive cannabis.
And this is apparently doing a large part to the
influence of the cotton industry because they didn't want the
the industry to come in and take away their business
because it's like significantly cheaper, isn't it. Yeah, that's my
understanding of it. And then, uh so, so you have
(50:08):
the Federal Bureau of narcrott and Narcotics under Harry J.
And Swinger, and he waged war on marijuana just throughout
the thirties. He rejected clinical analysis that even at the
time concluded that marijuana did not induce violent behavior or
lead to the use of more, you know, heavily addictive drugs. Instead,
he waged this campaign of yellow journalism and propaganda tied
(50:30):
in the evils of jazz. So you're you're getting, you know,
some racist tendencies right where we got the jazz cigarette.
The jazz cigarette also tied it into imperial Japan and
communism as well. So again this idea of that, um,
this heavy tone of this marijuana is tied to this
(50:50):
ethnic threat to the white female. Uh, because you see
that in some of the posters at the time. You
see like the marijuana brandishing individuals kind of a darker
demonic figure and of course he's preying on the the
the the Caucasian woman. Um. So it's it's really like
it's really ify the more and more you look at. Yeah,
(51:12):
I mean, like refor madness is one of those things
that like a lot of people, especially of our generation,
like kind of look at and they're like, oh, isn't
that ironic? Funny? Ha ha ha, But like it's just
another example of humanity just like pointing its fingers at
the wrong things, you know, and not really kind of
like taking a decent step back and looking at like
what the actual situation is. Right, And even though today
(51:34):
we can we can watch reefer madness and laugh at it,
that might even be on Netflix or something like that. Yeah, periodically.
I think it's it may be in the public domain.
I know there's a riff track on it and and
it is just goofy and and an awful But we're
still to a large extent living in its shadow, right,
I mean that that era of of cannabis, a version
(51:56):
of moral panics around surrounding cannabis like that never truly
completely went away. I mean, it's certainly that we had
cultural shifts we had the nineteen sixties and in the
post nineteen sixties. Um. And we've touched on this before
in a M d m A episodes just about like
the difficulty of coming back from that even with just
clinical research. Yeah, right, exactly, and that we'll talk about
(52:17):
that more in the next episode, the sequel to this
about medicinal applications. But it's like tremendously difficult to do
studies on this stuff because of the results of this
sort of movement that Robert's describing. So where this interesting
point in history, right, We've we've seen a great deal
of post drug war decriminalization overall and overall cultural acceptance
(52:41):
outside of the US, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland, the Netherlands
and Belgium of all decriminalized marijuana possession to varying degrees,
and it's also quite villa, but it's also quite vilified
and outlawed in such places as the United Ara, Memirates, Indonesia, Malaysia,
the Philippines, and Japan. I can tell you having lived
in Singapore as they could, it is not very welcome there. Uh. Yeah.
(53:05):
And it's interesting because I just recently took a trip
to Portland, Oregon, uh and the medical dispensaries are all
over the place there now. Uh. And it was so
it was such a like culture shock thing, like, oh,
I'm in America, but this is a very different America
than Georgia, where I can't imagine the medical dispensaries happening
(53:27):
anytime soon. But like, yeah, it was like dunkin Donuts,
Like on every block there was a little shop with
and they're very professional looking. They didn't look like head
shops or anything, you know. They had like nice, nice
signs with a little green uh plus symbol to to
signify what it was for. It was everywhere. Yeah, So
it's interesting to just try and figure out where we
(53:48):
are in the overall continuing history of marijuana, Like, is
this is this the peak? Like every is everything about
to go? Uh in an entirely different direction? Is it? Can? Can? Can?
Can you continue to change towards acceptance and research? I
think our generation Maybe it's just the people that I
spend time with, but I really feel like our generation
(54:08):
isn't as easily fooled by the whole reefer madness rhetoric, right,
Like we think about it a little bit more maturely
than that and and realize like the actual benefits and
adversities of cannabis on the brain at least, I like
to think, so, um yeah, So hopefully that like the
(54:28):
current generation and then even the most the most recent
generations to sort of reach that acceptable ami acceptable however
you want to look at it, uh, you know, drug
experimentation age, Like hopefully they are injuring into it with
a lot more balanced information and not just like fearmongering
on one side and uh and you know hippie mumbo
(54:49):
jumbo on the other, but the middle path that incorporates
some level headed decision. Yeah, totally. Like I said, like,
I would love to see us go back to some
kind of like shamanistic cultural thing where you know, we
celebrate that when you've reached the age that it will
no longer deform your brain. So on that note, I
think we should pause, uh, sign out for today, and
(55:13):
then you can rejoin us in the next episode, which
will publish on Thursday, where we will talk about medicinal
marijuana and all the different things that can be used.
It can be used for it's associated with, right, And
if there's something that we just briefly touched on in
this episode, or that we briefly touch on in the
next episode, and you think yourself, hey, I'd like to
hear more on that, let us know, because there's there
(55:36):
are so many areas in these two episodes that we
could really blow it out and do an additional episode
or two related to the content. Yeah. And in addition
to you know, we've been talking, like I said at
the top of the episode, about doing like a sort
of ongoing series of these where you know, not like
every week, but every you know, a couple of months,
will explore a different drug. And you know, like we've
(55:57):
thrown around the idea of doing one on ayahuasca. I
think Joe's interested and is it d M t um
So you know, let us know, if there's a particular
thing out there that you want us to cover, uh,
you know, let us know, uh and and we'll try to,
you know, basically take the same framework and apply it there. Indeed,
and hey, in the meantime, you want to check out
past episodes, including that two part on M d M A,
(56:18):
head on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That is our mothership. That's where you'll find all the
podcast episodes. You'll find videos, you'll find blog posts, you'll
find links out to our social media accounts such as what,
Facebook and Twitter. We're blow the Mind on both of those.
We're also and Tumbler, and hey, we're also on Instagram,
right we are. Indeed, I just spent all day yesterday
posting pictures from the various Alien movies because it was
(56:41):
Alien Day. We had a blast on Alien Day on
social media. We're on all of those. But if you
want to write us directly, hit us up that blow
the Mind at how stuff works dot com for more
(57:01):
on this than thousands of other topics. The House up
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